White farmers asked to return

news.bbc.co.uk...

now as an african myself (Nigerian actually), i realize that Mugabe was trying to make some kind of an attempt to right the wrongs of the past when he made the short-sighted decision to entirely strip land control from the white people in his country. not only did that leave Zimbabwe without a form of a functional economy, but now a great portion of the people of that country are now starving in a land which was once know as the "bread basket" of Africa.
i know many people around the world will probably laugh and pretty much say "i told you so"...but my point is that in spite of how much hurt has flowed through the past and into the present Mugabe (or somebody) realized that something needed to be done.

my only questions now are do you think this will work? according to the article, anyone black or white is now free to apply for land, but do you think the farmers will return? moreover, will the black people of Zimbabwe accept them?

i'm making this topic because *from my point of view* this world is turning, past the point of no return, into one giant stinkhole, and i'm thinking (or at least i'm hoping) that this is an inkling of good news(because we all know how hard good news is to find these days) of people who are trying to overcome a power trip and at the same time trying to get over their historical hurt...

Nope sorry I'd let them all starve, and keep my white farmer butt nice and safe whilst laughing heartily at the devastation that inbred tin pot dictator caused because of his racist genocide against the white.

Any white who goes back, farms and feeds Mugabe and his people is as guilty of complicity as any of the killers, because if they stay away the countries regime will fall quicker than if it is fed.. and after seeing what they did to the land and people, just why would you want to go back with the threat of death hanging over you all the time?/ Oh and did Mugabe suddenly realise that the blacks couldn't even be bothered to farm the land ?? oh my my theres a suprise....

Stay away - let them starve.

I have to agree on this one. The above poster's words may seem heartless...BUT THEY ARE NOT. I remember the violence, murder - no, just as he said - genocide, that took place when the white farmers were either driven from or killed on their land.

And NOW, the black populace apparently doesn't know how to pick up a hoe and work land, and the black government is unwilling to buy seed.

Nope - I wouldn't come back either. They either need to learn how to feed themselves, or they can kiss the world's backside as they fall into malnutrition at their own hands. The world didn't bring them to this. The white farmers didn't bring them to this. THEY brought themselves to this...THEY need to fix it.

people, please stop to consider the history of Zimbabwe, and how horribly racism affected it's populaton.

i'd rather see this die than to have it turn into another pointless venomous race baiting thread.
thank you.

[edit on 21-4-2006 by karby]

They don't need white farmers (or purple farmers for that matter), they need money for new machinery, and they need a demeanor that encourages cooperation. They need engineers and mechanics and factories and shipping agreements and relationships with buyers, and they have none of the above.

They made a big, big mistake. They should have driven out the crooked, predatory land owners and allowed the honest ones to stay in the spirit of cooperation and egalitarianism. Some of those awful white farmers were seriously invested in the local community, to the extent that they were essentially responsible for raising whole communities out of the dust, feeding and clothing and sheltering them.

Mugabe apparently wasn't much of a farmer himself, or he would have known that to save a plant you must avoid tearing out the roots and flinging them out of the country.

It should never have been about race. Just another artificial divide to weaken the solidarity of the poor against economic strangulation and castration.

People who fall for that crap, and get on the machete bandwagon, don't deserve anybody's help. They deserve to suffer and fall, consequences are unavoidable. Nature will not be denied. Human beings who are not able to act consistently in their own best interest don't live long enough to outbreed their more successful competitors. Some people will be moved to try and help them out of this awful predicament, but I doubt it will do any good.

Just another nation where the citizens are suffering and dying on a massive scale because of the incompetence and cruelty of their leaders, a lack of education, and poor self-control. Where I come from we call that 'Justice'.

People are always going on about how life isn't fair. Life is totally fair.

South Africa has started buying farmers land and giving it to the blacks but it is only a matter of time before they take the land forcefully. They want 30% of all farm land in black hands by 2015. The program to teach these blacks how to farm is useless so i don't see what progress will come out of this. All most all of them will end up doing nothing at all with the land.

In South Africa they also made all the white business owners give half of their companies to blacks or black empowerment groups. I'm glad i left that place when i did, if they want to fix the country they need to fix the education system first. What do they expect will happen if they force white people to give their land and businesses to blacks who are uneducated?

It's not. You are calling it that because we have made statements you didn't want to read. That doesn't make those statements race baiting or anything else. It makes them our opinions. My opinion is based on what happened a few years back. I'm assuming the other poster's is as well.

If the blacks want their land back they need to work it. They don't need to invite their "oppressors" back so that the land can be worked and then another phase of violence occur.

Get up and feed yourself.

it's not because i didn't want to read your statements Valhall. it's because that was the direction i was seeing this steered to. this is still a touchy subject weather you consider it to be or not.

i'm very aware of what your opinion is. but saying that you'd rather laugh while people starve is, in my opinion, baiting the hook.

