Posted on 11/30/2008 4:08:05 AM PST by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
A few days ago I had no choice but to travel past the farm my husband and I legally bought in 1990 but which was grabbed from us by a mob of government supporters 10 years later in 2000. In the eight years since then I've never had any official written communication from the government of Zimbabwe about the farm - not even a letter informing me of the state acquisition of the property. I've never been offered or received any compensation for the assets seized.
I am not talking about the land itself but about the improvements on it including workers' houses, farm buildings, a dairy, spray race, tobacco barns, trading store, dams, borehole, water pumps and pipes, an electricity transformer and scores of kilometres of fencing. Nor has the government of Zimbabwe given any compensation for our home on the farm or for all the fixtures and fittings that were in place in our fully functional house. Nothing has been given to any of the men and women who worked for us on the farm either - not land, money, homes, jobs or pensions.
Believe it or not, this lack of official paperwork concerning the seizure of the farm and then the non payment of any compensation at all, is something that the vast majority of Zimbabweans are not aware of. Mostly we just don't talk about the farms anymore, its become a topic of shame, embarrassment, disgust, contempt.
What I saw this week as I drove past the farm to which I hold the Title Deeds, filled me with deep sadness at the widespread destruction. All the fencing has gone - many kilometres of it. Thousands of trees planted for poles and timber have been chopped down. All the contours which protected the land from erosion have gone. The roofing on the dairy has gone. The workers houses - made of brick and cement - have all been smashed down into piles of rubble. The tin roof sheets have gone. The metal door and window frames have gone. The borehole pump, motor and pipes have gone. The roofing on the tobacco barns has gone. The farm store which used to sell groceries, fresh produce and milk has been turned into a beer hall. The state of the farm dams and the main farmhouse is unknown, this is a no-go area. The local people call it The Jambanja Place and they speak scornfully of the people on the farm as the Jambanja People. (The word Jambanja has many connotations but mostly it means a violent struggle)
It's been eight years since Zanu PF put us into a perpetual state of jambanja and now Zimbabwe is completely stricken. A lethal cocktail of hunger, disease, super hyper inflation, infrastructural collapse, brain drain and emigration is decimating our population and crippling our country.
This week a ruling was made by SADC in the test case of 78 white Zimbabwean farmers trying to keep their land. Judge Louis Mondlane, President of the SADC Tribunal said that the Zimbabwe government "is in breach of the SADC treaty with regards to discrimination." We wait to see if these are just words and if SADC hold any sway when it comes to dealing with one of their own breaking 15 nation treaties. While we wait ever more Zimbabweans have no choice this Christmas but to flood into neighbouring countries in search of food, medicines, and work.
I will be taking a break for a while but wish all Zimbabweans, wherever you are in the world, a blessed, peaceful, healthy Christmas. 2009 will be better!
Until next year, thanks for reading, love cathy.
The hyperlink that I have entered into the "Source URL" field is the location where a November 2008 letter ought to appear if and when Cathy is able to add it to the site.
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Note also that nobody now has a fee simple in possession to any of the confiscated lands. This means that the persons in possession of the land have no capacity to give title to any purchaser or mortgagor. This means that any settlor has no power to mortgage or hypothocate as security for borrowing.
Cultivation of veldt land requires major expenditure of borrowed money for fertilization, ploughing, planting, irrigating, tending and harvesting. Without the farmer having the ability to award title, no lender will advance a loan. This even if inflation was not in seven figure percentages.
I am stating the obvious to anyone who has cultivated veldt, prairie or outback land, but the obvious seems to have escaped the notice of Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs.
Note also that even should the government award title deeds to those that it has settled upon the confiscated land, no lender could rely on a deed whose source is a government of thugs who might at any time, at whim and with impunity, again invade that land.
This is not a fanciful possibility. There have been instances of settlors having been placed upon the land, haveing started subsistence farming, put a season or more of work into it, and have had the land taken back when a Zanu PF cadre took a fancy to the land and decided that he wanted to become a gentleman farmer.
Cathy...that one's *easy* to explain.Being Comrade Mugabe means never having to say you're sorry.
The British colonialists of course.I know because Bob Mugabe told me.
Let Zimbabwe die off.
” I’ve never been offered or received any compensation for the assets seized.”
I can tell you why exactly: “Tough luck, whitey!”
“...when a Zanu PF cadre took a fancy to the land and decided that he wanted to become a gentleman farmer.”
More like “wanted to become a Cannibal King.”
That day’s coming for Zimbabwe.
I think back to Winston Churchill's quote "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed,
if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
This is the crux of socialism vs. freedom. Socialists believe "death" is the greatest evil. They would rather "live" in slavery, or have everyone else live in slavery, than take the chance that they might die. These are people with no sense of reality or or truth.
So they probably took over a farm from someone who had to flee in an earlier round. Perhaps her reward for her early support of Mugabe?
Supposedly, her husband left Zim to seek work and never came back - they are divorced. She appears to be too stupid to leave herself.
Every Cathy Buckle post needs to point out (see #12) that both she and her husband were big supporters of black rule and of mugabe.
When reading about her troubles, just remember to save your sympathy for the Zimbabweans who didn't help the thugs come to power.
There is political resistance to mugabe, but they're probably just as corrupt as he is. The ones who could have both resisted him and improved conditions there (the native whites), are almost entirely gone, thanks to Jimmy Carter and liberals like the Buckles.
I disagree.
When Mugabe took over in 1980 most of the commercial farmers had figuratively packed their bags and were about to become expatriates.
Mugabe made a speech in which he asked the farmers to stay and help him to build a "new Zimbabwe". The farmers did so and until 2000 had continued to maintain Zimbabwe as the breadbasket of southern Africa.
The commercial farmers and Mugabe's Zanu PF did not like each other and remained political opponents but a modus vivendi based on that undertaking continued until 2000. By 2000, 15 percent of the Commercial Farmers Union members were blacks. They acquired their land in the normal manner of purchasing it at arms length at fair market value. Britain had offered to help Zimbabwe to finance the purchase of commercial farm land for redistribution at fair market value.
Mugabe lost a plebiscite on a constitutional amendment that would have effectively made him lawful president for life. The commercial farmers and their employees helped to defeat the plebiscite. It was only then that the farm invasions began.
Until 2000 the farmers were left at peace because it was in the best interests of Zimbabwe's economy to do so. Land was bought and sold and mortgaged and worked in the same manner as commercial farms throughout the common law. Farmers expected that someday much of their land would be redistributed but had every confidence that it would be done (with Britain's help) by purchase or expropriation at fair market value and without violence.
Instead Mugabe chose violence, thuggery and murder to effect his "land reform".
It figures. Her amazing prattle about "government communication" and "compensation," as if she actually expected some sort of official acknowledgement, have the other-worldly air of delusion and denial.
Exactly. The Buckles made their bed in supporting Mugabe — now they must lie in it.
I’m weary of Cathy and her situation. Years of spiraling down have me wishing that they just hit bottom. Then they can begin their climb back up.
Sounds like some of our inner cities.
While "progressives" prattle about "speaking truth to power" from secure sinecures in university "African-American Studies," "Woman Studies," etc. Cathy is the real thing.
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