Posted on 08/11/2002 3:02:39 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The Zimbabwe government said yesterday it would arrest about 1,000 white farmers who stayed on their land in defiance of an order for them to leave by midnight last Thursday.
"Those who defied the deadline will face the consequences," said Patrick Chinamasa, the justice minister, in an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Zimbabwe's state-owned ZBC radio reported that the farmers would be fined or sentenced to two years' imprisonment.
It is unclear whether the government will carry out its threat or if this is simply an intimidatory tactic to frighten more farmers off their land.
In June President Robert Mugabe ordered 2,900 white farmers to stop all production and gave them until last Friday to vacate their farms and homes. The deadline was the culmination of a brutal campaign of land occupation that began in February 2000 and has seen 12 farmers murdered and thousands of white farmers and black farm workers beaten and harassed.
Most of the affected farmers have spent the tensest weekend of their lives as they wait for Mr Mugabe's speech today in which he is expected to lay out his plans.
Some, including the artist Larry Norton, his wife Sara and their six-month-old daughter Madeline were among those who opted to leave their farm.
According to Jenni Williams, of the farmers' organisation Justice For Agriculture, which is contesting the eviction order, about half of the threatened farmers have stayed on their farms while 30 per cent have left the country and the remainder have gone away for the long holiday weekend.
Those numbers seem optimistic. The Telegraph found that in the tobacco-farming area of Karoi, where the entire community had decided to stay on, almost every farm was empty, perhaps because of the beating of Kevin Smith, a local white farmer, on Thursday. In the Mazowe Valley, almost everyone had gone while Marondera was also abandoned.
Among those who stayed in Karoi were the Flight family, who live along the Binga road. All but one of the farms have been abandoned and many whites are afraid of travelling in the area.
Ed Flight has seen three quarters of his farm taken over. His two sisters and two brothers have fled the country and his parents forcibly removed from their farm. War veterans have built a beer hall opposite the farm to watch comings and goings.
Mr Flight and his wife, Suzy, however, decided to risk staying on with their three children. "Every day we're living through threats and demands, and now I have just 70 hectares left for my tobacco.
"But why should I move?" said Mr Flight. " This house used to hum with people. Now, that's all gone. People are frightened to come here."
So far the weekend has passed off more quietly than expected, perhaps as a result of Wednesday's High Court ruling that the Cabinet was illegal because the ministers had not been sworn in again after the presidential election in March, rendering the eviction notices illegal.
One farmer, William Dardigan, 57, was attacked in Lions Den, just south of Karoi, on Friday, but there were few other reports of violence. "This is all about theft and extortion not land reform," Mr Dardigan told The Sunday Telegraph.
The land was meant to be allocated to landless blacks "to right the wrongs of colonialism", according to Mr Mugabe.
But of the farms so far taken over, more than 100 have been given to senior military officers or government officials, and most of the land has been laid to waste.
There appears to be much hand wringing in the West about what to do. Food aid has been increased but that will deal with the symptoms, not the cause, of famine. Pleas have been made to Zimbabwe's neighbours to act but few African states have the political will to deal with the crisis. Mugabe has shown in recent weeks that he is quite prepared to divide the African Union and the Commonwealth to remain in power. The regime has not hesitated to play the racial card both domestically and internationally and the crisis is constantly portrayed as a spat between Britain and her former colony. Mugabe's purpose is to raise the stakes in the hope of deterring the West from taking sterner measures for fear of, for example, splitting the Commonwealth.
The crisis is now so grave, however, that the West must not be deterred from taking decisive action. Two distinct courses of action should be followed. First, those in Zimbabwe guilty of torture (as defined by the International Convention) should be investigated and prosecuted. Aside from the abuses of the past two years, food is now being used as a political weapon which is already resulting in thousands suffering. Many could die unless those responsible know that they will be held accountable for their actions. The vast majority of those who may die will be MDC supporters denied food solely because of their political beliefs. That is clearly a crime against humanity.
Second, the West, in conjunction with its democratic African allies, must now seriously consider its responsibility to protect Zimbabweans. The report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in December 2001 points out that where a population is suffering serious harm as a result of repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling to halt the suffering, the usual principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.
The principle of state sovereignty, so readily used by the Mugabe regime to protect itself, is not absolute. With sovereignty comes a responsibility for the state to protect its people. But more than six million Zimbabweans face starvation as a direct result of the state's failure and its use of food aid as a political weapon. In these circumstances the civilised world has a responsibility to protect the Zimbabwean people and to do so it should intervene in the manner proposed by the International Commission. If future famines are to be avoided and if what was once the jewel of Africa is not to become another Somalia, governments in the West must must act urgently with their African colleagues to address the root cause of the catastrophe now unfolding in Zimbabwe.***
The silence of the media in America remains deafening-- I guess they just don't want to talk about what they helped enable...
I was thinking the same thing this morning backhoe. I was wishing I had them by the collar and could shake them, asking 'Where are you now?'
Could someone explain the UN's plan to protect the white farmers...stop the atrocity...and help insure the people of Zimbabwe don't starve?
The left-wing media have to be silent. This is about a black African dictator, not an evil white. In their mantra, whites should be chased out of Africa and if millions of black Africans starve, so what? But why don't some conservative media and writers take this crisis on? Just too un-PC? Too boring? We will hear all about the starving Zims in a year or less, and then it will be only appeals to send food and money. The marxist Mugabe knows he can always count on Western liberals.
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