Zimbabwe approves constitutional overhaul

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Dancing and cheering, lawmakers approved sweeping constitutional changes Tuesday that prominent lawyers have called the greatest challenge yet to Zimbabwean civil liberties.\nRuling party representatives erupted into celebration after Parliament voted 103-29 to endorse the constitutional overhaul that sharply restricts private property rights and allows the government to deny passports to its critics. The 22-clause Constitutional Amendment Bill now goes to President Robert Mugabe to sign into law.\nThe slate of amendments, the 17th since independence from Britain in 1980, strips landowners of their right to appeal expropriation and declares all real estate is now on a 99-year lease from the government.\nJustice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said this would stop 5,000 evicted white farmers from frustrating land redistribution to black Zimbabweans.\n"It will close the chapter of colonization," Chinamasa said during a stormy half-hour debate that preceded the vote.\nThe bill also gives the government authority to deny passports if it is deemed in the national interest.\n"This will take away the right of those people to go outside the country and ask other countries to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe," said Chinamasa, who is among 200 of Mugabe's elite barred from traveling or owning bank accounts in the United States and European Union countries.\nThe overhaul also calls for a new 66-seat Senate to be formed, which critics charge the ruling party will use to increase its patronage powers.\nLovemore Madhuku, whose National Constitutional Assembly reform alliance mobilized opposition to Mugabe's attempt in 2000 to entrench his rule indefinitely, predicted swift implementation of the changes.\n"I think (Mugabe) is likely to sign the bill into law in the fastest possible time -- even within four days or so," Madhuku said. "He wants to have elections for the Senate by October."\nMadhuku said the amendments add to a host of repressive measures already imposed by Mugabe's 25-year-old regime.\n"But in time, it will eventually collapse," he said. "Do you think the people are going to accommodate this for all time?"\nThere had been concerns within Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front that the party might not mobilize enough support to pass the bill after it cleared a preliminary ballot 61--28.\nTwenty-eight members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which has 41 seats in Parliament, voted against the bill. The lone independent legislator, Mugabe's former propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo, faced a barrage of catcalls from his former colleagues when he, too, opposed the changes.\nThe MDC said approval of the amendments will destroy any hope of agreement with Western donors for desperately needed aid.\nA team from the International Monetary Fund wraps up a two-week visit Friday to reassess Zimbabwe's economic crisis ahead of a Sept. 9 board meeting that could expel the country for failing to make payments on $295 million in debt.\nThe seizure of white-owned commercial farms, combined with years of drought, have crippled the country's agriculture-based economy. Some 4 million people are in urgent need of food aid in what was once a regional breadbasket, according to U.N. estimates.