Posted on 08/06/2002 5:49:49 PM PDT by Clive
All across Zimbabwe thousands of white farmers are tearfully saying farewell to their neighbours, workers, gardens and houses before tomorrow's deadline to leave their homes.
Farmers are photographed at the Mutorashanga Country Club before preparing to leave their homes before tomorrow's deadline
Jannie Erasmus, a 63-year-old rancher who left his home, Bath Farm, earlier this week, said:"We can't take any more. We are finished. I have two dairy cows and two sheep left."
Last weekend, the Erasmuses and the few remaining neighbours from their community gathered for a last prayer meeting in a homestead.
Tears poured down their faces as they prayed for "safety" and "serenity" days before being forced to drive down their dusty farm roads for the last time.
In May, MPs from President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party passed a law which gave farmers 45 days to stop farming, and the same period again to abandon their homes, nearly all of them without any compensation.
Most of those affected by final orders of acquisition have already begun leaving, moving into towns, squatting with friends or family, before the coming weekend's public holiday commemorating the thousands of black guerrillas who died in the independence war which ended in 1979.
"We must go before the weekend in case Zanu-PF decide to take out it out on us," said a tobacco farmer in Hwedza, 60 miles south east of Harare. "We have been offered a house in town for the weekend," he said.
Jannie and Maureen Erasmus have lived on Bath Farm, Chatsworth, 140 miles south of Harare in cattle ranching country, all their married lives.
"The 'settlers', that's what we are supposed to call them, have cut down thousands of wonderful indigenous trees," said Mr Erasmus.
"They have extorted money from me for months. Their children swear at me and my wife at the school they have created in my workshops. They have stolen so much of my equipment. This is no life. I had to move my cattle. Every time they went near a settler's piece of land they said we had caused damage and they extorted me. I have paid out millions."
Maureen Erasmus said: "Packing up 30 years of rubbish is hell. We only have a few workers left. The government says we must pay them packages before we go. We have no money left in the bank to pay anyone. We only have an overdraft."
At a minute to midnight before leaving the Erasmus farm was still neat and intact. The white homestead, reminiscent of the Cape Dutch architecture of his ancestors in South Africa, was clean and the garden was watered and pruned.
All the paddocks are still fenced. Miles of underground pipes carrying water to where 4,000 cattle used to graze are still working. But there is nothing moving in the paddocks, no sounds of cattle, almost, it seemed, no birds in the remaining ancient trees.
Less than a year ago Commonwealth foreign ministers visited Bath Farm and were told by Mr Mugabe's ministers that Jannie Erasmus had agreed to co-exist with hundreds of ruling party supporters who invaded his farm and destroyed his life and still regularly threaten his physical safety.
It was not true. Jannie and Maureen were bullied, threatened, beaten and bruised into sending away their cattle and trying to stick it out. He has offered the government four out of his five ranches in the parched province.
"They haven't let us know. So we are moving into a small holding outside Masvingo. There are some fruit trees which Jannie can be busy with," she said. But they have no money, had to take out a mortgage and do not know how they will meet the monthly repayments.
Leaving was especially hard for the Erasmuses. Their only son died of a brain tumour two years ago and Bath Farm was where he spent his last days. "We have so much pain, we can't even talk about it," said Mr Erasmus.
Chatsworth district, which six months ago had 50,000 commercial cattle, now has fewer than 5,000.
In Masvingo, Ian Dott, 73, was recovering from wounds inflicted on him at his farm, Mayo, close to the town. With arms heavily bandaged and a black eye still visible, Mr Dott said he was attacked in the middle of the night 10 days ago. "Nothing was stolen, they just want me to go."
An unknown number of farmers, especially the older ones, say they are returning to their homesteads after the holiday weekend. A farmer near Marondera, 45 miles south-east of Harare, said: "We don't know what to do.
"We can't get equipment off, because the war vets won't let us. We can't grow crops. We are still grading last season's tobacco. Our kids are supposed to be at home for the holidays, we have no money to pay off workers, and we are paralysed."
