TO SaveOurGuns.com

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's regime is arming black supporters, who are squatting on white-owned farms, with government-issued AK-47 rifles, and has handed out as many as 20,000 weapons over the past several weeks, according to a Zimbabwean national who spoke exclusively to WorldNetDaily.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is widely seen as promoting animosity towards whites to retain power.

Mugabe's real goal in fomenting the highly publicized persecution of white landowners by taking over their farms, is to reach the black farm union workers who control a huge voting block in the country, said the source. He requested anonymity to protect his personal safety.

Because of new mandates implemented by Mugabe, the source said, all telephone conversations and email transmissions were "compromised," with government officials monitoring communications coming into and leaving the country.

Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai is Mugabe's biggest threat to power.

Fueling the violence that has rocked Zimbabwe is an attempt by the country's increasingly discredited ruling class to intimidate out of existence the Movement for Democratic Change -- or MDC -- the country's leading opposition party. Unknown to most outsiders, the source said, the recently publicized killings of a few white landowners are overshadowed only by the greater and more widespread killings of black opposition members.

"What the government is really aiming at is the [black] workers who represent the swing vote in the country," the source said, adding that Mugabe was "trying to create a smokescreen by creating animosity toward whites so he could get onto the white farms and thus have access to the black workers."

Yesterday, Mugabe announced that the government plans to confiscate about 50 percent of the white-owned farmland, defining for the first time how much land the government intended to take from the African nation's 4,500 white farmers who settled and built the once-prosperous nation.

Speaking at the launch of his government's re-election bid leading up to parliamentary elections which must be held in the next few months, Mugabe reiterated that he would not order black independence war veterans off the white-owned farmland. It is widely believed Mugabe will order the confiscation of the land without compensating the farmers living on it.

That is sure to worsen the nation's economy, the source said, who disclosed that in-country reports suggested that of this year's tobacco crop -- which amounts to about a third of Zimbabwe's revenue -- only around 15 percent will make it to market because farmers and workers fear attacks.

Addressing reports that some feared a spillover of similar violence in South Africa, the source told WorldNetDaily that only one white-owned farm had been taken over in that country, but that generally, most were not concerned that Zimbabwe's problem would be repeated in South Africa.

Pretoria's biggest fear, the source explained, is an increasing flow of displaced refugees into South Africa from Zimbabwe, though South African President Thabo Mbeki supports Mugabe's regime.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean farm union representatives said Tuesday that the Mugabe supporters squatting on farms have begun demanding transport, food and fuel from the white landowners, and have even advertised some plots of land for sale. About 1,000 white-owned farms are currently under occupation.

In an ironic twist, the source said it is "common knowledge" that two key white business colleagues of Mugabe are involved in helping the Zimbabwean leader stay in power. They are involved in business deals with Mugabe to exploit cobalt, diamonds and other mineral riches from Congo, he said, where Mugabe has sent 12,000 Zimbabwean troops -- without the Parliament's permission -- to help fight Congo's civil war.

The source, who lived a few miles from one of the white farmers killed by Mugabe supporters last month, told WorldNetDaily that the issue of race in the country is of minimal importance to most people.

"Whites make up less than one-and-a-half percent of the population in Zimbabwe, so we're really not much of a political threat," the source said, adding that most felt race was "probably ranked about fourth or fifth" on the list of things most important to people.

"As a white," said the source, "I'm more concerned about the safety of my [black] workers than my own."

That's because these days, among most of the population, it is the economic future of Zimbabwe that "captures about 80 percent of the people's attention," he said, noting the corruption rampant throughout Mugabe's administration has been responsible for turning Zimbabwe into a failure after years of being an African success story.

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