HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The occupation of white-owned farms by black veterans in Zimbabwe threatened to spread Wednesday as the country's land crisis intensified and hundreds of farmers sought to regain their British citizenship.
Two farmers have been killed, the latest one on Tuesday, in an escalation of tension and violence some say President Robert Mugabe has not tried hard enough to stop even though courts have ruled the occupations illegal.Thousands of black veterans from Zimbabwe's fight for independence 20 years ago have occupied hundreds of white-owned farms mainly around the capital of Harare over the past two months, saying they are reclaiming land taken from them under British colonial rule.
Farmers said the veterans had split up with groups going north and south of Bulawayo, the country's second city and traditional stronghold of the country's Ndebele nation.
A Commercial Farmers Union representative told Reuters at least 350 men arrived in Matabeleland province, about 250 miles southwest of Harare, in buses, some of which were marked "War Veterans."
"We expect Easter is going to be a horrible time," the union official said.
Hundreds of alarmed whites, called enemies of Zimbabwe by Mugabe in a speech on Tuesday, lined up at the British High Commission to regain their British citizenship as Mugabe met with white farmers and the leader of the black veterans at his residence.
Scores of white farmers have abandoned their land for towns and cities. Others have sent away women and children and have armed themselves behind high security fences left over from the liberation war, which also pitted black against white.
Members of the tiny white minority -- about 1 percent of the country's 12.5 million people -- told reporters the killings and Mugabe's failure to condemn them had cut their options.
"We don't want to leave. We do want to stay, but we have family to consider and it's not looking safe anymore," said Carol Franklin, a friend of farmer Martin Olds who was beaten and shot to death at his farm on Tuesday.
The Zimbabwe High Court on Wednesday convicted Chenjerai Hunzvi, the leader of the black war veterans, of contempt for inciting farm occupations after they had been ruled illegal.
Judge David Bartlett gave Hunzvi until May 3 to prove he had tried to end the occupations.
Immediately after the hearing, Hunzvi and two white farm leaders went to Mugabe's State House residence for talks on the crisis, which has pushed Zimbabwe to the brink of anarchy.
Commercial Farmers Union director David Hasluck was turned away without seeing Mugabe. Zimbabwe Tobacco Association leader Richard Tate said Mugabe asked him to wait to be invited back.