Posted on 09/22/2009 6:33:26 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Charles Lock is one of an estimated 400 farmers who have remained in the country despite President Robert Mugabe's policy of redistributing white-owned farms to landless blacks.
"Why do they want to remove me when I've complied with everything they want? What more do they want other than for me to pack my bags and leave and if that's the case, then admit that that is the policy. Pass a law: no whites are allowed to farm. Then it makes it clear," Lock said.
Since 2000, Mugabe's controversial land reform program has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, destroying Zimbabwe's once prosperous agricultural sector.
"When the land reform program began, we decided we were not going to have a confrontational attitude; that we would actually go along with this program because it was the only way that this whole thing would be sorted out. So I voluntarily gave away my own farm and moved onto my father-in-law's farm," Lock said.
That was in 2002. A year later the government came knocking on his door again, he said, demanding more land.
Lock told CNN he eventually gave up 70 percent of his father-in-law's farm, which he then owned. Now an army general is demanding Lock's remaining 30 percent.
When Zimbabwe's new unity government was formed -- with Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change -- in February this year, the general allegedly posted soldiers on Lock's farm. The farmer said he stopped farming and trade at gun point.
When CNN visited Lock's farm this month, workers were standing idle. Maize and tobacco, which Lock said is worth more than U.S. $1 million, lay in storage.
"They've switched off our irrigation system, taken out keys and stop our trucks if we want to deliver maize," ....
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
Someone notify Dave Matthews.
Why do these white farmers stay? Surely they don’t think things will get better.
They should probably just leave before they are physically harmed. They can come back after everyone in Zimbabwe has starved to death. But I wouldn’t advise coming to the US, because our “leader” is determined to make us a mirror image of Zimbabwe.
What makes someone like this stay? I’d rather sleep under a bridge in ANY Anglo country that made up the Empire than stay in Zimbabwe. Saw a clip about the hype leading up to the “Rumble in the Jungle”; Ali was so excited in the airplane, with comments about how incredible it was to have black pilots on a black airline. I guess those planes lasted until the first maintenance was due, and when the shaman couldn’t lubricate the parts with his rattles they just left them where they were last parked...
Do they have firearms there?
You live in a country that has turned from a breadbasket to a famine stricken wasteland. 95% of white farms have been seized. The dictator is 85 years old and has medical problems. The economy is in shambles. The army is on the verge of fracturing into warring sects. The other black leaders of the continent continue to chide your government without putting any real pressure on.
I understand loyalty to your home, but when the only thing they have left to take is your life, they will. Mr. Lock, I think it is very clear.
I asked the same thing from a white farmer from Zimbabwe who moved to our county about 6 years ago after being run off his farm with machetes. His father and brother are still there fighting to stay on their farms and praying they aren’t killed in their sleep, but he asked would I run away or fight for my country and land? Would I just run and leave every piece of property I owned because some thugs chased me with a knife? This man’s family has been there for over 100 years. Not a ton of time, but one of the first British immigrants to that land and they feel it’s theirs, they work it, they own it.
However I think they are realizing there isn’t much hope in riding a sinking ship down.
I can’t believe there’s any of them still left. They must be completely broke or they’d leave.
Some of them have done pretty well in neighboring Mozambique, where despite cultural/language differences they’ve been offered significant tracts of land as long as they employ the natives (who else would they employ?). After being without The Man for slightly longer than Zimbabwe, Mozambique apparently realized the error of their ways, and after being rebuffed by the Portuguese (who were approached about administering it again after independence was granted), they sent feelers out to the Zim farmers. It seems to be a mutually benificial relationship, and they’ll be feeding Zimbabwe for the rest of time (though they’ll be paid with dried feces and the like).
Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of South Africa - now they’re starving and getting food imports and World Bank aid.
Even our own Marxist in Chief lies constantly if inconsistently.
well the same reason ppl still stay in US. These white farmers were born there. Zimbawae is their home country
Where is Al Sharpton? After all, they are Africans too.
Just terrible.
They do, but the government has more. In fact, many of the black employees of the farms were beaten and driven off; they knew the future lay in those farms. Zimbabwe had the same problem as South Africa; most of the technicians and educated people were white, and driving them off has had dire consequences in terms of any industry, health care, etc. I remember South Africa’s post-apartheid government begging the whites to stay, but when you’re told to keep a cell phone in your trunk to deal with the inevitable carjackings, it really is time to go. The government couldn’t protect them, and in the end was making an effort, but the damage was done.
Education in the US about European colonialism ends with the independence movements and the excuses for descent into anarchy after they won it; nothing is taught about the French settlers left in Algeria or Indochina, the Portuguese in Angola or Mozambique, or the English (and Dutch) in southern Africa. The treatment of Indians in the newly independent Kenya & Uganda was sad; while the whites were treated well (since the new governments intended to maintain positive relationships with the UK), the Indian workers brought to those countries decades before were treated like sh!t. The Africans rationalized it by maintaining that these people who mostly worked as merchants were living on the backs of African labor, and they drove them out. That was how Freddie Mercury’s family ended up in England (they were from Zanzibar).
Obama is currently trying to reduce America to a ghetto too.. and it seems to be working..
At the time of independence, the farmers had been born in Rhodesia, and Britain wouldn’t fight to keep it. In fact, when the whites tried to maintain Rhodesia as a country, Britain (and most of the world) wouldn’t recognize it. I think it lasted until 1980.
Let them starve.
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