Hundreds have already left, abandoning their homes and their life's work. Only 106 out of more than 3,000 farmers have been paid pitiful compensation for the infrastructure on their farms.
Horseshoe, Mutorashanga, Raffingora, Umboe Valley, Ruzawi River, Mvurwi - these are the names of some of the farming districts from where heavy hearted farmers and their families are leaving in one of the last chapters of Mr Mugabe's ethnic cleansing of the countryside.
"They have extorted money from me for months. Their children swear at me and my wife at the school they have created in my workshops. They have stolen so much of my equipment. This is no life. I had to move my cattle. Every time they went near a settler's piece of land they said we had caused damage and they extorted me. I have paid out millions."
Maureen Erasmus said: "Packing up 30 years of rubbish is hell. We only have a few workers left. The government says we must pay them packages before we go. We have no money left in the bank to pay anyone. We only have an overdraft."
Well, the productive ones are stripped bare and kicked out. Now the appointees of Mugabe will have to feed the country. Let black Africans feed their own. That is what Mugabe wants, isn't it? Or is Mugabe too busy trying to find countries that he can fly into, anything but staying in the hellhole he's created while his people starve?
Once Zimbabwe begins to starve, the farmers can read about it on page A-27 of their newspaper.
It is not enough to just say that. What we need to do and what we should do is bombard our Representatives and Senators and tell them: "Not one damned dollar for Zimbabwe. Not now, not ever. Let them reap what they sow. Not one damned dollar."
On NOW at RadioFR!
Tonight The Shrew will host William S. Lind of the Free Congress Foundation on Radio Free Republic! Tune in to hear one of the foremost military writers discuss the article he has co-written with Paul Weyrich!
The whole damn continent, which (falsely)prides itself on throwing off colonial rule, will now become one gigantic continental welfare state. So what's the difference between taking welfare and being "colonized"? Over time, the latter offered some hope for real democracy to evolve. As it is, the end result will be more and more vermin "emigrating" to the west as a result of more and more tribal violence.
We ought to throw a big net over the whole continent.
Well, I don't see any US Senators pontificating on the floor of the Senate about letting these poor, persecuted white Zimbabwean farmer families emigrate into the US. I see dozens of old, newly arrived Chinese people (who will never assimilate into our culture) every time I get on a bus in SF, but God forbid that we should make a point of taking in people of Dutch, German and British descent from Zimbabwe.
On a side note, isn't it ironic that the forces that pressured Rhodesia and South Africa into giving up white rule are now feeling the same sort of pressure over their treatment of the Palestinians?
If I had millions to pay out, I would have taken the money and relocated to a friendly South American country as have many South Africans. I would follow the advice of Ayn Rand. If the political fight is already lost and if one has not the legal right to one's property or to defend ones life then you should sell out and leave. Strike of the mind
By paying millions to thugs in the hope that you are the last white left standing is enabling the crime which Rand called the sanction of the victim.
You don't know the half of it—they already get tons upon tons of food aid, from virtually every Western country (including the US, sad to say). Naturally, upon arrival all that food immediately becomes the property of Mugabe's "government," who then distribute it to those they favor and withhold it from those they wish to starve. The less food Zimbabwe grows, the more power Mugabe has. Indeed, the whole point of the "resettlement" program is to completely wreck Zimbabwe's agriculture once and for all, which is why Mugabe ordered all the farmers to stop growing crops.
The sucker American taxpayer is paying to feed Zimbabwe, and we practically have to beg them to take our food.
Read it and weep:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/725806/posts
And its not just this issue as well, did he even attempt to explain to the American people why CFR was wrong? NO! We need to get rid of Bush and nominate someone in 2004 who will actually attempt to teach the country about conservative values in his speeches. Bush lets so much crap happen without even a whimper of criticism. I'm not angry with him at failing do defeat the ideas of the left, after all Daschle has an iron grip on the Senate. I'm disgusted with him because he doesn't even try.
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