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-- Situation in Zimbabwe worsens...
Situation in Zimbabwe worsens...
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The crisis deepens When Robert Mugabe took the lands of white farmers five years ago to redistribute to sqatters and peasants (and many well-connected blacks as well), it caused an agricultural collapse that has repeatedly brought the country to the brink of famine. Now the ripples are spreading. Agricultural exports were the main source of foriegn exchange; now that Zimbabwe is a net importer, firms can't get foriegn currency to buy their imports, so manufacturing is collapsing as well: Manufacturing has slowed to a trickle, hamstrung by shortages of fuel and imported components. Businesses have been driven to barter and the black market, adding to the inflation. Appeals for government help are mostly fruitless. The government is all but broke. "The scarcities now are coming from manufacturers who can't deliver enough to retailers to fill their shelves," Mr. Robertson said in an interview in Harare, the capital. Initially the problem was that manufacturers could not cobble together enough supplies to make their products. "Now that there are more critical shortages in things like fuel," he said, "it's almost academic whether they can get the material, because they can't deliver the products anyway. The end result of the shortages is that prices are rising." It is depressing to look back at history and see how regularly the same nice-sounding idea--"let's take the land from the rich people who unjustly own it and give it to those who need it"--turns into tragedy for everyone. It's even more depressing to realise that despite the seeming predictibility of the result, lots of people want to do it anyway. |
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White farmers reject Mugabe plea to return By Toby Harnden , Chief Foreign Correspondent (Filed: 22/05/2005) White farmers evicted by Robert Mugabe's government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in "joint ventures" with those who brutalised them and stole their land. Gideon Gono, the governor of the country's central bank, suggested the idea last Thursday as a possible solution to Zimbabwe's economic crisis. A Zimbabwean woman surveys her devastated maize crop Greg McMurray, a tobacco farmer who fled Zimbabwe in 2001 and is now a grinder at a factory in Wiltshire, said: "These are empty promises. We have had all the assurances before and then they just turn around and change their minds. "I had them coming into my garden and threatening my fianc�e. Men with a bit of beer in their bellies told me, 'We'll come and burn you and your wife and your house'. "I would love to go back but the economy's in ruins. The place is a shambles. So many professional people have left. It would need a new regime before most of us would think seriously about going back." The prospect of a return for white farmers was dangled by Mr Gono, Mr Mugabe's leading economic policy maker, in a rambling three-hour statement in which he also announced a 31 per cent devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar. He said: "In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope in the country promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators as well as other new investors, so as to hasten the skills transfer cycle." During the evictions, some white farmers were murdered and many others were beaten and their families abused. The evictions prompted the collapse of the agriculture sector, the traditional engine of the economy. Those who took over the farms had no specialist knowledge - and most farmland now lies uncultivated. The machinery has been stolen, buildings have been plundered and the former workers are starving. Eddie Cross, the economics spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - which was heavily defeated by the ruling Zanu-PF party in recent parliamentary elections that were widely condemned as being rigged - said that Mr Gono was desperate. Mr Cross said: "He's got no power and he can't deliver. The reality is a thousand miles away from everything he says. He wants to regain some credibility with multilateral institutions. He has meetings with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank next month. This is about having something to say to those guys. The only salvation will be a change of government and a return to the rule of law. "Until then, no one's going to invest here or come back. Who on earth is going to do anything in agriculture when there is such dispute over land ownership? They'd be mad." While Mr Gono's words could be interpreted as an admission that the land seizure policy pursued by Mr Mugabe - which led to him becoming an international pariah - had failed, they offered little comfort to the dispossessed. One tobacco and cattle farmer, who was forced off his property by armed squatters in 2000, said: "He can't be serious. My house has been burnt down, my fields destroyed and he wants to invite me back? "There has to be a proper return to respect for property rights. We need facts, not words and a legal framework. No one's going to go back on the basis of this." The man, who asked to remain anonymous, is among 1,600 evicted landowners who have stayed in Zimbabwe and are attempting to get compensation. In 2000, there were 4,500 white farmers. Now only 400 remain on parts of their farms, many having made deals with Mugabe's regime. Thousands of others lost everything and have had to seek help to set themselves up in ventures outside Zimbabwe. Colin Ransome, of the Zimbabwe Farmers Trust Fund, a Scottish-registered charity, said: "A lot of those who settled in Britain have young families and new jobs. Everyone is very wary. Iron-clad assurances would be needed." |
Did you know that Robert Mugabe is the first Yorkshire man to become President of a foreign country? But he had to spell his surname backwards so he could fit in!
Ba Bum!
Oh dear I can see this being a hard one to explain.....
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