Fear Stalks Zimbabwe As White Farmers Murdered (2014)
http://tinyurl.com/ZimbabweFarmersMurdered
Posted on 03/21/2017 8:36:51 AM PDT by grundle
In 2000 Robert Mugabe shocked the world when he made dramatic changes to land ownership laws in Zimbabwe which resulted in thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers being forced to give up their farms and many to leave the country.
Those white farmers owned 70% of the most arable land in the country which they had inherited from a colonial past built on racial hierarchy.
But now the tide is shifting again. Mugabe’s people have hinted strongly, for the first time, that farmers can return–at least some of them. This will be some 15 years after the Zimbabwe government began seizing their land.
A few selected white farmers will be granted security of tenure on farms regarded to be ‘of strategic economic importance.’ Meanwhile black beneficiaries are expected to start paying a small rental fee per acre that will be used in part to compensate the more than 4,000 evicted white farmers according to the country’s minister of lands, Douglas Mombeshora.
Last year, BBC reported Mugabe told an audience, “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go.” It is the first time that the Zimbabwe government has publicly hinted on the failure of its unsustainable land policy.
The country that was once dubbed “the breadbasket of the region” has suffered an estimated $12 billion in lost agriculture production since the land occupations took place and has had to rely on donor handouts and food imports from neighboring countries. At least 1.8 million tonnes of the staple grain, maize, is required annually to feed the nation.
Zimbabwe’s transformation from exporter to importer of food is blamed by some analysts on the land reform program, which saw white commercial farmers lose farms to landless blacks who are said to lack the skills to farm or capital. Agriculture used to contribute some 40% of the country’s foreign currency earnings through exports.
What has been Zimbabwe’s loss, has been a gain for neighboring Zambia, where some of these farmers moved bringing with them decades of expertise for farming similar arable land.
British failure
And even though the Lancaster House agreement between the British government and the Zimbabweans had provisions for land redistribution and guaranteed compensation for white farmers, when the time came the British and other countries, including the United States, did not fulfill their part of the deal to fund the program.
It didn’t help that Zimbabwe’s government had no land distribution systems in place which made the aftermath a free-for-all. Politicians, senior members of the security forces, judges, civil servants and war-veterans picked their share. Most of them had no prior farming experience or capital.
Today, fewer than 300 white farmers remain on portions of their original land holdings in Zimbabwe and many of the seized farms lie fallow prompting the slow changes in attitude and policy.
Mugabe’s hard stance was more a reaction to growing political opposition and waning voter support. He blamed the white farmers for betraying his benevolence and threatening his power base. He declared, “If white settlers just took the land from us without paying for it we can, in a similar way, just take it from them without paying for it, or entertaining any ideas of legality or constitutionality.”
For Mugabe the land occupations had little to do with righting a wrong but much about exerting power and force. He has been in power since 1980 and one of the longest ruling presidents in Africa. It was therefore no surprise that the rule of law was suspended. Mobs of self styled war veterans and youth militia had carte blanche. There was violence and terror. Several white farmers and their black workers were killed, beaten or chased away and their properties taken over.
The chaos had adverse effects on the economy, food production, and civil rights. One of Africa’s strongest economies shrank to half the size it had been in 1980. Soon record hyperinflation would render supermarket shelves bare and the national currency worthless. 10% of the population fled to neighbouring countries in penury, hunger and fear.
After many years of operating as a pariah state, Zimbabwe is desperate to restore its pride and reintegrate into the international community. However, foreign businesses are still reluctant to invest in the country because of policy uncertainty and politicized property rights.
The other part of the story, after 17 years they could not train enough natives to operate a farm. Not just planting
and harvesting but managing resources and so forth.
Those farmers would be idiots to return.
This is liberalism working the same as always. It’s a shame leftists are incapable of learning from making the same mistake over and over again.
I read where A MAJORITY would be happy to go back to Apartheid, because it was vastly superior to what they have now.
Granted, it was NOT a good system, and was very ‘racist’ but it succeeded economically and peoples lives were far better than they are now.
What someone needed to do was give them a copy of the US Constitution and tell them to implement that. (AS ORIGINALLY WRITEEN - including all amendments)
Let the sub-humans starve.
Wait’ you mean farming is not as simple as it seems and any black farm hand can run a farm?
Shocking...I know...
A real-life history lesson for idiot libtards (Bernie and Hitlery supporters) who favor wealth redistribution...those receiving it would be broke in a few months, if not weeks.
Some skillsets are innate to certain races and nationalities. Read the generations following Noah.
How in the hell did we get roped in to help “fund the program”?!?!
You mean to tell me socialism even when run by a sainted Black thug doesn’t work? Now WHO woulda thunk that?
Let them eat cake.
"Some analysts" blame it on Mugabe running all the farmers out of the nation and turning farms over to people who have no idea how to do it. I wonder what the rest of the analysts think caused it?
Once Whiteys get the farms functional again, the dictator will seize them back from Whitey and give them once again to people who don’t know what to do with them.
It may not be so much about training, as about IQ. There's a lot about modern farming which requires a certain minimum intelligence.
When known as Rhodesia, it was called the bread basket of Africa. Today a One Hundred Trillion Zimbabwe Bank Note sits on my desk and a little Fifty Billion note. Value is about $7.50 as a collector piece.
Farmers are attached to the wonderful growing land of Rhodesia. If farmers are let back in, Rhodesia can feed its own. What a wonderful idea. Maybe my notes will increase in value to $10.00
Several? Several?
My guess is the Poppy crops are dying.
Some years ago I worked with an Indian H1B programmer, and during lunch, we had some neat discussions.
First off, with his veddy Brit accent, I asked him if he was born in India or in the UK and he said the latter.
His dad had owned a business in Uganda when Idi Amin took over and soon started confiscating all the Indian-owned businesses. His dad bailed to the UK.
Amin gave those stores to his cronies, who ran through the inventory, didn’t know what to do next, and closed shop. The economy imploded. Amin, like Mugabwe, sent out a “all is forgiven” message to the Indians, wanting them to come back.
The kid said his father said something like “Once burned, twice shy”, gave Amin the middle finger, and stayed in the UK.
It seems that anybody but Africans can run a country successfully (South Americans are close behind, though).
US Constitution would Not work there. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people” Ben Franklin
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