Posted on 11/26/2005 6:08:42 PM PST by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
There is a massive, massive crisis underway in Zimbabwe.
As I write this letter on Saturday the 26th November 2005, history will remember this date as the one on which elections for a Senate that we didn't want and couldn't afford were being held. Ordinary people, however, will remember this as the time when MDC leaders were tearing their party apart and Zanu PF were squabbling for the last few scraps on the political bone.
This is the November when both the MDC and Zanu PF seem to have lost track of the most important struggle in Zimbabwe: the one for food, food and more food. The rains have begun, the soils are wet, the temperatures high and yet only weeds are growing as each precious day ticks past. All around us peasant farmers in the communal areas and new farmers on seized commercial land, have still not been given seeds to plant. It is ludicrous that five years into Zimbabwe's land take-overs, these new farmers are still unable to plough the land they were allocated or even buy their own seed. In a country where inflation is over 400% and great convoys of trucks stream endlessly over our borders bringing in food in from other countries, Zimbabwe it seems is not even going to try and save herself this year.
The question that every Zimbabwean asks their neighbour in November is how much rain they've had and how their crop is doing. It doesn't matter if the "crop" is a few lines of maize plants in the back garden, seven acres in the rural village or a hundred acres on a farm. This year, the answer to the question is - "what crop."
When you ask new farmers or rural villagers how their crop is coming on, they say they haven't planted yet and are still waiting for the government to come and give them seed. If you comment that it's a month into the growing season and virtually too late to plant, they sigh and shrug their shoulders and say there is "nothing to do."
So far, in Marondera, we've had six inches of rain and have the makings of a perfect season. "It's looking good for farmers," I said to one man this week but he just shook his head, laughed sadly and said "But these farmers they are playing, just playing!"
To make this desperate crisis even worse, there continue to be seizures of the few productive farms still operating. Every day we hear of another farmer being evicted by some arbitrary bloke who arrives with "a letter from the governmment." As it has for five years, these evictions happen just after the farmer has planted the crop, when the fields are covered with newly germinated seed. It is plain, outright theft of another man's labour, seed and fertilizer and yet no one does anything because, "it is political".
This week the former president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries Kumbirai Katsande said: "As we sit right here I do not hear any senior government official condemning the farm invasions which are taking place across the country...It's criminal when we do not do what we are supposed to do."
Times are very hard for ordinary Zimbabweans in November 2005 but as the days pass and crops do not get planted, it does not bear thinking what things will be like this time next year. A harvest of hunger in 2006 seems inevitable and yet all our combined leaders talk about is the Senate.
Until next week, love cathy.
-
As Yee Sow, so shall Yee Reap.
Almost nothing is written about this in American newspapers. Where are all the politicians who promoted guerilla chief Mugabe? Where are the British, who forced Rhodesia into this mess? A country that was once a bread-basket for the region, is now a basket case. This is how the West has destroyed a once prosperous land, and has brought its people, black and white, to ruin. It is hard to see how the population ever will be able to recover.
Fie on those "humanitarians" who loudly proclaimed love and concern, and prated self-righteously, but now turn strangely silent when the consequences are played out!
It has been proven many times in the past that Africa has the resources to provide for the population. It has also been proven many times that those in power will consistently overlook the best interests of their countrymen in favor of driving Rolls Royces and extended stays in Europe. New leaders always turn their backs on the military that bled to put them in power. As the resentment grows, so does the support for the new coup. It is a sad cycle that they are doomed to repeat.
The first step in helping the people of Rhodesia has to be the removal of the feral regime running it. Starving in places like Rhodesia or the Ukraine is basically like not being able to get laid at a whorehouse. You have to really work at it.
The solution to this crisis is embarrassingly obvious: give the farms back to the people from whom they were "taken over" - those that are still alive, anyway. Problem solved. What am I missing here?
Cathy, leave now.
" it does not bear thinking what things will be like this time next year"
It bears thinking about, Cathy. It bears getting out of the country while you are still alive.
What's the point?
In my mind's eye, I see Kathy talking with her neighbors on the street or over their back fence.
Talking.
That ain't gonna get it.
Again!
The answer is clear- Cathy- Kill Mugabe before your entire country dies a horrible death.
Buckle: the other other white meat.
The Zimbabweans have no food?
Not true.
They have each other.
The saddest thing is that, with the resources they have, the rulers could do what is right for their people and everyone would prosper. But they're not smart enough for that. And they lack the moral fiber.
Also, the farmers would be fools to again trust any promises by Zim to respect their title deeds. In 1980, many farmers had their bags packed in the full expectation that they would lose their land. Mugabe made a speech in which he implored them to remain and help to develop a new Zimbabwe. Many took him at his word.
In 2000, the farm invasions began. There were about 4.500 family run commercial farm operations that provided the engine of Zin's economy, food for Zim and the rest of southern Africa, and much of Zim's forex., about 15percent of the commercial farm operators were indigenous blacks.
The white population was about 50,000 out of a population of twelve million. The last reliable figures that I know of, about a year old now, put the white population at about 35,000 and I suspect that it is now less than 25,000.
And it is not only the whites who were displaced. The trained farm employees, the only ones who know how to farm the veldt, were also driven off the land and most have joined the volkerwanderung.
So virtually the whole of the farm expertise has been driven off the land and sgriculture has reverted to a scratch and plant, slash and burn, beast draughted, hand irrigated subsistence level.
This will a case study for macroeconomics and geopolitics proffessors to assign to their students for years to come.
Somebody once told me that the best thing for Africa and specifically Zimbabwe would be for someone to parachute millions of machine pistols, each with a thousand rounds, and let events take their course from that point onward. They might have been right.
Thanks for the nice explanation, Clive. I suspected and now see that what I was suggesting isn't feasible under the current set of conditions. The more I read about this the more I'm convinced that Mugabe really is as bad as they say he is.
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