Zimbabwe Leader Using Land For Power

April 27, 2000 - Britain said Thursday it won't consider paying millions for land reform in its former African colony of Zimbabwe until political violence and occupation of white-owned farms is stopped.

But the country's long-time president may have just the opposite in mind, at least for now.

Police in Zimbabwe said Thursday they would crack down on rising political violence by using special powers dating back to the era of white rule that the opposition said threatened free elections.

And the arrest of an Associated Press photographer in connection with a newspaper office attack in Zimbabwe drew protest Thursday from foreign press organizations that supporters of President Robert Mugabe are trying to silence the press.

CBS News Correspondent Alan Pizzey reports the trouble in Zimbabwe is on the surface about farmland.

In the 20 years since independence some white-owned land has gone to black peasant farmers.

So-called war veterans occupying more than 1,000 white-owned farms want more.

But attacks on opposition supporters add credence to claims that President Robert Mugabe is using the issue to subvert upcoming elections.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, says, "We will have elections when everyone has been beaten up or killed. Those are the conditions he is trying to set."

Certainly Mugabe is in political trouble. Inflation is 60 percent, unemployment is almost as high, and people are poorer than they were when independence came with great expectations.

Economist Tony Hawkins says, "Over the last five years we've seen the growth of corruption and the growth of political opportunism, as we're seeing with the land issue now."

Joanna Takia, who is black, was resettled on part of a formerly white-owned farm sixteen years ago.

"We used to have only one rocky acre,"Joanna says. "Life is much better now."

But commercial farmers like Mick Townsend, who is white, produce five times as much corn per acre as farmers like Joanna.

Resettlement of the farm his grandfather hacked out of the bush a century ago would support about 200 people.

Today it is home to nearly 1,000.

Townsend, says: "It's a brilliant country, it still is. We have got troubles. But we tend to sort these things out."

Pressure is growing on the Zimbabwe government to do just that.

If farming collapses it's not just Zimbabwe and its people who will suffer. Eight neighboring countries are to a large degree dependent on the stability of this economy.

The emotional importance of land makes it an easy political weapon.

When asked what he would do if he had to give up his land, Townsend says, "Well since it's my whole life and my whole background I would be entirely lost, I wouldn't know what to do. I'd be devastated."