Posted on 08/12/2002 7:37:28 AM PDT by Clive
William Phiri is a 26-year-old black farmworker - one of a legion of Zimbabweans who are suffering even more from President Mugabe's land seizures than the white farmers being evicted from their land. "I am using pills," he says. "I have dreams about it. I can start crying for nothing. Sometimes I am like a person who is mad. I will start talking about it when I am asleep at night. I start to shout: "Leave me, don't kill me."" "It" refers to four assaults at the hands of Mr Mugabe's militias in the past two years since they invaded the Chipesa Farm east of Harare where Mr Phiri worked. "They force you to lie down and they beat you with knobkerries (clubs) and whips on your back and under your feet. They can beat you for 20, 30 minutes. Then they put you in cold water so the marks do not swell." When he reported the attacks to the local police, they locked him up for a week.
A recent study by the Amani Trust, a charity dedicated to victims of political violence, established that 81 per cent of farmworkers suffered clinical psychological disorders as a result of violence and stress. "It's the highest figure of any group in the country," Tony Reeler, Amani's director, said. Among veterans of Zimbabwe's guerrilla war against white minority rule, Amani found 70 per cent were disturbed. "The veterans were combatants, on the front line. The farmworkers are civilians. I would not be surprised if there are 400,000 farm- workers and members of their families who have been acutely traumatised and are in need of professional help."
Post-traumatic stress disorder is far from Mr Phiri's only problem. He is unemployed, has no money and almost no possessions, and home is a tent in an encampment for 157 displaced farmworkers on a church property in Ruwa, 15 miles east of Harare. Government lorries ferried about 400 war veterans and youth militia to Chipesa on March 15, three days after the flawed elections in which Mr Mugabe was declared the winner. It was the start of his campaign of retribution against anyone suspected of having voted for the opposition. The mob launched themselves at the workers. "We ran away into the hills. We were wearing overalls and gumboots, the women were in dustcoats. That was all we had," Mr Phiri said. Some crept back the next day. "Our houses were burnt. Everything was looted. Bicycles, radios, televisions, clothing, everything."
Commercial agriculture is Zimbabwe's biggest private employer, providing work - and, almost invariably, accommodation - for about 350,000 people. If Mr Mugabe carries out his threat to evict 2,900 white farmers, the workers and their families - a total of 1.2 million people - will join the ranks of the dispossessed, Jenni Williams, spokesman for Justice for Agriculture, said. Such people warrant no mention in any of the Government's land reform policy documents. Most are migrant workers from Mozambique or Malawi or their offspring, with uncertain rights to Zimbabwean nationality, and they are regarded as "foreign." Many of them supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change during the parliamentary and presidential elections. For these reasons, Mr Reeler said, "they are perceived by the Government as a hostile group".
Up to 60,000 have been forced from their homes in the past two years and now form a diaspora in squatter camps, refugees returning to Malawi and Mozambique, or crossing illegally into South Africa to work for farmers there at a pittance, Mr Reeler said. A minute proportion have been allocated land on the farms where they worked. Mr Phiri and the group at Ruwa are lucky, Mr Reeler said. "They are getting food, medical care, counselling and accommodation. There are a million people with no provision at a time when there are extreme food shortages in the country and possible starvation. The numbers are surreal . . . This is how Stalin and Mao dealt with agrarian reform."
1. Where's Jesse and other US self-annointed 'Black Leaders?'
2. This is directly the result of the political interference of Jimmy 'Mr. Habitat for Humanity' Carter and Andrew Young. Check the history of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe transition.
Operation Hope: Africa Africa Area Director Henry Church recently traveled in Zimbabwe and witnessed heart-breaking sights. "We visited the hospital (Chikombedzi) and a village. There is no food there. The village's corncribs are empty. The people are struggling to stay alive. ... The average family eats, at most, one meal per day," Henry writes. Similar reports have also come from Malawi. "Hundreds of people have apparently died," Henry states. "The government did not reserve any food last year, so the warehouses are empty. There was no help or subsidy on seed and/or fertilizer. So, the few who planted did not get much. ... The big tobacco farmers usually feed their workers. This year, they paid them but had no food to give them. So, many workers began walking to their villages, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, hoping to find something there. Those who did get home found nothing to eat. Many died on the way. ... All in all it is pretty grim."
Why that’s a rather negative way of looking at this. Perhaps materially they are destitute, but surely the experience of seeing one’s country torn to smithereens makes them richer.
This is simply a minor bump in the road as Mad Bob deftly transforms the economy from commercial farming to relief reception. All will be fine in due time. Farrakhan told me so…
NePAD is the wave of the future…
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
True, but Shermy, the truth has to get out over wide media outlets. Stalin had George Bernard Shaw, Walter Duranty of the NY Times (Pulitzer prize winner for it) and they both lied among countless others. George Orwell could barely get his reporting published in Britain, because it didn't praise the communist line. In fact, one of the torture techniques in Stalin's Lubiyanka prison was to read the prisoners the Western media accounts of how everything was just fine in the Soviet Union. It would drive the prisoners to despair. Nobody outside wanted to know, they didn't matter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.