Faced with famine, Robert Mugabe orders farmers to stop growing food
Posted on 07/02/2002 3:06:15 AM PDT by Clive
Faced with famine, Robert Mugabe orders farmers to stop growing food
JUNE in Zimbabwe is midwinter, but because of the country's subtropical climate, its commercial farmers can grow food all year round. Right now, they should be tending the winter wheat, which is usually ready for harvest in September or October, and preparing their fields for warm-weather crops, such as maize, the national staple. But President Robert Mugabe has commanded them to park their tractors and stop farming. With half the people in Zimbabwe on the brink of starvation, this is, even by Mr Mugabe's standards, an exceptionally bad idea.
From June 25th, some 2,900 white farmers, whose farms have been earmarked to be seized and given to blacks, were legally obliged to cease work. Those who continue to plough, weed and scatter seeds face jail terms of up to two years. Generously, the government said it would allow them to continue living in their homes for another 45 days, but then they must leave. In theory, they are permitted to take their portable possessions away with them, but in practice, police and ruling-party militiamen at roadblocks often prevent them from escaping with anything too valuable. Mr Mugabe's cronies, relatives and assorted mobsters covet their pick-up trucks and threshing machines.
In all, 95% of commercial farmland has been slated for “redistribution”. Some 60% of commercial farmers must halt work immediately. Another 35% have only received preliminary notices of confiscation, and so may carry on farming for a while longer. The remaining handful have so far escaped, either through the incompetence of their persecutors or because they have friends in government.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is facing its worst food shortage in 60 years, caused by drought and several years of violent harassment of the nation's most productive farmers. By the government's own estimates, nearly 7m of the country's 13m people will be without adequate food in a few months. The World Food Programme (WFP) which, with other donors, is already feeding 600,000 Zimbabweans, says that the food shortage is “virtually universal throughout the country” and predicts that, without a huge increase in imports or food aid, “severe malnutrition and death caused by hunger will occur in the coming months”.
White commercial farmers normally produce a third of Zimbabwe's cereals but, if evicted, may find it a bit difficult to continue feeding the nation. Many vow to carry on farming regardless. “How can the government tell me not to tend my wheat crop when so many people are going hungry?” said one, who preferred not to be named for fear of retribution. “As long as I'm on this farm I am going to feed my pigs and till my fields.” Two farmers went further, filing a lawsuit to have the evictions ruled unconstitutional. But others are winding up their operations and thinking of moving to Zambia, Mozambique, New Zealand or just about anywhere else that will have them. Black farmworkers and their dependants—2m people in all—face destitution.
Mr Mugabe says that his “fast-track land reform” will redistribute wealth from rich whites to poor blacks, from whose families the land was stolen in colonial times. At a recent conference in Rome, he called the programme “a firm launching pad for our fight against poverty and food insecurity”. But since the land is usually handed out to ruling- party loyalists, rather than skilled farmers, the result so far has been the opposite. Cereal production in Zimbabwe has fallen by 67% since 1999-2000, according to the WFP, and looks set to tumble further.
Mr Mugabe does not seem to care. After stealing a presidential election in March, his chief concern has been to punish those who dared to support his opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai. He suspects white farmers of having bankrolled Mr Tsvangirai's campaign, and is determined to ensure that they cannot do so again. He has also targeted critical journalists, ten of whom, including this correspondent, are facing criminal charges for articles they have written. Two prominent lawyers were briefly detained this month and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. As evidence, the police produced a semi-literate letter that the erudite accused allegedly wrote to British diplomats. The British high commissioner (ambassador) to Harare, Brian Donnelly, is accused of “masterminding” a plot to topple Mr Mugabe and is under 24-hour surveillance.
Mr Tsvangirai himself faces treason charges, which could carry the death penalty. And starving peasants who are suspected of having voted for him are denied food aid in areas where the ruling party controls its distribution.
Carolyn
I disagree.
Rhodesia had declared its independence from Britain under Ian Smith, before Mugabe won the Second Chimurenga in 1980.
A significant factor in Mugabe's win was international pressure largely orchestrated from the United States during the presidency of the peanut farmer.
The farmers had their bags packed in 1980and were resigned to going into exile when Mugabe made a speach imploring the farmers to remain and help him build a "new Zimbabwe". Unfortunately, the farmers believed him.
Mugabe has had 22 years in which to devise and implement a rational, fair land reform program, and to start training black commercial farmers and he has had an offer from the Brits to financially help him to buy out the farmers.
Instead, he did nothing until 2000 when he lost a constitutional referendum and came close to losing a parliamentary general election.
Then the commercial farmers became his scapegoat.
It is time for Africa to grow up, to stop blaming mommy and daddy for its problems and to accept adult responsibilities.
If Britain has any duty toward the people of Zimbabwe beyond that of the US, it is only because it is a member of the Commonwealth, as are Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
And as are a lot of African countries, including South Africa.
The same South Africa that characterized Mugabe's breathtaking theft of the 2002 presidential election as "legitimate by African standards"
I said "theft", actually "robbery with violence" would be a better term.
For all his weakness as an international leader, Jimmy Carter was, in my opinion, one of the most decent human beings to have occupied the Presidency in my lifetime. And you could tell that the guy, just because he was such a basically good person, also had faith that other people were basically good people too.
Unfortunately, he seemed to think that when a country wins it's freedom from colonial rule, it will naturally revert to democracy. I don't know, that's the only reason I can think of why he would have possible supported Mugabe, who was a thug during the revolution against Rhodesia, and just never changed.
It's time for the white farmers to recognize they are basically in the same position as the Jews in Europe in the late 1930s; time to pack your bags with whatever you can carry and escape from that madhouse while you still have your genes to pass on. Stop clinging so stubbornly to the idea that you were born there, as were your parents and grandparents, and have lived there all your life, this has nothing to do with what is right, it has everything to do with survival.
So go someplace else, start your lives anew, and let Zimbabwe collapse of it's own weight. And don't worry about the people of Zimbabwe. That's just that unfashionable colonialist "White Man's Burden" thinking. They are not your burden anymore.
Starvation is, after all, Mother Nature's way of admonishing people not to outbreed their food source. The "colonialists" turned the area into a fruitful breadbasket which is in the process of being intentionally destroyed by the "liberators", like a bunch of nihilistic punks on a rampage. Let them reap that which they sow.
The parallels are stunning, right down to the Sturm Abteilung and the Fuhrer Jungen
Mugabe is insane. Okay, so he's a racist who wants all the whites out of Zimbabwe. There are countless skilled black farm workers that might be able to do something, but he hands out farms to blacks that aren't farmers by trade. What does he think is going to happen? It would appear he doesn't give a damn, he's got the guns and the thugs and he won't starve.
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