Posted on 07/11/2004 4:39:18 AM PDT by Ironfocus
Harare - The exodus of Zimbabwe's small and anguished white population is under way with record numbers leaving their homeland, mostly for Britain or Australia.
Few have the R30 000($5000) they need in foreign currency to transport their goods to new countries, and most are starting new lives with 22kg of clothes and a few photographs.
They say they have hung on during the past four tumultuous years hoping President Robert Mugabe's "hate" campaign against them would ease, but it did not, and two months ago when he shut down private schools for a week for raising fees, they lost their nerve.
Up to three million black Zimbabweans have also gone into exile, Estate agents say there has been a flood of houses on to the property market in the past few weeks that has slashed prices to record lows. Thousands of homes from bungalows to mansions along suburban avenues are on sale for as little as R150 000 ($25,000).
Up to three million black Zimbabweans have also gone into exile, mostly for economic reasons, but they hope to return one day. Most whites, of whom perhaps 30 000 remain in Zimbabwe, say they will never return.
"It was a painful decision because this is the only home we know," said Jeremy Callow, 55, one of Zimbabwe's best-known lawyers. "I love Zimbabwe, love the people, but can't take it any more."
The "last straw" is different for each family who boards the planes for distant lands.
Callow succumbed to "relentless" pressure traipsing through the courts to assist white farmers legally recover possessions, and when he succeeded, applying in vain to get court orders enforced.
'I can't cope any longer with seeing grown men cry' "I spent 80 percent of my time with farmers counselling them and I am not trained for that, nor can I cope any longer with seeing grown men cry.
"The courts do not have the capacity to process thousands of farms seized by the state. So they change the laws, move the goal posts."
Under a new law ahead of the flawed presidential elections in 2002, Callow, like thousands of other whites born in the country, had to renounce access to British or other foreign claims to citizenship to vote.
"It is costing an arm and a leg to claim my British citizenship now," he said.
Among about 350 white farmers who remain on the land enduring varying levels of instability are some who have never been touched by ruling Zanu-PF party militants but are now abandoning their homes.
"We have recently noticed quite a number who have been left alone the last four years but are leaving," said Hendrik Olivier, the director of the remnants of the once 4 000-strong Commercial Farmers' Union.
One of Zimbabwe's most successful younger industrialists, who asked not to be named, decided to go to Australia a few months after his family was attacked in December in their home about 20km south of Harare. The family moved to the city and tried to settle in a new and glamourous mansion in a leafy suburb. It is now up for sale.
"We couldn't recover. In April I sold my business and as soon as our work permit arrives we will go.
"We have young kids and schools are a problem. I will miss it, especially the bush. We have family in South Africa, but the future is uncertain there."
John Winward, 57, spent Monday night detained in police cells in Karoi, once a prosperous, pretty village 210km north of Harare.
Under pressure from Zanu-PF invaders to get off his farm last week, Winward went to the local police with court orders proving he was allowed to remain until September to process about R1,5 million of crops.
"The policeman didn't believe or understand the court order and locked me up for the night.
"I wish now we had quit when the heat was on a couple of years ago, but I couldn't walk away. I wasted time and money going to court to fight the inevitable.
"If I am left alone to get my tobacco and maize off and sell the cattle, then we will leave for Britain in a few weeks. We won't take anything; we can't afford to."
Father of four, Chris Shepherd, 38, forced off his Karoi farm 21 months ago and now almost penniless in Harare said he would never leave and waited for signs that the madness was waning.
"I am going to Australia at the end of the month to look for a job, perhaps as a labourer, and I do this with a heavy heart," he said.
David Coltart, an Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP, said: "This is ethnic cleansing, not in the Bosnian sense of the phrase, as they knew they couldn't get away with wholesale murder, it's more subtle, designed to drive out whites because Mugabe believes whites provide funding and administrative support to the MDC.
"A year ago [information] minister Jonathan Moyo said whites would be 'sent out of the country' because they created the MDC. They are woefully mistaken if they think that driving them out will crush the MDC," he said.
"The laws were changed to deprive whites of any land they owned. Private schools were closed to get at whites even though most pupils are black.
