UNIMPEACHABLE NPP sources have alerted "Ghana Palaver" to a sinister plot by the NPP Government to admit into Ghana about 300 white Zimbabwean farmers who have lost or are likely to lose their lands in Zimbabwe as a result of President Robert Mugabe's land reform policy. It is feared that included among the Zimbabwe immigrants will be Ian Smith, the Racist supremacist who led the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) into the disastrous and infamous UDI or Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, sparking off almost 15 years of a brutal and bloody civil war which only ended with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement under which Zimbabwe was granted Independence in 1980.
"Ghana Palaver's" sources have been told that very high level contacts have been made between United Kingdom's Tony Blair Government and Ghana's J. A. Kufuor's NPP Government to discuss the deal under which Ghana will receive and settle about 300 of the white Zimbabwean farmers whose lands have been occupied by landless black Zimbabwean war veterans. The NPP Government is said to be giving the British Government's approach very serious consideration.
Though NPP Government official sources are very tight-lipped over the details of the British offer, "Ghana Palaver" has learnt that already, a stretch of land between Yendi and Yeji has been identified as a possible site for the settlement of the Zimbabwean immigrants. The area covers parts of the landmass of Yendi (capital Yendi), East Gonja (capital Salaga), Nanumba (capital Bimbilla), Atebubu (capital Atebubu), Krachi (capital Kete Krachi) and Sene (capital Kwame Danso) districts. They form some of the most fertile lands of the lower Northern, upper Brong-Ahafo and Northern Volta Regions, spanning some of the most fertile yam and tobacco growing lands on the east and west banks of the Volta River.
The area is also known to have a very high potential for potato cultivation. The discussions are being held in the closest of confidence and secrecy because according to the "Ghana Palaver" source privy to the approach, "this could prove to be a foreign policy landmine for the NPP; even worse than the "International Finance Consortium" loan in the financial sector, if it is not carefully handled".
It will be recalled that under President Mugabe's land reform policy, most of the 80 per cent of Zimbabwe's best lands, owned by Zimbabwean whites who constitute less than 2 per cent of the population, is to revert to Zimbabwean blacks from whose ancestors the lands were forcefully taken without any compensation during the pre-colonial and colonial eras. The white Zimbabwean farmers are mostly of British origin and have as their kith and kin most of the present day British aristocracy.
If they should lose their farms and lands as a consequence of the Zimbabwe land reform policy, therefore, and decide to leave Zimbabwe as many of them plan to do, Britain will have not only a moral but also a legal responsibility to take them in, especially since almost all of them are British passport holders. It is in a bid to resolve this problem that the British Government is thought to have made the approach to the NPP Government.
