Posted on 06/24/2002 4:21:21 PM PDT by WakeUpChristian
June 24, 2002
Zimbabwe whites told it is against law to farm land From Jan Raath in Harare
FROM midnight tonight it will be a crime for 2,900 Zimbabwean white farmers to produce food or exports to help to feed their countrys population, much of it now facing starvation.
In what could be the most serious single blow to the countrys already shattered economy, the farmers will tomorrow face arrest if they set foot on their lands. Twenty years ago the same farmers earned President Mugabes newly independent nation its reputation as the breadbasket of Africa. Now the law allows them only to stay in their homesteads.
Amendments last month to laws governing the confiscation of land order the closure of 60 per cent of the countrys productive farmland. In 45 days time even their homesteads will be denied them, when the Land Acquisition Act orders automatic eviction.
Violation of either deadline carries maximum penalties of two years in jail or a fine of Zim$20,000 (about £35).
For most of the remaining 40 per cent of the farmers, a rash of new 90-day expulsion orders is being issued, and 94 per cent of the 28 million acres of white farmland has been formally listed for Mr Mugabes land grab. A clause in the law allows farmers to apply for an exemption, and a group of tobacco farmers put in their applications last week. However, Jonathan Moyo, the Information Minister, was dismissive of the applications.
They are a waste of time because they are cynical and sinister, he said. There will be no extra-judicial waiver. The land reform programme is real and irreversible.
Jenni Williams, a spokesman for the Commercial Farmers Union, said: This is insanity. Ranchers have got to water their cattle. They cant just leave them. There are people with millions of dollars of wheat in the ground.
People cannot just get up and walk away from everything they have built up in their lives. Its absolutely unconstitutional.
The farmers were divided on how to deal with the new threat, she said. There will be those who will not abandon their homes and would rather face the authorities.
Ironically, the most effective resistance to Mr Mugabes newest recklessness would be for all farmers to close down immediately and leave the regime with far worse food shortages, said Lindsay Campbell, 33, who farms tobacco and cattle in the Marondera area about 50 miles east of Harare.
If we all just do what the minister says, they will realise pretty soon it wasnt such a smart move, she said. On Monday we are going to move all our cattle off. We are going to stop everything on Tuesday. We are not going to move outside our security fence.
The Campbells property has just been resettled for the second time. About two years ago it was allocated to peasant farmers who practise subsistence agriculture.
Now they have learnt that it has just been allocated again, this time to a senior government official. The settlers are not going to like this, she said.
Farmers will lose not only their land and homes, but all property that is permanently connected to the land, like pumps cemented into the ground and powerful electricity generators.
The new law says that farmers have the right to take their moveable property with them. In practice, most owners have been illegally forced, usually under police scrutiny, to leave with a couple of suitcases of clothing.
The tractors, earth-moving equipment, computers and sheds full of crops left behind, have been claimed by the senior ruling party functionaries, top military and police officers and their relatives Zimbabwes new farming class as their own.
Hopes for compensation have almost entirely been abandoned, especially now that the Government is in effect bankrupt and inflation is running at 120 per cent. Economists estimate that £5.5 billion worth of moveable assets have been illegally impounded or looted since February 2000, when ruling party militants began invading white farms.
I sincerely doubt the government of Zimbabwe, a nation of about 12 million people, is worried about a couple thousand white people rioting -- most have already left and those who remain are scared to death (or are actually being killed). It's a pretty safe bet they are more concerned about breaking up protests by the Mashona (about 9 million people) and Matabele (about 3 million people) protesting against Robert Mugabe's crooked election tactics and repressive government or in support of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is currently facing treason charges in that messed-up country.
Considering the number of people who are routinely shot, dismembered, disemboweled, burned or impaled to death in Zimbabwe these days, armored vehicles spraying cold water on a hot crowd is hardly a mortal threat.
Imal
"The law comes into effect as the European Union ( news - web sites) on Monday allocated $5.9 million to provide aid to hungry Zimbabweans, and again condemned the policies of President Robert Mugabe for aggravating his country's food crisis."
"The World Food Program estimated nearly half the country's 12.5 million people would need food assistance this year. The crisis was caused by dry weather and the often violent seizure of land by Mugabe loyalists on the commercial farms, which are about five times more productive than small-scale farms, the WFP said."
"The private sector has a leading role to play in bringing in food on the market," said Poul Nielson, EU aid commissioner. "The government must remove the constraints which are preventing this from happening."
So, the already over-burdened US taxpayer, via the agency of the commie UN, will now have to fork over yet more untold millions of $ to feed a nation that is in the process of self-destruction through more Marxist-inspired madness. Yup, makes a lot of sense to me!
Sow salt and *get out.*
I don't know. The United States and the EU have slapped an arms embargo on Zimbabwe. Last February, the European Union put a a visa ban on 20 top Zimbabwean official, including President Robert Mugabe, and froze their assets. There has been a lot of criticism of Israel in Europe for their sale of arms to Mugabe. Difficult to discover (for me at least) exactly what is the state of the situation now. Some Keywords to search on: Beit Alfa Trailer Co., Mugabe, Israel,sanctions, European Union,Stan Mudenge.
Mugabe has been a backer of Kabila in Angola. Interestingly enough, Arkadi Gaydamak, a large shareholder in "Africa Israel" provided the GPS equipment used to track down and assassinate Savimbi in Angola. In addition to that mess, Leonid Minin and Col. Yair Klein were running arms to Taylor in Liberia. Klein is in a prison in Sierra Leone and Minin in Italy awaiting trial for their activities last I heard.
But the Brits are walking in different shoes than us here. These Rhodesian whites are essentially British; descendants of Brits who settled the land at the behest of England. The British should not let them be exterminated at the hands of savages such as Mugabe. When the killing hits a crescendo, or better yet, before- the Brits should put paid to Mugabe's account. And America should not get directly involved, America should heartily cheer the Brits on.
There is more to it than that. These are armored vehicles with gun ports. Take a look at this baby. And we're talking about Mugabe--a stone cold killer. The "we're only selling water cannons" is a dodge to make the sale look halfway moral. Shipping heavier equipment or tanks would only infuriate the EU, which doesn't like this deal, more.
Check out #31. Africa is fascinating to research. Lots of arms flowing in from the Ukraine which are handled by Israeli nationals. Necessary to use Babelfish to translate French in many cases.
Has Israel ever done what we asked them to do except cash the checks?
I understand your point, but would beg to differ. Were the Rhodesians descended from American settlers to the region, I would feel an obligation to fight for them.
At a bare minimum, I propose the Brits allow unlimited immigration from British descended citizens of Zimbabwe back to the motherland. My guess is that the Brits would be too cowardly and constipated and PC to even do that- not that America in this day and age is any better...probably worse, if anything.
So they're amoral businessmen who do business with anybody who pays them. Gee, I thought what that's what businessmen do. If they didn't there wouldn't be any business because there's always some group who doesn't like you doing business with someone else; boycott the people who cut trees, who don't employ enough gays, who are pro-abortion, anti-abortion, for or against gun-control, push junk food, etc., etc. etc.
On a more serious level remember the merchants of death during the First World War - or Ford and IBM who continued to do business with the Germans during WWII?
Why single out the Jews and the Israelis - as you repeatedly and never-failingly do?
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