Human rights watch: Militants move onto white-owned farms

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HARARE - The looming risk of mass starvation in Zimbabwe worsened this week as militants moved on to more white-owned farms, beating one worker for refusing to shout ruling party slogans and forcing hundreds of others to stop work.
On Sunday three white farming families were barricaded in their homes after scores of militant supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party, gathered on four farms in Guruve, 125 kilometres north of Harare.
Despite an official announcement that the land reform was a “done deal”, the occupiers told farm workers they had to make room for new black settlers on the land.
The continuing violence threatens to worsen already critical food shortages in Zimbabwe. Farming experts have predicted a 40 per cent fall in agricultural output this year due to the communalisation of commercial farming. The country needs to import at least 700,000 tons of wheat and maize, but has no foreign currency to buy it. A recent report said nearly three million villagers had registered for food aid with the government. The worst hit people had already started eating tree roots and leaves for lack of other food.
Conceding that a quarter of Zimbabwe’s 12.5 million people were now living in abject poverty, the Finance Minister, Hebert Murerwa, warned last week that the country urgently needed aid from abroad. But analysts say President Mugabe will remain the major hurdle to efforts by some of his more moderate ministers to normalise ties with the donor community. While Murerwa was urging ties with donors, the Foreign Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, a close ally of Mugabe, was summoning British and EU diplomats in Harare to censure them for their stance on Zimbabwe. Mumbengegwi is said to have expressed dismay at the EU’s “confrontational attitude” towards Zimbabwe.
He also launched a broadside at Britain claiming it was mobilising negative international opinion against Zimbabwe. But, in private, Zimbabwe has asked the United Nations Development Programme to help mobilise food aid worth £200m. The president sent the Finance Minister to hold urgent private talks with Agostinho Zacarrius, the UNDP resident representative in Zimbabwe, reports said last week. – Own correspondent