vue - FARM TENSION CONTINUES

English/Nat Responding swiftly to rumours of a mass protest planned for Harare by members of Zimbabwe's opposition on Saturday, Zimbabwean riot police descended on several check points around the city, halting traffic and searching vehicles for protesters. The demonstration failed to materialise but the government's quick reaction to the rumours served to show how tensions in Zimbabwe have escalated in the past few days. President Robert Mugabe left the tense environment and departed on a scheduled flight to Havana to attend an economic summit. Former guerrillas and squatters who have taken over more than 900 white-owned farms in violent land seizures threaten to destroy Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy, warned farmers whose land has been occupied. The illegal occupation of the land is backed by President Robert Mugabe, and has disrupted large-scale agricultural production in most key farming districts, farmers' leaders said on Saturday. A parliament bill passed last Thursday, which allows blacks to claim white-owned farmland without paying any compensation, has put the white community of Zimbabwe on the defensive. Mugabe said that thousands of squatters would not be forced to withdraw from the white-owned farms they have occupied since early February, and he has also stated that his government would fight farmers who resisted the confiscations. The squatters are led by veterans of the bush war that ended white rule in the British colony of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then named. Zimbabwe's economic crisis has led to acute fuel shortages, and many residents of Harare spent Saturday in their automobiles, queuing for hours at petrol stations waiting for the chance to fill their tanks for the coming week. SOUNDBITE: (English) "Some spend 2 hours, 3 hours, 10 hours on the queue." Question: "How does this effect you?" Answer: "We can't even do business." SUPER CAPTION: Vox pop Though 4-thousand whites own about one-third of the nation's productive land, 2 (m) million people - workers and their families - live on that land and derive their livelihood from it, the union said. About 7 point 5 (m) million people live on the rest, engaged mostly in subsistence farming. The white commercial farms produce tobacco and export crops that accounted for 40 percent of the nation's hard currency earnings last year. At the Harare Sportsclub, a mixed club with a majority of white members, white sportsmen were reluctant to talk about the racial tension as they fear attracting more attention. Mugabe told fearful white farmers that they were free to leave the country and many have taken advantage of the momentary calm to pack themselves and their families aboard flights and leave their homeland for good. The land occupations are being described as justified protests against the inequity in land ownership. Police have defied a High Court ruling ordering them to evict the squatters and enforce law and order in the farming districts. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/716d29fa8ee328e262d1c7e105a58300 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork