Posted on 03/21/2017 8:36:51 AM PDT by grundle
In 2000 Robert Mugabe shocked the world when he made dramatic changes to land ownership laws in Zimbabwe which resulted in thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers being forced to give up their farms and many to leave the country.
Those white farmers owned 70% of the most arable land in the country which they had inherited from a colonial past built on racial hierarchy.
But now the tide is shifting again. Mugabe’s people have hinted strongly, for the first time, that farmers can return–at least some of them. This will be some 15 years after the Zimbabwe government began seizing their land.
A few selected white farmers will be granted security of tenure on farms regarded to be ‘of strategic economic importance.’ Meanwhile black beneficiaries are expected to start paying a small rental fee per acre that will be used in part to compensate the more than 4,000 evicted white farmers according to the country’s minister of lands, Douglas Mombeshora.
Last year, BBC reported Mugabe told an audience, “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go.” It is the first time that the Zimbabwe government has publicly hinted on the failure of its unsustainable land policy.
The country that was once dubbed “the breadbasket of the region” has suffered an estimated $12 billion in lost agriculture production since the land occupations took place and has had to rely on donor handouts and food imports from neighboring countries. At least 1.8 million tonnes of the staple grain, maize, is required annually to feed the nation.
Zimbabwe’s transformation from exporter to importer of food is blamed by some analysts on the land reform program, which saw white commercial farmers lose farms to landless blacks who are said to lack the skills to farm or capital. Agriculture used to contribute some 40% of the country’s foreign currency earnings through exports.
What has been Zimbabwe’s loss, has been a gain for neighboring Zambia, where some of these farmers moved bringing with them decades of expertise for farming similar arable land.
British failure
And even though the Lancaster House agreement between the British government and the Zimbabweans had provisions for land redistribution and guaranteed compensation for white farmers, when the time came the British and other countries, including the United States, did not fulfill their part of the deal to fund the program.
It didn’t help that Zimbabwe’s government had no land distribution systems in place which made the aftermath a free-for-all. Politicians, senior members of the security forces, judges, civil servants and war-veterans picked their share. Most of them had no prior farming experience or capital.
Today, fewer than 300 white farmers remain on portions of their original land holdings in Zimbabwe and many of the seized farms lie fallow prompting the slow changes in attitude and policy.
Mugabe’s hard stance was more a reaction to growing political opposition and waning voter support. He blamed the white farmers for betraying his benevolence and threatening his power base. He declared, “If white settlers just took the land from us without paying for it we can, in a similar way, just take it from them without paying for it, or entertaining any ideas of legality or constitutionality.”
For Mugabe the land occupations had little to do with righting a wrong but much about exerting power and force. He has been in power since 1980 and one of the longest ruling presidents in Africa. It was therefore no surprise that the rule of law was suspended. Mobs of self styled war veterans and youth militia had carte blanche. There was violence and terror. Several white farmers and their black workers were killed, beaten or chased away and their properties taken over.
The chaos had adverse effects on the economy, food production, and civil rights. One of Africa’s strongest economies shrank to half the size it had been in 1980. Soon record hyperinflation would render supermarket shelves bare and the national currency worthless. 10% of the population fled to neighbouring countries in penury, hunger and fear.
After many years of operating as a pariah state, Zimbabwe is desperate to restore its pride and reintegrate into the international community. However, foreign businesses are still reluctant to invest in the country because of policy uncertainty and politicized property rights.
Mugabe has some nerve asking these farmers to come back, after he threatened to kill them and their families if they didn't leave.
I’ll just bet there were a couple of White Farmers who took him up on the offer. Some farmers love that lifestyle, and consider any chance to resume their work is bigger than Mugabe. The smarter ones probably went to other areas of Africa. You cannot trust Mugabe.
I can’t imagine any white farmers, who escaped with their lives, would return to a country ruled by a monster who wanted them dead, and who confiscated their property in the first place.
Let Mugabe and his country suffer what they have brought on themselves.
Why is this guy still breathing?..................
They went to Zambia, which has become an exporter of food...............
Fool me once.................
I feel bad for the formerly Zimbabwean farmers who were robbed 17 years ago. As for those who return, they are fools and deserve what they get. If Mugabe wants Zimbabwe to eat, he needs to send his farmers elsewhere to learn how to grow food and then let the people he chose to keep in his country grow that food. Anyone who is not Zimbabwean (which does not include those chased out when their land was stolen) but still gets involved there is a special kind of stupid.
Simple. Farm grabbin Bob wants them to rebuild the farms so he can take them again.
Mugabe’s genocide: The images of despair that reveal the full horror of Zimbabwe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1099467/Mugabes-genocide-The-images-despair-reveal-horror-Zimbabwe.html
Zimbabwe white farmers must fight or flee
Thousands of Zimbabwe’s white farmers must decide by midnight tonight whether to fight President Robert Mugabe’s government and risk jail or to flee lands they have farmed for generations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-132504/Zimbabwe-white-farmers-fight-flee.html
The farmers should have salted the land when they left and told him to go pound sand.
It is one of the most remarkable stories of Africa. Here was a land that could have feed the entire continent, and if you’d left them alone....there would be a thriving economy, with everyone on the plus-side.
Google image - "Mugabe fall" - It is a hoot!
The white farmers the blacks killed would like a re-do.
Without a foreign armed force to protect any farmers willing to return, fuggeddaboutit!
There was a video on YouTube showing a few from SA that went to Mozambique.
He did more than threaten. Many white farmers were killed by the marauding gangs of "veterans".
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
They were against apartheid. So they switched to the same thing buy blacks in charge. The world is going to have to admit one day that Sherman was right.
Ya Know, Senator Fineswine and Congresswoman Pelosi are BOTH FARMERS!! So Is Bruce Springsteen and BonJovi. Can we send them to Help??
The other part of the story, after 17 years they could not train enough natives to operate a farm. Not just planting
and harvesting but managing resources and so forth.
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