12 interest, and the testimonies of those called to account before the Commission were undoubtedly humiliating to all those who felt that there had been great honour in fighting for the liberation of the country from colonial rule. When, after all the tackiness and humiliation of the Chidyausiku Commission hearings, the war veterans began to assert themselves against the party, the President, Robert Mugabe, solved the problem through executive action: they were all paid substantial pensions. That the wage bill led directly to the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar in November 1997 and food riots the following year was less serious in the end than the binding of the war veterans to President Robert Mugabe directly. At the time, many speculated that there would come a time when he would demand payment for this support. Thus, there was little surprise when the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association declared that its members would be campaigning for Zanu(PF) in the 2000 Parliamentary Election. 19 This perhaps was another indicator that, ahead of the Constitutional Referendum, there was a strategy in the offing for this important election. The primary targets of the “land reform” were ostensibly the white commercial farmers, but, in reality, were the commercial farm workers, mainly in the three Mashonaland Provinces, since, under the auspices of the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe [GPWUZ], there had been marked support in these three Provinces for the National Constitutional Assembly [NCA] in the constitutional process. GAPWUZ represented a substantial block of voters from amongst the 350,000 families of full-time employees, and 250,000 seasonal and casual workers mostly living on commercial farms, working in agriculture, and a very large proportion of these were found in the three Mashonaland Provinces. Their votes cast in favour of the Movement for Democratic Change [MDC] could well have spelt defeat for Zanu(PF) in three crucial Provinces, and hence it was essential that this threat be neutralized. 20 There was not an equivalent threat in the Matabeleland Provinces, where commercial agriculture was mostly livestock rearing and the number of workers involved was considerably lower. There were pockets of large numbers of farm workers down in the low veldt at Triangle and Chiredzi, and these areas did become targets too. 19 20 See again Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2001), Politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe 2000–2001. A report on the campaign of political repression conducted by the Zimbabwean Government under the guise of carrying out land reform, HARARE: ZIMABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM. See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2000), Who is responsible? A preliminary analysis of pre-election violence in Zimbabwe, HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM; Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2001), Who was responsible? A consolidated analysis of pre-election violence in Zimbabwe, HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM. A Preliminary Report on Human Rights Violations on Commercial Farms, 2000 to 2005.