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: 2002-01-05 Time: 22:43:07 Posted By: Jan
[Note: It is entirely possible that Mugabe wants to use the threat of starvation as a way of winnning votes. In other words, vote for me and I’ll let you have food. Don’t vote for me and you’ll die. Jan Lamprecht]
New censorship laws expected to be passed this week don’t deter one
woman’s mission to help her country.
By Nicole Itano (124)| Special to The Christian Science Monitor
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Cathy Buckle loves her country, even if
sometimes it seems not to love her.
In the past two years, as government -sponsored lawlessness has
thrown Zimbabwe into turmoil, her sheep, cattle, and lumber farm has been seized and occupied by landless squatters – her family terrorized, and her friends harassed, tortured, even killed. But she is not leaving.
Despite her white skin, she is a Zimbabwean and knows no other home.
“I do not consider leaving and will not do so until there is no hope
at all. I belong here, was born here, and have a role to play in this
country,” she says.
For almost two years, Mrs. Buckle has led a solitary campaign from
her computer to let the world know about the growing instability in Zimbabwe. In a weekly e-mail that now reaches tens of thousands of people and is reprinted widely around the world, she has chronicled the campaign of terror unleashed by Zimbabwe’s ruling party, the ZANU-PF, against white
farmers, their workers, and supporters of the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change. Although a long-awaited presidential election is slated
for March, few expect that it will be fair.
The Zimbabwean government has also cracked down on the press,
expelling several foreign journalists and denying visas to others. Mrs.
Buckle’s weekly e-mails – always signed “Love, Cathy” – provide some of
the most intimate pictures of a country that has gone from one of Southern
Africa’s great success stories to a starving and impoverished nation
embroiled in political violence.
Because of her dedication to letting the world know about the
situation in Zimbabwe – her phone monitored and a harsh new censorship law
expected to pass through the legislature this week – Mrs. Buckle agreed to
speak to the Monitor by e-mail.
The daughter of a prominent lawyer who was involved in Zimbabwe’s
fight for independence from England during the 1970s, Buckle began her
weekly e-mails shortly after her farm, purchased a decade after Zimbabwe
won independence, was invaded in March of 2000. The invaders were men and
women who claimed to be veterans of the independence war. They, said they
were reclaiming land stolen from them by white colonialists.
About 4,500 farms, including some owned by blacks who have spoken
out against the government, have been targeted for redistribution. Buckle’s farm, though not on the official list, was among the first of about 1,700 farms to be invaded.
For seven months, as dozens of “war vets” squatted on one of the
main grazing fields of her small, arid 1,000-acre farm – slaughtering her livestock and chopping down the gum trees she had patiently raised for lumber – Buckle shared her story with a growing number of readers inside and outside of Zimbabwe.
The war vets severely burned her storekeeper on the face with a hot
metal pipe because she could not find her ZANU-PF membership card. They
forced her other workers to attend brutal political reeducation sessions.
Her 8-year-old son, more sensitive to the situation than she had realized,
was plagued with nightmares.
Still, in some ways, she was lucky. Nationally, since the beginning
of the violence, nine farmers and 39 farm-workers have been killed.
Trevor Ncube, publisher and chief executive of two of Zimbabwe’s
independent newspapers, said the content of Buckle’s dispatches shocked
even urban Zimbabweans.
“The way she wrote it, so simplistically, just telling the story of
her life and how she was feeling during the invasions. It was what people
needed as a window into what was going on,” said Mr. Ncube, who wrote the
foreword to “African Tears,” Buckle’s recently released book about the
invasion of her farm, after following her story through her e-mails.
Finally, when her family could no longer live with the terror, they
packed up and moved to a house in the nearby town of Marondera, about 60
miles east of Harare.
From there, Buckle has continued her weekly e-mails, corresponds
regularly with hundreds of people who have read her story, and is in the
process of writing a second book, based on interviews with farmers, about
the invasions.
More than a year after her family was forced off the farm, Buckle
says her country is slowly heading toward starvation and anarchy. Political violence is increasing as the March election nears and – with much of the country’s farmland occupied and the government blocking international food aid, there is little to eat.
“[Last week] in Marondera, there is no sugar, no cooking oil, no
laundry soap. Prior to that, no chicken, bread, margarine, flour, or
milk,” she says. “The country is facing mass starvation – there is no
doubt of it.”
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Copyright 2001 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.