On June 8, 2004 Robert Mugabes ruling regime in Zimbabwe banned private farmland ownership and nationalized all farmland and privately owned game preserves. Special Affairs Minister for President Mugabe, John Nkomo ordered all private landowners to surrender their land immediately to the government. He added that former landowners could apply for 99-year leases to their land from the government. The legal owners of the land will not be compensated for their losses.
This process of stripping legally titled land owners of their property began in 2000. At that time, Nkomo boasted, in the end all land shall be state land and there will be no such thing called private land. He told private landowners to surrender their property to the government and stated, the state should not be made to waste time and money on acquisitions.
Since this program of stripping property rights from farmers has begun crop production has decreased, although there are conflicting reports on current levels of food production. The United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization predicted cereal production would be lower than the dismal output recorded last year, when emergency imports were required. The Zimbabwe governments own Famine Early Warning System claimed that cereal availability would not be a problem this year. Inflation is soaring and market shelves are sparsely stocked, removing incentive to profitably and efficiently grow food by nationalizing the farmland will not encourage increased production or decrease inflation.
Nationalizing farmland will harm food production in the short run, and have catastrophic effects in the long term. Since farmers will not own the land, they will have few incentives to invest in improvements. People make investments and improvements on property they own, not rent. Reputable banks will not accept a lease instead of a deed for the farmland as sufficient collateral for a loan. Without capital loans most farmers will not be able to afford equipment like tractors and harvesters or be able to build or improve structures on the government farms. As the government seized the farmland from owners, they also confiscated machinery. This machinery will work for the short term, but in the future new machinery will be needed. Without capital accessed through the value of the land, most farmers will not be able to afford new machinery.
-snip-
(Garrett Glass in the Digital Freedom Network, June 17, 2004)
http://unix.dfn.org/ZimbabwePropertyRights.shtml
ping
Once again the world is being shown national socialsim and fascism. You can bet your bottom dollar that the left around the world won't do a dang thing about it. The right isn't doing much better.
"Nujoma, shouting from a Lutheran Church pulpit..."
Wow. The gaul of this man to advocate the theft of property in violation of the 10 Commandments inside of a Christian church. I hope he repents or God may strike him down.
Anyone who thinks there was a peaceful handover of government in South Africa was not there. Remember necklaces?