Zimbabwe farmers to join national strike next week

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HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- Zimbabwe's white farmers resolved Saturday to confront President Robert Mugabe by joining a national strike next week against intimidation of opposition supporters and the occupation of their farms.

A spokeswoman for the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) told Reuters the association's leaders had decided to support Zimbabwe's main labor movement in its call on Friday for a three-day strike starting Wednesday, saying the southern African country was close to real anarchy."

Zimbabwe's 4,500 white farmers were targets of fierce anti-white rhetoric during campaigning for parliamentary elections in June, but kept a low profile to avoid escalating conflict in which at least 31 people were killed.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), headed by former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, won an unprecedented 57 seats with the ruling Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF winning 62.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is supported by most of the country's 1.2 million workers, called the strike after an emergency council meeting and said it was trying to coordinate its initiative with other civic groups.

"The CFU supports this call for the restoration of law and order and so will be part of the national work stoppage for this period," the spokeswoman said.

"All farming operations, except for essential tasks, will be stopped for the three-day period," she said.

"The CFU leaders decided that there is need to support all initiatives aimed at restoring law and order because the country has been taken close to total anarchy," she added.

Earlier this week, the CFU warned that intimidation and violence on hundreds of farms occupied by supporters of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party since February might force its members to halt farming operations nationwide starting Monday.

The union said interference on the farms had escalated despite the government's announcement of plans for the orderly transfer of land from whites to blacks.

Mugabe says white farmers occupy more than 70 percent of the country's most fertile land while blacks are crowded in barren districts they were driven to during 90 years of British colonial rule which ended with independence in 1980.

But the farmers -- who say they occupy less than 40 percent of the best farmland and support land redistribution -- accuse Mugabe of failing to produce a coherent reform program since he came to power at independence 20 years ago.

In a statement published by the official Herald newspaper on Saturday, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said the ZCTU decision was unfortunate and ill-advised.

"As has already been acknowledged by the farmers themselves, government has expeditiously responded, through the police who have put in place adequate security arrangements, wherever need has been demonstrated," he said.

"The commitment of the government of Zimbabwe and the people of Zimbabwe to orderly, transparent and legally defined land reform is irreversible," he said.

In a statement issued Saturday, the Zimbabwe Business Leaders Forum also called on Mugabe to restore law and order and urged him to call an emergency meeting of all national stakeholders to discuss the country's political situation.

"We strongly urge His Excellency, President R.G. Mugabe, to use all means at his disposal to restore law and order in the country," the forum said.

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