http://www.boston.com/dailynews/004/world/Zimbabwe_distributes_farming_p:.shtml

Zimbabwe distributes farming plots, rewarding loyalists

By Angus Shaw, Associated Press, 1/4/2002 16:54

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) Zimbabwe's government published a list Friday of about 100,000 blacks scheduled to receive land seized from white farmers under its controversial ''fast track'' land reform program.

Among those on the list were lawmakers and loyalists to President Robert Mugabe.

The plan to redistribute farms to landless blacks has been marred by the violent occupation of hundreds of farms by ruling party militants and has plunged Zimbabwe into a political and economic crisis.

Most of Zimbabwe's commercial farmland has been in the hands of whites, who make up less than half a percent of the country's population. But human rights groups have said the government was less interested in correcting Zimbabwe's unfair land allocation than in wooing political supporters ahead of presidential elections in March.

The list includes Zimbabweans who applied under a government program offering parcels of land for commercial farming, and does not include squatters who have already resettled on former white-owned farmland.

About 20 million acres of farmland approximately 95 percent of the farms owned by some 4,000 white farmers are being nationalized.

Among those on the list was Tony Gara, a wealthy former deputy government minister who owns a chemicals business and a chain of hair salons.

Gara was censured by churches in Zimbabwe for comparing Mugabe to Jesus and describing him as ''a son of God.''

Several lawmakers, a government research scientist, two former broadcasters with the state radio station, an award-winning athlete from the national police force and six senior journalists with the state-run Herald newspaper were also among those on the list.

Joseph Chinotimba, a leader of a militant group that has organized scores of violent farm occupations, has defended his inclusion on the list, saying: ''I deserve it.''

The government says applications were granted to those committed to retaining the productivity of seized land.

The land seizure program has disrupted production of tobacco, the main hard currency earner, and corn, the staple food, deepening the nation's worst economic crisis since independence in 1980 and raising fears of food shortages.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Answers

I still can't read these stories any more. It's SUCH a disaster, even worse coming, and nobody seems to give a damn.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002