Posted on 09/05/2002 9:15:03 AM PDT by blam
Mugabe promises new crackdown on white farmers
Robert Mugabe has vowed to crack down on whites in Zimbabwe who refuse to abandon their farms.
He said half of the 2,900 farmers had disobeyed a deadline set for land seized from whites to be redistributed to landless blacks.
The seizure of 95% of white-owned farmland has brought farming to a standstill even though six million Zimbabweans are threatened with starvation.
"Time is not on their side," Mugabe is quoted by state radio as saying.
Since March 2000, the government has targeted white-owned land for allocation to landless blacks. Most of the country's commercial farmland had been in the hands of the white minority.
The land conflict has added to political unrest in the country and critics say many prime farms have gone to politicians, military and police officers, and government cronies instead of the poor.
Mugabe has also lashed out against two prominent white lawmakers from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
"Your place is in prison and nowhere else. Otherwise your home is outside the country," Mugabe said of the two politicians upon his return to Zimbabwe from neighbouring South Africa.
About 300 white farmers have been arrested since an August 8 eviction deadline, police said. Most have been freed on bail but have been forbidden to return to their farms before their trials begin. Scores of others fled their farms fearing arrest.
The state Herald newspaper said Mugabe told the crowd of several thousand supporters at the Harare airport that the government was also planning to seize stakes in foreign-owned companies and mines that he said were "scooping out our wealth."
Story filed: 13:10 Thursday 5th September 2002
Mr. Mugabe is a British-educated communist, as we are told, the most highly educated of any African dictator. As a communist, one of his goals would be to destroy the national sovereignty of the US.
Perhaps his purpose in Zimbabwe (and his payoff to the Americans (Carter/Brezinski) and British who put him in charge) is to provoke the "international community" into declaring national sovereignty void in the "humanitarian interest." He might see it in his long term interest toward picking Western pockets clean, devolving American power, and clearly enjoys the continuing pleasures of limitless despotism. He probably regards his political opponents as deserving death and really doesn't care what happens to Zimbabwe in the process toward global communism.
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