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Indexed, and it will go out in the next email...
Let those who have eyes, see... and learn.
Posted on 08/04/2002 5:46:50 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
BANKET, Zimbabwe -- This is the season for winter wheat, the time when lush, green seedlings usually blanket the earth. But these days, the roaring tractors have been silenced and many fertile farms are idle.
Here in this hungry land, where the United Nations says 6 million people -- half the population -- are threatened by famine, the government of President Robert Mugabe has ordered thousands of the country's most productive farmers to stop farming.
The white commercial farmers, who are among the largest producers of wheat and cornmeal, help feed the nation and fuel the economy. But they have been condemned as racists and enemies of the state because they have refused to turn over their land to the government -- land that was seized from blacks during the days of British colonial rule.
And now, officials say, the day of reckoning is finally at hand. By Thursday, the government has announced, most of the nation's white farmers must leave their farms for good. As the deadline approaches, many farmers are packing their bags.
The threatened expulsion of 2,900 white farmers has shaken a country already reeling from drought, a collapsing economy and political violence condoned by an increasingly authoritarian government. Some say officials are punishing the farmers for financing the opposition in the presidential election last March, an election that most Western officials believe was rigged to ensure Mugabe's victory.
Others say that Mugabe, 78, who came to power in the 1980 election that ended white rule, is desperate to secure a place in African history as the revolutionary who returned the land to his impoverished people.
Officials of the World Bank and Western governments agree that land should be redistributed in Zimbabwe, where the legacy of colonialism has left a tiny white minority with more than half the fertile soil. Whites make up only 1 percent of the population. But farmers and foreign donors have balked at participating in this program, which has been dogged by violence and cronyism ever since it was revived two years ago in what is widely viewed as a tactic to bolster Mugabe's waning popularity.
Prominent politicians loyal to Mugabe now control scores of fertile farms while many poor blacks are stranded on arid stretches without adequate water or sanitation. The government, which claims to have acquired more than 5,000 properties, actually has title deeds to fewer than 100, recent statistics show.
As government-backed militants have swept across the country, invading the farms in the past few years, several white farmers and dozens of black farm workers have been killed, while thousands of other black laborers have been evicted and left homeless.
The government has refused to pay white farmers for their properties, saying it will not pay for land stolen by British settlers. Britain has agreed to finance a well-run land redistribution program, but not the one that is currently in place. So farmers who are forced off their properties receive nothing right now for the land they have lost.
The United States and the European Union, which have already imposed sanctions on top officials, have criticized Zimbabwe's treatment of its farmers, and diplomats here are quietly pressuring officials to reconsider their stance. It is still unclear how the government will actually deal with whites who defy the deadline. Some officials have threatened to crack down, while others have promised to be lenient with farmers who agree to give up some of their land.
But recently, officials arrested 16 white farmers for continuing to farm past June 24 -- the date when most farmers were ordered to stop working -- leaving little doubt that some hard-liners are willing to force citizens to endure even greater hardships as they struggle to redraw the colonial map.
Meanwhile, the exodus of whites from Zimbabwe's farms is quickening.
In July, Adrian Wilkinson was loading his belongings into his Isuzu pickup truck, trying to beat the government deadline.
In normal years, he grows about 740 acres of winter wheat. This year, he will produce no wheat at all. Militants threatened him when he tried to plant. A few weeks ago, they barricaded him and his wife inside their farmhouse, pounding on the doors and singing for blood.
So the Wilkinsons have decided to give up their 3,000-acre farm, where they grew tobacco, soybeans and corn, and the red brick farmhouse where they raised their children and savored the best years of their lives.
"On Monday, I took out my stove and my dishwasher," said Wilkinson, 50, who plans to live off his savings in a smaller house in town, where whites feel more secure. "Today, I'm going to take out this washing machine and the tumble dryer."
In 1999, agriculture accounted for 20 percent of Zimbabwe's domestic product, the World Bank says. A year later, the figure had dropped to 11 percent, and experts say it has continued to decline.
The production of corn -- the country's staple food -- plunged by nearly 70 percent this year, the United Nations says. It predicts that the production of winter wheat, which is harvested in October, will be down by as much as 40 percent.
With the situation so dire, white farmers are increasingly questioning whether they have a future in Zimbabwe. At the Banket country club, where dozens of farmers met recently to consider their options, union leaders pleaded with members to stay put.
"We've been harassed and terrorized for political gain, but we are still all Zimbabweans here," said Ian Barrett, who represents the farmers who produce cooking oil. "We're still here! We're still strong!"
In the town of Chiredzi, where 15 farmers were arrested for continuing to farm, most of the men have vowed to defy the deadline. They are hiring extra guards and bracing themselves for the worst.
Officials have warned that farmers who defy the deadline will be arrested, tried and sentenced to two years in jail or a $363 fine.