"Mugabe said whites were 'enemies of the people' and he is still hammering away at them." - Foreign Service
Yep and that's how she hopes it stays.
Thank you kindly.
I'm not saying there aren't wars and genocides and torture in Africa, I'm asking you how you think that war, genocide and torture are Africans' "highest ideals".
How can you?
It's easy -- A Farm Disaster of a Different Color
You show me where they have aspired to anything other.
'We are being dragged back to the stone age'
Like many others I thought that once the whites were kicked out, the colonials would improve their lot, and for a while it looked pretty good. Then they fell back into tribalism and have been wallowing in despair ever since.
OK, the colonialists, other than the British, didn't leave much civil service infrastructure but that alibi gets pretty old after 40 years.
"Quick point: Darfur should be listed (Muslim/Muslim)
No, it is Muslim/Christian.
"According to estimates by U.N. delegations in the Darfur region of Sudan, 300,000 Sudanese are in danger of liquidation by Arab militia allied with Khartoum's Islamist regime, notes the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, . . . Al-Rashed said he favors the unity of Sudan, where the mostly Christian and animist south is resisting the Arab north's attempt to Islamize the nation."
http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=458400 "
I'll say it again, to make it clear. DARFUR is a Muslim/Muslim conflict. Darfur is in the WEST of Sudan. I don't know if you read the article you linked, but it's all about how the Arab world is ignoring Darfur because it is Muslim/Muslim violence.
"I'm not saying there aren't wars and genocides and torture in Africa, I'm asking you how you think that war, genocide and torture are Africans' "highest ideals".
How can you?
It's easy -- A Farm Disaster of a Different Color
You show me where they have aspired to anything other."
I suppose you think that the Africans responsible for this
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/mali-exhibit.html
... were just passing the time before they could think up some new ways to wage war, commit genocide and torture inoocents?
"I'm not saying there aren't wars and genocides and torture in Africa, I'm asking you how you think that war, genocide and torture are Africans' "highest ideals".
How can you?
It's easy -- A Farm Disaster of a Different Color"
The thread you posted ("Farm Disaster ...") does not support your claim that Africans' "highest ideals" are war, genocide and torture. It is a story about how Mugabe is destroying his country.
Care to retract your statement?
I can't talk to people who don't want to know anything different.
BTW, let's total up the amount of people murdered under European communism and nazism. Genocide and backward thought systems are hardly an 'african ideal'.
When it comes to the 20th century, Hitler, Mao and Stalin are probably responsible for more genocidal murders than all of Africa combined.
But people still don't mind making these statements based on logic like Mugabe=bad, Mugabe=African, therefore, African=bad.
Well, it's their debating funeral, right?
I guess I just go to these Africa threads as a preventative measure against low blood pressure. :)
guess I just go to these Africa threads as a preventative measure against low blood pressure. :)
*** LOL!!!
I also agree that calling whites who stay stupid and deserving of their fates is needlessly cruel. The choice between just dropping everything and leaving, or staying in the hopes that everything will straighten itself out, is difficult because we get security from physical things. An example would be senior citizens in Texas that died in a heat wave with working air conditioners left off to save electricity. The easy conclusion is stupidity, which is merely a blunt way of describing someone who chooses one thing over another for their own reasons, which we cannot discern after the fact. Unfortunately, stupidity is something that happens to everyone, no matter how wise or intelligent.
The thread you posted ("Farm Disaster ...") does not support your claim that Africans' "highest ideals" are war, genocide and torture. It is a story about how Mugabe is destroying his country.
Care to retract your statement?
Hell No! Earth to zimdog - Your own (underlined) words prove my point. The highest official in the land authorizes robbery and (quote from article, italics mine)) "On Good Friday, in April, dozens of police arrived with water cannons and submachine guns, Moyo said, and blocked off the road, looted the offices and beat anyone who sought to resist. Enter "Mugabe torture murder" in Google and tell me what you find.
Boy, this is like talking to a liberal:
1) I make a statement and you challenge it.
2) I offer proof and you duck, dodge, weave and cherry-pick which items to respond to and ignore the other damning proof.
