Mugabe allies draw up secret plan to seize more farms

Harare/Johannesburg: President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has drawn up a secret plan to seize the land owned by Zimbabwe's last white farmers.

The Commercial Farmers' Union estimated yesterday that at least 100 farmers had been targeted for eviction in the past two weeks.

They appear to be the first victims of a co-ordinated campaign begun despite Mugabe agreeing to share power with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The Daily Telegraph has learned that the plan to accelerate the eviction of the embattled white farming community was drawn up by Mugabe's allies at a secret meeting earlier this month.

Officials from justice and land ministries - both allocated to Zanu-PF under power sharing - met police and magistrates in Chegutu, north of Harare.

A set of notes from the meeting show that its purpose was to "find ways that could enhance quicker prosecution of former commercial farmers".

Johannes Tomana, the attorney-general who has been allocated a seized farm, is reported to have said that there had been "unnecessary delays" in farmers' trials as a result of their legal representatives challenging the constitutionality of the process.

Harare's chief magistrate, Herbert Mandeya, said that a ruling by a tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that the farmers' rights had been violated "must be disregarded as it does not form part of our law".

Zimbabwe is a signatory to SADC.

The meeting decided that "lands officers together with law enforcement agencies must do everything in their power to assist in the eviction of former commercial farmers", according to the notes. Another, similar meeting was held a few days later in Mutare, south-east of Harare.

The land grab, which began in 2000, precipitated the country's collapse, destroying commercial agriculture, the mainstay of the economy.

The disclosure of the meetings and the plight of farmers will be a test for the effectiveness of power sharing.

The MDC, which started work in the unity government last week, has promised a land audit and that seizures will stop, in the knowledge that agriculture is key to economic recovery.

More than half the population needs food aid.

Nelson Chamisa, the information minister and a spokesman for the MDC, said: "The MDC is clear that there has to be security on the land and for those who have planted their crops so that these farmers form the anchor of a sustainable recovery process."