Zimbabwe -- Police order white farmers off land in grain belt

SAPA via SABC News (SA) ^ | September 6, 2002

[Clive]

Police in Zimbabwe's grain belt are delivering orders to white farmers to get off their land by Sunday, in a move that may finally remove nearly all of them from the area, farm union officials said today. Since late yesterday, teams of police have been travelling around the commercial farming areas in Mashonaland West and ordering farmers already issued with eviction orders to leave with all their possessions by 2pm on Sunday.

A total of 25 farmers out of about 150 in the area had been visited by midday today, said David Rockingham-Gill, local administrator for the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU). "They are still driving around so there are still more to go," he said.

"They (police) said, 'the workers have got to stop work and anything you leave on the farm is ours'."

Police were targeting farmers with who had already received "section 8" eviction orders under President Robert Mugabe's notorious land-seizure legislation, which gives landowners 90 days in which to wind up their affairs and abandon their property. The Mashonaland West area, stretching from just outside Harare to 200km north of the capital, is the richest grain producing area in the country. Maize, wheat and barley, as well as other crops are grown intensively under irrigation.

The police were making their rounds as the country's bakers warned of worsening bread shortages in urban areas and Mugabe made a policy U-turn and agreed to imports of genetically modified maize as emergency food aid to try to avert the worst famine in the country's history. "It's very serious," Rockingham-Gill said. "I don't know where we go from here. There are all sorts of confusing messages coming from all the different police vehicles."

Farmers visited included many with eviction orders that had been annulled by court orders, others whose orders had not yet fallen due and some who had not been issued with any eviction orders. At least five of those ordered to leave owned only one farm. Mugabe told the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, this week that only farmers with more than one farm would be targeted.

"People are 'phoning their lawyers," Rockingham-Gill said. Only one farmer had begun to pack, he said. Douglas Taylor-Freeme, vice-president of the CFU, was among the farmers visited by police. He said he showed them he had been issued with an eviction order that gave him until the end of November to leave.

"I told them I have 400ha of wheat in the ground which will be ready for reaping in October, ...tobacco which I should be planting and 500 head of cattle to look after.

"They said they don't care, you have got to be off," he said. "Then they went to the workers and said they had to stop work, and told them to claim retrenchment packages. I will have to see if I can keep going and get some sense out of this," he said.

Mugabe told a group of visiting journalists yesterday: "We have sworn that no one will go without land, but they (white farmers) are greedy, greedy colonialists."

The official in charge of land seizures in Mashonaland West is provincial governor Peter Chanetsa, also the top local ruling Zanu (PF) party official. He is reported to have seized five white-owned farms for himself. - Sapa

[Clive]

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[LibKill]

Mugabe hates whites so much he would rather see his people starve than eat food from a white-owned farm.

[agrace]

Mugabe told a group of visiting journalists yesterday: "We have sworn that no one will go without land, but they (white farmers) are greedy, greedy colonialists."

Yep, he knows all about greed. Explains why he gave his wife a white man's farm with a big ole mansion on it. This situation makes me sick and the lack of news coverage and international outrage makes me sicker.

[republicman]

As usual liberalism punishes those it is supposed to save.

Thanks to Magube they will only have dirt to eat from now on

[PuNcH]

Dont worry guys the US and the UN are already sending aid.

[PhilDragoo]

Mugabe exposes Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, the Eurotrash and UNuchs, the world's Goebbels-gobbling medioids as Communist monsters first, last and always.

Stalin engineered famine, Mao engineered famine, and now Mugabe engineers famine.

The boatload of bozos will be as beneficial to dying Zimbabweans as it was to slaughtered Rwandans.

Which is to say, not helpful at all.

Champaigne all around and a round in Mugabe's occipital.

[Burkeman1]

And when the famine comes and millions are starving watch how the media omits any reference to the policies of the Mugabe government as a cause just as they did in Ethiopia under Mengitsu and his communist regime. Remember "live aid"? They blamed the famine then on the "drought" even though they knew it was the communist collectivisation of farms that had caused it.

[agrace]

Thick as thieves.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (R) poses for photographers with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan before their meeting at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, September 3, 2002. The city is hosting the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, which is due to run until September 4. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings.

Grace Mugabe, new farm-with-mansion owner.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, left, his wife Grace, center, stand with the head of the World Food Programme James Morris, right, at a meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002. Mugabe denied that his country's controversial seizure of white-owned farms had contributed to the massive hunger crisis that threatens half Zimbabwe's people with starvation. (AP Photo)

[backhoe]

A primer:

Rhetoric of blame is now a white lie (AFRICA, HEAL THYSELF)
The Daily Telegraph ^ | September 3, 2002 | Tim Butcher
"I remember Africa in the 1960s, everyone was filled with high expectations after independence. Forty years on, Africa is a series of kleptocracies, many worse off than they were under colonial rule. Almost all of the common people in relative worse shape to the rest of the world than they were before independence. Africans after 40 years have no one to blame but their own leadership for their problems. The leaders want to deflect blame to the West. The West's not buying it anymore..."

CIA -- The World Factbook -- Zimbabwe

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

South African Crime Report

ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe
... Books & Videos. Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power
In Zimbabwe This book tells the story of Zimbabwe from the hopeful era of ...

MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ...

Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa

-South Africa - The sellout of a nation--

[LibKill]

UNuchs

That's good, it really describes them.

[Sungirl]

At this point...any white farmer who is still there ....well.....they are very stupid.

[Lockbox]

"I see dead people"

[Cindy]

Links of Interest:

WASHINGTON TIMES.com: "MUGABE WITHHOLDING FOOD" by David R. Sands (083102)

GOOGLE Search Term: "MUGABE"

BBC NEWS: "FARRAKHAN BACKS ZIMBABWE LAND GRAB" (July 13, 2002)

[jd777]

Yes apparently they were still growing and producing food in this area, we'll put a stop to that nonsense!