Posted on 09/01/2002 7:53:11 PM PDT by Clive
Tsatsi, Zimbabwe - The cropping season in Zimbabwe's fertile, well-watered northern Tsatsi highveld started on Sunday and was marked by the lighting of bushfires that blackened the countryside.
On the farm Ruorka, abandoned by its owner 18 months ago when scores of squatters invaded, the weed-strewn fields were deserted. A woman searched for mice to eat.
"We would be planting tobacco here today [Sunday] and Monday," said Richard Galloway (41), who two weeks ago was driven off his farm.
"All of this should have been prepared for planting a long time ago. There is nothing happening here now," he said.
Saturday was the deadline set by President Robert Mugabe for the "successful conclusion" of his campaign to seize white-owned land and to hand it over to black Zimbabweans, from whom he claims it was "stolen" after white settlers began arriving in the country 112 years ago.
By Saturday, he recently said, 300,000 peasant farmers and 54,000 "indigenous [black] emergent commercial farmers" would be on their new land, supplied with loans, seed and fertiliser and be ready to start the cropping season.
He added that they would probably out-produce the white farmers.
In previous years, all the farms in the district would be covered in dust from the tractors finishing their last preparations, while dozens of workers cultivated the evenly ploughed fields.
However, there were only two small areas the size of a tennis court ploughed on the 2,500-hectare Ruorka.
The only sign of any seed was with two women on the road near the turn off to Tsatsi who swept the tar for maize pips that fell off passing trucks.
Ruorka has about 50 peasant families on it, while the neighbouring farm has been earmarked for about eight new "indigenous" farmers.
Knee-high wheat, three bags of maize
On one of its fields is a broad stand of knee-high wheat with swelling green ears, which will soon be reaped by its new farmer.
"It was planted, fertilised and irrigated by the previous owner," said Galloway. "It was part of a deal to let him grade his tobacco and reap his citrus while the new settler moved on. The settler would take his wheat.
"He was kicked off last week. His pumps, sprays and piping were all commandeered. To try and get it off would be life-threatening." Galloway added.
A beaten-up blue kombi was parked outside the expansive thatched-roof house.
"The settlers have just moved in," he said. They had already ploughed a small patch near the homestead. "That used to be a block of specialised rye grass for pasture for pedigree bulls.
"The owner was a brilliant farmer. This guy might get three bags of maize from it," he said.
Tsatsi is in a high rainfall, high fertility area, with a reputation for top quality tobacco and a wide range of other crops produced by its 35 farmers.
Only five farmers left
Only five are left and able to farm with limited security, said Galloway.
All the other farming districts in the province of Mashonaland Central, the richest commercial farming area in the country, are similarly hit.
Mugabe has listed a total of 5,894 white-owned farms for seizure out of a total of 6,000, covering an area of 11-million hectares, about 28% of the area of the country.
Over 3,000 of the owners were issued with eviction orders, most of which expired early last month.
Authorities are issuing fresh eviction orders every day, said Jerry Grant, deputy director of the Commercial Farmers' Union.
Mugabe has scorned criticism that the state-backed invasions of white-owned farms that began in February 2000 are a reckless, racist land grab that will destroy an agricultural sector whose surplus output for decades has rescued other African countries from starvation.
The "resettled" peasants last year did "minimal cropping", said Grant. "A few straggly maize plots were grown and nothing in the way of wheat", in some of the most productive parts of the country.
The government last month admitted that only half of the 54,000 "emergent" commercial farmers had bothered to take up farms allocated to them.
None of the promised inputs have been delivered as the government's budget was swallowed up by an economic crisis.
Famine threatens about seven million people - out of a population of 13.5 million - with starvation also taking its toll in the areas seized and occupied by Mugabe's squatters.
Banks have refused to lend money to squatters with no collateral to offer and no track record as farmers.
"The government's first resettlement initiatives were well-funded and supervised by donors - and they were still a mess," said a Western diplomat.
"What is going on now is a tragic disaster from which the country will probably never recover," he said.
Give em some fishing line and hooks.
I wonder if they know - or care - that this contributes to global warming.
Lovely.
At this point, I think all we can do is hope that Zimbabwe dies. Nobody is willing to fight for it, and until they wake up and take the country back from Mugabe, they have earned what they sowed.
I'm very disappointed in the white farmers, too. There was little to no resistance, and no effort to flee the inevitable. What's up with that?
I heard that the US Open was suspended today because of rain. That's a shame for tennis fans.
Right!
Seconded. I think the problem was that the farmers were still too culturally British for their own good. As such, they trusted government to do the right thing and at the same time had no concept of self-defense. American farmers would have organized, shipped in guns and mounted a defense while there was still time.
No doubt.
The difference between farming or any other productive activity, and academic theories like socialism, is that people need to eat. We'll see what Mugabe's subjects are eating soon.
The land was never "taken" from anyone. The farms were carved out of land which had never been cultivated. Rhodesia was an area which had little population 100 years ago, because it requires irrigation and relatively advanced farming techniques, neither of which any tribal group knew how to do.
As "Zimbabwe" collapses, there may come a time when the Rhodesians make a comeback, but I doubt it. Even if they could muster say, 30,000 people to fight, there would still be millions of blacks, and the spectacle of whites fighting to take back their land would be too much for the Peter Jennnings of the world. Condemnation and outrage would ensue.
Note that no such condemnation and outrage are occurring now, except in a few British papers and in the netherworld of conservative internet sites.
Any idea who these were? The usual supects of NGO's, anti-globalists, eco-communists, and the like?
First the white farmers, then each other!
First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.
-A Capsule History of Southern Africa--
| Parallels between Apartheid SA & USA today | ||||||
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ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ... Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa |
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