Zimbabwe -- Cathy Buckle -- Burn out

Letters written by Cathy Buckle ^ | 2006-01-21 | Cathy Buckle

[randita]

I understand your point. Mugabe has not starting killing white people -- yet. Even though he's a barbaric thug, maybe he's not that stupid.

On a related note, I have a friend who just returned from a mission trip to S. Africa. She said it was sad to see that the government there had given once fertile, productive land to black people who had not a clue how to farm it. So it's lying fallow and those blacks who now own the land are as impoverished as ever.

That's what is also occuring in Zimbabwe and why there is so much starvation. I hope S. Africa doesn't eventually travel down the same trail as Zimbabwe is. It would be pretty ironic that the "civilized" world pressured S. Africa so long and hard to end apartheid and then have that country end up way worse than it was. Not that I agree with apartheid, but maybe there was a better way to resolve that issue.

[AnAmericanMother]

What do you mean, Mugabe has not started killing white people? You must not have been paying attention. His so-called "war veterans" (most of whom are too young to have done any such thing) have murdered many white farmers and their families AND the black farming employees who had tried to stay with them and help them bring in a crop. Their houses have been burned, their crops destroyed, and their cattle butchered.

The handwriting has been on the wall for quite some time.

[randita]

Yes, I should have done more research. I have done some more and it's really difficult to find accurate statistics. One article I read claimed that 18 white commercial farmers have been killed since 2000, when Mugabe came to power and that out of 4,000 white commercial farmers in 2000, only about 300 are left on their land. But who knows if that is correct. I wonder if those nearly 4,000 white farmers have left Zimbabwe or whether they have stayed trying to make another living.

I haven't seen statistics on the black farm workers.

It may be one of those situations where we'll never really know all the facts until much later -- like the Rwanda crisis.

[AnAmericanMother]

Well, it's like this.

Either those 4,000 white farmers were ABLE to get out, in which case Ms. Buckle should follow them . . . or they were NOT able to get out. In which case they may be dead, or simply working in some other field. But since hyperinflation has taken hold, it's difficult to make a living in any area that doesn't directly produce consumables. So if they're not dead now, they will be soon.

The world is pretty much ignoring what's going on in Zim, since Mugabe is one of the darlings of the left. They will cover up for him as they covered up for Stalin for years and years.

[technochick99]

Heartbreaking... and so few people care, even here.

[colorado tanker]

I recently read an interesting piece that Mozambique is beginning to take in white farmers and give them land that used to be cultivated under the Portuguese, before the civil war. They need the farming skills they lost during the war.

[Clive]

Yes, both Mozambique and in Zambia, and more recently Nigeria, have been offering inducements to Zim Commercial farmers to immigrate and take up grants of 50 year leaseholds.

Moz requires the farmers to undertake to learn Portugese which is its commercial language although the farm employees would probably speak mainly Shona.

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP!