THE Government of Robert Mugabe tabled draconian laws yesterday to drive the last white farmers from their land and crush dissent.

The constitutional amendments debated in Parliament will nationalise all agricultural land that has been listed for seizure since 2000. Landowners will have no right to contest the confiscations and will be barred from receiving compensation.

Another clause in the legislation gives the Government powers “in the national interest” to stop people leaving the country. Lawyers said that this echoed apartheid-era South African laws that stopped critics from travelling abroad to condemn white-minority rule.

Another section will introduce an upper chamber in Parliament, with 16 of the 66 senators effectively appointed by President Mugabe. Also on Parliament’s order paper is a Bill to put private schools, a preserve of generally pro-opposition middle-class families, under state control. Yet another amendment will ban civil servants from joining trade unions.

The legislation comes after parliamentary elections in March that the ruling Zanu(PF) party won amid accusations from Western nations and the Opposition that they were neither free nor fair. The legislative onslaught also comes after demolitions and evictions in mostly urban areas that made 700,000 people homeless and jobless, according to the UN.

The package comes as Mr Mugabe is negotiating with South Africa for a loan, thought to be £279 million, to prop up the Zimbabwean economy. It is believed that the loan is conditional on Mr Mugabe reversing his crackdown on democracy that began in 2000 when the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) nearly won elections.

Brian Raftopoulos, of the Zimbabwe in Crisis Coalition, said that the changes showed Mr Mugabe’s scorn for the hopes of President Mbeki of South Africa to start political dialogue in Zimbabwe. “Mugabe will never accept political conditionality,” he said.

David Coltart, the MDC’s legal director, said: “Mugabe said the elections were meant to ‘bury’ the MDC. He failed. Zanu (PF) didn’t win a single urban seat. What we are seeing now is an incremental approach to finish off the MDC.”

After five years of murder, assault and harassment of white-owned farms by state agents, the Government has managed to confiscate legally only about 10 per cent of the estimated 4,500 properties. All but a handful of white farmers have had their property listed for “compulsory acquisition”.

However, most of them have kept the Government at bay by fighting their eviction in court. About 450 farmers have stayed on their farms.

Mr Coltart said: “These constitutional changes are designed for once and for all to smash the white farmers and to close any possible avenue for using the constitution to protect human rights.”

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