In the impoverished village of Chikhovo, many agreed that officials should right the historical wrongs that left blacks stranded on crowded, rocky soil. But Lloyd Tafirenyasha, who scrapes by on one bowl of porridge a day, said he could not understand how farmers could be evicted while millions of Zimbabweans were going hungry.
"We wake up in the morning with no food," said Tafirenyasha, 18. "We need help. Those who are good in agriculture, they should continue.
"Those white farmers, they must stay for now."
Outside the southern African state's parliament, there was no sign of a planned protest march by pro-democracy activists after police warnings that the demonstration would be crushed. Mugabe said Zimbabwe, in the grips of its worst economic and political crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, was facing "considerable challenges" from what he called "British machinations" and a regional drought.
The economy is in its fourth year of recession with record high inflation and unemployment and a severe food shortage. "Our sovereignty is constantly under attack from the bullying states ... which seek to use their political and economic prowess to achieve global hegemony," Mugabe said. At 78, Mugabe is a left-winger who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi among his foreign allies. Monday, the European Union extended a blacklist of Zimbabwean officials subjected to a visa ban and asset freeze. The move is aimed at piling more pressure on the country whose human rights record it says has deteriorated since Mugabe's re-election in March. ***
Bump.
Why do I keep thinking that America is going to be blamed for this somehow, and in particular, President Bush? Is there time for the Democratic Leadership Council to make it a campaign issue? (loosers)
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AfricaWatch: for AfricaWatch articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
Indexed, and it will go out in the next email...
Let those who have eyes, see... and learn.
I As much as I am disgusted by the whole scenario, this part irks me the most. What he said is portrayed as a moderate approach, yet he is really a leech, since he is basically saying, "White farmers must provide when we are in need, but when we get our act together, get the *&%$ out."
It seems as if most of Africa is riding this "You colonized us so now pay" gravy train, very similar in some ways to the "You enslaved/oppressed us so now pay" gravy train in the U.S. It would be fairly interesting to see how this developes in the future.
That really chapped me too!
April 9, 2002 - Senegalese Loner Works to Build Africa, His Way***"I've never seen a country develop itself through aid or credit," said Mr. Wade, who was trained as an economist in Senegal and at the Sorbonne. "Countries that have developed - in Europe, America, Japan, Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore - have all believed in free markets. There is no mystery there. Africa took the wrong road after independence."***
April 19, 2002 - Zimbabwe's sole African critic, Senegalese**Wade, a 76-year-old leader elected in 2000 after more than two decades in opposition, emerged as the only African leader to condemn the vote. Last summer, he stood nearly as alone among African leaders in dismissing the idea of European reparation for past African enslavement - asking if his own family, former slave-holders like many in Africa, should also pay. On Zimbabwe, he said Friday, "For me, my problem is: Did the people of Zimbabwe express their free choice of election? My answer is 'no.'"
His remarks came as Wade emerged from a week in which he spearheaded African leaders' successful mediation of Madagascar's violent three-month election impasse. After three days of room-to-room shuttling by himself and four other presidents in a Dakar hotel, Madagascar's two rival presidents agreed to a temporary power-sharing plan. "Something very important on that is the consideration Africans have for elder persons," he said of his own role in that effort. "There are very few people who speak frankly, and generally we succeed," he said. The peace-making came on the sidelines of an African leaders' summit in which heads of state laid strategy for a promised massive infusion of Western aid.
Wade broke from one key provision of African leaders' proposal for encouraging good government among themselves - a demand of the wealthy Group of Eight nations promising the aid. The proposal, endorsed by influential Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, calls for a "peer review" in which African leaders themselves keep leaders like Zimbabwe's president in line. "Maybe if there is a problem, they call the head of state ... and maybe scold him," he said. "I am not very optimistic for the good functioning of the system," he said. "In general, we have little capacity to put pressure on a president."***
Mugabe's place in African history will be the same as Pol Pot's place in Asian history.
" The only hope for Africa is WHITE leaders."
" The only hope for Africa is WHITE leaders."
Makes one think: when was the last successful black African regime? Why is it that history shows that blacks are more mistreated by their own leaders (and I include Jesse Jack$on, Sharpton, Mfume, Farrakhan Clinton ((!)) and the rest in this elite group) than the "evil white man?" I mean one where the new leader doesn't rule with terror and the army, run the country into the ground, and abscond with foreign aid money, to live in comfort in south France?
Say what you will about apartheid, I will be surprised if the lot of the average black person in South Africa will improve one iota, with the obvious exception of Mugabe and his cronies. Idi Amin Dada and the rest must be laughing in hell.
It was worth the shot at Clinton though!! LOL!
Take the farms from those who know how to produce and give them to those who haven't a clue. Nothing gets produced, and everybody loses.
Ain't liberalism grand?
Yeah the trouble is, no matter how many failures liberalism has had throughout history it still keeps goosestepping onward.
The very same thing happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean when the British and other Northern Europeans were kicked out. Some good areas remain, but you have to know where you are going and you have to be willing to pay premium rates to be guaranteed a safe and comfortable trip.
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