White farmers have made new complaints about violence and looting by pro-government activists who have illegally occupied their land in the Chinhoyi region, north-west of Harare, but police officials claimed yesterday that the farmers were exaggerating.
African leaders, meeting in Malawi, also played the issue down and the South African government said it would not use sanctions or other forms of pressure on President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
"There has been no let up; the violence and looting is continuing," said a spokesman for the Commercial Farmers' Union in Chinhoyi. Chaos has reigned in the area for a week as veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation war have targeted white property, prompting many farmers and their families to flee.
The CFU estimates that more than $3.8 million worth of property has been lost in a week of ransacking by gangs who also assaulted scores of black farm workers in the Doma and Mhangura areas near the town. Up to 90 families have left Chinhoyi.
The CFU's president, Mr Colin Cloete, told South African radio yesterday that he had heard reports about four more farms being targeted.
Looters had made off with tractors and other vehicles, fertiliser, welding machines and other farming equipment, he said.
A police spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, said farmers were exaggerating. "Despite the CFU's position that we are not doing anything, by last night 12 people had been arrested in the Mhangura area and we have recovered a substantial amount of property," he said. "We are doing the best we can under the hostile environment the farmers have created."
Last night, police reinforcements were reported to have arrived in the region.
Mr Mugabe warned white farmers on Saturday against attacking militants. A day earlier, a court in Chinhoyi denied bail to 23 farmers who were charged with inciting public violence after clashes on an occupied farm in the area. Police say five of the occupiers were seriously injured in those skirmishes.
Mr Mugabe argues that it is immoral for about 4,500 whites to own the bulk of Zimbabwe's prime farm land, which he says was stolen from blacks when the country was colonised by Britain more than a century ago.
At a meeting of the 14-state Southern African Development Community, the SADC's executive secretary, Mr Prega Ramsamy, said that the Zimbabwe land crisis would not feature in the discussions because "the case there is often exaggerated". The meeting would focus on the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the ruinous conflicts in Angola and Congo.
Under reforms begun in 1998, the leaders will revamp the SADC body dealing with politics, defence and security, which Mr Mugabe chairs. It will be put under the control of three presidents.
Zimbabwe's foreign, information and agriculture ministers said the violence that led to the arrest of the 23 white farmers in Chinhoyi was orchestrated by the victims in a bid for international sympathy ahead of a meeting on the land crisis which has been convened by Nigeria in Abuja on September 6th.