Posted on 07/13/2002 8:14:51 AM PDT by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
Outside my kitchen door there is a large and very beautiful Msasa tree and all week a pair of glossy starlings have been flitting in and out of the branches. They are a gorgeous metallic blue colour with startling orange eyes and have the most peculiar call which almost sounds like a question.
Nearby is a large avocado pear tree whose branches are positively staggering under the weight of perhaps 400 fruits which are gradually swelling and ripening. A few metres away stands a paw paw tree with 15 great green fruits clinging onto the trunk.
All of these simple and common sights have helped to keep me sane over the last seven days which have again been filled with tears of both despair and disgust at the events in Zimbabwe.
Mid week an elderly farmer came to see me and found it easy to tell his story of horror to a stranger.
The man told me how the people who say they have been allocated his farm had come at the weekend. There were 5 men in a green landrover and they drove right up to the farmer's house. They walked into his garden and demanded their right to move into his small guest cottage.
The farmer and his frail wife, their almost blind son and his wife and their two young children were completely helpless and powerless to stop this obscenity. They stood and watched as these five men went into the guest cottage, removed all the furniture and dumped it outside on the lawn.
The five men then removed the farmer's lock from the front door of the cottage and put their own padlock on the door of the house.
With beds and tables, chairs and bookcases lying on the grass in the farmer's garden, the five men left having claimed another man's home and life. They will return in less than a month to claim the rest of the elderly farmers life.
This story is being repeated on farms all over the country but for me this particular incident has bought such indescribable horror that I have struggled to keep my faith and hope for the future of Zimbabwe alive.
The reason is that I know the man who came in the green landrover. I know that he is an educated, middle class man who already has his own farm. I know that he is not a landless peasant but has allowed himself to be consumed by the greed which is sweeping our country.
While 6 million people face starvation and utter destitution, anyone who thinks they can make a quick buck in these days of lawlessness is doing so. Morals, principles, values and human decency have gone out of the window in Zimbabwe. Looking out for each other, sharing what little we have and helping the man who stumbles on the street have become things of the past.
After two and a half years of political insanity, torture, murder and burning, no one knows who to trust anymore. The moral fibre and fabric of our society is crumbling and we need ugent intervention.
Everyone says that the world will not step in and help us until we begin helping ourselves. How can we though? It is illegal to go out without an ID.
If more than five friends meet for a chat it is an illegal gathering.
It is against the law to criticize the President, Cabinet or security forces.
It is an offence to say or write anything that may cause alarm and despondency and if you are a white farmer it is illegal to grow food.
How do we help ourselves in Zimbabwe when police will not enforce court rulings and will not attend to the scenes of a multitude of crimes on farms and in rural areas because they are considered "political."
We are not sure which way to turn in a country where, 4 months after elections, parliament has not yet reconvened, the President has not yet announced his cabinet and absolutely no one in authority has made any statements indicating how we are going to get out of this most desperate situation we are in.
When the elderly farmer who visited me this week was leaving he said he had one more thing to tell me. This man who is moments away from losing everything it has taken him a lifetime to secure, said that he had this week visited my own farm on the outskirts of Marooned.
He had heard that 500 people had been dumped there and are literally starving to death. The white farmer had taken them a 50 kilogram bag of maize because he could not bear the thought of children starving to death.
He asked me if I blamed him for helping the people who have taken over what was my family farm. I do not. I thank God for this farmer's decency, goodness and godliness.
Until next week, with love, cathy.
Obtain a firearm by whatever means necessary and when these thugs show up for you, use it on them
They are going to kill you anyway, so you might as well go down fighting.
Regards,
L
Carolyn
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