'I thought my boss was a devil. Not now, He was my saviour. '

Independent ^ | 18 August 2002 | Basildon Peta, Zimbabwe Correspondent

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Charles Mushambati had always regarded Thom Martin as being among those "devil" Zimbabwean white farmers who grossly underpaid their workers and kept them in squalor. With hindsight, he now believes he was wrong.

More than 60 white farmers had been arrested around Zimbabwe by yesterday as President Robert Mugabe cracked down on 1,800 farmers who were refusing to leave their land. His confiscation policy is supposedly aimed at helping people such as Mr Mushambati, but the 59-year-old labourer, like most of the 80,000 farm workers who have found themselves unemployed and homeless after their bosses went out of business, has lost his illusions.

Mr Mushambati had often quarrelled with Mr Martin over his wages, and was elated when he attended a rally before the 2000 parliamentary elections at which Mr Mugabe promised "land to my people".

The labourer applied for a piece of land, but officials asked him for a Zanu-PF card, demonstrating membership of Mr Mugabe's ruling party, to attach to the application. He didn't have one.

"They made it clear that no one would get land without a party card," he said.

Mr Mushambati returned to work for Mr Martin, who paid him 4,000 Zimbabwe dollars (£50) a month. His wife also worked for the white farmer and they received free produce from Mr Martin, and sent their children to a school he built for his employees.

"I used to think the boss was a devil, but with hindsight he was not. He was my saviour," said Mr Mushambati.

The Farm Community Trust, a welfare organisation, estimates that of more than 100,000 families given pieces of land on farms seized from whites, fewer than 2,000 are farm workers. The latest crackdown puts the livelihoods of 300,000 more agricultural labourers at risk.

As the collapse of agriculture threatens half of Zimbabwe's 13 million people with starvation, displaced farm workers and failed subsistence farmers are drifting to the towns and cities, where there is 65 per cent unemployment. Crime levels have rocketed. Carjackings and armed robberies, almost unheard of a few years ago, are becoming commonplace. Tim Neil, executive director of the Zimbabwe Community Development Trust, expects the number of children living on the streets to start increasing in the next six weeks.

This is the future now facing Mr Mushambati - a plight often forgotten in the international attention devoted to thewhite farmers. Mr Martin told his workers last week he had given up the fight for his land and was emigrating to New Zealand. Mr Mushambati asked his employer to take him too.

"Unfortunately, the boss said he will not own a farm any more. He is going to work in a hotel in New Zealand," said his employee of 20 years. He broke down. "I am finished. I have no future."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Zimbabwe Urges Blacks to Move on to White Farms*** HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's justice minister urged landless blacks Tuesday to move on to white-owned farms, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with white farmers defying eviction orders. "Those who have been allocated land should move to the farms and utilize it," Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the state-owned Herald newspaper.

President Robert Mugabe's government, pushing ahead with its land reform program to resettle landless blacks, has ordered 2,900 of the country's remaining 4,500 white commercial farmers to quit their land without compensation, but nearly two-thirds have defied an August 8 deadline and refused to leave their farms.

About 200 defiant farmers had been arrested by late Monday, of which more than 40 have been charged and released on bail. Police said the latest arrest figures for Tuesday were not yet available.

Farmers' lobby group Justice for Agriculture declined to comment on Chinamasa's remarks. The disruption to agriculture in Zimbabwe, once the bread-basket of southern Africa, comes as millions in the region face food shortages. ***

[Technocrat]

Has anybody heard of even one instance where the farmers have confronted and killed the invaders? Do any of these people have a backbone? A lot of these guys are in their 70s and 80s - they should be far more cantankerous and far less caring about their own lives. Sonething doesn't compute here. We are being denied critical information, either on one side, or on the other.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

This has been a drip, drip situation. Many of the "war veterans," really young Mugabe thugs, have been camped outside these farms for months, intimidating and harrassing the farm famlies, including beatings and killing 10 or more. I think they're just plain traumatized.

Here's just some of it.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Space Wrangler]

In very short order, Mugabe will have turned Zimbabwe into a desert, and the calls of the Hollywood elite to feed the starving people fo Zimbabwe won't be far behind. Why our gov't can't have the foresight to realize that this is something much better off being nipped in the bud, but it will be left to fester until all out military force is needed. Something that will take two divisions to fix two years from now, could be easily fixed with a squad of well armed commando's today. I know it's not really THAT easy, but in this case an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[Malesherbes]

Not to worry. Mr. Mushambati can seek asylum in Britain.

