Africa Media Watch

As Zimbabwe's government moved this week to speed up the seizure of white-owned farms, a newspaper in neighbouring South Africa advised white farmers to "get cracking" on the land reform issue.

Get proactive

"The South African farming community should now become proactive to defuse the land crisis instead of waiting for the government to do something," prominent columnist Max du Preez wrote in Johannesburg's The Star.

Farmers should "urgently" draw up a comprehensive register of all non-urban land in the country, together with an assessment of land needs.

Land grabs similar to those in Zimbabwe are imminent!

Die Afrikaner - South Africa

"All this information should be put before government with a proposal for a panel of assessors who would independently evaluate land -so the often made charge that farmers are thwarting reform by out-pricing their land can be avoided," du Preez urged.

But writing in the same paper, Pan-Africanist Congress official Thami Ka Plaatjie argued that current laws were being used to stall land reform.

"The rule of law has been widely used as a means of preserving the rights accorded to whites by years of colonial rule... That is why we submit the land crisis is more acute here than in Zimbabwe," Ka Plaatjie wrote.

"It would also be foolhardy for any sane person to expect that land dispossessors will return your land willingly. No thief would be so generous as to give back the loot with a smile" he added.

Prepared to resist

South African weekly paper Die Afrikaner sounded a stark warning to its readers that "Land grabs similar to those in Zimbabwe are imminent!"

"Revolutionary language is increasingly inciting more and more blacks," it said.

The message from the Landless People's Movement urging people not to vote for the ANC in the next election "means that a renewed attack on white farmers' land in South Africa is being planned".

Mugabe attacked Britain at the Earth Summit

"The white farmer is therefore warned to be on his guard, be prepared to resist," the paper said.

In Namibia, the government moved to assure the Commonwealth that it would not emulate Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme.

Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab told visiting Commonwealth Secretary-General Donald McKinnon that the envisaged land reform programme would not destabilize the country, Namibian news agency Nampa reported.

The government was committed to the principle of "willing buyer, willing seller", Mr Gurirab was quoted as saying.

Killing agriculture

In Zimbabwe itself, the pro-opposition business weekly Financial Gazette saw some hope for the country in President Mugabe's dramatic about-turn on his government's refusal to accept genetically modified maize donated by the United States.

The shift "shows that for all his inimical actions which have brought Zimbabwe to its bended knees, Mugabe can indeed swallow his pride and climb down from his high pedestal when confronted by painful reality".

The only reason why there is a quarrel over land that belongs to Zimbabweans is Tony Blair...

The Herald - Zimbabwe

"The main lesson emanating from this episode is that Mugabe still has the capacity to right the wrongs which he has singularly brought on Zimbabwe just to remain in power," the weekly said.

"Although time is running out for him to act in the same way he has backtracked now, we urge him to stop his violent land reforms which will only worsen Zimbabwe's famine and kill agriculture," it added.

Blair's 'folly'

Zimbabwe's state-controlled press meanwhile continued with its fulsome praise for what the Sunday Mail called President Mugabe's "brilliant and motivating speech" at the World Summit in Johannesburg.

"The summit highlighted the British folly of bringing an emotive subject such as land to a multilateral conference, on African soil," the paper said.

"What still remains puzzling, however, is British Prime Minister Tony Blair's anachronistic colonial mentality, which continues to regard white settlers as a privileged lot with divine rights to land," it added.

And Harare's The Herald couldn't resist a fresh swipe at the British leader.

"The image-obsessed Blair is devastated by the realization that Africans and the world are not impressed by his fake moralisms and shallow defences of the indefensible," it said.

"The only reason why there is a quarrel over land that belongs to Zimbabweans is Tony Blair... We must recognize that in Blair we are dealing with a determined and cunning racist," the paper thundered.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.