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Zimbabwe Whites Finished - Nation 'Like One Big Departure Lounge'
Sunday Mail - London ^

Posted on 11/24/2001 11:56:15 PM PST by cmvc3

Zimbabwe Whites Finished - Nation 'Like One Big Departure Lounge' The Sunday Mail - London 11-25-1 HARARE - We marked Heroes and Ancestors Day - or Gooks and Spooks, as we prefer to call it - in Harare yesterday. The city was a place of eerie calm but in the bush all hell was breaking loose, with women, children and old folk being evacuated hourly by light aircraft.

There is a 'fin de' everything, atmosphere among white people now, a sad, bitter resignation to the fact that our world is crumbling around us. It,s like going through a bereavement for the beloved country many of our families came to from England 100 years ago. It's an agonising process: anger, denial, bargaining - then maybe death.

The entire generation of whites know they are not wanted and have left or are leaving. The older generation is still desperate to live out what remains of their lives in what is left of British colonial style.

I saw a prosperous looking elderly couple in the supermarket last week looking at the prices of pet food. The woman said: "I don't think we can afford to keep the dogs anymore." They are lucky. Upcountry other pensioners have resorted to cooking with dog food - they cannot afford proper meat. Their fixed pensions have been almost wiped out over the past two years by an inflation rate which must be well over 150 per cent. With their children and grandchildren going or gone, many have been reduced to a kind of genteel poverty, trading in their beautiful old homes to huddle together in old age compounds.

The elderly are not the only vulnerable ones. A few days ago I saw a pretty white girl of about 17 touting for business at a flea pit hotel north of the city centre, in a mini skirt despite the cold winter wind. In a country where one in four people is thought to have AIDS, you have to be really desperate to become a prostitute.

There's simply no money here and certainly no security, not even in death.

Suburban street signs have been removed wholesale - we think they are being melted down and made into coffin handles. Graves have been opened, corpses dumped in the bush and coffins taken for resale, spruced up with aluminium from the signs. The other day I was trapped in a huge traffic jam - a rush of middle class black people applying for white land at the Ministry of Agriculture. Spectacles like that make even the bitter-enders talk about quitting.

The government's 'indigenisation' policy makes it more and more difficult for us to be employed instead of the millions of jobless black Zimbabweans. And without a very good job you can't afford a ticket to get out. There used to be a joke that if whites and middle-class blacks waited too long they would have to sell their plush mansions just to pay for the air fare to London. That joke is rapidly coming true as the value of the Zimbabwe dollar depreciates weekly. It's expected to reach 500 Zim dollars to the pound within a month, yet when the current government took over 21 years ago, one Zim dollar was worth £1.

The country feels like one big departure lounge in which we carry on our day to day activities while waiting for our flight. You go to the café but you only talk about who's gone, who's going and then you see someone you used to take coffee with who,s now sleeping on the pavement.

A chronically optimistic farmer friend told me recently he had always thought the rest of Africa could learn from Zimbabwe, but last week he changed his mind. "I was so naïve," he said. "to think that 50,000 whites could really make a difference and hold out against the tidal wave of chaos that is engulfing the rest of this continent." An opposition party supporter, he revealed that what really depressed him was the seeming indifference of most black Zimbabweans to what was happening to the whites.

Mobs of veterans - the catch-all name for Mugabe thugs - and party supporters have been surrounding farms, building road blocks and forcing farmers to flee in what is seen as the start of campaigning for the presidential election next year.

As I flew over the bush I watched crowds of people looting from the abandoned farmhouses, taking away white families possessions on their heads, donkey carts and on 'liberated' farm vehicles, some of which they immediately crashed.

At one farm in the Doma area I saw looters load bags of fertiliser from a smashed open warehouse on to a donkey cart. At another I saw beds, tables, cupboards and other bits of furniture scattered over the lawn and thrown into the swimming pool. I spotted caches of stolen goods in the bush around the farms. One farmer told me many workers had been forced at gunpoint to plunder their employers property but some loyal ones were hiding valuable stuff such as computers so they could return it later when law and order was restored. The farmer said that if that happened he would never miss another church service again.

Despite all this, Jack Straw, the UK'S new Foreign Secretary, has done nothing to help whites in what was for so many years a British colony, and in which so many of the white tribe still hold British passports.

The slaughter and robbery might seem random but it is not. There is a brutal logic at work. The government knows if it can drive the whites out of Zimbabwe, the rest of the world, and particularly the Western media, will lose interest and then it will be able to deal with its political opposition in no uncertain terms.

If that happens, there will be a descent into poverty and terror from which Zimbabwe, a once civilised and sophisticated nation, may never emerge.

Photo


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: africawatch
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To: cmvc3
I recall segments, lead by the media, in our country screaming about how the blacks are treated and how the whites would be protected by the blacks. Now I haven't heard from any of them.
21 posted on 11/25/2001 12:41:04 AM PST by Dante3
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To: cmvc3; Clive; robnoel
Bump!

Where is Bolshy Blair posturing posing and pretending this week?

Pakistan, again? And the its back to the Balkans for him?

God forbid that he should send a couple of people in soldier suits to somewhere they might actually achieve something, eh -- or do Good?

But then they speak English in Zimbabwe, isn't it -- and are Christian?

Too bad for them!

