Posted on 07/03/2010 7:47:17 AM PDT by george76
ZIMBABWE'S coffee production has hit a record low since Independence following the chaotic land reform exercise that reduced coffee growing estates to four from 120.
Statistics gathered after a high level coffee stakeholder conference held last week in Mutare show that organic coffee production mostly in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands pl-unged to 300 tonnes in 2010 from a peak production of 15 000 tonnes in 1990 when farmers raked in US$37,5 million from sales.
Production has been in freefall for the past 10 years, signalling a threat to the livelihood of both commercial and communal farmers ...
Today the coffee sector is moribund, with 300 tonnes produced in 2010...
Most of the coffee growing estates were taken over during the land reform exercise. Until we restore our record on property rights, production will continue to be on the decline. We now have four estates from 120
(Excerpt) Read more at allafrica.com ...
All part of the plan to drive this country to it’s knees.
Another Socialized state success story!
In this case Socialism was a means to an end: Totalitarianism.
But, then again Socialism is the natural gateway to Totalitarianism.
As soon as the State is more important than the individual its just a matter of time.
The country of Rhodesia had a booming agricultural economy and was known as the breadbasket of the African continent, exporting a huge percentage of their products every year.
As Zimbabwe, under Mugabe’s despotism, the murderous rampage against the European farm owners continued unabated until the country has devolved into a third world cesspool. Starvation normal, inflation astounding, crime rampant.
But, hey! At least those white devils are dead or gone! Much better.
Posters are saying the people are lazy, and not working. I’m not sure that’s the case. The article says they switched to growing maize/corn, and not coffee. They may need to eat, and have gone from an exportable cash crop to sustenance, subsistence farming. Really don’t have enough info to tell, but there certainly are horror stories coming out of there.
Gee, so Aesop’s tale of the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg is actually based in fact? Who would have guessed?
With Zimbabwe, it is the reverse. Inflation increases at an insane daily percentage, crop production of all sorts reduces monthly on an insane percentage, products disappear from shop shelves on a regular basis - yet they are still there. Same guys 'running' the country, same folks starving.
How is it possible? What part of the story are we not being given? How does Kathy Buckle escape imprisonment? How does she feed herself? How does the country survive - if it does? (And when will the mess visit our shores?)
The blacks took over in the 1980s, renamed the country Zimbabwe, and that could have been fine; in fact, you could argue that that was much more fair and democratic. The white who remained, while a minority, were promised to be well treated and asked to be part of the new nation; most wholeheartedly agreed and simply went on with things as farmers do, planting and harvesting according to the seasons.
However, the Mugabe regime fought its way to power via demagoguery against the whites, and an appeal to tribalism, hatred, and socialism. In the past 15 years they have forcibly kicked white farmers off their land, taking everything they had without compensation, in many case even their lives. Hundreds were arrested for resisting, many even murdered.
Their farms were given over to “collectives” or communal farms made up of native blacks, many who had been farm laborers, but without any planning or management skills. Especially important to the Mugabe regime was rewarding the best farms and lands to political supporters and thugs who did the most vicious things in order to get the white farmers out of Zimbabwe. So now they are gone and these cornucopia farms are desolate, unproductive wastelands, that have been raped and pillaged by their new thug owners.
It is abject racism and inhumanity as evil as that which was ever done by any colonial power to natives anywhere, but hardly attracts notice from the UN or the global left wing media. Ho hum, they're getting what they deserve, some have even said. So I guess it's OK to fight injustice with injustice?
The world we live in truly sucks, and the modern powers-that-be are as bad as anything they've railed about.
Dr. Bogus - in addition to what others have said, the “land reform” of the Mugabe regime awarded the previously white owned farms to his “war veterans”, a euphemism for bands of native thugs who simply drove the farm owners out through murder, mayhem, or intimidation. Once they had the farm, however, they did not have the skills needed to run it, and the farms fell into ruin.
The roots of this outrage can be found in simple racism, cronyism, and the worst kind of forced redistribution of wealth and land. But since it was black on white violence, most of the world’s press simply pretended it didn’t exist.
But the results are tragic and undeniable. There used to be a website called “Bloody Africa” years ago, that documented the horrors (rape, torture, murder) that the owners of the farms were subjected to by Mugabe’s “war veterans.” As expected, the local police were instructed to ignore these outrages. The pictures on the this site were horribly graphic, but told the story well.
And now the whole country is in ruins. But Mugabe remains in power, directing extreme violence against those would challenge his power. Hardly the model of a successful transition.
The Ian Smith regime that was the last white minority government in Rhodesia fought for its survival brutally. Many, many black natives were oppressed, tortured and killed. Still, this regime fought against groups that ran the spectrum from true patriots to especially evil thugs. The thugs were sponsored and supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the various communist governments that these two powers had set up in Angola and Mozambique in the late 1970s (thank you Jimmy Carter!).
The Leftist news coverage of events in Africa from the end of WWII followed a meme that any overthrow of a colonial power, or even native whites themselves (as in South Africa, the Boer settlers were there BEFORE the Bantu tribes which migrated down in the 1700-1900s) is good and noble. Call it the Ghandi-zation of the Third World. Whether that colonial government was good and fair to the people, and whether the people prospered under it was simply not a thought, rather, they must be overthrown as all colonial power was/is fascist, oppressive, and evil. White is evil. So the Smith regime was Nazi Germany, and the various black factions fighting it was George Washington and his soldiers crossing the Delaware.
The Smith regime lost not because of this, but because they WERE NOT this! They succumbed to the world-wide pressure and condemnation because they had a conscience and could not consciously be brutal enough to keep their power.
Sadly, the most brutal of the confederates who fought against them had and has no such compunctions! Mugabe IS the brutal thug that the global driveby media tried to make Ian Smith. Sure, Smith was wrong, but in the end he gave up rather than putting the native Zimbabweans through Nazi Gotterdamerung and extermination camps.
Mugabe has no such respect for whites. And lets not forget that once the Smith regime gave up, Mugabe fought viciously and brutally against his black compatriots in order to place himself in absolute power. The latest elections, which Mugabe lost, were simply stolen and the winning party was once again brutally oppressed. Here are black on black atrocities the Leftist press simply will not cover.
“How does Kathy Buckle escape imprisonment? How does she feed herself?”
I don’t follow her story closely at all, but I am curious as to how she gets by without anything bad happening to her.
“Zimbabwe’s story is the exact opposite of those ‘fuel saver’ devices you see advertised which promise “30% improvement in mpg.” You know it cannot be true because if you bought 3 or 4 of them you would be getting 100 mpg”
Actually it’s worse, you’d be left with a gallon for every 3 you used; soon your tank would spill over...
Unfortunately, our own goose is in its death throes, too. Or damned close.
Socialistic systems are notorious for cultivating the lazy, corrupt and incompetent. That's all the info you need to know.
So much in this world could be set right with but a single box of rifle cartridges.
I know about all the horror stories. I follow all the threads here, and in the news about that country. That’s why I mentioned “the Horror stories” in my last sentence.
But,,, the article clearly states that the farms are now growing “maize” instead of coffee. That may be because of the starvation going on there. Can’t eat coffee beans, but you can stay alive eating corn. Sure, you can sell the coffee beans, but with their inflation running rampant, how much can you buy with the devalued currency?
Rhodesia, a lesson of the need for aggressive parasite control.
I realize that many people (including some here) will take racial implications from the current course of events...but in fact events in Zimbabwe are closely paralleling what happened in Russia, and would happen in ANY country that collectivizes itself.
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