Zimbabwe: Panel to oversee land transfer

By M. S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, MAY 13. A Land Commission is being set up in Zimbabwe to oversee the transfer of white-owned farmland to the state for its eventual redistribution to the landless blacks.

This was agreed to during a meeting in Harare between the President, Mr. Robert Mugabe, and representatives of the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) and the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans' Association (ZLWVA).

It is not clear how the proposed commission will work, or in what matter it will fit into the existing structures dealing with the land question. Talks are to be resumed next week between the CFU and the Government to discuss further details.

The agreement was arrived at over three days of negotiations between the CFU and the ZLWVA, even as clashes over the forcible occupation of white-owned land by the war veterans continues. Eighteen people, including three white farmers, have been killed in these clashes over the last 10 weeks. However, such attempts by the landless blacks to take over white-owned land are not a recent phenomenon. They have occurred periodically over the past decade, provoking every time dire prophecies in the media about Zimbabwe ``going over the brink''.

The agreement on the setting up of the commission is likely to shift the focus in Zimbabwe from the land occupations to the electoral contest. These have to be held before October 10 this year, Parliament having been dissolved on April 11. The so- called Lancaster House Constitution provides for a ``window period'' of six months after the dissolution of Parliament before which fresh elections have to be held. Zimbabwe's home-grown Constitution, which was rejected in the referendum in February this year, had reduced this period to four months.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main Opposition party, which three days ago had threatened to boycott the elections on the ground that they would not be free, has now backed out from that threat. However, the demand that they should be held under ``international supervision'', voiced as much by MDC as (strangely enough) by Britain, may yet prove contentious. The MDC has also held out the threat of a general strike to protest against the violence on the farms and attacks on its supporters allegedly by supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF.

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Section  : International
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