Posted on 03/18/2002 3:43:09 PM PST by Clive
Harare - The shooting death of a white farmer overnight has spread fear through Zimbabwe's small white community, many members having already begun thinking about fleeing into exile following violence-wracked elections here.
"It's the end for us," said a neighbour of Terry Ford, who was found dead in the early hours of Monday at his farm in Norton, some 40km west of Harare.
"The white farming community is very frightened. People I spoke to feel we are going to be exterminated if we don't leave," he added.
Ford was the eighth white farmer killed in the country since early 2000, when ruling party supporters began invading white-owned farms under President Robert Mugabe's controversial land reforms.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is generally backed by the white farming community, has recorded more than 100 deaths among its supporters since 2000.
The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said Ford's farm was looted by supporters of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
He called for help but the police did not respond, and when neighbours showed up it was too late.
"Terry called me around midnight," said the neighbour, who is alone on his farm after having evacuated his family.
"He was very upset, he told me to go and get the police as soon as I could because his life was at stake."
He added: "He told me, 'Don't come alone, they'll kill you,' and then the line went dead. I couldn't sleep, I knew deep down that the worst had happened to him."
Another white farmer, in Mazowe to the north of the capital, would give his name only as David.
He said: "Since Mugabe was re-elected, the invaders know they have a free hand.
"They gave me three hours to leave on Saturday. I'm still here, but I think my death will come soon and through violence."
In Seke, south of Harare, a white farmer named John said he was considering joining his wife and children in Britain, where they
fled after their farm was occupied by black settlers last year.
"It's not our homeland, we don't belong there, but the only choice we have is between exile or death," he said.
Mugabe, who led the nation to independence in 1980 following a bloody guerrilla war, was widely praised for the conciliatory attitude he adopted towards whites who wanted to stay on in the former Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe.
By 2000, race relations had remained surprisingly good considering that two decades after independence whites, making up less than one percent of the population, still hogged 70 percent of the prime farmland in the country, despite early efforts to correct the inequities.
But in February 2000, Mugabe was stung by the failure of a constitutional referendum that would have allowed him to seek two more terms, as well as measures enabling the seizure of white farmland without paying compensation to the owners.
With parliamentary elections looming in June, Mugabe played the race card, promising to take back the land from the whites and actively encouraging his supporters to invade their farms.
Only days after the referendum, pro-Mugabe militants began forcibly invading white-owned farms, saying they were protesting the slow pace of redistributing land to the majority black population.
Though many of the invaders were too young to have fought in the 1970s guerrilla war, they were referred to as war veterans, and their colourful leader Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi, who has since died, added his revolutionary rhetoric to the cause.
Only some 40 000 whites remain in the country out of a total population of some 12 million. Among them, some white farmers still have a reputation of being bigoted.
Many poor landless blacks, on the other hand, view Mugabe's re-election and his vow to carry on with the land reforms as a long-overdue victory, since whites began chasing blacks off their land more than a century ago.
"Now it's the whites' turn to lose everything and leave," a beaming black peasant said last Friday. - Sapa-AFP
Reminds me of a joke I heard a few years ago. A Detroit Lions football scout saw a soccer player in Sarajevo, and he could really kick the ball far. So he went to Bosnia and found the player. He convinced him to come to Detroit to kick for the Lions. He was a good kicker, but he was very busy with games, practice and travel to away games. Near the end of the season, he finally called his family. "I've done really well. I kicked 19 Field Goals, all the extra points, and did very well in the kickoffs, and made $225,000! How are you, Momma?"
"Things are terrible. Your brother was shot in broad daylight, your sister was attacked and raped, and there has been major ethnic strife. How dare you have brought us to Detroit?"
..... imposed upon Africa's wannabe African "farmers" by a missing 40,000-odd years of evolution ......
"Now it's the whites' turn to lose everything and leave," a beaming black peasant said last Friday .....
..... and your turn and that of the rest of all of Africa's pre-stone-age savages to handle the consequences of Africa's Mugabe's turning back hisory's clocks to pre-colonial days!
Good luck Africa!
[And goodbye!]
Note to Zim "tourist" [Good luck!!] authority: Here's a new jingle for Y'All to try.
VISIT "zimbabwe" AND VIEW THE WONDERS OF THE RECENTLY LOST RHODESIAN CIVILIZATION!
In the belly of Ethiopia's famine victims. A look at African history shows that when a nation is returned to native rule corruption, violence and famine is the result. The inevitable situation provides prime fodder for the U.N. and globalists to 'administer' the mess. White colonialization will be replaced by globalist exploitation. In that case the natives will either be subsistence employees or a "burden to company profits".
Make that the next year, they are already running out of food and asking for help.
Really? How many were killed?
I'll bet more blacks were killed during this same period. Remember that young black males are more likely than any group to become victims of homicide.
White flight from the city has more to do rising crime rates and dropping property values...than anything else.
And the fact is blacks who are able to escape these things to the suburbs do so as well....only fewer of them can afford to.
Comparing this to Gov't sanctioned murder and theft of land by roaming mobs in Zimbabwe is just plain silly.
Really? How many were killed?
I'll bet more blacks were killed during this same period. Remember that young black males are more likely than any group to become victims of homicide.
White flight from the city has more to do rising crime rates and dropping property values...than anything else.
And the fact is blacks who are able to escape these things to the suburbs do so as well....only fewer of them can afford to.
Comparing this to Gov't sanctioned murder and theft of land by roaming mobs in Zimbabwe is just plain silly.
G'Day, FRiend, how sad to see yet another of the world's most beautiful places -- and most beautiful coming-together-of-peoples -- being destroyed by the intitutionalization of the delusional grandiosity of one man's sick ego.
Why, it's enough to remind one of the consequences of seven-plus decades of control of My America's levers of power, the feral-gummint purse -- and what used to be the "judiciary" -- by the vast criminal organizations loosely referred to as the "DemocRATic" potty.
[Or to give one a glimpse of what will, in a decade or two -- and unless she and her evil ilk are cut off at the knees (Or higher!) -- be in store for Helen KKKlarke's Ayarteeyarowah!]
Best ones
Brian
..... and your turn and that of the rest of all of Africa's pre-stone-age savages to handle the consequences of Africa's Mugabe's turning back hisory's clocks to pre-colonial days!
Good luck Africa!
...and when civil war, famine and AIDS transforms your population into wretched walking skeletons...and you are reduced to begging whites to come save you....remember this day.
Rubbish!
Not making the direct connection between the inevitable rise of violent crime, murder, rape and general all-around lawlessness that has accompanied the handing over of government in such places as Detroit, Washington DC, large parts of Denver, Watts and South Central Los Angeles [As just a few examples] to people who are [To put it kindly -- and delicately] ill-equipped to handle it; is what is "silly."
And if kept up, such infantile folly will see somalia's and South Central Los Angeles' and Watts' and Detroit's, Ground Zero's and zimbabwe's battles being fought -- and much sooner than you can possibly believe -- in your street.
It is Judeo-Christian-Western ["Human," that is] Civilization itself that is under attack in Rhodesia -- and here -- not a few white farmers.
the Commonwealth can't even agree if Election theft, violent oppression, racial cleansing, starving the people and such are a bad thing.
Asseblief God!!?
The Kid.
Goeienaand, Kind!
Hoe gaan dit met u?
Later, Makker! Bekommer hom Uself!
Brian
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