Posted on 06/08/2004 3:18:38 AM PDT by Ironfocus
Harare - Zimbabwe's government plans to nationalise farmland by cancelling the titles to all productive land and replacing them with 99-year leases, a senior cabinet minister was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"In the end all land shall be state land and there will be no such thing called private land," Lands Minister John Nkomo told the state-owned Herald.
"We want a situation whereby this very important resource becomes a national asset," he said.
"The state should not waste time and money on acquisitions. Ultimately, all land shall be resettled as state land," Nkomo said.
'Ultimately, all land shall be resettled as state land' Four years ago Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform program that saw the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms that were handed over to landless blacks.
Veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war were dispatched to carry out the takeovers of the farms that at times turned violent.
The land reform scheme drove close to 4 000 white large scale commercial farmers from their land which was parcelled and given to landless blacks.
Scores of former Zimbabwean farmers have re-located to other African countries such as Mozambique, Zambia, Nigeria and Uganda where they are leasing farmlands.
A small group of about 4 500 whites farmers owned a third of the country's land including 70 percent of prime farmland before the government launched the program in February 2000.
Fewer than 500 white farmers now remain in Zimbabwe and own just three percent of the country's land, according to a government audit of the land reform programme.
The land reform programme, along with a combination of factors, including poor planning, lack of resources, HIV/Aids and drought have led to a huge slump in Zimbabwe's agricultural production in recent years.
The government, however, says that this year, its agricultural production has surpassed expectations and that the country will require no external aid to feed its people.
The communist takeover is complete....
Exactly. Nothing outside the state, nothing against the state, everything for the state. Robert Mugabe does a Mussolini impression.
Leni
The agricultural production in Zim has gone so far down that there is now mass starvation, and it is expected to worsen this year.
Socialists of the world strike again
My advice to the 500 White Farmers left there is to get out while you still have your lives.
You may soon be looked at as the next meal.
"In a generation, the Zim populace will be starving."
I would shorten the time line considerably, maybe six months.
The eco-fascists and their rat Marxist puppets are following the land theft to determine how it could be applied to American land owners.
It's already been applied to a good many American farmers. You don't need to look to Zimbabwe to see land confiscation run amuk.
The press will claim the famine is because of "drought" and "poor harvests", but the facts are that just 10 years ago, before the Mugabe reign of terror kicked into overdrive, Zim was a net exporter of food. With the forced adoption of communism, that will not be the case until Mugabe and his supporters are strung from lampposts.
Where is our "free press" on this issue? They refuse to report on the death and destruction of yet another african hell-hole, because it is just like all the rest of africa, and because it would show exactly what happens when communists/socialists control things.
Other sources state that the crop this year is worse than last year, but the government has refused to allow the WFP to continue its inventory of food shortages.
Following last year's disastrous harvest (man made, not drought) half of the population of Zim relied on foreign food relief. This year the percentage will take another significant junp.
Famine is being used as a political weapon in Zim.
Replacing commercial farming with small family plots cultivated by slash-and-burn, scratch, beast-draughted subsistence farming will necessarily mean that the population of Zim must be lowered to 6 million from its year 2000 level of 12.5 million.
A couple of years ago a Zanu PF cadre member opined that this would be acceptable provided that all of the 6 million were Zanu PF members.
Four years ago Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform program that saw the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms that were handed over to landless blacks.
And now all the blacks aside from a tiny ruling thug-elite will STILL be landless blacks. Except they will be starving to death as well.
That land was not given to "Landless Blacks" it was given to mugabes' family. similar to the baath party in Iraq.
When the whole thing collapses and the government with it, any guesses as to whom they'll be selling that land? Hmmmm?
BUMP
"Owning land for Britain" means supporting civil society, or talking to human rights groups critical of Zanu PF, or voting for an opposition party. Mugabe showered praise on his ruling party youth militia, now commonly known here as the "Green Bombers". Their fraudulent claims to be ex- guerrillas from the 1972-80 bush war in Rhodesia were exposed in the early days of farm invasions, after the February 2000 constitutional referendum. It was the crushing defeat of Zanu PF in that referendum that caused Mugabe to unleash country-wide violence under cover of agitation for land reform in order to ensure a semblance of victory in the June 2000 parliamentary elections and the March 2002 presidential poll.
This campaign of terror Mugabe calls the "Third Chimurenga" or civil war. "The Third Chimurenga has yielded a New War Veteran: these young men and women who slugged it out on the farms in support of their elder veterans...We are not apologetic about our national youth service programme...it is mandatory, it is national, it links to the politics and defence of our country…It seeks to and will build a new national cadre who is self respecting, adequate, assertive and patriotic and thus does not apologise for being black," he said. Mugabe sees his enemy as "White-ism" - the route `"through which the forces of imperialism and neo-colonialism enter."
Mugabe either does not know that it is impossible to run commercially viable farms on the lord-and-vassal system he is imposing, or feels that the economic costs are more than offset by the blessings of "political stability" (i.e. he gets to stay in power until he can hand over to his children). Commercial agriculture here only prospered by being keenly responsive to world market trends. In the 20 years since the state monopoly, the Minerals Marketing Corporation, was created, millions have been lost through the tardiness of bureaucrats in responding to potential orders - they are paid for loyalty, not for initiative.
Doris Lessing, a founder member of Rhodesia's long defunct Communist party, concedes that her father's Kermanshah Farm at Banket (one of the 2,900 now being seized, although her family sold up 60 years ago) was hopelessly sub-economic at 400 hectares - and those were the days of ox-ploughing. To maintain competitive edge in an age of mechanisation, farmers need security of tenure, title deeds that can be lodged with financial institutions against loans.***
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