Challenge to land seizure

Harare - A Zimbabwean opposition party yesterday lodged a court application to suspend President Robert Mugabe's controversial…

Harare - A Zimbabwean opposition party yesterday lodged a court application to suspend President Robert Mugabe's controversial scheme to seize mostly white-owned farms to resettle landless black peasants.

"The applicant seeks an order suspending the whole designation exercise until it is clarified fully as to whether it is economically viable and in the interests of the nation as a whole," says the request by the little-known National Democratic Party.

The government has announced plans to seize 5.5 million hectares, about half the country's prime commercial farmland, mostly from white farmers to resettle black peasants crammed in unproductive regions.