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
Ping
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Boy, am I glad that in this Post-Colonialist era that Black-Africans have taken control of their respective countries from the Whites for the benefit of all.
What do you know? Racist communists. Who would have thought?
"We have family in South Africa, but the future is uncertain there."
I'm glad that he realizes that. One huge disruption is enough. I can barely imagine what it would be like to leave everything you know and love, but one can only wish that more Jews in Europe had realized what was happening and left.
Observe how America's Marxist-Leninist media organs tell us almost nothing about Zim (or Venezuela) these days.
The real "white flight"
The two most advanced societies on the African continent were once Rhodesia and South Africa. In less than a generation, the bloody scythe of Communism, wielded by black butchers, has turned these countries into seething hellholes, unfit for man or beast. The Mugabes and Mandelas of the world should have been necklaced by their own thugs, long ago.
When the inhabitants of sub-Sahara Africa become extinct during the rest of the 21st century, there will be adequate room for expansion of the civilized and overpopulated peoples of China and India.
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No sympathy? Too stupid? I respectfully have to disagree with those statements. The whites have been in Southern Africa almost as long as whites have been in the US. In my opinion, it entitles them to some ownership of the country they helped build, and call it home. You expect people to give up their homes and leave Zimbabwe, but in other places the US goes to war to remove dicators, and protect minority rights. Why is this different?
I was in Britian last week and this subject came up. The peson I was talking to said that the white farmers stole the land from the blacks in the first place, and he appeared to think there was a certain justice in what was happening over there. I don't know much about the history of the place, but it seemed to me to be on the same level of the argument that the Europeans stole America from the Indians, or that the U.S. stole California from Mexico.(Have I just opened a can of worms here?) Whatever the case, I hardly think that what happened in the past justifies what is happening there now.
I'm going to do a little research on the subject, but for now can anyone here give a brief synopsis on whether the Brit's remarks are true?
Many thanks.
Don't you know? Blacks in Africa can never be racists. All is justified in the name of "freedom" from colonialism and the other scourges brought by the whites.
At least the Jews understand the writing on the wall now. They're leaving France.
This is the first I have heard of the MDC. It is a good article ... sounds Mugabe wants to hold onto power. Not just drive out whites.
Response: Sounds like California!
Africa belies the leftist drivel that America's wealth has little to do with morality, the rule of law, and the free market economy, but that we're just lucky because we have a lot of natural resources.
Africa, as you say, is a country as rich as any other in natural resources, but lacks a basic system of morality and law and it is in utter chaos.
Japan, on the other hand, has little natural resources to speak of, but is among the richest nations on earth.
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