Posted on 05/21/2005 5:56:38 PM PDT by blam
White farmers reject Mugabe plea to return
By Toby Harnden , Chief Foreign Correspondent
(Filed: 22/05/2005)
White farmers evicted by Robert Mugabe's government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in "joint ventures" with those who brutalised them and stole their land.
Gideon Gono, the governor of the country's central bank, suggested the idea last Thursday as a possible solution to Zimbabwe's economic crisis.
A Zimbabwean woman surveys her devastated maize crop
Greg McMurray, a tobacco farmer who fled Zimbabwe in 2001 and is now a grinder at a factory in Wiltshire, said: "These are empty promises. We have had all the assurances before and then they just turn around and change their minds.
"I had them coming into my garden and threatening my fiancée. Men with a bit of beer in their bellies told me, 'We'll come and burn you and your wife and your house'.
"I would love to go back but the economy's in ruins. The place is a shambles. So many professional people have left. It would need a new regime before most of us would think seriously about going back."
The prospect of a return for white farmers was dangled by Mr Gono, Mr Mugabe's leading economic policy maker, in a rambling three-hour statement in which he also announced a 31 per cent devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar.
He said: "In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope in the country promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators as well as other new investors, so as to hasten the skills transfer cycle."
During the evictions, some white farmers were murdered and many others were beaten and their families abused. The evictions prompted the collapse of the agriculture sector, the traditional engine of the economy.
Those who took over the farms had no specialist knowledge - and most farmland now lies uncultivated. The machinery has been stolen, buildings have been plundered and the former workers are starving.
Eddie Cross, the economics spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - which was heavily defeated by the ruling Zanu-PF party in recent parliamentary elections that were widely condemned as being rigged - said that Mr Gono was desperate.
Mr Cross said: "He's got no power and he can't deliver. The reality is a thousand miles away from everything he says. He wants to regain some credibility with multilateral institutions. He has meetings with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank next month. This is about having something to say to those guys. The only salvation will be a change of government and a return to the rule of law.
"Until then, no one's going to invest here or come back. Who on earth is going to do anything in agriculture when there is such dispute over land ownership? They'd be mad."
While Mr Gono's words could be interpreted as an admission that the land seizure policy pursued by Mr Mugabe - which led to him becoming an international pariah - had failed, they offered little comfort to the dispossessed.
One tobacco and cattle farmer, who was forced off his property by armed squatters in 2000, said: "He can't be serious. My house has been burnt down, my fields destroyed and he wants to invite me back?
"There has to be a proper return to respect for property rights. We need facts, not words and a legal framework. No one's going to go back on the basis of this."
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, is among 1,600 evicted landowners who have stayed in Zimbabwe and are attempting to get compensation.
In 2000, there were 4,500 white farmers. Now only 400 remain on parts of their farms, many having made deals with Mugabe's regime. Thousands of others lost everything and have had to seek help to set themselves up in ventures outside Zimbabwe.
Colin Ransome, of the Zimbabwe Farmers Trust Fund, a Scottish-registered charity, said: "A lot of those who settled in Britain have young families and new jobs. Everyone is very wary. Iron-clad assurances would be needed."
The only white farmers left are the liberal whites that aided Mugbe to take over.. They deserve MORE than will get.. They deserve Zero commpassion..
No surprise here. The savage thugs take over the entire country and turn it into a cesspool.
Oh now you've done it. You've done the MSM's work for them. The evil white farmers were politely asked to come back and they refused. Blacks will starve to death in Zimbabwe and the MSM will label the white farmers as greedy genocidal racists! And all because YOU pointed it out first! (smirk)
Then send them, Nelson Mandela, Koffi Anan and our "Black Caucus" to tell them all once again about bad it was to live with those whites and the evils of Apartheid.
The change was coming but the politicians from other countries had to meddle and have it overnight.
The incentive to work as a slave on their own land for the ones actually dumb enough to go back to Zimbabwe. As in rounding up their families and putting them in some gulag, and then telling the farmers "make this farm produce, or watch us rape and murder your wife and children."
White man seen the big cooking pots and said no thanks.
To the press and the UN, blacks are still an inferior human species, their plight not worthy of comment.
First, bring back Ian Smith.
Yes...these fools went in harvested the white mans crops had a large return. Then when it was their time to step up to the plate to grow crops they all miserably failed. They've also destroyed the land...w/out proper care for the land...the land will not bear any crop/fruit whatsoever. We white folks knew this was coming....how quickly it came.
I feel a rather sinful schadenfreude over this...
If left to it's own devices, Zimbabwe would become Matabeleland again, just like it was when ol' Cecil Rhodes found it in the 1890s, with about 500,000 subsistence-farming population instead of the 15,000,000 it has today.
That's the term that got me too. "Joint venture"???? What in the hell is that????
Hey, whitebread! Get back here and fix our destruction and give us the credit. You owe us.
VOMITOCIOUS!!!
They have fouled their own nest. The kindest thing the world can do for this nation gripped by the viral infection of collectivism is to not lift a finger to help, let the nation catastrophically collapse inward upon itself, and thoroughly document the ugly aftermath as a lesson for all future aspiring followers of tyrants that promise riches from looting.
they are savages... not even animals to this to each other!!! WARNING it's not for a weak stomach...
http://www.africancrisis.org/photos8.asp
We can send Koffi over to run that place! THEN TAKE AWAY THE THIEF'S PASSPORT!!
If this was a script for a movie, we would guess it was a collaboration of Monty Python and Woody Allen. What's heartbreaking is that this stuff is actually happening.
A farmer that had his land stolen from the regime or its thugs would be insane to go back there, and risk thier lives again.
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