DATE=5/2/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=ZIMBABWE / FARM POLITICS
NUMBER=5-46242
BYLINE=ALEX BELIDA
DATELINE=HARARE
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Zimbabwe's ruling, but widely unpopular, ZANU
P-F party appears resigned to losing urban
constituencies to the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change in upcoming parliamentary elections.
Analysts say that means the country's rural
constituencies, ZANU's traditional support base in the
20-years since independence, are likely to decide the
outcome of the poll. Southern Africa Correspondent
Alex Belida reports both sides are leveling and
rejecting charges of intimidation in the bitter fight
for the rural vote.
TEXT: Last month, at an opposition political rally in
Bindura, northeast of Harare, a grizzled old farm
worker in a tattered T-shirt and shabby trousers told
me he was happy to support the new Movement for
Democratic Change. Besides, he said, he would not
have his farm job unless he had an M-D-C party card.
The man was quickly hustled away by party activists
who said he did not know what he was saying. They
insisted no one was being forced to join the
opposition. The Commercial Farmers Union, which
represents most of Zimbabwe's four-thousand white farm
owners, said it did not believe any of its members
would require workers to join the opposition. No one
else corroborated the man's claim.
Now, Zimbabwe's state-run broadcasting service is
reporting that thousands of farm workers are flocking
to rallies in rural areas where they are claiming they
were all coerced into joining the M-D-C by the white
commercial-farm owners who employ them.
One televised report this week showed farm workers,
joined by their employers, turning over M-D-C party
membership cards and T-shirts and renouncing their
support for the opposition. The farm owners were
quoted as saying their tractors and trucks, previously
used to ferry workers to M-D-C rallies, would now be
used to take them to rallies held by the ruling ZANU
P-F party, which organized the event.
But these televised political conversions followed
bloody incidents in which white farm owners and their
black workers have been killed, beaten, and threatened
by ruling party activists or the black war veterans
and other squatters involved in the recent occupations
of white-owned farms. M-D-C officials are challenging
the authenticity of these change-of-party-allegiance
events, which they claim have been stage-managed by
ZANU P-F after the farm owners and their workers were
intimidated.
The Commercial Farmers Union is also questioning the
genuineness of the conversions.
Nevertheless, M-D-C leaders are now openly
acknowledging that farm owners and farm workers alike
need to put their personal security first.
At a May Day rally in a black working-class suburb of
Harare, M-D-C leader Morgan Tsvangirai told an
audience of several-hundred supporters that they
should go along with those he described as ZANU
intimidators to avoid further trouble. He says what
really matters is what they do in the privacy of the
polling booth on election day.
But there have been suggestions that Mr. Tsvangirai
feels betrayed by some white commercial farmers. They
initially gave him and the M-D-C their enthusiastic
support, but now appear to be making separate deals
with the ruling party and the war veterans behind the
land seizures.
Mr. Tsvangirai is on record as criticizing farm owners
for negotiating with those he calls outlaws. But he
tells V-O-A he feels no sense of betrayal.
// TSVANGIRAI ACT //
No, no, no. I think that safety comes first. I
do not feel any betrayal at all.
// END ACT //
One farmer with land southwest of Harare says he and
his workers have faced extraordinary harassment,
including what he describes as serious threats to
their safety. This farmer, speaking on condition of
anonymity, says landowners have been made to feel by
the ruling party and the squatters that they can enjoy
effective peace as long as they stay out of politics.
Accordingly, he says that for public purposes, he is
now distancing himself from involvement in the
campaign for the coming parliamentary elections.
But he says what he does in the privacy of the polling
booth will be another matter - echoing the hopes of M-
D-C leader Tsvangirai.
But less educated Zimbabweans may not feel so
confident about the secrecy of their votes. Worried
M-D-C officials say farm workers have been told
privately that the ruling party has unspecified ways
of seeing just who they vote for. They say they have
been told they will be killed if they vote for the
opposition.
With an estimated 350-to-400-hundred thousand farm
laborers and hundreds-of-thousands more in their
families, that fear could cost the opposition votes in
rural areas, where ZANU P-F's hopes of retaining a
parliamentary majority appear to rest. (SIGNED)
NEB/BEL/GE/RAE
02-May-2000 09:29 AM EDT (02-May-2000 1329 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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