ZIMBABWE evening NEWS: 13 May 2000
Zimbabwe Police Block Peace Rally
Saturday May 13 8:39 AM ET
By Darren Schuettler
HARARE (Reuters) - Police armed with automatic rifles prevented a Zimbabwe opposition rally for peace in central Harare on Saturday, barely 24 hours after President Robert Mugabe called for a return to normality in the country.
The police action came as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was about to hold a meeting of its own to discuss Mugabe's call for an end to violence and his plan for land redistribution.
Lovemore Madhuku told reporters outside a city sports complex that police had turned away supporters of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a coalition of civic, church and opposition groups.
``The police told everyone coming to disperse and did disperse some...They have been attacked by police. The government here is determined to crush any kind of public protest,'' he said.
Reporters on the scene saw groups turned away at gunpoint, but did not witness any assaults.
The rally calling for a peaceful, free and fair campaign for elections expected in June was the first called by the NCA since pro-government mobs broke up a peace march on April 1.
On Friday, Mugabe denounced the violence that has killed at least 19 people, including three white farmers, and announced the formation of a land commission including government officials, farmers and the war veterans who have occupied hundreds of white-owned farms since February.
But Mugabe said the veterans leading the farm invasions would not leave until land redistribution had started. Until now the president has strongly supported the land invasions and police have done little to intervene.
Another Farmer Mourned
The farming community held a private memorial service on Saturday for Alan Dunn, who was fatally beaten by suspected war veterans near Beatrice, south of Harare, last Sunday.
Catholic priest David Gibbs told about 400 mourners spilling out of the small Harare church into surrounding gardens that Dunn had ``sacrificed himself for what he believed in.''
``We are honored knowing that somewhere in the future, what Alan has sacrificed will bear fruit,'' the priest said.
An official of the opposition MDC, which poses the first election challenge to the ruling ZANU-PF since independence in 1980, said party leaders would meet on Saturday to review the situation following Mugabe's talks on Friday with veterans and white farmers.
Options the party could consider included a call for mass action against the government and for foreign sanctions against Mugabe's administration.
Britain increased the pressure on Friday by extending a ban on new applications for arms exports to Zimbabwe to a total arms embargo, including a prohibition on the sale of spare parts to the defense force.
The partly state-owned Herald newspaper said on Saturday the government would order about 86,000 white Zimbabweans who have applied for British citizenship since the land crisis began to surrender their Zimbabwean passports.
Zimbabwe has not allowed dual nationality since 1985, but Britain has never recognized the renunciation of rights to British nationality by Zimbabweans with links to London.
Passports To Be Surrendered
The Herald quoted a statement from the Zimbabwe Citizenship Office saying: ``The British nationals ineffectively renounced British citizenship in the form and manner prescribed by the Zimbabwe Citizenship Law.
``They are, therefore, deemed residents and not citizens of Zimbabwe. These people who have not renounced, must surrender all Zimbabwe passports because they are now citizens of the United Kingdom,'' the statement said.
Britain earlier this year said it would take in about 20,000 white Zimbabweans with hereditary claims to British nationality.
Farmers, meanwhile, weighed the significance of Mugabe's condemnation of the three-month-old campaign of violence and occupation. Not all were encouraged.
Coffee and cattle farmer Roy Bennett, whose land was occupied last Wednesday, said the land issue would not be settled before parliamentary elections expected in June.
``Mugabe and ZANU-PF are fully aware they have no support in this country...He (Mugabe) doesn't want the land issue to go away before the elections,'' he told Reuters.
Hunzvi said after Friday's meeting that he supported the call for peace on the farms, but added: ``Violence is caused by delays in implementing land distribution. The people must have their land before elections because politicians tend to forget these things and go on a long honeymoon.''
Mugabe said a land committee -- including representatives of government, the war veterans' association and the mainly white Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) -- would be set up to manage the land redistribution within a short period of time.
The government has identified 841 of the country's 4,500 commercial farms for redistribution. But Mugabe said last week he wanted to redistribute half the white-owned land to blacks.
Mugabe said the government would compensate farmers for improvements to the land, but not for the land itself, which he and the war veterans say was stolen under colonial rule.
($1-.6588 British Pound)
Militants Thwart Zimbabwe Rally
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer Saturday May 13 7:28 AM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Armed ruling party militants chased away at least 100 supporters of a peace rally called by civic groups today, and turned back others who approached.
Scores of police, some in riot gear, watched passively as supporters of the National Constitutional Assembly fled the grounds of the rented sports arena. There were no reports of injuries.
A handful of organizers refused to leave but were not attacked.
``Even if there are 10 of us, we are having our meeting,'' said assembly spokesman Tendai Biti. ``We will not succumb to these forces of evil.''
He said their alliance of churches, opposition parties and other groups received police permission to hold the rally against worsening political violence. At least 18 people have died ahead of parliamentary elections expected to be called for next month.
Opponents of President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party say he has encouraged the violent occupations of more than 1,000 white-owned farms by war veterans and mobs of squatters. They say he wants to punish farmers and their workers for supporting the main opposition group.
Mugabe says the land seizures are acceptable in a country where one-third of the fertile land is owned by a few thousand whites.
Three white farmers killed in the violence have all been Movement for Democratic Change supporters.
The MDC is seen as the first real challenge to Mugabe's rule since he led the nation to independence from Britain. Leaders of the labor-backed party today were considering a mass program of strikes and civil disobedience.
Organizers of today's rally in western Harare said Mugabe's intimidation tactics were clearly working.
On April 1, the assembly's peace march through Harare was attacked by veterans of the bush war that led to independence in 1980. At least 15 people were injured in attacks by ruling militants armed with iron bars, bricks and razor wire whips.
``It is the same pattern today,'' said Lovemore Madhuku, the assembly's deputy chairman. ``People were frightened and ran away. We told them to get away quickly at the first sign of trouble.''
But he said his organization had not expected thousands of supporters to show up this time.
``Many people let us know they were not coming because they were afraid,'' he said.