Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land — in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months ...
Since 2000, when the government began seizing white-owned farms, many of them violently, the agricultural sector has collapsed and the economy has gone into freefall, with inflation now at 6,600 per cent, the highest in the world.
The World Food Programme estimates that it will be feeding 4.1 million Zimbabweans, one third of the population, by the end of the year.
Now the Chegutu group is charged with violating the Consequential Provisions Act, which gave the few hundred remaining white farmers a final deadline of Sep 30 to leave their land and homes.
The farmers ... have already given two-thirds of their farms to the government for resettlement ... They pleaded not guilty and face up to two years in prison if convicted ...
Didymus Mutasa, the lands minister, has said that the few hundred remaining white farmers will be forced out, one way or another.
"The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites," he said recently. "Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms."
In fact many farms were given to members of the government and their cronies, and one minister has admitted that the new farmers have failed in their cultivation efforts.
Outside the court, the scruffy shops of Chegutu were empty of basic foods, and street vendors sold small, sour oranges.
They came from a once-prolific citrus farm in the district now devastated after it was seized by Bright Matonga, the deputy information minister, earlier this year.
So the situation in Zimbabwe is this: the last remaining whites are being driven from their farms, the land is being redistributed to government cronies, leaving a third of the population dependent on international charity.
Zimbabwe has descended to the depths in a single generation and South Africa, which is plagued now by violent crime, corruption and attacks on white farmers, isn't far behind.
The lesson is that you can't take your security, your prosperity or even your civilisation for granted. We don't live in the kind of world in which you can hand over power and expect to be treated justly.
These are the fruits of softheaded Western liberalism: misguided good intentions.
ReplyDeleteIsolating Rhodesia was about as worthy as invading Iraq.
Abject disaster in both cases...
Mugabe was right by taking back the land. God gave the land in Africa to Africans, not Europeans. I find your article to be very racist and this is not surprising since the Australian government is doing everything it can to bring about change in Zimbabwe. However, Australia's efforts will be a waste because black people worldwide support Mugabe. Eventually, blacks will retake land in South Africa, Namibia.
ReplyDeleteI like LA's comparison of the current situation in Zimbabwe to Atlas Shrugged.
ReplyDeleteMugabe has taken everything from the productive (white and black) and given it to the corrupt and incompetent. The results are just about what any sane person would predict.
The main difference is that in Atlas Shrugged the productive members of society who left were always planning to return. Who'd be crazy enough to go back to Zimbabwe?
As for African land for Africans as suggested in the previous post; maybe when the largest, most fertile continent on Earth is capable of feeding itself I'll take you seriously. As long as charity workers keep stopping me at the local Westfield to try to guilt-trip me into paying to feed Africa, you might want to be a little more polite to your benefactors.
To anonymous (9/10 3:25):
ReplyDeleteYou're helping to prove my point.
Liberal politicians in Australia, like Malcolm Fraser, believed that whites could hand over power in Zimbabwe without loss to themselves as a group or to the country in general. They believed that all that would happen would be a move toward liberal goals of freedom and equality.
They were wrong. The more realistic perspective was that whites would be attacked and dispossessed and that governance in Zimbabwe would move toward African norms.
You are another voice reminding us of the likelihood of the same result in South Africa and Namibia.
This same liberal viewpoint is being applied not only to countries in Africa with black majorities, but to countries elsewhere with white majorities.
There are a host of liberals who demand that whites give up their majority status in Australia, the US and even in Europe itself, as an act of political morality.
They don't understand, or are willing to blind themselves to, the severe consequences of following such a policy.
There are a host of liberals who demand that whites give up their majority status in Australia, the US and even in Europe itself, as an act of political morality.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope that South Africa falls apart fast enough, hard enough, so that the lesson is learned before that happens.
Greetings from the Navajo Nation, Arizona, USA!
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to let you guys know that I have very much enjoyed reading Mark Richardson's essays on the Conservative Central web site.
Reading those essays has really opened up my eyes to what liberal and conservative philosophies are, and that is exactly what I hoped for.
While I have always considered myself conservative, for some time now I have wanted to find out why liberals think the way they do: and now I know. But is still baffles my mind that seemingly intelligent, educated people can buy into liberal beliefs.
I am not quite finished reading all of the articles on CC yet, so I want to get back to it.
Keep up the good work Down Under! (-:
Take care and God bless.
Todd
Toddman, thanks.
ReplyDelete