[edit on 21-4-2006 by karby]

You have got to be kidding! Yet it was inevitable. South Africa's current leadership is just Mugabe-light. No leaders with strategic vision such as a Mandela or that nice poet fellow which ran Senegal after the French left. I remember when I was in South Africa the health minister had to send for doctors to convince the President that AIDs was a disease and not poison being placed in the water supply by whites (!) that's the tip of the iceberg. The corruption is increasing rapidly along with the poor policy. Tragic really. I just hope S.A. doesn't go the way of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe since that was a great country (even with all the racism crap) before Mugabe came along.

[edit on 21-4-2006 by Nakash]

This is most crucial. And most important because I would think anyone with a heart would come back as long as they felt safe and non-threatened.

The problem with most black communities is rather simple and apparently common no matter where they are from and that is they are dependant on someone else for their survival.

Just like in new orleans.

Just like in this case.

Bill crosby tried to tell them this but theyd rather label him a "racist" or an "uncle tom". perhaps this stems from slavery, I dont know, I find it hard to believe that this would cross generations like this.

Bill cosby old them to stop wasting money on sports stuff and "bling" and invest in education and books and they threw a fit. Education is very important for self growth. (one of the few things I agree with the liberals on).

a big concept that seems to have escaped them is self-reliance. Not dependancy on others or the government. This, IMO, is the basic difference between repulicans and democrats in the US. democrats wish to continue, either unknowingly or purposely, to force a people who are already dependant on others, to become further dependant on the government thus continue the slave frame of mind in the black community.Republicans would rather strive themselves, to provide for themselves. (this was in theory and has resulted in cut throat business which is another matter entirely).

Stop handing people things and make them grow. Make them self-reliant,
just like that scripture "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." and people say the christian bible is worthless......

I understand where you are coming from. But people cannot live in the past, you cannot hold onto hatred, you cannot hold a grudge. Forgive....forget....move on, live in the present (nothing in the past can ever be changed), make a new future (the future can always be changed for the better) and be peaceful (and at peace) and love one another. If we were all blind, skin color would never be an issue. It's not about skin color, it's about attitude and behavior, and mutual respect. Peace.

[edit on 21-4-2006 by zerotolerance]

Racism like killing and stealing the land from a group of people based solely on race????

Any white person that goes back there deserves what they get the next time they decide to "throw whitey out"

Well, as it happens, I know a number of Africans, including Tony from Sierra Leone. From my experience, the image of the blacks as being "lazy"/whatever is completely wrong.

What IS going on is that they're poor and often uneducated. The whites had the support of their countrymen and came in with ready markets and wealth far beyond what the blacks had. There was some (but not a lot) effort to allow the blacks to become autonomous farmers and equally prosperous, but these efforts were few and far between.

I'll skip over the rant here on colonialism and governments and the attitudes of the governments that supported the whites... google for "Colonialism" and Africa and you'll get a snootfull of what happened to the people there.

Those kinds of policies created the"lazy uneducated class" lie in every corner of the world it touched -- Africa, Polynesia, Australia, China, Japan (until China and Japan struck back economically), South America, Central America, and on the AmerInd reservations here in the US. In fact, this kind of policy also created the same "lazy dimwit class" lies among the Irish and other Caucasian groups.

Like I said, read up on colonialism and how it creates that kind of ill-informed superior attitude and contempt in the colonial "haves" while it keeps tools and land out of the hands of "Little Brown Brother" (even when LBB is actually Caucasian) and makes sure there's not enough economic power so that "THOSE people" show up inconveniently in the places that the Priveleged Colonials frequent.

I'm all for white farmers going back. It's been done elsewhere in Africa and around the world -- but this time they're dealing with a population of equal political power and rising wealth and the "had nots" are getting a chance to partner with the "haves."

Historically, it worked. The hidalgos of California were disenfranchised when American acquired California. With the rise of political Chicano movements of the 1960's and 1970's, we saw a rise of the Hispanic middle and upper class. In a place where Hispanics were once only welcomed if they could pick vegetables, we see successful farmers and business owners who go to the same clubs and events and donate to the same causes as the Whites or Blacks.

So let the white farmers stay home if they like. However, a partnership can be mutually beneficial -- AND an added advantage is that with jobs and business opportunities available (even in agribusiness), there's fewer people who are desperate to migrate out to other countries.