22 posted on 11/25/2001 12:49:44 AM PST by Brian Allen
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To: cmvc3
If that happens, there will be a descent into poverty and terror from which Zimbabwe, a once civilised and sophisticated nation, may never emerge.... but they still have basketball players!
23 posted on 11/25/2001 3:32:29 AM PST by exmoor
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Comment #24 Removed by Moderator

To: cmvc3
>> An opposition party supporter, he revealed that what really depressed him was the seeming indifference of most black Zimbabweans to what was happening to the whites<<

And the fact that he thought it could be otherwise is the reason that he suffers now.

25 posted on 11/25/2001 3:59:10 AM PST by Jim Noble
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To: Jim Noble
And it could happen here in the USA if the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Queasy Mfume and John Conyers ever get into real positions of power.
26 posted on 11/25/2001 4:10:49 AM PST by tom paine 2
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To: tom paine 2
Take a look here:

First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.

27 posted on 11/25/2001 4:14:43 AM PST by backhoe
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To: Lancey Howard
The whites should run, don't walk

The problem with that is the ancestors of those whites have been in southern africa as long or longer than the blacks (and as long as OUR ancestors have been here). The handful of natives of the southernmost regions of SA were killed off or assimilated. The blacks there now were either brought as slaves or migrated there to live by working for (or stealing from) the 'evil' white man.

If civilization flees every time the 3rd world hordes become the majority, western civilization will eventually die (kalifornia would be gone already!). I personally think that the UN should help create a white country out of part of South Africa. Its pretty obvious by now that black africans cannot respect the rights of minorities, and the whites BUILT that country. They're seeing it destroyed every day, but they shouldn't have to give up everything.

Don't shed too many tears for the white Rhodesians. A lot of them are good people but most are english. Just as in SA, the english brought the collapse of southern africa onto themselves by buying into the liberal PC crap from the western world. There might have only been a few million whites in southern africa, but they could have held on forever if they had wanted to. And the english have a place to go now that their homes there are being overrun.

We should all pity the Afrikkaners though. The 'white tribe' of africa has nowhere to run to. They are the people who built SA into a powerful nation. They are, in my opinion, the finest examples left of the people who left northern europe and spread civilization throughout the world. They are a culture that should be preserved.

28 posted on 11/25/2001 4:14:46 AM PST by LIBERTARIAN JOE
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To: tom paine 2
Be serious.
29 posted on 11/25/2001 4:15:08 AM PST by AppyPappy
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To: Lancey Howard
I hear Galt's Gulch has vacancies.
30 posted on 11/25/2001 4:21:20 AM PST by Crawdad
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To: tom paine 2; *AfricaWatch
Index-
31 posted on 11/25/2001 4:22:30 AM PST by backhoe
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To: cmvc3
I think I'll save a copy of this thread. In a few years it might be useful to pull it out and review it with my liberal friends. I'm sure that blame for all future problems will be placed on the whites who fled for their lives (and also on the US).
32 posted on 11/25/2001 4:24:05 AM PST by Senator_Blutarski
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To: LIBERTARIAN JOE
Actually, there were always blacks in SA. The "no blacks were here" is an urban legend. There always has been and there always will be blacks in Africa. And South Africa is no exception. The whites were perfectly happy with black labor until it bit them in the ass. This is a perfect example of allowing a problem to grow until you can't control it. Killed by your own greed.

Any whites left in SA/Rhodesia is suicidal. Rhodesia will turn into a giant sucking mouth on the tit of the world soon. SA will follow later.

33 posted on 11/25/2001 4:24:50 AM PST by AppyPappy
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To: river rat
All the whites should leave, with all the assets possible. Investments should stop. The U.N. should be forbidden to help any country as lawless and racist as Zimbabwe. Then simply allow Africa to become Africa. Shouldn't try to fool mother nature.... Semper Fi

You are right.

34 posted on 11/25/2001 4:26:59 AM PST by RnMomof7
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To: cmvc3
The American press is silent on this.
35 posted on 11/25/2001 4:28:34 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: LIBERTARIAN JOE
They declared a UDI against the UK, the only country to do so other than the USA, rather than submit to majority rule. They fought (ever wonder where all those war veterans come from) against Mugabe's hordes even after South Africa, their only major remaining trading partner betrayed them in hopes of getting some benefit for itself before being doublecrossed again. I would hardly say that they bought into the "liberal, pc crap". In fact, it took a lot more to force them into their current situation then it took the whites of SA, of both tribes.
36 posted on 11/25/2001 4:28:48 AM PST by cmvc3
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To: cmvc3
Upcountry other pensioners have resorted to cooking with dog food - they cannot afford proper meat.

Weird that they have this myth there, too. Pet food, per unit weight, is usually more expensive than human food, especially the type that someone would use to substitute for "proper meat".
37 posted on 11/25/2001 4:30:34 AM PST by aruanan
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To: cmvc3
A large proportion of whom, didn't even bother to vote.
38 posted on 11/25/2001 4:31:52 AM PST by cmvc3
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To: cmvc3
Great, as soon as the whites leave all of South Africa will be wide open for Chinese conquest. They already have their foot in the door. I wonder how the Chinese will treat the indigenous black population? Chi-Coms have a unique approach to "poor behavior".

Nope, not a race rant, just the facts, people.

39 posted on 11/25/2001 4:34:40 AM PST by Caipirabob
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To: cmvc3
Interesting thread--bookmarking.
40 posted on 11/25/2001 4:36:28 AM PST by proud American in Canada
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