A Start in Zimbabwe

It's a start, but it's an important one. Robert Mugabe has finally admitted that his land-grab policy in Zimbabwe is a failure. The question is, what will he do next?

Like most Americans, I never paid any attention to Zimbabwe, beyond speculating what its name used to be before it was one of the "Z" named countries.

As I've written before, I started taking my turn writing The Bread back in '96. Since it's an email devotional (that we recently added to the blogosphere), our responses came via email as well. I was thrilled to get replies from email addresses in South Africa and Australia. Once, though, I got an email from Trish, whose address ended with .zw, so I asked where she was from. Zimbabwe. From that moment on, Zimbabwe has been on my radar. I notice the news articles coming from there, and I think of Trish. I don't know anything about her, whether she's black or white, except that she's a Christian and she has access to email. When I started hearing about Mugabe's land grab, I feared for Trish's safety--not because I thought she was a farmer, but because of the violence directed at whites in general.

Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, is a madman, the typical "strongman" leader of a formerly prosperous country. Before the land grab, Zimbabwe's farms were the bread basket of sub-Saharan Africa. They produced enough grain to feed not only their own people but a large proportion of other African nations. Mugabe liked the wealth the farms brought to his nation. But he didn't like the fact that the majority of these farms were white-owned. He didn't think it was fair that whites owned the farms and blacks weren't reaping the benefit of them.

So Mugabe instituted a policy of "land reform" (farm confiscation), and he gave the farms to his cronies. But my description sounds too sanitary. Mugabe's thugs forcibly threw the farmers off their land, usually just before the crops were ready for harvest. There were reports that some of the new farmer owners burned the crops, slaughtered the livestock, and killed the white farmers who resisted. In a July 28, 2002 report, Anthony C. LoBaido quotes former white farmer, Cathy Buckle, describing the plight of another farm family (lucky ones who survived):

"At the end of a long and tiring day, I got home to the news that yet another friend had been forced off her farm. Given two hours notice to vacate her house, she lived through that day of hell which has now become commonplace in Zimbabwe. This morning she and her family are homeless and jobless, and their life lies in boxes and cartons on a friend's lawn," she said.

"The home they built, the lands they tended, the workers they employed are now just memories, and I could not find the words to tell yet another white farmer how dreadfully sorry I was for their loss and anguish. Within months, they will leave the country of their birth because they are farmers and know no other way to earn their living. They will have to go somewhere where they are allowed to grow food."

The condition of Zimbabwe is another piece of the Clinton legacy. As reported in WorldNetDaily, "Mugabe's African National Congress, backed by the United Nations, European Union, Russia, China and the U.S. State Department, took power in 1994." That would be under Secretary of State Warren Christopher's watch.

Bringing it back to today, David Blair's report gives this some perspective. "All but a handful of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers lost their homes and livelihoods when armed gangs of Mugabe supporters began invading their property in 2000." Four thousand farmers feeding much of a continent. But that was before land reform. This is today: "About 400 white farmers remain in Zimbabwe, with about one third of this year's tobacco crop of 89,000 tonnes coming from only 250 white landowners."

Ninety percent of the country's white farmers are gone. The ones still farming (black and white) are unable to get loans for seed, because title for the land is held by the government and not the farmers, so production is down 70% since 1999.

It's good that Mugabe finally recognized the obvious failure of his policies. But if he doesn't start working to correct the problems, then the dire conditions in the markets, described by Cathy Buckle in the article quoted above (here's the link again), will only get worse.

I'm not holding my breath.