Snippets from the Zimbabwe Independent by a national:
"When Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika were burnt to death, was that civilisation? When Stevens was dragged from a police station to his cruel death, was that patriotism? When the Olds family was murdered in Nyamandlovu was that bravery? When acid is poured on people to kill them, is that land resettlement?"
and
"We have Mbeki who thinks Mugabe is more sinned against than the people of Zimbabwe who have been deliberately starved to death, had their buttocks burnt on red hot stoves, had plastic burnt on top of their bodies, had fathers kidnapped never to be seen again, had loved ones thrown into disused mine shafts."
and
(italics mine)"Finally Dr Mahoso, Africa is for Africans, as you would want us to believe but let us put our house in order so that we can stand up and be counted. Let us avoid emotions and run our continent in a civilised manner where rape, murder, torture, human rights abuses, dictatorships, and abuse of power are condemned whether done to win an election, to fix another party, or to gain more power. What is wrong is wrong." (Evidently he's a voice in the wilderness since he's not in the majority.)
Let's turn this charade around. Prove me wrong. YOU TELL ME what their "highest aspirations" are (that phrase REALLY seems to bother you). GIVE EXAMPLES showing the nobility of that crowd over there.
Get a shortwave radio. Radio Canada, the BBC, VOA/Africa, and even Radio Nederland have had updates on Zimbabwe. The BBC reporter got kicked out during the last "election".
Not sure what you can pick up in Kali, but on the East Coast, a lot of countries broadcast out of the Caribbean, though not
directed to the North America, or to NA out of New Brunswick, CA.
VOA? Sometimes out of North Carolina, but reception may be better from Botswana.
For general broadcast schedules, ilgradio.com publishes a quarterly, but slightly behind (it's free) schedule of
broadcast times/frequencies. Poke around for free software, and there are a couple of programs that will sort the
records, for say, english, on-air-now.
"1) I make a statement and you challenge it."
Because you were wrong.
"2) I offer proof and you duck, dodge, weave and cherry-pick which items to respond to and ignore the other damning proof."
If you offer proof, I'll acknowledge it. But you haven't offered proof. You've given proof that Robert Mugabe is a wicked person whose iron grip on power is strangling his country. I didn't need to duck, dodge or cherry-pick to point out that THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE ARTICLE YOU OFFER AS 'PROOF' CONTRADICTS WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO SAY. If you try to turn this into an argument over whether or not Mugabe's highest ideas are war, genocide and torture, you might as well start an argument over whether the sky is blue or a slightly lighter shade of blue. What you wrote was that the highest ideals of Africans were wicked ones and you 'proved' this by using Robert Mugabe, a single unpopular dictator, to smear a continent of 800 million people.
YOUR OWN evidence of police beating people who tried to resist Mugabe shows that you are wrong, that Mugabe IS CLEARLY NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL AFRICANS. And you say MY words prove YOUR point?!
"(Evidently he's a voice in the wilderness since he's not in the majority.)"
Not everyone can speak their mind in Zimbabwe's repressive atmosphere. I'm surprised that this made it past the censors. However, if you thought about the situation for one second, you would see that Mugabe is supported by his own wealth and the cooperation of others who stand to gain from working with him. A select, and morally bakrupt, group.
"Let's turn this charade around. Prove me wrong. YOU TELL ME what their "highest aspirations" are (that phrase REALLY seems to bother you). GIVE EXAMPLES showing the nobility of that crowd over there."
I gave you a link to the L of C Timbuktu exhibition. I could cite Desmond Tutu, Mbaye Diagne, Cheick Modibo Diarra, Salif Keita. These are people who are RESPECTED for their commitment to human rights, science and the arts. I'm sure cyborg will be happy to give you other examples.
The businessman in the farm disaster article is an African and his highest aspirations are running a productive farm, feeding the nation and supporting a local economy by hiring people to work for him and paying good wages. Is he secretly planning to murder his employees or poison his corn? You think a dictator's actions speak for all African people. You're wrong.
I wouldn't bother responding. Zimbabwe is like China, a place where the people can't speak out for fear of death. If someone doesn't get past their ignorant views about Africa then nothing I can say will change their minds.
i know...
it's frustrating that he sees zimbabwe as the be-all end-all of african life. it's more frustrating when he claims that I'M somehow proving his argument to be right when i'm really proving it to be wrong.
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