Posted on 05/04/2002 7:15:34 AM PDT by Clive
"You People"
Saturday 4th May 2002 1.47pm
Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you all for the staggering response to my letter last week and sorry for so few letters back from me. A number of newspapers and radio stations have publicized that letter exposing this insanity which makes me both proud and humble.
It has been a very fraught time for me this week as Wind and two of his helpers moved into my house on the farm. They had a comfortable few days, nice hot baths and listened to their radio at a very loud volume until Wednesday when they ran the borehole dry and burnt out the electric motor.
They sent a message to me saying that as I was still the owner of the farm I should pay for the borehole motor to be repaired as they could not survive without water. My response to their demand was short, explosive and consisted of two words which I cannot repeat in this letter.
The tenants have made repeated requests to the electricity company (ZESA) to have the supply to the farm disconnected but this has not yet been done for two reasons. One is that Wind and his helpers want the power left on and are threatening in the extreme and the other is that there have been so many farmers forcibly evicted recently that ZESA cannot cope with the backlog of disconnection requests.
Towards the end of the week I finally managed to get in to see a senior local government official to advise him that three unknown men were now living in my house, had broken the borehole and that the situation was completely out of control. I explained politely that as the government had not served me with any acquisition papers at all I was extremely worried about assets which may now be being destroyed such as geysers, water fittings, fitted cupboards etc.
The "official" got extremely angry with me and gave me a very long lecture about the history of Zimbabwe and said the reason the country was now in this state was due to "you people" who have made concerted efforts to "demonise Zimbabwe" and "tell lies to the world." Some of the things this "official" said to me were extremely offensive and absolutely shocking, particularly coming from a civil servant.
The official told me that in order to have my property valued I must go to another government department, fill in forms and hand over the title deeds. When this has been done government valuers will go in and then compensation would be paid at some future date.
Throughout the "interview" I was polite and courteous and did not raise my voice or lose my temper and had expected a similar response from a man whose salary is paid by my taxes.
The entire encounter, which perhaps lasted fifteen minutes, left me feeling very uncomfortable about my personal safety but incredibly sad about the future of the country I was born in.
When I left the man's office he and his Central Intelligence Officer stood watching me from their window and I tried to stand tall but it is becoming increasingly difficult as I am more and more often made to feel unwanted in Zimbabwe.
In the car park I met other farmers in a similar position to mine including one man who had been visited by men like Wind and given 30 minutes to get out of his house. He did so under duress and that night his house and workshops were looted. There have been dozens of similar cases in the past fortnight.
While this goes on the food supply situation is continuing to deteriorate. This week the government announced price increases on cooking oil, margarine, soap, bread and milk. Most of these products have been in very short supply for many months and now, with milk having increased by 73%, have become completely unaffordable to hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans.
In the midst of this nightmare and with my last source of income from the farm rent now gone I again appealed to the publishers of African Tears to pay me any of the royalty or serialization payments now grossly overdue. They continue to say how sorry they are for my plight and the situation but that they are unable to pay me anything at all and have again asked me to be patient which is not so easy when the wolf is at the door and I can no longer afford lawyers.
In the meantime I continue to work on the update to African Tears which I hope to submit to another publisher very soon.
My week ended on a wonderful note when a parcel arrived from a complete stranger filled with little treats, thank you so much Ann.
This coming week Parliament at last goes back into session and I should think it will be a very stormy one which will hopefully do something to rapidly address the massive starvation which is right at our doorsteps.
Until next week, with love, cathy.
Petty tyrants love to lecture those who stand powerless against them.
And getting the truth out is "telling lies," huh?
I hope Cathy Buckle can get out in one piece, because I can predict where all this will lead...
Has Cathy Buckle ever written out the logic and reasoning that keeps her from getting the hell out of Zimbabwe?
Regardless of what happens there next, no one is ever going to leap up and invite white farmers or white experts, businesspeople, doctors etc. to step back in and save them from their self destruction.
Get out, start over, don't look back.
[historical note, many years ago I was equally stunned when listening to second generation cuban exiles, light skinned, well tought, integrated into US culture, earnestly talking of the day that their former employees (their "people") would call for them to return and reassume their lands and leading roles - sheer fantasy that seems to also affect whites in Zimbabwe.)
Like "norton" and others, myself included, have said................Get out!
Absolutely no one is going to further your cause.
It is, after all, the "Indians" turn slaughter the "cowboys".
We're way past the get-a-mitt-and-catch-a-clue stage. White people are only wanted to serve as targets. The old racist sterotype of the black savages (spears, grass skirts, bones through their noses) boiling a white person in a big iron cauldron is about the only level to which the situation has not yet sunk.
The writing is on the wall, white people are not wanted, welcome or even allowed in Africa anymore. I wonder what would happen if the people in France decided that only French people could live there, and anyone else had to leave and surrender their property. Could you imagine the outcry? The nightly news would spend twenty minutes a day on the story, with detailed interviews of crying Africans and Arabs who were being forcibly deported, wailing into the camera about how they had lost everything.
However, since it's only white people in Zimbabwe who are being deprived of life, liberty and property, our network news cannot bother to spend even one minute a day on the subject. How predictable, how typical, how damnable.
They did not help enron, they are not helping argentina. I think you should have no worry that the US will help here and I agree with you totally and thank god clinton is gone.
It is not Conservatism that is the failure. To realize that Conservatives lost the key battles in the 20th Century is one thing. But to suggest that what we fought for failed, is quite another. If Rush is overly optimistic, that is also one thing. But to suggest that we cannot still turn this world around, is quite another.
We have the amunition. We must have the will. If we do not have that will, your projection of the future could indeed come to pass.
William Flax Return of The Gods Web Site
Cathy Buckle's journal has the fatalistic air of an about-to-be-transported 'zek' in the old Soviet Union.
The comments mostly share this bleak outlook.
One must admit that there is no apparent ray of sunshine on the horizon. :^{
Note to author. Get out. Or get guns. Steal guns. Buy guns. Fight back.
It ain't pretty but it beats the alternative. Which is what you are living through now.
The "war vets" are human garbage walking around taking up space and breathing valuable O2.
How do I know? One of my better friends was a medic, RLI, Support Commando.
The world is full of people of good intentions.
The fact of the matter is when the armed thief or murder confronts you, you have a choice to make.
Submit or fight.
IMHO the better choice was to have left years ago.
This calamity didn't begin yesterday.
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