the Case of the Freeper FRiva Feva is under scrutiny - super-sleuths are welcomed
come resolve the way to yesterday's Target Post, you're not out of the running yet
win your registration fees to the FRive Las Vegas Conference if you dare
Posted on 06/27/2002 1:02:03 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe's ruling party urged tough action against white farmers who defy orders to stop working their fields, and dismissed claims that the land seizures have exacerbated the country's hunger crisis, state media reported Thursday.
At a meeting Wednesday, the leaders of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party said many white farmers were ignoring the order, which took effect earlier this week.
"(The government) should take swift action against any farmer who breaks the law," party leaders said in a statement, according to the state-run Herald newspaper Thursday.
Most farmers stopped working months ago, intimidated by armed militants occupying their land and paralyzed by the threat of the government's program to seize white-owned farms and redistribute them to landless blacks.
The 2,900 farmers ordered to stop working their farms face an Aug. 8 deadline to evacuate their homes.
The land seizures have decimated the nation's commercial farming industry and come amid a potentially devastating food crisis in Zimbabwe. The agriculture minister said the crisis had nothing to do with the land seizures.
"We dismiss the claim that the government is destroying the backbone of the country's agriculture-based economy by resettling landless people," Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told The Herald.
The World Food Program estimates that nearly half of the 12.5 million Zimbabweans were at risk of starvation in the coming year and a U.N. relief team arrived Wednesday on an assessment tour.
Despite promises to redistribute the confiscated land to poorer segments of the population, many of the farms have been given to confidantes of Mugabe and ruling party leaders.
The party leaders also accused white farmers of trying to take over the country, saying they were taking "a racist and fascist approach of wanting to continue white dominance in this country," Made said.
Less than 1 percent of Zimbabwe's population is white - mostly the descendants of British and South African settlers. Zimbabwe won independence from Britain in 1980 and Mugabe's critics have accused him of trying to stir up racial tensions in an effort to deflect attention from the country's crumbling economy.
With hundreds of other farms already seized, about 95 percent of the nation's 4,000 white farmers will be out of business if the government order is enforced, farmer representatives have said.
To compound the misery of Zimbabweans, the country's minister of agriculture and other associates of Mugabe refused until April to agree that the country would run out of staple food. Opposition politicians had predicted disaster last September. But for purposes of propaganda before the presidential election in March, his government denied the possibility of shortfalls. Even after belatedly acknowledging the country's precarious food situation in April, the government has harassed external relief efforts and has succeeded in denying food relief to areas that voted against Mugabe in March. ***
Who Is To Blame for Africa's Woes?***Everything that is happening in Zimbabwe is being done in full accord with the doctrines of post-colonialism. If every evil is caused by colonialism, then the heart of the problem must be the colonists themselves. In Zimbabwe, that means thousands of white British farmers who settled in Zimbabwe's sparsely populated countryside and built a prosperous agricultural economy. The settler's use of Western agricultural techniques, combined with the benefits of British law and order, made Zimbabwe into the breadbasket of southern Africa, an exporter of grain on which all of its neighbors relied. But in accordance with leftist philosophy, Zimbabwe's post-colonial ruler, Robert Mugabe, denounced the white farmers and hatched a scheme for "land reform."
In the language of tin-pot dictatorships, "reform" means "theft." For years, Mugabe has allowed armed gangs to occupy white-owned farms, sometimes murdering the owners, as a precursor to a plan to seize the farms, allegedly for redistribution to poor blacks. (In reality, the farms are going to Mugabe's cronies.) The result? People are starving in Zimbabwe, not because there is a drought, but because hundreds of thousands of acres of crops have not been planted. Some farms are fallow because they are occupied by armed thugs. Others are unused because of a law threatening white farmers with two years in prison if they plant without government permission, which has not been given. Other farms are unplanted simply because no one in his right mind would go to the trouble of planting crops that will be seized before he can harvest them. When you make war on the farmers, what can you expect but famine?***
“We did everything they wanted,” he said. “We won the election for them, but they have treated us no better than donkeys. They have used us and thrown us away.”
.... “I don’t want to do those things any more,” said Sam. “My parents are so unhappy.” David added: “We’re in a jail of our own – never free to leave and always being punished for what we do. We’ll never have our lives back until Mugabe is gone.” ***
I truly hope this man starves.
The way to get a better government is to rise up and throw the bums out! Ship guns to the people so they can fight. If US forces have many arms caches found in Afgani Taliban areas, get the weapons on transport planes and handed over to the general populace in Zimbabwe. Assistance with a self-help program, is what that's called!
Reverse the situation and the UN would be demanding immediate intervention by the powers of the world to put an end to the 'genocide'.
But its only some white guys being killed so it doesnt make the radar screen.
Ah, well you may be right. But then again maybe we ought to arm just the white settlers so thay can defend themselves. Or, bring them here where we've got plenty of farmland that would benefit from attention. Obviously those white farmers are smart and hard workers. No telling what surplus we'd have with their help.
Probably a good thing I don't make policy per our relationship with African countries.
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