Zimbabwe -- White farmers fear 'extermination'

News24 (SA) ^ | March 18, 2002

[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

[nopardons]

REALLY ? Only to you, who know less than nothing about this topic, dear.

BWWAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Blade]

Such glibness is not only irrelivant, it makes the person claiming it, look much more than simply foolish.

Not as foolish or irrelevant as someone who can't spell irrelevant.

[nopardons]

If you want to keep up , about this topic, I suggest that you ( and everyone else new to it ) read the archived AFRICA WATCH files. It's all covered pretty well there. We have been posting / posting to these threads for a long time. Most regulars have lived there, have family who lived there / still lives there, and / or have done extensive reading about these countries. We've known about the coming famine for almost a year.

The white genocide, in South Africa gets little to no press. It is far worse, than is what has / is happening in Zimbabwe. So is what is being done to blacks and colored ! From 1949 through 1994, there were 21,000 murders in South Africa. From 1994 through 2001 ( not a complete total, I'm afraid ) , under ANC rule, there were 176,000 murders.

[nopardons]

Please see my post, with the murder stats.

[nopardons]

Better than someone whose only comment is to point out a typo, and knows NOTHING whatsoever about the thread's topic and hasn't ever been on the Africa Watch threads, dear. : - )

[quebecois]

The ironic thing about this whole affair is this: go back and look at the arguments made in the 60s and 70s between those who wanted majority rule in Rhodesia, and those who didn't. Every single thing that the "right wingers" warned about has come to pass....and every single thing that the lefties preached would occur has not.

Let this be a lesson to us all.

[Brian Allen]

Save your smarmy,patronizing conceit .....

I won't read beyond that, thanks all the same.

Psychopathological Projection Syndrome [PPS] requires a level of professional attention far removed, thank God, from my fields of expertise.

I must thank you, though, for having shared the various interesting theories you've created from such limited resources as your relative's perspective, from your reading and from your otherwise imagined African experiences.

Tunnel vision and PPS notwithstanding, my experience of your African obsession has been interesting -- fun even -- and not least because the spectator quality of your Africa "experience" and the hypotheticals developed from it seems to have elevated you to realms out of reach of most of us.

Out of reach, for example, to those of us handicapped by [In addition to all of our physical experience of all of the rest of the world] having actually lived part, some, most and/or all of our lives in very many African countries -- and handicapped by having Africa's smells forever in our nostrils -- its rythms forever reverberating in our ears -- and further handicapped by having the shape of its thorn trees and the love of its Peoples forever part of our psyches.

And who have other, more interesting, feet on the ground, things to do than to theorize.

I will pray that you find a nice therapist to help with the PPS -- and that you have a nice life.

Cordially -- Brian.

[nopardons]

ROTFLMAOPIMP !

Congratulations, that was an exceedingly fine example of self important, self indulgent, grandiose, petulant, benighted ramblings yet. Oscar winning, as a metter of fact, and totally irrelivant to the thread's topic.

[Brian Allen]

Dear shaggs

If you ever catch me:

Taking myself too damned seriously;

Saying anything other than tongue in cheek;

Limiting my repertoire to a single tune -- and/or;

Doing other than Absolutely insisting upon enjoying life;

Pull my ear willyah?

<];^)~<

Best ones

[Be safe -- Be well -- Be happy -- B A]

[nopardons]

FYI

[quebecois]

I go back and forth in my thinking as to whether the liberals are consciously evil or merely immensely naive. At the moment, I refuse to believe that anyone in Rhodesia (or SA) could not have seen all of this coming.

Either way, southern Africa had a rensaissance in which modern societies and functional economies were established. That region is, tragically, about to enter a dark ages which may endure for quite some time. As for the liberals in the West...what do they care? They forgot about SA/Zim a long time ago and have already moved on to their next utopian crusade.

[Basil Duke]

From observing and interacting with the left here in the states, I suspect the left's leadership IS inherently evil in their long-term designs for this country, and that the bulk of their following - the "it's for the children"/abortion on demand soccer moms, the union workers, the elderly who still think Harry Truman runs the Democratic party - are merely idiotic, or at least grossly uninformed. I saw a Labor for Gore/Lieberman bumper sticker on a rugged 4X4 truck on the highway this morning, and I so wanted to flag the driver down and ask him how labor could support a party that has successfully worked for decades to close down lumber mills, ranches, logging companies, etc., or whether he supported Gore's desire to deprive him of the right to own a gun and to hunt on public lands. If the left's followers truly educated themselves on the issues, it's impossible for me to imagine them supporting the cause. Perhaps in the pits of their souls, they understand that, too - and thus subconsciously strive to avoid trifling matters like the facts.

[backhoe]

Every single thing that the "right wingers" warned about has come to pass....and every single thing that the lefties preached would occur has not. Let this be a lesson to us all.

True, and very sad. I would rather have been wrong, but what I feared and predicted is coming to pass.

[shaggy eel]

,,, I'm no auditor Bri but I'll try to keep you in line [LOL]!

[jsraggmann]

I vote for consciously evil. They hate us!

[jragan2001]

Where are all of those Hollyweird celebrities and rock stars that were out screeching and whining about apartheid now? I guess when it is whites that are victimized, it's okay with these punks. Also, the UN is nothing but an anti-white organization, because if they weren't they would have that scumbag Mugabe in the Hague world court instead of Milosevic.