The three-day conference opening Wednesday in Harare is meant to "strengthen" the struggle against the remnants of colonialism, said Didymus Mutasa, the secretary for external affairs for the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
"There is a lot of criticism of our land reform programme and we want those who are supporting us to understand why we are doing it," Mutasa told AFP.
Invitations to the gathering described as "one of the first of its kind" have been put out to former guerrilla movements from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
Further abroad, ZANU-PF, which waged a seven-year war against British colonial rule in the 1970s, has invited solidarity groups of blacks from Britain, the United States and aboriginal groups from Australia.
"Naturally we want to strengthen ourselves and to say that the struggle continues," said Mutasa of the gathering. He added that he did not know specifically who would be attending.
Zimbabwe's controversial land reform is expected to be a highlight of the forum, while good governance will be discussed among other issues.
After the opening ceremonies, "we will go straight into the discussion of the land reforms," said Mutasa.
The delegates will be taken on a tour of former white-owned farms which have been seized under the program and distributed to blacks.
A small group of about 4 500 white farmers used to own a third of the country's land including 70 percent of prime farmland before the government launched the program in February 2000.
Now fewer than 400 white farmers remain in the country and possess just three percent of the country's land.
Mutasa said the meeting will also shine a spotlight on the rights of non-whites in Western countries.
"Is there any good governance in the so-called civilised world?" he said, citing aboriginal groups in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand and natives in Canada.
"Nobody ever questions why these people are not regarded as human beings, with any rights," he said.
The meeting of former liberation movements is the brainchild of Mugabe himself, who in February slammed "the majority" of his counterparts in Africa for succumbing to Western influence and turning against African revolutionary causes.
He said that a few militant leaders reminiscent of former staunch nationalists remained, "but the majority have gone the Western way".
"They are listening to the enenmy, they are being dictated to by the enemy and it's a pity that (the) old type of leadership has vanished the scene," he told the state broadcaster.
In a bid to get African countries to continue to resist Western tendencies, Mugabe promised to host a forum of former liberation movements this year to sustain "the level of revolutionary zeal by interacting with them".
"We would want the forum of former liberation movements to be resuscitated," he said - Sapa-AFP.
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