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Several farmers forcibly removed from their property six years ago with the connivance of Dictator President Robert Mugabe were recently able to pay a visit to their old homesteads. The farms that formerly earned the lion’s share of Zimbabwe’s foreign exchange have been allowed to fall into disarray. This is what one farmer saw.
[I]t was desolate, unkempt. No farming appeared to have taken place on the 2,000 once-productive acres since they were forced off. The homestead was still locked up, no one had moved in.The only mysterious change was why, with all that land, the tennis court had been dug up for a scruffy vegetable garden. Many of the farm workers were still there.
Farm workers generally supported the armed mobs who seized properties from their rightful owners. Now, however, they have no work. This particular farm has been given to a big-city policeman who visits his country estate only infrequently.
Previous related post: Mugabe to white farmers: No hard feelings
[...] Farms seized from white Zimbabweans lie in ruins [...]
[...] Abp Ncube told a London audience that Zimbabwe has the world’s highest AIDS rate, the world’s lowest life expectancy, and that the country’s overall death rate is higher than in Darfur or Iraq. The economy suffers from the fastest rate of decline and the highest inflation on the planet. Starvation, corruption, and violence are endemic. [...]
[...] Farms seized from white Zimbabweans lie in ruins [...]
[...] So, Mugabe’s ruination of Zimbabwe’s agricultural industry by seizing hugely productive white-owned farms that now lie wasted has nothing to do with that. [...]
[...] The most obvious reason for that interpretation is that the one issue on which the bishops express a political opinion is Zimbabwe’s anemic economy, for which the letter identifies only one cause: economic sanctions imposed by foreign nations. Mugabe’s disastrous policy of expropriating productive white-owned farms is not mentioned, nor the government’s price controls and subsidies that discourage productive economic activity, nor the central bank’s printing of vast quantities of currency fueling the world’s highest inflation rate. The bishops, like Robert Mugabe, blame the economic meltdown solely on foreigners. [...]
[...] Farms seized from white Zimbabweans lie in ruins [...]
[...] Can Zimbabwe’s economy get any worse? Just watch By StatGuy Zimbabwe’s economy nose-dived after President Robert Mugabe sanctioned brutal and illegal confiscation of white-owned farms for redistribution to cronies. The new proprietors proved abysmal failures as farmers, and Zimbabwe was quickly transformed from the bread basket of southern Africa into a basket case. The people were soon forced to rely on foreign charity for food. The economic free-fall into hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and widespread poverty is largely attributable to the land seizures. [...]
[...] Price controls: A scheme to seize Zimbabwe’s private sector? By StatGuy Mugabe’s threat to nationalise "profiteering" firms supports the theory that the price reduction campaign is merely a means to take over the country’s private business sector in the same way that productive farms were seized and urban poor were driven out. THE current government drive against soaring prices is the same template of harassment, bullying and threats the State unleashed against commercial farmers in 2000 under the guise of land reform. [...]