[serinde]

Well, the solution to all this is, of course, for America to send more money to Zimbabwi. After all, these poor, helpless people just can't make it on their own. And isn't it our responsibility - being so rich and all - to take care of them? /sarcasm

[Guillermo]

It's real easy to act so tough when you're safe and sound behind your computer, 5,000 miles away from the action.

But of course, it it was *you*, you and your 2 guns would have been blazing away at the hundreds, thousands of thugs gathered outside your doors.

[TopQuark]

and sent their children to a school he built for his employees. Yet:

"I used to think the boss was a devil..." said Mr Mushambati.

Which illustrates so well one of the dicta of Machiavelli: punishment should be sever and inflcted swiftly, whereas gifts should be small and disbursed frequently. The school --- a rather large gift -- is forgotten all too quickly.

It sounds silly at first, but suppose the farmer charged tuition and then, each month, returned the money to the workers. In this case, they would have never forgotten what they recieved.

[GVNR]

"In very short order, Mugabe will have turned Zimbabwe into a desert"



SAYS IT ALL!

[Basil Duke]

Yes, I suspect the relative lack of resistance from the white farmers was a product of overwhelming numerical inferiority. Granted, from afar it might be a simple matter to envision transforming one's property into an Alamo-type bunker from which to resist the black tide, rifle barrels sticking out of every window and volley fire scything the devils down as at Ulandi. Unfortunately, most of these guys are just as they appear - out of shape, middle-aged farmers. They are NOT soldiers. Many of them have families - families who would no doubt suffer heniously were their men folk to go down as was suggested by an earlier poster - with guns blazing. Mugabe would lead the women and children survivors naked through the streets before burning them alive. The farmers know this. They kept holding out hope that something would turn up to get them out of their fix with a semblence of their old lives. They were denied this, of course, as we're all seeing. But armed resistance to an entire country would have had only one conclusion: the extermination of every white man, woman and child within the reach of the sadists who run that godforsaken country.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Guillermo]

Yup.

But the arm-chair warriors here bash them. It's SOOOOO much easier to demand that someone ELSE take up arms.

Kind of reminds me of those who supported that Christine freak father. Martyrdom is always easier for someone else.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

These "poor, helpless" people stood in line for up to three days to have their say and vote Mugabe out. This, even after torture, beatings and other intimidations from gangs trained by Gadaffi's shipped in henchmen, to pressure them join Mugabe's party. The fix was in, the vote was slowed, the boxes stuffed, people were denied their vote, people were arrested, the whole nine yards and the election was stolen.

[Nov3]

Do any of these people have a backbone?

I am sure you would be much braver looking at leaving your family without a breadwinner in a country going into a famine. You could provide for them much better in the no doubt luxurious jail system if you survived. Your wife and children would no doubt enjoy being raped and beaten by Mugabes war heroes.

South Africa is not far behind.

[Travis McGee]

/1/ The vast majority of the hard core Rhodesian fighters left the country in the 1980s, there was too much bitterness and too many grudges for them to stick around. The small minority of whites who stayed on were the most (foolishly) optimistic of the bunch, the true (naive) liberals among white Rhodesians who trusted Mugabe's word.

/2/ The few fighters who are left are spread like atoms across an area the size of Texas. They are too weak to act as individuals, and are too far apart and isolated to act in groups. Armed resistance at this point by whites would be a suicidal gesture, their families and children would be tortured and raped to death in the brutal retribution which would follow.

[headsonpikes]

And yet there are still those who insist on the FACT of 'moral progress'. ;^(

[Travis McGee]

It's sad to watch Zimbabwe's slide, but also instructive, to those with eyes.

[Gritty]

As the collapse of agriculture threatens half of Zimbabwe's 13 million people with starvation, displaced farm workers and failed subsistence farmers are drifting to the towns and cities, where there is 65 per cent unemployment.

What we are once again seeing in Rhodesia Zimbabwe is the slow-motion massacre which has become the African Way Of Death (except in certain places, like Rwanda, where it reached fast-motioned rhythm). After Mugabe's solutions really take hold, that awful unemployment rate will drop quickly from 65% as helpless people by the millions die of starvation or migrate to overwhelm neighboring countries who have their own appalling Socialist/Marxist Dictator problems.

Isn't it about time for another chorus of "We Are The World!" and some touch-feely rock concerts gushing with celebs to stop all this?