Black Zimbabweans, wielding guns and clubs, invaded another white-owned farm yesterday – the latest act of violence in a land dispute embroiling the African nation.
Thousands of squatters have killed four people, injured scores of others and burned buildings in recent weeks.
The attackers say they were promised land in exchange for fighting for Zimbabwe’s independence during the 1970s.
In yesterday’s attack, 200 blacks occupied a farm in the Mvurwi region, 60 miles north of the capital, Harare, and trapped the farm manager and two women inside.
More than 700 supporters joined the armed men in seizing the farm, one of the world’s biggest tobacco operations. At least two other farms were occupied in an area east of Harare.
The squatters’ campaign was sparked in February by President Robert Mugabe, who encouraged supporters to seize the farms after he lost a referendum that would have allowed him to reclaim and redistribute land. Mugabe calls the white farmers enemies of the state.
Zimbabwe – once the British colony of Rhodesia – was an apartheid state until blacks gained independence in 1980. Through both regimes, blacks worked in serf-like servitude on the productive, white-owned farms.
Now 4,000 white farmers are a minority in the nation of 12.5 million – but they own one-third of Zimbabwe’s agricultural land.