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Zimbabwe Wants Apology for Colonialism During Racism Conference
HARARE, Aug 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Zimbabwe will ask for an apology and compensation from Africa's former colonial powers at next week's U.N. conference on racism, but Western critics want the government to answer for its land reforms.
"As black people, like Jews, we also deserve an apology for the human rights violations that were committed against us as a race," Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said earlier this month, in outlining Zimbabwe's position ahead of the conference.
"We should not be treated any differently because of our color or because of our ethnic grouping," he said.
At the conference, opening August 31 in Durban, South Africa, Chinamasa said Zimbabwe will insist on an "express apology by former colonial masters" and the setting up of two funds to make reparations for slavery and to victims of colonialism.
"An apology should be forthcoming, reparations should also be made available," the minister said.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe refers to his government's land reforms as the final battle against colonialism - what he calls the "Third Chimurenga," or the third uprising against white rule.
The fortunes of Zimbabwe have for the past two decades been tied to President Mugabe, who wrested control from a small white community and put the country on a stable course.
For years, the country has been the world's third biggest source of tobacco and is potentially a bread basket for surrounding countries less geared up for agricultural production and often forced to import food, according to the BBC online archives.
Whites represent less than one percent of Zimbabwe's population, but they own more than 20 percent of all the nation's land, a heritage from the colonial era in Africa. According to the government, that represents 70 percent of the prime farmland where big cash-earners like tobacco are grown.
The former colonial power, Britain, and other donors had agreed in 1998 to set up a fund that would allow Zimbabwe to buy land from white farmers for resettlement with blacks.
Zimbabwe had agreed with donors to expropriate 118 farms over an initial two years, but then proceeded to issue notices of intention to acquire 841 farms.
With backing from Western countries, often referred to in the issue as 'White' governments, the action was successfully challenged in court by the white farmers, leaving Mugabe incensed.
The donor-funded scheme then fell by the wayside, overtaken by a scheme of farm invasions, spearheaded by veterans of the 1970s liberation war.
Now the government says it will take more than 90 percent of white-owned land without paying the farmers as an answer to atrocities committed by the white colonial powers and the failure of Western governments to pay back compensations for the people of Zimbabwe.
Donors have refused to support the violence-plagued scheme, which has been closely tied to political intimidation of opposition supporters.
Since losing a referendum on a new constitution and facing a tough challenge from an upstart opposition party, Mugabe has used racially inflammatory rhetoric to whip up support for his scheme and branded whites "the enemy."
Because of the violence, which has left dozens of blacks and at least seven white farmers dead, South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance has asked that the so-called "racism" against white Zimbabweans be added to the agenda of a U.N. conference.
The party's deputy leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk said last week that he made the request in a letter to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who is secretary general of the conference.
"The ongoing violence and racism being perpetrated upon the citizens of Zimbabwe - specifically upon white Zimbabweans - by state-sponsored operatives operating under the guise of structural land reform, has gone on long enough without concrete action from the international community," he wrote.
But at the same time, South Africa's Landless People's Movement has invited Mugabe to address its meeting to be held on the sidelines of the conference.
Movement spokesman Morena Thoabana told journalists in Johannesburg that South African groups were "not interested" in the violence, but wanted to learn how Mugabe was implementing the land redistribution program.
"We were quite impressed and are hoping he (Mugabe) would give us advice," Thoabane said. "We want to learn from Zimbabwe."
The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance will attract about 30 to 35 heads of state, approximately 160 foreign ministers, and delegations from 194 countries.
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