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Zimbabwe's government defies court on land reform

By ANGUS SHAW,Associated Press Writer AP - Tuesday, December 2

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe rejected a court ruling that demanded the government stop its policy of seizing land from white farmers, the state newspaper reported Monday.

The government instead will speed up efforts to seize land remaining in whites farmers' hands and redistribute them to black subsistence farmers, Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa said, according to The Herald.

President Robert Mugabe's often-violent land reform has forced thousands of white farmers off prime agricultural land since 2000 and triggered a food crisis.

The Southern African Development Community's tribunal ruled Friday that Zimbabwe should allow 78 white commercial farmers to keep their farms, which had been for expropriation.

The Namibia-based court also said Zimbabwe should pay compensation to three farmers who already had lost their land.

The farmers welcomed the ruling Friday, but said it was unlikely to be enforced. The tribunal, set up by 14 countries including Zimbabwe, can hear appeals from citizens but does not have power to enforce its rulings.

Zimbabwe once boasted one of Africa's most vibrant economies, with good health care and infrastructure. But the economy has collapsed since Mugabe took control after Zimbabwe's 1980 independence, with runaway hyperinflation, mass unemployment and shortages of most major commodities, including gasoline and food.

Some 5.5 million Zimbabweans _ half the population _ face imminent starvation due to the food crisis that resulted from Mugabe's land redistribution policy, the United Nations said.

A recent cholera epidemic has killed hundreds across the country, and an anthrax outbreak has claimed three lives.

Since disputed elections this year, government has been paralyzed amid power-sharing talks between Mugabe and the opposition, with politicians arguing over how to share Cabinet posts.

Meanwhile, the country's sewage and water facilities have collapsed, hospitals have closed and garbage has gone uncollected.

Authorities in the capital, Harare, say cholera has killed 425 people and sickened more than 11,000 people since August.

Harare, at the center of the epidemic, was without water Monday, after the state utility ran out of chemicals to treat the supply, The Herald reported.

Anthrax has killed two children and one adult in western Zimbabwe, and is threatening to wipe out at least 60,000 livestock, according to the Save the Children rights organization said.

It said starvation was forcing people to eat infected meat.

"Many families in the Zambezi Valley are so hungry that they are taking meat from carcasses of their dead animals, even if they know it's diseased, and are feeding it to their children," the organization said in a statement.

It said anthrax infections have already killed 160 domestic animals as well as two elephants, 70 hippo and 50 buffalo. A quarantine zone has been declared in affected areas.

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