by Ogo A. Bellard

Created on: July 25, 2007   Last Updated: July 26, 2007

"We will proceed with current land reform with or without sanctions, ... Let that position be known here and abroad and let the commercial farmers tell that to their constituency or constituencies overseas." -Robert Gabriel Mugabe (RGM)

In 2000 a campaign of violence and terror rocked the entire Zimbabwe nation to its core. Led by the "Heroes of the Revolution" the Zimbabwe War Veterans Association (WVA), all over the country groups of squatters ran riot, invading and forcibly occupying large tracts of working farmlands and evicting the resident owners.

"We are no longer going to ask for the land, but we are going to take it without negotiating,"-RGM

Though many the members of the WVA were actually too young to have been in the liberation struggle, and it is generally believed to be a direct undisclosed instrument of the government. News reel footage clearly shows the rioters were driven to specific locations in nice new unmarked buses. Not to mention previous to this campaign all the members of WVA were given sizable cash payouts as remuneration for their part in the liberation struggle. In Harare the capital city, quite a few WVA's were seen hurtling along the potholed streets, trashing their low suspended, bright and shiny luxury sports cars.

"Cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen"-RGM

For any thinking Zimbabwean this new land resettlement campaign signalled the beginning of the end. The warning signs that had been flashing since 1982, (when the newly formed Fifth Brigade under the direct control of Robert Mugabe, massacred 20,000 ZAPU related ex-liberation struggle combatants and their extended families in Matabeleland province. This assured the destruction of his only rival political party, ZAPU, and opened the way to a one party, ZANU-PF, state), those flashes of alarm became unrelentingly visible in local daily life. Zimbabwe in one foul swoop discredited any appearance of economic stability. When any government can and does whimsically seize land and property without fair economic exchange, local and foreign investors rightly run for the borders.

"We pride ourselves as being top, really, on the African ladder ... We feel that we have actually been advancing rather than going backwards."-RGM

From an inflation rate of only 38% in 1985 it exploded to an estimated unofficial 11,000% in June 2007 or Z$400,000 1 (British Pound), and is forecast to reach 1,500,000%

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