Thousands of Whites Defying Zimbabwe Over Farm Evictions

New York Times ^ | 8/12/02 | RACHEL L. SWARNS

[kattracks]

early 3,000 white farmers in Zimbabwe were anxiously waiting yesterday to see how the government would respond after hundreds of farmers defied an order to abandon their farms.

The farmers were ordered to leave their farms by midnight last Thursday by the government of President Robert Mugabe, which has threatened to jail or fine those farmers who defied the deadline.

Officials say they are trying to undo the legacy of British colonialism, which left a tiny white minority with more than half of Zimbabwe's fertile land.

So far, no one has been arrested, even though hundreds of people have ignored the eviction order, farming officials say. Police officials said they were awaiting formal instructions from the government. President Mugabe was expected to address the issue in a speech scheduled for today.

"It's all been very quiet," Jenni Williams, the spokeswoman for Justice for Agriculture, a group that represents many of the farmers who are refusing to leave their properties.

"We're just waiting to see what happens tomorrow and what the speech is from the president," Ms. Williams said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Most of us are surprised that there haven't been arrests already."

In recent days, government officials have been warning that a crackdown was imminent. Ignatius Chombo, the government minister who heads the country's land resettlement committee, called the defiant farmers racists and warned that they might be forcibly evicted. Vice President Joseph Msika warned that the farmers should not expect leniency.

"Those who are not going to work within the laws of Zimbabwe have nobody to blame but themselves," Mr. Msika said on state television Friday night. "The law will take its own course. It's simple and straightforward."

In Washington, the State Department sharply criticized Mr. Mugabe's government, describing the eviction of white farmers as irresponsible at a time when nearly half of Zimbabwe's population is in need of emergency food aid.

"At a time when six million Zimbabweans are without adequate food supplies, the government of Zimbabwe's eviction of commercial farmers and thousand of farm workers is a reckless and reprehensible act," Philip T. Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement on Friday. "The United States again calls upon the government of Zimbabwe to reverse course."

[Anotherpundit]

I'll be surprised if those farmers live that much longer. That said, I'll be even more surprised if their murderers don't starve to death soon after.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[JoeFromCA]

My advice to the farmers: take up arms and defend your property.

[john in missouri]

My advice to the farmers: take up your children, and your passports, and get the h*** out of there.

[SamBees]

Can you see something like this happening in America as a result of a UN, or international court resolution giving back land to mexico?

[zarf]

No way. Too many yahoos, like myself, with weapons ready to unload on the suckers who try to confiscate property.

[BJungNan]

My advice to the farmers: take up your children, and your passports, and get the h*** out of there.

That is the best advice.

[John Locke]

Officials say they are trying to undo the legacy of British colonialism, which left a tiny white minority with more than half of Zimbabwe's fertile land.

And how fertile was the land before the white minority started farming it? How fertile will it be after the white minority have been driven out? You can find the first answer in the history books, and the second in tomorrow's newspaper.

[SamBees]

I would like to think you are correct. Its very patriotic to think that, but I believe that after a few families were murdered, many Texas patirots would hand over the land taken from them by evil government.

[Mr. Jeeves]

My advice to the farmers: take up your children, and your passports, and get the h*** out of there.

I'm not sure all of them have passports. I'm not sure Britain would allow them in if they did - they are white, after all, and by definition a part of the oppressor class. I think many of them have little choice but to stay and be murdered.

[ethical]

Their arms have been confiscated.

[Basil Duke]

That's a key point never mentioned in mainstream media reports. It's not as though the white man arrived and threw native residents off millions of acres of rich, productive farm ground. Rather, the whites migrated to the region and transformed that ground into fertile farm land. Before Cecil Rhodes @ Co. arrived, it wasn't used for anything. Blacks and whites alike were fed and regularly employed as a result of this 'horrible' legacy of colonialism. And now everyone starves in the name of correcting a wrong that wasn't even wrong to begin with.

[VetoBill]

My advice to the farmers...

If you have irrigation wells, start dumping fuel, chemical, and oil down the well head
Burn your buildings
Put trenches through your gravity irrigated fields
Poision stored grain
and if possible put on chemicals that have a residual effect of a year.

Then let them have the ground.