By Cris Chinaka
Harare - Gunmen on Sunday shot and killed the mother of a farmer slain last year at the start of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's campaign to seize white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks, a relative said.
The relative, who asked not to be identified, told reporters that 68-year-old Gloria Olds was found shot to death on her farm near Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo, where she lived alone.
"It appears a group broke into the house and shot her several times. We understand this happened just before daybreak. We don't believe it was a burglary - I think they just used the car to get away because nothing else was stolen," the relative said.
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| Her son was the second white farmer killed |
Olds' son, Martin, was the second of five white farmers killed last year in a land-grab sanctioned by Mugabe and headed by veterans of the former Rhodesia's 1970s liberation war. Two more white farmers were killed in apparent robberies.
Martin Olds was killed when more than 100 war veterans surrounded his home and opened fire. His wife and two children later sought political asylum in Britain.
Sunday's shooting came two days after a war veteran threatened white Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay with "war" if he refused to obey a government order to take early retirement.
Gubbay agreed a day after the threat to go on leave immediately and to retire 10 months early on July 1, clearing the way for Mugabe to appoint a new head of the judiciary.
Mugabe, ministers in his cabinet and war veterans had criticised Gubbay and other white judges for decisions favouring white farmers trying to hang on to their land and opposition politicians seeking to challenge the results of last year's election.
| Some farmers have abandoned their lands |
Self-styled war veterans, many too young to have served in the liberation war which led to Rhodesia's independence from Britain in 1980, have occupied hundreds of white-owned commercial farms.
Some farmers have abandoned their lands near the capital, Harare, and near Bulawayo in the face of threats and violence from war veterans.
Others, like Gloria Olds, have continued to farm in an uneasy co-operation with war veterans who have maintained at least a token presence on many farms earmarked for redistribution to landless black peasants.
Mugabe said in an address marking his 77th birthday in February he would continue to seize white land without compensation.
Asked when he would retire, he said: "I would like to do that, sure. As long as I am assured that those we fought yesterday are thoroughly beaten and that the carpet they now stand on, the economic carpet, has been removed from their feet and it has become our carpet." - Reuters
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