...and everyone would like to see that, right? Opportunities within the originating countries that are decent enough that people stay there rather than trying to come to America or Europe.

whoa...ok, i think i'm being misunderstood.

that statement was directed speciffically at the "laugh and watch them starve" comment that MadGreebo made. look, attack me if you want, but that comment sounds like it was coming from the mouth of a 10th century neaderthal.
if you've ever personally been to any african country (or any country for that matter), there is nothing funny about watching people starve. in my experience it was one of the most heart wrenching things i have ever felt, and i will never forget it. in my 'consider the past' comment i said 'people' because i thought it was obvious. i should've singled it out and i didn't. which is why i said he was baiting. my apologies.

now to try to clarify my position: please try to recall what it was that led the black population to react in the atrocious way they did. the feelings were boiling under the surface for quite some time and it was just a matter before it eventually exploded. now that a good portion of the country actually realizes that no matter what happened in the past, that white zimbabwean farmers did eventualy become benificial to the country, will it be possible for the people of that country to backtrack their mistakes and move on? moreover, reguardless of what you may feel, will white farmers even want to come back after what happened to them?

for the most part i agree with most of you. yes believe it or not, racism played a part in shaping what Zimbabwe is today, and if it was me and/or my family that had went through that nightmare, i wouldn't want to return either.
that part i'm not disputing.

So let me get this straight....African blacks chase away the evil wicked undeserving white farmers at knife point, take their land by force, demand half of the financial rights to their businesses, all in the name of blatant racism operating under a racist Mugabe regime - and now that these white farmers have been chased away and the black Africans are left running the show suddenly they realize that they aren't smart enough or industrious enough to grow their own crops to provide food to feed themselves and are now starving. Now they want the white farmers to come back "hey, I know we took your land and terrorized your families, but can you show me how to plant this corn?" lmao ....They deserve to starve. In this world what goes around comes around, why should these farmers have any pity for these butchers at all? Why would they risk life and limb to go back into that warzone to help feed the scum who just brutalized and robbed them? That is like asking a woman who was raped to come over and fix dinner for her attacker, absolutely absurd. The moral of the story, don't bite the hand that feeds you, regardless of what color it is. But hey, I hear those grasshoppers don't taste half bad if you roast em right

Now please, let's quit the "let them starve" crap, a whole country shouldn't pay for a few people's mistakes. I'm sure Zimbabwe/Rhodesia has already suffered enough under Mugabe's hands, this sort of thing is just heaping abuse on these people for no reason. Then again I didn't see the murdering of all the "whitey" that Mugabe did, and from everything I have heard it was genocide pure and simple, of the worse kind- would make Stalin and his Ukranian Kulak murders proud.

But, see, it's not 'a few people's mistakes'. This is governemnt supported lynch mobs ravaging folk's farms. I don't know abotu you, but I don';t know a farmer who has the time or patience to properly oppress a person in this day and age, much less in the disease ravaged, starving continent such as Africa.

This is public demand, and the rewards of public demand. Shows you what not educating the people does, but then again, how many of these people ASPIRE to education instead of nice rims and a new AK?

DE

Thats a tough call, on the one hand, I am sure that these guys want to get back to their land and their home country. But they have to figure, what happens if the government again, even decades in the future, decides to do this? It'd be very risky to go back, without some sort of oversight on the government, a revocation of its ability to take people's private land.


The idea that the blacks in africa are too stupid, lazy, and dependant upon a paternalistic 'nanny-state' is absurd. They rose up and TOOK the land for themselves, as an act of self-realization. The farms are failing because you can't take non-farmers and expect them to run a farm, white, black, orange, anglo, boer, zulu, french, whatever.

I think there are two problems here.

The first is trust.

Expropriating the assets of a bunch of your citizens simply murders the public trust. You want to know why America is such a financial powerhouse? Sure, part of it is industrial capacity. But the REAL reason is trust. In 200 years, the USA has never defaulted on a bond payment to its shareholders. Now, compare that with France. The French republic has defaulted FIVE TIMES since 1789. Now, even if the odds are small that France will default again in our lifetimes, the odds are not Zero. and however small they are, they are still bigger than the chances that the US will default.

All of which demonstrates, that once you've screwed a portion of your populace, it will be a generation or two before things get back to normal. But probably, the people who benefited during the last purge will think is should happen again, and soon.

I'm sure some whites will move back, of course. But probably not the best and brightest. Probably the ones who couldn't make it anywhere else. So that's not exactly a huge boost to Zimbabwe's chances for stability, either.

The second problem is aims.
Mugabe wants to get jobs for people. White farmers will want to make a profit. In mercantile farming, you bring in a lot of machines that are incredibly efficient, and you farm "huge tracts of land." for all they're worth. And each worker grows enough food for 300 villagers. So, the white farmers goals will not match the govt.

IF I were advising Mugabe, I'd tell him to make a small show of inviting whites to return. But I'd cut up the big ranches into smaller farms. Get your people farming with shovels and picks for five years or so. Once everyone has a job, then we can start worrying about selling produce on the international market.

But instead of white farmers growing cash crops, you need to focus on full employment and feeding the hungry. I'd go for goat and dairy, since there have been rainfall problems. Maybe encourage the white (big) operations to focus on hay.

Once your feeding people, then some of the farms can be consolidated and you bring in modern machinery.

These ideas are not new, they were published in the 60's in a book called Small Is Beautiful, about how a developing nation should be careful NOT to try and slavishly copy the (over)developed west.

.