President Robert Mugabe's threat to bring to trial the former Rhodesian leader, Mr Ian Smith, and other whites on charges of genocide has increased Zimbabwe's already simmering tensions. It has not, however, succeeded in reducing pressures on the beleaguered President himself.
Mr Mugabe's angry pledge to revoke his policy of racial reconciliation has served only to intensify popular resentment against his leadership. The parliamentary impeachment proceedings against Mr Mugabe and the opinion poll which found that 74 per cent of Zimbabweans want the President to step down got more headlines and more support from Zimbabweans.
In parliament yesterday the Speaker of the House, Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa, said he would form a committee to study the impeachment charges tabled on Wednesday by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Mr Smith was quick to dismiss Mr Mugabe's vow to take him to court. "If he wants to make a fool of himself, he is free to do so," said Mr Smith, who is currently in Britain. "I would welcome the chance to defend myself in court and to draw attention to Mr Mugabe's misrule, his destruction of the economy and the suffering he has caused the mass of Zimbabweans."
Numerous blacks yesterday rejected Mr Mugabe's vow to take whites to court for war crimes.
"It's sheer madness and shows that Mugabe is trying to grasp at anything to prop up his dictatorial regime," said Mr Wilfred Mhanda, a former liberation war fighter. "He tried using the land issue but that did not work so now he is playing his last card, the racist card. But the people won't buy that. They can see what he is doing. In any case, many blacks served in the Rhodesian forces. Is Mugabe going to try all of them, too?"
Mr Mhanda is a leader of the Zimbabwe Liberators' Platform, a group of veterans of the war against Rhodesian minority rule who oppose Mr Mugabe's regime. "He is tarnishing everything good that we fought for," said Mr Mhanda. "He is tearing down the beautiful nation that we built over 20 years. He has lost legitimacy and it is time that he steps down. The man must go in the interest of the nation."
Mr Mhanda was sitting under a large red banner that said "GO" in huge letters. Mr Mhanda and other members of a new civic group, the United People for National Survival, launched their "GO" campaign yesterday.
"This is our way of encouraging peaceful change," said human rights activist Mr David Chimhini, another leader of the campaign. "It is very disturbing to see the President so bitter and so full of hate. His threats are empty and they are not what the country wants."
Mr Tendai Biti, an MDC deputy, also dismissed Mr Mugabe's threats against whites. "Legally I doubt that he can do it," said Mr Biti, a Harare lawyer. "There were guarantees of no recriminations made in 1980. One must also question his moral justification for bringing these threats, 20 years after independence."
Mr Biti said that if Mr Mugabe institutes some kind of war crimes tribunal, it could question the President's own past.