Saturday, October 06, 2007
Suspend food aid to Zimbabwe
Not for the first time, Zimbabwe is prosecuting farmers for producing food because of the color of their skin:
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.
The case in Chegutu district, 70 miles southwest of Harare, exposes the perversity of President Robert Mugabe's policies. Commerical agriculture was the mainstay of the economy in the days when Zimbabwe was a food exporter.
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.
But none of that has stopped the Zanu-PF regime.
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 colonial-era Chegutu courtroom was packed by the so-called "war veterans" who are Mr Mugabe's staunch supporters, and "beneficiaries" who stand to be given the properties should the 10 be convicted.
Among them are Edna Madzongwe, the speaker of parliament, and Nathan Shamuyarira, a former information minister and one of President Robert Mugabe's closest aides.
The farmers, aged from 38 to 75, produce a variety of food from chickens to oranges and have already given two-thirds of their farms to the government for resettlement. All but one still work their remaining land intensively and say they intend to try to continue.
You have to hunt around to find news like this, because it does not really fit the "narrative." Imagine the global uproar if a majority-white government prosecuted black farmers for growing food. The Western left, which long promoted Robert Mugabe as a hero (awarding him honorary degrees and such), never realized that these policies were the logical extension of Robert Mugabe's program from the very beginning. Besides, the chattering classes expect uncivilized behavior from black African leaders, so the same people who rose in a global campaign against white African oppression regard black African oppression as just another manifestation of cultural diversity.
Meanwhile, consider the no doubt unintended consequences of Western altruism. The World Food Programme is an agency of the United Nations. It is providing food to a country that is demonstrably capable of feeding itself but which has chosen not to so that it can prosecute people because of the color of their skin. In so doing, the United Nations is protecting Robert Mugabe's government from the consequences of its own actions.
The United Nations should be arming Zimbabweans, not feeding them.
4 Comments:
By 
Fritz, at
Sat Oct 06, 07:32:00 PM:
Zimbabwe has to be the last or 2nd to last country I'd want to live in, ever. Mugabe and his enablers...words fail me.
By 
, at
Sun Oct 07, 12:57:00 AM:
Robert Muggabee sounds like a liberal and a tyrants so why isnt that worthless UN doing anything about him?
By Simon Kenton, at
Sun Oct 07, 10:57:00 AM:
Should be arming them? You mean, arming ... the people? They are in the midst of one of their perpetual attempts to 'control the trade in small arms,' which of course means states assuring that other states, no matter how corrupt, control the means of resistance and citizens have only the choice to submit.
I used to be one of the "it may have its problems, but its all we've got types." I thought this position humane, intellectual, and true. No more. Insanity is....
By Thom Jefferson, at
Sat Oct 20, 10:48:00 AM:
Prof Watson is being castigated now due to his views on race and intelligence, and rightly so the black man is just as smart as the white farmers. Leave the smart blacks alone to sole their own problems, they don't need help they're clever fucks...
