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The
End Game 17th June 2002 It has become abundantly clear to me in the last few weeks that we are now in "The End Game" in Zimbabwe. The recent Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) survey shows that nearly one third of all white owned title deeds are now closed down completely, and that there is another quarter of all title deeds partially closed down. The number increases on a daily basis. Our young people are leaving and our old people, many of whom have not been allowed to farm for a year or more, are using up their savings and their pension monies and will soon be in a position where they cannot recover financially. A huge resource of expertise is rapidly flowing out from the country. As time goes by there are more farm closures, more illegal evictions, more cattle and game being hamstrung or snared and slaughtered, more farmers heading to other countries and other continents. The wanton destruction and lootings seems to not even get reported any longer, but it runs into around a trillion dollars or US$18 billion according to Eddie Cross, a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) economic advisor, when all things are considered since the farm invasions began in February 2000. This is three times Zimbabwe's annual G.D.P and US$3.4 billion more than the entire African continent received in foreign aid last year. The CFU, since the 21st March 2002, has been tirelessly pursuing dialogue. The Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative was formed and agreed upon by all parties concerned about a year ago. Meanwhile, almost all the remaining white owned farms have been listed for compulsory acquisition. Our farms have continued to be pegged, and settlers have continued to be allocated lands that we were busy trying to farm. The latest spate of the "landless" onto our farms has included the ZANU (PF) faithful's that we are currently in dialogue with. In many cases they are commandeering our equipment, moving us out of our homes, and denying us everything that has been built up over many years. Due to the part-time nature and the inexperience of these "new farmers" they are doomed to fail. Thousands of hectares of irrigation schemes currently lie idle. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost and millions of people are now going to starve. The latest stage in this "controlled revolution", passed while the dialogue goes on, is the enacting of a new law. This states that after receiving an arbitrary bit of paper signed by the Minister of Agriculture, we have 45 days to completely wind down our operations and disperse all our livestock. For 60% of white farmers and our workers it will become illegal for us to even feed our animals or water our Wheat after the 24th June 2002. From the 8th August 2002 it will become illegal for us and our workers to live in our houses. The punishment for these offences is Z$20 000.00 fine or two years imprisonment or both. Given the fact that more than 20% of the population of Zimbabwe live on white owned farms and that 60% (and the number is growing every day) of these have received these arbitrary bits of paper, there are now in excess of 1 million people that stand to lose their homes and their livelihoods at the stroke of a pen. Parliament heard the argument, but ZANU (PF) drove it through and the very people that we have been in dialogue with knowingly voted to stop production, and to turf us out of our homes. On Sunday 2nd June 2002, Charles Anderson went back to his house with his family after being away for an hour. The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture had managed to get this farm allocated to himself, and Charles Anderson was busy having to pack up. He found that his house had been broken into, and when he went inside was shot in the head at close range by two men waiting for him with a loaded AK47 (which I understand has been traced back to the Minister of Home Affairs' body guard). He died on the spot. I think everyone will agree that dialogue has been tried, and that dialogue has completely failed in providing an enabling environment for Zimbabwe to prosper. The Commercial Farmers' Union has tried it, the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association has tried it, The South Africans have tried it, and the other SADC neighbouring states have also tried it. The
Commonwealth, the European Union, and the United States have had a go, and
various agreements have been brokered like the one in Abuja which was
disregarded in all it's aspects as though it had never been written. Our country
now faces starvation and it appears that the internationals are wanting to come
in to bail us out. This is good and right, but some very firm conditions clearly
need to be set with some very tough implications if the "lawlessness"
and "controlled revolution" is allowed to continue. By 1933 his regime was ready to collapse. (It was only due to the unlikely combination of two events outside his borders that he managed to remain in power. First the United States of America suddenly decided to recognize his regime as legitimate because of some false promises that he made, and second Adolf Hitler came into power and Stalin was able to rally the people against a common enemy). Our leaders spent years learning the ideology of communism, and it is not surprising that the very same methods that were used to completely control the population in Russia are currently being used today in Zimbabwe. The strategy is surely to remove, in as controlled a manner as possible, every single white farmer from his land. They wish to do this because we are an instrumental part of the eyes and ears seeing and hearing and reporting the horrors taking place on the ground. They wish to do it quietly, but if it takes the odd murder to help it on it's way, murders happen. The plan is being executed with insidious cunning. In a similar way to the torturer's relationship to their victim, so we are led by the nose. One torturer beats us and then when we cannot take any more the other torturer comes in and is sweet and nice, and so the victim is broken down. In the very same way we have the one torturer taking our farms and stopping our incomes, and driving us and our workers out of our homes and killing our friends, and the other torturer talking sweetly to us and the international community and making us think that we are heading for a breakthrough in our dialogue. We are confused and terrified and unable to move forward with the resoluteness that is required to sort the situation out. The
strategy of the party is quite clearly to attain totalitarian control through
fear and confusion. If the world stands by and rewards this "ethnic
cleansing" "final solution" strategy by giving Africa the US$64
billion in development aid, they will be guilty of being party to the
perpetuation of what the International Institute for Strategic Studies has
described as "state terrorism". In the
Mail & Guardian S.A. of the 31st May 2002 Dr. Greg Mills, who is the
national director of a South African Institute of International Affairs, wrote
" There are a range of choices between invasion and quiet diplomacy:
strongly worded demarches; tough presidential statements; a more open
cultivation of ties with the MDC and its leadership; working more closely with
those international partners tougher on Zimbabwe (such as the United States);
motivating for Zimbabwe's suspension form the Southern African Development
Community; tighter border controls; initiating public debate on sanctions;
military manoeuvres near the border; targeted sanctions on Zanu PF's elite,
including a ban on air flights and a freeze of personal assets; and finally oil
and electricity sanctions.....(the solution) entails the legitimate use of
pressure on an increasingly out-of-control government that is apparently immune
to carrots and sweet-talking". I would add to this the possibility of a
peace keeping force being deployed in Zimbabwe, to ensure that the farmers and
their work force who are trying to do their duty in producing food for the
starving are Is the G8
and the U.N and the British Government and the rest going to stand by as they
did in Zimbabwe in the 1980's when the Catholic Bishops exposed "the
maiming and death of hundreds and hundreds of innocent people", in
"wanton killings, wounding, beatings, burnings and raping" by the
army? In this Gukurahundi, in a move that was bound to lead to widespread
starvation, the Government closed all stores; halted all food deliveries to the
area including drought relief; and enforced a blanket curfew, restricting all
movement in and out of curfew zones. At that
time Mugabe had this to say to a Matabele audience: "Don't cry if your
relatives get killed....we do not differentiate who we fight". Up to 20 000
men, women, children and babies were murdered by 15 000 troops and police. An article written by Ben Freeth. |