Zimbabwe to give housing plots to war veterans, take over more farms

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- Zimbabwe is to provide 100 residential plots to veterans of its 1970s liberation war after police this week destroyed illegal huts erected on occupied white-owned land, a local government leader said.

Elijah Chanakira, chairman of a commission running the capital of Harare, said the plots would be allocated as a matter of urgency.

"Additionally, the city of Harare has identified farms on the outskirts of the city which the government will be asked to acquire as soon as possible for future housing developments," Chanakira said in a statement sent to Reuters on Saturday.

Police this week destroyed houses under construction and burnt down makeshift huts on farms on the outskirts of Harare, a move the government later said it regretted after a protest by war veterans at President Robert Mugabe's offices.

On Friday, Mugabe gave formal notice that the government would appropriate 509 white-owned farms to resettle blacks, bringing to 1,542 the number of properties he has ear-marked for compulsory acquisition to resettle landless blacks.

His government has started moving peasants onto 211 farms it has acquired without objection from the farmers, under a "fast track" program in which it plans to resettle people in 100 farms in each of the country's eight provinces before the start of the rainy season around October.

Mugabe has passed legislation allowing him to acquire the farms with no obligation to pay compensation for the land if former colonial power Britain does not provide the funds.

Mugabe plans to acquire nearly half the 12 million hectares (30 million acres) owned by about 4,500 white farmers to resettle peasants as redress for the seizure of land by British colonists over a century ago.

The government has sanctioned the invasion of some 1,000 commercial farms by self-styled liberation war veterans since February, which the Commercial Farmers Union, a grouping of 4,500 mainly white farms, says has severely disrupted agricultural production.

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