Posted on 06/26/2002 4:00:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:07:55 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The food shortage has been caused by the leaders. This has nothing to do with the populations of these countries. The problems are explained in the article. The damns in Zimbabwe are full, the white farmers and their workers have been kicked off the land so it can be taken over by Mugabe and his cronies. He is refusing aid and selectively distributing available food to his supporters. He should be tried and punished for his crimes against humanity.
Bump!!
Interesting.
Almost sounds like Al Gore. Or maybe Hillary when she runs.
Looks like the liberal press in the US Northeast is beginning to notice and to attribute the problem mismanagement and corruption by African leaders, including he who once was a favourite poster child, Mugabe.
Very atypical behaviour on the part of the press.
This will merely put off the day of reckoning. Sometimes the wisest path is mercy. Sometimes it is severity.
Hoping some day that they can be as successful as Mugabe and bring that situation here--with them at the top.
My question is after their government kills all of their people who will they have to steal from? I say let them wallow in their own mess!
You're suffering under the common illusion that democracy equals good government. Most of the founding fathers would have disagreed with you. Mugabe is an elected leader, and although he certainly fixed the last couple of elections, he has a great deal of popular support. Even if he were clearly the choice of the majority of people, would that make him a better leader? Of course not.
Why anyone thinks that a mob of largely ignorant, unsophisticated, heavily propagandized, superstitious and primitive people can magically find and elect a set of enlightened leaders, when far more advanced societies have managed to come up with the likes of Hitler, is beyond me.
Democracy is a good system when it leads to individual liberty, but democracy neither guarantees individual liberty, nor is necessarily the most likely system to produce it. Africa would be far better off under a set of benign colonial dictatorships, but I can't see the remotst chance the world will provide them with such.
Precisely correct. This isn't genocide, it's a callous manipulation of the means of production in favor of one political class and to the detriment of all others. And as long as Mugabe controls the means of distribution as well there is absolutely nothing the U.N. can do to alleviate the starvation. Move the food into warehouses and the thugs will take control of the warehouses, as in Somalia. Air-drop it and the thugs will intercept it on the ground. Move it around the country to distribution points and the thugs will be there to "provide security." This is not really a production problem, nor is it a distribution problem, it's a thug problem. And Western media are stubbornly refusing to admit it.
Exactly, neighbor, exactly.
I'm pleased to see more than the usual number of replies to this post. Maybe people are starting to pay attention to the little horror show going on in Africa.
Who Is To Blame for Africa's Woes?***Everything that is happening in Zimbabwe is being done in full accord with the doctrines of post-colonialism. If every evil is caused by colonialism, then the heart of the problem must be the colonists themselves. In Zimbabwe, that means thousands of white British farmers who settled in Zimbabwe's sparsely populated countryside and built a prosperous agricultural economy. The settler's use of Western agricultural techniques, combined with the benefits of British law and order, made Zimbabwe into the breadbasket of southern Africa, an exporter of grain on which all of its neighbors relied. But in accordance with leftist philosophy, Zimbabwe's post-colonial ruler, Robert Mugabe, denounced the white farmers and hatched a scheme for "land reform."
In the language of tin-pot dictatorships, "reform" means "theft." For years, Mugabe has allowed armed gangs to occupy white-owned farms, sometimes murdering the owners, as a precursor to a plan to seize the farms, allegedly for redistribution to poor blacks. (In reality, the farms are going to Mugabe's cronies.) The result? People are starving in Zimbabwe, not because there is a drought, but because hundreds of thousands of acres of crops have not been planted. Some farms are fallow because they are occupied by armed thugs. Others are unused because of a law threatening white farmers with two years in prison if they plant without government permission, which has not been given. Other farms are unplanted simply because no one in his right mind would go to the trouble of planting crops that will be seized before he can harvest them. When you make war on the farmers, what can you expect but famine?***
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