Posted on 09/02/2002 3:11:25 AM PDT by Clive
The deadline for the conclusion of Zimbabwe's land programme passed ominously yesterday: seized farms which should be busy with summer replanting were silent.
In years past the fields would have been noisy with tractors and scores of workers cultivating in ploughed ridges. Instead, there is the occasional solitary figure, hunting among the burnt weeds for mice to eat.
It looks as if nearly every square inch of the undulating fertile farmland is blackened, right up to the ridges of the Great Dyke, the spine of mountains on the horizon. Burning is the closest approximation here to preparation for the summer cropping season that started yesterday.
About 50 squatter families were "resettled" on one farm here 18 months ago. I saw only two small plots ploughed for maize crops that would feed their respective families.
"All of this should have been prepared a long time ago," said Richard Galloway, 41, as we passed an area of six rugby fields. He was forced off his farm nearby two weeks ago.
On the main road near Tsatsi, two women with grass brooms were sweeping up maize pips that had fallen from passing lorries.
Saturday marked the deadline set by President Mugabe for the completion of his "revolutionary land reform programme". By then, all the settlers were to have been on the former white-owned land allocated to them. They should have had seed and fertiliser to cultivate and feed the nation.
Mr Mugabe declared the programme "an unparalleled success" and said by the weekend they would be out-producing the white farmers. Ignatius Chombo, who heads the Cabinet committee on resettlement, said last month that "most settlers are on their plots and are already engaging in winter cropping". The Government's claims are met with astonishment. Most of the rest of the world regards the programme as a lawless, racist land-grab.
The UN says it is "unsustainable" and "a leading cause" of the famine that threatens about seven million people. A senior Western diplomat said: "What's going on has had no planning, no funding. It will be a miracle if Zimbabwe recovers from this disaster."
None of the free inputs promised by Mr Mugabe have yet been delivered. In the drier areas there are reports of squatters abandoning occupied farms as famine takes hold.
Last month, Joseph Made, the Lands Minister, told banks to lend the new farmers Z$8 billion (£8 million). He was summarily rejected. A senior banker said: "None of these farmers has title to the property. Made wants us to lend to people with no collateral and no record in farming."
State propaganda organs make much of wheat, which is grown only in winter, being produced by "emergent commercial farmers", a group made up of senior ruling party officials, officers of the uniformed services and loyal civil servants.
On another farm in Tsatsi, also abandoned by its owner, is a big field of knee-high tasseling wheat, ready soon to be reaped by the new black farmer. "The original owner planted, fertilised and irrigated the crop for him," Mr Galloway said. "It was a deal so the owner could grade his tobacco and sell it, and reap his citrus. He got kicked off last week. His pumps, sprays, irrigation pipes were commandeered."
Figures that add up to disaster:
The Government has formally listed 5,400 out of 6,000 farms owned by 4,200 commercial farmers to be resettled
Before the farm invasions started in about February 2000, commercial farmers owned 27.2 million acres which represented 28.2 per cent of Zimbabwe's total land area
About 150 individual farms were never listed
Just an estimated 15 per cent of original farm owners are still left on their land
Farm labour unions say the occupation of white- owned farms means that 350,000 workers will be made homeless
The Government claimed that 300,000 peasant farmers would have been resettled on white-owned farms by the end of August, with 54,000 new "indigenous (black) emergent commercial farmers", marking the end of the "Land Reform"
Putting people with no personal knowledge or skill in place of the trained workers is a receipe for disaster in any field.
The only people he needs alive are his thugs, and the people who are needed to work the mines
If he destroys agriculture, then the people who are left will be totally dependent on imported food, which will be under his control. He will then be able to rule forever.
The "people" were able to rise up and throw out the British.
If they sit on their hands and take no action against Mugabe, they deserve their fate.
-ccm
This must warm the hearts of the Sustainable Development watermelon wackos meeting just a few hundred miles away in Johannesburg.
If there is one thing this world will not run out of any time soon, it is mice and rats. After the fields wither and die, they will feed on the bodies of black villagers who have died of famine. Eventually a "sustainable" balance will be reached, at about 1/100th the population level of today.
But imagine the views that the rich Western eco-fascists will be able to enjoy from their Land Rovers as they pass by on safari! All those ugly villages full of ugly skinny black people gone, and replaced by warm fuzzy animals for them to videotape for their friends back on the Upper East Side in New York.
-ccm
Something like that. There was an excellent article posted yesterday that said something similar.
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