ZIMBABWE: The Zimbabwean land crisis will reach a new peak at midnight tonight when almost 3,000 white farmers will have to choose between fleeing their land and being forcibly evicted by the government.
President Robert Mugabe signed a new law last May giving the vast majority of the country's commercial farmers 45 days to stop farming, and a further 45 days to vacate their properties.
That deadline expires tonight. The government has indicated that it may start evicting those who resist by Saturday, to make way for landless blacks.
However the beneficiaries also include senior figures in government, the police, the military and state media.
Criticism of the controversial land programme has intensified in recent months as Zimbabwe faces into an unprecedented food crisis that aid agencies warn could tip over into a full-blown famine.
Agricultural production has plummeted and six million people, or half the population, could be without food within the coming months.
The European Union allocated €35 million to the emergency last Tuesday.
Some white farmers have already left their farms, either for provincial towns, Harare, or countries such as Britain and South Africa.
But most have stayed, and farmers' representatives predict that up to 60 per cent will defy tonight's ultimatum.
"My feeling is that they've made such a mess of this, and with the world watching, nothing is going to happen," said Mr Brian Trethowan, a cotton and paprika farmer, at yesterday's annual congress of the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU).
The government is sending out confusing signals about the controversial process.
During a visit to Singapore earlier this week, President Mugabe said he was determined to press ahead with the programme.
Addressing several hundred white farmers at a meeting in the capital, Harare, yesterday, the Vice-President, Mr Joseph Msika, warned that the laws of Zimbabwe would be enforced "without hesitation".
But in the next breath Mr Msika stressed he was not a racist, then added: "We will bang our heads together and find a solution." Agriculture Minister Mr Joseph Made later said that not all farmers would be subject to immediate eviction, but he could not say how many.
When hundreds of farmers defied an order to stop farming 45 days ago, 14 were arrested within four days of the deadline.
The white farming community is increasingly divided on how best to tackle the crisis. The CFU wants to continue dialogue with the government in the hope of brokering a settlement.
But a new splinter group, named Justice for Agriculture (JAG), has been formed to take a more confrontational approach.
JAG rejects negotiation and advocates aggressive legal action through the courts. "Farmers have been made many promises by the government over the past two years. All of them have been broken," said JAG spokeswoman Ms Jenni Williams.
The CFU rejects legal action as fruitless: although some farmers have had their eviction orders overturned, the government has proceeded against them regardless.
Ms Williams said: "One must keep knocking on the judiciary's door to maintain the high moral ground." Official lists and local media reports have revealed that some of President Mugabe's closest colleagues and allies have moved on to former white land.
The Information Minister, Mr Jonathan Moyo, has been officially listed as the new owner of farm titled "Little Connemara" in the eastern Manicaland province.
Air Vice-Marshal Perence Shiri - a senior military figure accused of gross human rights abuses during the 1980s Matabeleland massacres - has reportedly taken a farm in Mashonaland East.
And according to local farmers the Vice-President, Mr Msika, has already moved his cattle on to a farm he has claimed as his own in Matabeleland. Other alleged beneficiaries include senior civil servants, police officers, war veterans and a journalist with the state television station, ZBC.