ZIMBABWE WILL go to the polls this Saturday a deeply divided nation, but the overwhelming number of black voters will be united on one thing: that whoever forms the next government will help redress the country's glaring land ownership problem.

On the one hand will be President Robert Mugabe's supporters, who analysts say will be hoping that the octogerian president will romp home to continue the forcible land acquisitions that began in 2000.

On the other hand, supporters of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, will be hoping that their man wins, so that Western (not international, as the Western press has styled it) support can translate into dollars with which to acquire the farms and revive the shrinking economy. 

At least 16 people were killed in January in politically motivated violence, the highest number in any month over the past 22 years, according to human rights groups. But some analysts say that the land question, and not President Mugabe's authoritarian streak, is what has led to the Zimbabwe meltdown. 

President Mugabe's radical land reform, which has earned him condemnation from former colonial master Britain, the EU and the US, envisages that all but five per cent of white-owned farmland will be redistributed to poor black Zimbabweans in a programme that Mugabe allies say will help redress colonial injustices in land ownership. 

Currently, some 4,400 white commercial farmers own 12.2 million hectares of prime farming land, while 1.2 million communal households are crammed onto 15.4 million hectares of land, much of which is not arable. Whites make up less than 0.8 per cent of Zimbabwe's 13 million people.

The land question, which resonates in many African countries, has seen a major policy difference emerge between the West and Africa, where Mugabe enjoys some degree of support. Most African nations, including regional powerhouses Nigeria and South Africa, have opted for a cautious approach, saying that the situation in Zimbabwe does not warrant sanctions or condemnation so far.

Many African governments, their own people also having suffered from colonialism, are sympathetic to the Zimbabwean government argument that its supporters resorted to white farm invasions in 2000 after a programme, which sought to buy the land from white farmers for redistribution to blacks, stalled because Britain reneged on pledges to fund it. 

The farm invasions, which have continued for the past 20 months, have resulted in the death of nearly a dozen white farmers.

Analysts say that a first hand experience of oppression by the apartheid regime, for instance, has informed South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki's response to the Zimbabwe crisis. All along, President Mbeki has adopted a "constructive engagement" approach, despite the impact of the crisis on the South African economy. Last year, the South African rand lost about 25 per cent of its value mainly due to the crisis, while foreign investment dropped to a trickle.

Despite a recent spate of public pronouncements expressing concern on the goings-on in Zimbabwe, President Mbeki's approach has continued to be that of behind the scenes consultation, in which he has set up a series of committees with counterparts in Harare to consider the economic regeneration of Zimbabwe as well as to mediate on the land issue.

Tacit African support for President Mugabe, analysts say, has been particularly instrumental in ensuring that the Commonwealth, which groups Britain and its former colonies, does not take an overly hard line on Zimbabwe. A Commonwealth Action Group meeting in London in January, for instance could not agree on what action to take when Britain, Australia, Canada and Barbados backed suspension, while Nigeria, Botswana, Malaysia and Bangladesh opposed it.

Last week, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo echoed widespread opinion in Africa when he said that there had to be clear proof that Mugabe had broken Commonwealth rules before any action against him could be considered.

"It must be proven beyond reasonable doubt that you have gone outside that rule," Obasanjo told journalists in Canberra.

And, African Commonwealth leaders on Saturday defied Britain’s call for the organisation to deliver President Mugabe an ultimatum to hold free elections or face punitive action.

Speaking at the start of a biennial Commonwealth summit near Brisbane, several African heads of state said it was too soon to talk of action before the March 9-10 presidential vote, when Mugabe faces his toughest electoral challenge in 22 years.

"That is too radical to think of right now," Ghana’s President John Kufuor told reporters.

In contrast, the US and the EU, which last month slapped sanctions on Mugabe and key members of his government, have tended to take a tough stance, saying that the Harare government is failing to uphold the rule of law and leading Zimbabwe into anarchy. Citing the Public Order and Security Act, which was enacted in January, and a press law making it illegal to criticise Mugabe both the EU and the US charge that Mugabe's regime has degenerated into dictatorship, and plunged the country into economic chaos. Mugabe's supporters charge that the accusations are a smokescreen for Western unease with white farm invasions.

Last December, the US House of Representatives intensified pressure on Mugabe when it passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act by an overwhelmingly vote of 396-11. The legislation urged US President George W. Bush to impose targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe's leadership unless they end months of "political violence and ensure that free and fair elections are held."

Last week, the US imposed sanctions when Mr Tsvangirai, was charged with treason for an alleged plot to kill the president. 

Earlier, relations with the European Union similarly came to a head when Zimbabwean authorities refused to accredit election observers from the Union led by Mr Pierre Schori of Sweden, saying that they were likely to be biased. 

According to Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, no invitation was sent to the EU, although nine out of the 15-member grouping had been told they could observe Saturday's presidential election. The EU countries, barred from sending observers to Zimbabwe, whom Harare accuses of supporting the opposition, are Sweden, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland.

Mudenge said the EU, if it had wanted to monitor the elections, would have joined an observer mission led by developing countries within the African Caribbean and Pacific Countries (ACP) framework.

Analysts say that part of the Zimbabwe's government's hostility towards the EU stems from the fact that an EU mission, again headed by Schori, declared the June 2000 parliamentary elections "neither free nor fair." At least 32 opposition supporters were killed in the run-up to last year's elections. Reacting to the censure, Zimbabwe and its pan-Africanist supporters have accused the EU of seeking to continue its colonial domination of Africa.

Following the withdrawal by the EU of its 35 monitors last month, only observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the Non-Aligned Movement, will observe the presidential election this Saturday.

Undeterred by these developments, however, Mugabe's supporters, in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa, contend that the EU and the US are only using the issues of governance and democracy as battering rams. "It's not about democracy but about hate, vengeance and racially driven piece of legislation," ruling party war veteran official Christopher Mutsvangwa, said recently.

"There are many countries which don't even call elections in the world but still maintain relations with the US." Mugabe's supporters also point to such "provocative" actions as the appointment of Schori to head the EU mission, despite common knowledge that he is a particularly unpopular personality in Harare, as part of a wider scheme to discredit Mugabe.