Posted on 07/06/2004 9:19:39 PM PDT by Clive
KAYANJE FARM, Zambia - When a truckload of government-sponsored thugs chased Chris Thorne and his family from their wheat and soybean farm in Zimbabwe three years ago, ransacking his home and decrying him as a racist, Thorne was left to wonder whether a white farmer like him could have a future in Africa. Thorne is finding his answer in Zambia. Just north of Lusaka, Zambia's sleepy capital, Thorne is busy felling trees, leveling termite hills and laying irrigation lines to expand his new 7,000-acre tobacco and maize farm.
"The opportunities are endless here," says Thorne, a ruddy-faced 56-year-old, who clicks through Zambia's advantages as if he were making a sales pitch: good rainfall, rich soils and vast expanses of arable land, about 70 percent of it not being cultivated.
What's more, he adds, the racial tension that led to such agony in Zimbabwe seems nonexistent here.
"It's got it all," he says of his new home.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
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When flying from Zambia to Zimbabwe, if you look down at the land, you can tell when you hit Zimbabwe because one minute you're looking at lush green then next thing it's all dry dirt :( Oh well, when Zimbabwe goes down the hole, they'll have no one to blame but themselves.
It's a good thing other countries see how valuable these farmers are to feeding their people. However, how many years will it be until this country begins to murder the white farmers and drive them from their homes? It might be five years, it might be a a decade or two, but eventually it seems to happen in all of these countries.
It starts and stops at national boundary lines and within Zimbabwe it starts and stops at farm boundary fences.
And it is a drought in which the irrigation impound dams still hold water that is not being drawn for irrigation.
Future macro-economics and geo-political students will have Zimbabwe as a case study in how to dismantle a fully functioning mixed economy, starting with the destruction of the agrarian sector.
Perhaps they have learned their lesson.
Also, the new commercial farmers are each buying a term of years, not a fee simple absolute in possession. This takes away some of the ideological objections to their presence.
Ownership of a term of years is not common in North America but it is very common in Great Britain. The estate can be bought and sold and mortgaged and as such can be used as security for farm loans. In Britain, the land law reforms have restricted legal titles in land to a fee simple absolute in possession and a term of years, with all other estates, demises, fees and incidents of ownership or possession sounding in equity.
Of course, the concept cannot work in a Zimbabwe governed by Mugabe and Zanu PF. There the right to possess exists only at the whim of Mugabe, his politboro and party cadre, any one of whom might unexpectedly take a fancy to your land.
Any estate in land, whether fee simple or term of years. is dependent on there being a culture of respect for the rule of law.
Unless one has lived in Southern Africa, the import of this cannot be understood.
Zambia was mocked for years by proud Zimbabweans. They were the perpetual poor relation.
Who's sorry now ?
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