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
bttt
Lets face it...everybody stole something from everybody else. Various Indian tribes in the US would hunt down other tribes, kill them and then claim the region as their hunting region. The same is true in Africa in the 1700s with various tribes killing off other tribes. Its the way of man. As for the white farmers...its true that they came and simply took the land. But they also developed the entire business of farming in the region...and made the country tens of millions in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, its gone, and will not come back.
That would be nice but Teddy would never allow it.
Not enough whites there to fight I guess. They needed to fight for and win a white homeland back 20 years ago. The South African's would be smart to realize this is going to happen to them and create their homeland now. That was one of the proposals for ending aparteid that was tried, but discarded. Probably the only one that could have allowed some whites to stay in the region.
My church frequently (through the United Methodist's UMCOR) donates money to Zimbabewan causes. Recently, they called for help in Zimbabwe's "recent crises," without going into ANY detail about the crisis, other than there was little food.
Of course, they didn't say that these illiterate, uneducated black militia members are taking over huge, technologically advanced farms, after, of course, raping, maiming, and / or killing the whites who have successfully farmed them for generations. These militia members, most of whom can barely read, are left to manage massive operations, and subsequently fail miserably. They then complain the Mugabe's thugs to put pressure on foreign philanthropic institutions to give them food and money, because after they took over these farms, in the breadbasket of Africa (which, by the way, feeds a huge percentage of the continent), they couldn't grow a weed let alone fruits and veggies. Oh yeah, and that money goes straight into the pockets of the average Zimbabwean... riiiiigght.
So... let's see here... famine (Ethiopia, Sudan, etc.), plague (AIDS), fire (civil war), pestilence (Mugabe and the militias)... yup, all present and accounted for. Time to reap what they have sewn.
Dunno about that.
I live in SA, my parents were born here.
Their parents all came here as Jews fleeing Eastern Europe (Lithuania) as they could see the writing on the wall prior to the Nazi holocaust in Europe. At that time, prior to the advent of apartheid, Africa was just as good as anywhere- simply a place to go where it was freer than home.
I can see the writing on the wall now. I don't have a foreign passport. I'm still young. To gain easy access to for example Australia, I need 5 million Rand which I don't have right now. It's a lot of money. (About 1 million Aussie Dollars; About 825,000 US Dollars). I do wanna leave.
I don't mean this as a disrespect, but Cathy sounded quite whiny in the last interesting article you posted Saturday.
Maybe they'll build a mock refugee camp in Berkeley to protest the abuse of whites.
Sorry, I have to disagree on that too. Israel has the support of a powerful ally in the US, which the Rhodesians did not have. They were betrayed by their supposed allies, who allowed Mugabe to take power through the UN. There was no way the Rhodesian army was losing the war, it was lost by the politicians around the world.
I was at an indian site museum recently and what hit me was that when looking at scenes of their living conditions you couldn't tell if it was 1,000 BC or 1865 AD. I allow the same could be said of sub-Sahara Africa.
When left to their own devices, these people merely EXISTED. Their highest aim in life was to steal from other tribes, make war, and torture prisoners. Then the whites came in and BUILT and IMPROVED things. Yeah, there was brutality and all that goes with it, but I'll bet there are more than a few blacks who pine for the old days when compared to what they are getting now or are going to get. They haven't learned that Europe and the Left only care when whites oppress blacks. When the oppressors are also black, it's a Gallic shrug and "what do you expect of those people".
When the Spaniards had the West they did nothing with it. I ask these "Reconquista" types why the Mexican states we didn't "steal" from them look basically the same as they did 150 years ago while the American side is thriving and prosperous. What did they do with the land when they "stole" it from the Aztecs and other tribes? No answer.
When Mugabe first took power, the president of Mozambique, after seeing what happened elsewhere, advised Mugabe to "keep your whites". Good advice, too bad he didn't take it. Working together the whites and blacks would have prospered as they had when the place was called Rhodesia. Soon it will be renamed Golgotha.
I agree they get screwed. However, it is not that simple. You don't just get on a train and go, if your whole livelyhood and asset base is built into generations of development in that country. I also agree that the whites should leave. But what I take exception to is that you and others on this thread see fit to judge the whites in Zimbabwe, essentially saying they are stupid, so they deserve what they get. And by the way, because you are so stupid, you ignorant whites from a backwater country, I also don't feel sorry that you will lose everything you have built over the last few generations.
Thanks for the link. I'll save it and read up on the subject.
I had always suspected that Europeans had a smug sense of moral superiority. After my trip these past few weeks, I am more convinced than ever.
Instead of leaving your country, why not move to Orania?
Israel has benefited by being a buyer of the latest American weapons, but the price has been a lot of meddling by American politicians obsessed with looking good in Arab eyes. If Tel Aviv were not hampered by Jimmy Carter's efforts to gain a Nobel at the expense of Israeli security, it would now be arguing with its neighbors about settlements on the west bank of the Tigris.
It is OK to be a racist, so long as the target of your racism is white.
I understand the hard truth, more than you can know. However, I still wish to make 2 points. The first is that I would like to know which national interest of the US was protected in Vietnam, Bosnia and Somalia? The US went to war in those countries. The second point is that I don't dispute any of your facts. I do disagree with your statements of "stupid" and "no sympathy". Those are cruel, hard statements to make. Have you ever had to leave your country, culture, family and life behind? I guarantee you it is not easy, and requires resourcefulness, opportunity, courage and faith, and all the help you can get, and not all those people have it at their disposal.
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