Posted on 01/23/2015 5:15:01 PM PST by Altura Ct.
The government of Zimbabwe has pledged to seize the last remaining handful of white-owned farms in the impoverished African country, confident that turning over a few hundred farms to the majority black population will improve its terrible living standards.
Since 2000, President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party have pursued a series of land reforms that have seized farmland belonging to whites in order to redistribute it to landless blacks. About 4,000 farmers had their lands seized in the first wave, leaving only a few hundred commercial white farmers operating in the country.
Now, that number is poised to drop even further, as ministers vowed to finish the land reforms in areas that were protected from the first wave in order to give land to thousands who still lack it.
The white farmers who are carrying out farming activities on gazetted land will not be tolerated as it is illegal in terms of the laws of the country, Zimbabwe State Minister Joel Biggie Matiza said on Wednesday, according to the Zimbabwean news source News Day. In this province, we were protecting the very people who yesteryear were our erstwhile oppressors.
Similar statements have been made by other members of the government, who have also pledged to dispossess larger landowners in general.
Those with multiple farms, we will take them, the few whites on farms, we will look into that and those with big farms, we will cut to size, promised Zimbabwe Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa last weekend.
Meanwhile, Land and Resettlement Minister Douglas Mombeshora said that whites in land disputes with blacks have only 90 days to leave if they want to avoid trouble with the law. He also said whites will be barred from entering joint contracts that would let them operate farmland (and take most of the earnings) while making payments to black owners.
Joint ventures with white former commercial farmers, we say no to that, said Mombeshora, according to the Zimbabwe newspaper News Day. We have never allowed that.
Zimbabwe, formerly known as Southern Rhodesia, is almost entirely black, but its tiny white minority has historically been very economically influential. Mugabes government argues that land seizures reverse the damage from decades of British colonial rule, but the seizures have also been blamed for the countrys continued economic backwardness, as the new owners have often lacked either the skills or the means needed to maintain output.
Since the land reforms, Zimbabwe has been in a near-constant state of economic distress. Once a major food producer and one of Sub-Saharan Africas wealthier countries, Zimbabwe is now quite poor even by African standards, and has to rely on food imports. Before the country abandoned its own currency entirely, inflation was so severe that the countrys trillion-dollar bills werent worth enough to buy a candy bar.
Mugabe has also used the seizures to enrich his family and other politically connected individuals, often at the expense of the poor blacks the seizures were supposedly supposed to help. Recently, Mugabes wife Grace Mugabe aroused anger for burning the homes of poor farmers in order to take their lands and merge them into a wildlife sanctuary.
About time they got all the whites out of there.
You got a problem with reality?
Singing “99 whiteys still on the farms, 99 whiteys still, shoot one down, cut off his crown, 98 whiteys still on the farms”.
Mugabe singing, “Let’s have another verse”. And Zimbabwe dies a little more.
Could be a great revolution in old Rhodesia when this red monster dies.
Actually, Mugabe has it entirely right. Return the land to nature, and reduce the human population to near zero. Between the land reform and the famine, he has it covered.
Why insist on saving a culture who does not want to be saved or helped? Leave them all alone, obviously they have all the answers. Whatever it becomes it will be of their own doing. For the sake of sanity leave them alone to succeed or make a mess of it as they desire. Give your time to a better ROI.
Any white person still living in Rhodesia is mentally defective. Does Mugabe need to drive to your house and personally execute your family before you will realize that you have no future there?
Bermuda? Trinidad? Prince George's County, Maryland? It's more accurate to say that the vast majority of black countries and communities are crime- and poverty-ridden. At the same time, it's clear that India, of all places, is worse off than many black-run countries. With the exception of Haiti, no black-run Caribbean country is worse off than India. Given the cards they've been dealt, IQ-wise, blacks haven't done all that badly. Zimbabwe is a hell-hole because Mugabe is a Communist, not because he's a racist.
35 years ago, when Harare was still called Salisbury, you had to carry - most often open carry. It was quite beautiful in places.
I know a guy who had his farm taken a few years ago by them, and he occasionally flies over it in his little Cessna to check it out. He says the fields are unused and the buildings are run down and falling apart.
They took farms and no one's bothering to run them.
He lives across the river in Zambia now and is hoping that cases that have been dragging through the World Court will somehow get him his land back... but he's not holding his breath.
“He lives across the river in Zambia now and is hoping that cases that have been dragging through the World Court will somehow get him his land back... but he’s not holding his breath. “
My wife’s relatives in Vietnam actually are getting some money back for land taken by the communists. Of course the original amount was not to their liking so they are still fighting for a more reasonable number. Causing some problems as part want to take the offer in fear of getting nothing later.
A slow and frustrating process for sure, but it least it gives one hope.
Kinda like Gaza and the farms that were left to the Palestinians. It isn’t the color of the skin but the content of the character.
The land grabs from the white farmers has destroyed Zimbabwe's food economy. People are starving in what used to be one of the most productive "bread baskets" in Africa.
I think the “racist paranoia” part was where people were ascertaining that its going to happen here. No, its not.
Indeed....I suppose I should feel some sympathy for them but I mean how many blazing neon signs do they need to get the message?
Reparations are needed to correct past injustice.
Not necessary, the farms will kuput in two years.
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