- HARARE -- President Robert
Mugabe has issued a decree confiscating millions of pounds of agricultural
equipment owned by former farmers who have already been dispossessed of
their land and homes.
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- If the former farmers, mostly white Zimbabweans, resist
or try to sell their equipment privately, they face up to two years in
jail.
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- The decree was published in the government gazette and
might not be challenged in Zimbabwe's unreliable courts for six months,
by which time the Harare parliament must ratify the new law. "This
is outrageous. It is legalising blatant theft," said John Worlsey-Worswick,
a spokesman for the pressure group Justice for Agriculture.
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- "Many of us who have been kicked off our farms and
lost our homes and businesses have been surviving by selling our equipment.
Now they have even taken that."
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- Mr Mugabe, who pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth
after its leaders decided last week to continue Harare's suspension from
the body, has been emboldened by his support at the summit by Thabo Mbeki,
the South African president. Faced with massive crop failures after his
seizure of 90 per cent of white-owned land, he has taken nationalisation
of white-owned assets a stage further.
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- Zimbabwe's frequently amended constitution allows the
president to issue decrees that come into effect immediately.
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- Warehouses and sale yards all over the country are full
of equipment that some farmers were able to rescue from their properties
before they were evicted by hordes of Mr Mugabe's supporters.
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- Many farmers say they are selling assets below replacement
value to Mr Mugabe's cronies who have been given the country's best farms
but have failed to plant even five per cent of their new land.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
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