Posted on 08/27/2002 3:29:31 AM PDT by Clive
Sarah du Toit cried as she watched the television news in Australia and saw white Zimbabwean farmers being led away in handcuffs after refusing to give up their farms to landless blacks. "It made me very sad because those are people we know," recalled Sarah before breaking down again.
Sarah, her husband Koos, a second-generation white Zimbabwe farmer, and their three children are part of a flow of white Zimbabweans fleeing their homeland for Australia. Once derided by Zimbabwe's whites as "the chicken run", fleeing to sanctuary in Australia has now become "the owl run" the wise thing to do they say.
A total of 868 Zimbabweans entered as skilled migrants in 2001 against just 281 Zimbabweans in 1997.
The Du Toits arrived last month to start a new life on a dairy farm in the southern state of Victoria, giving up ownership of their own spread to become managers of someone else's land. Koos was forced to hand over his first farm to landless blacks in July 2000, but held on to his second tobacco farm in Rusape in eastern Zimbabwe until this year.
"It's sickening to be told to leave and if you don't leave you're arrested," said Koos, assistant manager of an 325-hectare dairy farm near Murroon, southwest of Melbourne. "Those guys are being thrown in jail, for what? For somebody's greed and stupidity. Prison is not a place you would even wish on your enemy," Koos said. Koos fears that once white farmers have a Zimbabwe prison record it will close their last escape route migration.
President Robert Mugabe has ordered 2900 of the country's remaining 4500 white commercial farmers to quit their land without compensation under a land redistribution programme. Nearly two-thirds defied his August 8 deadline, resulting in police arresting nearly 200 farmers. Mugabe, who has been in power since the country gained independence from Britain in 1980, says his land drive is aimed at correcting colonial injustices that left 70%t of the best farmland in the hands of whites.
'No future in Zimbabwe' The Du Toits migrated to Australia under a sponsorship migration programme in Victoria which has a shortage of farmers. Like most other Zimbabwean migrants, they arrived with a few bags, unable to bring their life's savings. "I felt I had abandoned my whole life, abandoned my home, all my family had lived for," explains Koos du Toit. "I came here with mixed feelings, but my wife and children were very happy. There is no future in Zimbabwe for our children and that is why we left."
The story is echoed by many white Zimbabwe farmers now working the land in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland they fled to give their children a safe and secure future. "My daughter used to have nightmares back in Zimbabwe because we had war veteran guys beating drums and singing outside our gate in the middle of the night," recalls Kevin Tonkin.
"It took her about two to three months to settle down. She kept having nightmares, saying 'they're at the gate, they're at the gate'. There was no one, there it was very sad." Kevin and Lara Tonkin used to farm a 1200-hectare mixed farm northeast of Harare with more than 150 black workers and 15 full-time security guards. Today they own a 1600-hectare wheat property in Western Australia after migrating in January 2001. - Reuters
Has anyone seen this on US TV news?
As a matter of fact, there was pretty good coverage of this horrific story on Sixty Minutes (of all places!) last Sunday.
Mugabe has banned most foreign journalists from his country, so that's why there isn't much video coverage. No video = no US TV news coverage.
Oh no. Surely Australia and other countries would make exemptions for the Zimbabwean refugees, considering the situation.
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