Last white farmers vow to hang on in Zim

Independent Online (SA) ^ | Basildon Peta

[Clive]

Virtually all the remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe, who have been asked to surrender their land to President Robert Mugabe's government on Monday, have vowed to defy orders to stop farming and vacate their properties, saying they have nowhere else to go.

At least 2,900 white farmers have been ordered to close shop and surrender their farms in line with recent changes to land acquisition laws which gave the Zimbabwe government sweeping powers to seize land for black resettlement.

But Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) spokeswoman Jenni Williams said the spirit of resistance had never been stronger among the farmers who now feel they have no option but to "hold firm" against the Zimbabwe government's last-ditch effort to dispossess them of the entirety of their properties.

Williams said unless the Zimbabwe government made a sudden U-turn, the orders would attempt to force farmers whose land had been designated for seizure to shut down on Monday - giving them 45 days to cease operations. The farmers had since sent over 230,000 farm workers on forced leave.

The changes to the Land Acquisition Act came into effect on May 10 and required all farmers who had, prior to that date, been served with Section 8 orders for the acquisition of their properties, to cease operations within the 45 days.

Williams said the government had since rejected a request by farmers for the suspension of the orders to enable them to continue farming until they had completed harvesting their land. Agriculture minister Joseph Made could not be reached for comment.

Although the farmers can remain in their farmhouses until August 10, they are required to refrain from any agricultural activities.

Any farmer who defies the law and attends to his crops or livestock will risk a two-year jail term or a Zim $20,000 (R3,300) fine or both.

Zimbabwe's agro-based economy has been ranked as the fastest shrinking economy in the world by international economic organisations. The Commercial Farmers Union said the soya bean crop output had been reduced by 60 percent.

The CFU further estimated Zimbabwe's maize harvest shortfall to be at least two million tons next year because of disruptions in commercial agriculture.

[Clive]

-

[xJones]

Virtually all the remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe, who have been asked to surrender their land to President Robert Mugabe's government on Monday, have vowed to defy orders to stop farming and vacate their properties, saying they have nowhere else to go.

Clive, I know this is an ignorant question, but can these farmers immigrate somewhere else? They would lose everything they own, but they would be alive. Can they get out?

[ozzymandus]

Fools. I'd leave that communist hellhole if I had to walk.

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

[mdittmar]

Let's all remember these stories when,in a few years,we hear the cries for massive amounts of our tax dollars to be spent to save the poor,starving Zimbabweans.

[Clive]

I am sure that they can get out, but apart from those who have Brit citizenship and those who have been able to lease land from Mozambique under its program to re-establish commercial farming, who will give them landed immigrant status?

Or even refugee status?

But from the tone of this article, there seems to be a bloody-mindedness developing.

Messada.

[RicocheT]

How can these 2000 or so white farmers resist? They already have largely been disarmed. The government thugs have more firepower. It will be a mass killing of whites. Since they are white and the killers are African blacks, the rest of the world will shrug it off as a post colonial payback.

[germanicus]

Any farmer who defies the law and attends to his crops or livestock will risk a two-year jail term or a Zim $20,000 (R3,300) fine or both

This is laughable. Do you think the Zim authority will waste time struggling to remove these farmers using the law? If they don't get off the land, they're dead. They have thugs that can take care of these white farmers. Pure and simple.

[nanny]

Is there any way to just post an observation without posting 'to' someone.

My observation, does anyone see the faintest parallel of this post and the other post concerning the government effectively taking private land to protect one plant? They are not taking the land here in America, they are just making it impossible for the land owners to use it to make a living - so who gets the land, the government and what are they going to do with it? Maybe redistribute it in the future?

[john in missouri]

Although the farmers can remain in their farmhouses until August 10, they are required to refrain from any agricultural activities.

Any farmer who defies the law and attends to his crops or livestock will risk a two-year jail term or a Zim $20,000 (R3,300) fine or both.

Unreal.

[daviddennis]

This is amazing. Last time I looked, famine affects blacks every bit as much as whites, and they're beggin' for it here.

I guess Mugabe wants half his country to starve. Depressing.

D

[Travis McGee]

"Last Jews Vow To Hang On In Warsaw"

[Clive]

""Last Jews Vow To Hang On In Warsaw"

Exactly!

[Travis McGee]

Tragic.

I just read Wilbur Smith's "The Leopord Hunts At Night" from @ 1986. It's a story of post civil war struggle in Zimbabwe, and at the happy end the black hero asks the white hero to stay on in Zim to continue to run his farms and safari ranches for the good of all Zimbabweans blah blah blah.

I wonder what Wilbur thinks now.

[AD from SpringBay]

Although the farmers can remain in their farmhouses until August 10, they are required to refrain from any agricultural activities.

What an absolutely idiotic law. Do these people not even understand the mechanics involved with the concept of eating? It's not like the growing season is going to wait for them. Nor will the economy wait for a new set of "reallocated" farmers to learn how to run the ranches and farms.

In two/three years we will see the UNICEF commercials of starving bloated baby bellies with flies crawling on them and it will be a campaign election year issue and momma US guv'ment of the hundred-thousand nipples will be forced to squirt some US taxpayer dollars in that direction because it's not fair that America is so rich and the rest of the world sucks. We definitely need to archive these articles.