Posted on 06/08/2004 11:33:08 AM PDT by knighthawk
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's government announced plans today to nationalise all Zimbabwean farmland after forcing more than 5000 white farmers off their properties in an often-violent redistribution program.
Title deeds to all productive land will be cancelled and replaced with 99-year state-issued leases, the state-run Herald newspaper reported.
"In the end all land shall be state land and there shall be no such thing as private land," Land Reform Minister John Nkomo was quoted as saying.
Since 2000, the government has been seizing white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. The controversial program, combined with erratic rains, has crippled the country's agriculture-based economy and sparked political clashes.
Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, now suffers acute shortages of food, hard currency, petrol and other imports. United Nations crop forecasters predict the country will produce only half its food needs this year.
Mr Mugabe, however, argues redistribution is needed to redress British colonial injustices, when much of the best farmland was settled by whites.
About 200,000 black families have been allocated land under the government program, most for small-scale farming. Hundreds of others have bought commercial farms.
The government did not intend to "waste time and money" in disputes with farmers whose land had been seized, regardless of what legal documents they held, Mr Nkomo was quoted as saying in the article.
"Ultimately all land shall be resettled as state property," he said.
Mr Nkomo gave no timeframe for the nationalisation program, but said a National Land Board would be set up to supervise the process and ensure the effective use of land.
He asked current land owners and occupiers to come forward for vetting to qualify for state leases.
Critics of the redistribution program say much of the best farmland has been allocated to Mr Mugabe's supporters and is currently underutilised or lying fallow.
Production on many other farms has dropped sharply because their new owners lack financial resources, seed, fertiliser, fuel and farm machinery.
Mr Nkomo said the state-issued leases would be sufficient collateral for farmers to secure loans to purchase the material and equipment they need.
Independent Harare economist John Robertson disagreed.
"It doesn't work that way," he said. "You can't borrow on the strength of something you don't own."
Ping
Since socialized agriculture is a sure recipe for famine, the compassionate US tax payers always have to pick up the tab for the Marxists experiments. (See Ethiopia, North Korea, Cuba, etc)
Off the cliff they go.
Well, it worked so well for Stalin...
The Future Farmers of America prototype.....................
That should shape things up for the nation with the lowest economic growth in the world. Yup. Nothing like a good ol' abolition of private property to really put a some pep in your GDP. While they're at it, it's good to see that they are using obvious racism to accomplish this monumental feat. And yet the media is shockingly quiet!?!!
This is good news!
The end of the regime cannot be far off, now.
Just a straight-forward genocide to wrap up first!
Didn't STALIN try this too????
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/coll.html
Can someone please tell me why Mugabe's brains are not yet splattered on a wall?
They were using hoes and shovels on acres that had been mechanically plowed years ago. They couldn't fix the broken equipment, couldn't afford seed, didn't understand the irrigation systems...
I read this story a little differently. Those who recieved the redistributed/bought/stolen lands are now having the land stolen by the state.
The state is the bigger thief.
The only way to help the normal people of Zimbabwe is to get rid of Mugabe and his supporters, and then re-colonize the place.
In effect this move is non-operative. A 99 year lease is a form of private ownership. Can't they do anything right? They aren't even good Communists.
It always is.
: )
Stalin not only tried to collectivize agriculture in the SU - he succeeded. His aim was to break the back of the peasantry, the vast majority of the population, and force them to submit to Bolshevik rule. If it was necessary to starve millions to death, ship the most productive farmers off to concentration camps, and condemn the rest to miserable lives as state slaves, so be it. Mugabe has the same goal.
The only whites left in Zimbabwe are the liberals that helped put Mugabe in power.. Tears for them are not happening. Any conservative whites left after Mugabe assumed power or soon after. Only the liberals assumed Mugabe was not a murdering son of a hyena. Liberals in Zimbabwe are exactely like liberals in the United States.. same mental disease.. with the same political bent..
Ping.
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