‘We have teeth’ – Didymus warns farmers(01-02-07)

orm Didymus Mutasa told a Senior Civil Servants Housing Scheme meeting at Augustadale Park, that government was going ahead in redistributing Zimbabwe’s most fertile land – most of it owned by white commercial farmers – to the landless black population.
While there is international controversy over the ambition, Mugabe’s government has given tacit support to – or at least turned a blind eye to – landless blacks, who describe themselves as veterans of the war of independence, occupying white farms.
“Any attempt to stand in the way of the land reform programme would not be
tolerated,” Mutasa told the meeting. “May I warn those who are bent on resisting the land reform programme that we have teeth, we can bite and indeed we shall bite should the need arise.”
Mugabe’s government has ordered 600 of the remaining 4,500 white commercial farmers to surrender their lands to black settlers by February 3, but said they were free to harvest their crop.
Farming sources estimate 40 percent of the farmers have obeyed the instruction, but others have been holding on in the hope of a reprieve from the country’s courts or from Mugabe himself.