Mugabe warns white farmers to clear out the land in Zimbabwe!

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe today told white farmers, defying orders to hand over their land, that he stands by an August deadline for them to clear out and pave the way for his black resettlement land reforms.

"We set ourselves an August deadline for the redistribution of land and that deadline stands,"

Mugabe said in a televised address during a funeral for a former finance minister.

Mugabe's government had ordered 2,900 of the remaining 4,500 white commercial farmers to surrender their lands without compensation to black settlers by midnight (2200 GMT) last Thursday, August 8.

"We, the principled people of Zimbabwe, we, the true owners of this land, shall not budge. We shall not be deterred on this one vital issue, the land. The land is ours," Mugabe told more than 15,000 supporters.

Farming sources have estimated that about 40 percent of the farmers had obeyed the instruction but others were holding on in the hope of a reprieve from the country's courts or from Mugabe.

Mugabe said the deadline would allow new owners of the land enough time to prepare and plant for the new crop season, which should start in October.

White farmers defying the order to leave their land face up to two years in jail.

Returning to his regular condemnation of Britain's role in opposing his government and its land seizures, Mugabe said:

"No gold, no silver is precious enough to buy our sovereignty. We are not for sale. We are not for sale, and Zimbabwe is not for sale. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. We are not for the highest bidder in Europe or elsewhere.

"Let (British Prime Minister Tony) Mr Blair hear it. We are not for the British bidder either," said Mugabe, who led the country to independence from Britain in 1980.

Farmers facing an abrupt end to a lifestyle they have lived for generations had hoped for a reprieve on Monday, but Mugabe did not back off.

Local government minister Ignatius Chombo was quoted earlier as telling the black farmers at Blanket, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Harare: "Those (white farmers) who have not moved out of designated farms should immediately do so.

"The law will deal with those who continue to defy the government directive."

But police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena told the Herald police had had no reports of farmers resisting orders to leave their properties and believed the process was moving smoothly.

Zimbabwe's land reform programme, a trigger for tightening Western sanctions against Mugabe and his top aides, is being driven to a climax amid a worsening regional food crisis.

Up to 13 million people, close to half of them in Zimbabwe, could starve over the next six months as a result of drought and political mismanagement across six countries in the region.

Whites owned more than 70 percent of the best farmlands when colonial rule formally ended in 1980, but most have said they are willing to give up some of it under an organised programme.