HARARE—Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF has pushed 40,000 workers off farms in a post-election campaign targeting supporters of the opposition ahead of a possible presidential run-off, farmers' groups said on Thursday.
The groups said armed youth militias loyal to President Robert Mugabe had driven workers off farms in a bid to swing votes in a second round ballot. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won most votes in the first round on March 29.
"It's ongoing so they are going to displace more people," John Worsley-Worswick, CEO of the Justice for Agriculture Trust (JAG), told Reuters in Johannesburg.
Zimbabwe's government rejects accusations from the opposition, human rights groups and Western countries that the ruling ZANU-PF party has launched a campaign of violence to ensure Mugabe keeps his 28-year hold on power.
The White House renewed its call on Mugabe and his supporters on Thursday to end "violence and intimidation".
ZANU-PF says Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has carried out political attacks.
The government has been cracking down on dissent.
Zimbabwe police on Thursday arrested the leaders of the country's main trade union over speeches they made during a workers' day rally last week, their lawyer said.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) president Lovemore Matombo and secretary-general Wellington Chibebe, who are critical of Mugabe, were taken into custody after surrendering to police, who were reportedly looking for them, their lawyer Andrew Makoni, told Reuters.
"They have been arrested on allegations of communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state and are being detained in police cells," he said.
Police have also arrested the editor of a privately owned weekly that is critical of the president over its publication of an opinion piece by a leading opposition politician.
Economic Crisis
Central bank governor Gideon Gono, who has been critical of some government policies, called on the political opponents to work together and said failure to end an election deadlock could undermine efforts to rescue the battered economy.
The opposition has not said whether it will participate in the run-off. It believes Tsvangirai won the outright majority he needed to avoid a second round. But if Tsvangirai does not contest, Mugabe is automatically declared the winner.
In Cape Town, MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti called for reconciliation and said any future government should include all parties, except for Mugabe, after a comprehensive political settlement is reached.
"Firstly you need that settlement because without that settlement there is going to be more blood, there's going to be more conflict," he told a seminar.
Gertrude Hambira, general secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union of Zimbabwe said the government was acting as if it were a crime to back the opposition.
"We have had security agents going out to the farms, addressing the farm workers. Some of them saying that we need to discipline you because you voted for the opposition. It's really bad," she told a news conference in Johannesburg.
Four hundred workers were hiding in the bush and three are still in hospital after being assaulted, she added.
Zimbabweans had high hopes that the election would usher in a period of prosperity and greater freedoms.
Instead, an economic crisis marked by severe shortages of food and fuel and the world's highest inflation rate of 165,000 percent is deepening.
Gono said divisions in parliament, where ZANU-PF lost its majority at the election, could make it hard to pass laws.
"My ability to deal with inflation and the normalisation of the economy might also be seriously compromised," he said in an opinion piece in the Financial Gazette.
Gono said he was not suggesting that there should be a "forced government of national unity" but he warned a post run-off political crisis would be catastrophic.
"It would be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions and a great setback if we are to have a loser in this race refusing to recognise the winner and engaging in precipitous actions that take us back in years in terms of economic turnaround," he said.
Critics blame the economic collapse on Mugabe's policies, including the seizure of white-owned farms to give to landless blacks. Mugabe, 84, says sanctions imposed by his Western critics have ruined the country.
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