JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Zimbabwe’s last white farmers were “preparing for the worst” yesterday as their leader predicted that they would all be forced to leave their properties by President Mugabe’s latest land invasion.

Chanting gangs of veterans of the war against white rule have occupied at least 27 farms since Saturday, with about 12 falling victim yesterday morning alone. Only about 200 white farmers are left in Zimbabwe — 5% of the total eight years ago.

“We are preparing for the worst,” the president of the once powerful Commercial Farmers’ Union, Trevor Gifford, said.

One white farmer, who declined to be named, was tipped off that squatters were about to overrun his property. He gathered his wife, their three children, aged 7, 9, and 11, and his elderly parents and left immediately.

His homestead was duly invaded Sunday. Trembling with emotion, the farmer said: “I have wondered what this day would be like, whether it would come after all these years. Now I am wondering if this is it, or if I will be able to get back.”

The farmer survived the land invasions of 2000 and the official seizure of white-owned properties that began in earnest in 2002.

However, Mr. Mugabe’s apparent defeat in the first round of Zimbabwe’s presidential poll may have led to his dispossession. To extend his 28-year rule, the president is fanning racial tensions and holding out Zimbabwe’s last acres of white-owned land as a vote-winner in the election run-off that must take place by April 19.