Tuesday, December 2, 2008

2nd December 2008

“Mugabe's government has seized thousands of white-owned farms and redistributed the land to poor blacks”

This is a quotation from one of the world’s most respected news agencies, Reuters, in a document filed on Saturday the 28th November while quoting on a SADC Tribunal decision in support of 75 white farmers who challenged the validity of their land seizures. The italics are mine.

When is the real world going to wake up? The land has NOT been redistributed to poor blacks. The majority of the land has been looted by ZANU PF politicians, senior military, policemen and civil servants and now, having looted what they can including farmhouses, tractors and other agricultural implements, the land is either lying idle or if the farmhouse is still in any way intact, being used as a ‘weekend retreat’ for the new (very idle) rich.

On a journey from Harare to Chirundu late last month the only evidence of crop growing came from one large commercial farm near Karoi. Nearer Harare there are a few huts scattered about and a few attempts at land preparation done obviously by hand or at best, by ox drawn plough that will feed the crop grower for six months but nobody else.

Where once there were commercial farmers growing maize, tobacco, cotton, groundnuts, cattle and pigs, now there is NOTHING.

And yet, ZANU PF, as quoted by Didymus Mutasa, wants more land! It’s not the land they want, believe me.

No comments: