Whites out

last updated 8 January 2015

Harare, Zimbabwe

President Robert Mugabe has launched a new wave of seizures of white-owned land, this time in Zimbabwe’s cities. The autocratic leader already confiscated most white-owned farms over the past two years, a move that caused a dramatic food shortage throughout the country. Now his government says it needs urban land for low-cost housing. Opponents say the real aim is to give free apartments to his paramilitary supporters, called “war veterans,” although they are too young to have fought in the civil war that ended white-supremacist rule. “The simple point is that there is no respect for property rights in this country,” one farmer told the London Independent.