WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2001-09-06 Time: 23:17:44 Posted By: Jan
September 06 2001 at 06:13PM
By Stella Mapenzauswa
Harare – At least a quarter of Zimbabwe’s white farmers have stopped work as
militants loyal to President Robert Mugabe stepped up their campaign of
intimidation, a farmers’ union said on Thursday.
In its latest update on farm invasions which began 18 months ago, the mainly
white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) painted a bleak picture of idle farms
and veld fires suspected to have been started by people who had occupied the
land illegally.
The report came on the day Commonwealth leaders met in Nigeria to discuss
Zimbabwe’s land-reform crisis, with the host nation saying Harare should stop
creating the impression that it is was fostering a “lack of respect for the
rule of law”.
‘They refused to let my workers go to work’
“At least one in four commercial farmers are unable to continue with normal
farming operations,” the CFU, which groups 4 500 farmers, said in its update
for the past five days.
In one incident near Norton, west of the capital Harare, the CFU said a
soldier threatened a farm owner with an automatic rifle while police looked
on.
Pro-government militants have seized hundreds of white-owned farms since
February 2000.
Mugabe says it is immoral for whites to own the bulk of Zimbabwe’s prime
farmland, and his government has targeted about 5 000 white-owned farms for
black resettlement.
Nine farmers have died and many farm workers have been assaulted in violence
that political analysists link to Mugabe’s campaign to retain power.
Thousands were also forced to leave their homes.
‘This is going to have a severe impact on food production’
The chaos has forced the closure of hundreds of commercial farms and
disrupted agricultural production, a key part of the Zimbabwe’s economy.
War veterans wielding axes and knives tried last Saturday to evict former
Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith from his farm in central Zimbabwe, but
police intervened.
“They refused to let my workers go to work. They had them all lined up,”
Smith, whose white minority government yielded to black rule in 1980 after
years of bush war, told South African radio on Thursday.
“When I came out I was threatened, but I was not prepared to accept this so I
simply walked away… I told them I was waiting for the police to arrive and
once they got this message they decided to beat a hasty retreat,” Smith said.
Smith has accused Mugabe, who led the country to independence, of stirring up
racial hatred against white farmers. Now 80, he is sharply critical of the
land reform programme.
The Financial Gazette newspaper on Thursday quoted CFU president Colin Cloete
as saying 900 commercial farms have stopped operations due to intimidation
and violence.
“No one is farming, not the commercial farmers or the settlers. This is going
to have a severe impact on food production,” he said.
In its update, the CFU estimated that 25 percent of the farming areas in the
southern districts of Matabeleland province had been burnt out.
“Fires continue to be set throughout the region and grazing is becoming
increasingly scarce for cattle,” it said.
On Wednesday Mugabe’s government accepted an offer of nearly one million
hectares of land from the commercial farmers, aimed at helping to break the
impasse over land reform.
But the government also appealed to former colonial master Britain to help
raise funds for land reforms, warning that without international finance “the
road will be rough and slow”. – Reuters