Zimbabwe's Mugabe vows to keep grabbing land

Zimbabwe's Mugabe vows to keep grabbing land

BINDURA, Zimbabwe (Reuters): Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe thumbed his nose at world opinion on Thursday, vowing to extend the seizure of white farms and telling donors to keep their money.

Reverting to a hard line after having seemed on Wednesday to be ready to compromise, Mugabe told the black Zimbabwe Farmers' Union he would not bow to international pressure to end the occupation of nearly 1,000 white-owned farms by veterans of the 1970s liberation war in the former Rhodesia.

"We are now in the process of settling people and have identified the slightly more than 3,000 farms we shall gazette and acquire. The war vets will stay on all the farms until we resettle them," he said.

Mugabe's government announced on Monday it would add 2,237 farms to the list of 804 it planned to take without compensation and give to blacks.

On Thursday, he added: "Whatever we do after the 3,000 farms will be purely complementary, but we are not stopping there."

After a five-hour meeting in which South African President Thabo Mbeki offered on Wednesday to help Zimbabwe rewin international confidence, Mugabe said war veterans would be removed from farms not identified for black resettlement.

Most analysts had understood him to refer to the 804 farms already identified for seizure when he said: "I want to say, within this month we will have concluded this exercise."

But on Thursday he castigated the state-owned Herald newspaper, usually a reliable voice of the government, for misquoting him in a story reporting his concession.

"I didn't say war veterans should be removed," he said. Mugabe lashed out at his critics, calling them imperialists and saying an opposition strike that paralyzed his country on Wednesday was meaningless.

"Our roots are in the soil and not in the factories. We can never allow a return to racial oppression.

"Our land is to us first. The donors can stay with their money. We will not give up our land because of what the donors say," he told the farmers.

Returning to a regular theme of his campaign for parliamentary elections in June, which his ruling ZANU-PF narrowly won, he said: "Don't listen to the propaganda of racist whites in the country. The whole of Zimbabwe belongs to each and every one of us."

Mugabe's address appeared to undo the work of Mbeki, who on Wednesday offered advice and moral support if Mugabe would enforce law and order.

Political and economic analysts had interpreted Tuesday's devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar and Wednesday agreement to end the farm invasions as first steps in Zimbabwe's economic and political rehabilitation.