zimbabwe issue ... - anybody's thoughts?

political provision · 23rd August 2002, 15:36

Five young militants in green uniforms were posted at the farm while Schultz was being harangued by militants inside the police station in Banket, a farming center 55 miles northwest of Harare.

Schultz said the militants had warned they would "bring back a battalion" to remove him if he defied them.

"We would be given safe passage as long as we start packing. I'm a quivering wreck. I want out before it kills me. I want to live the rest of my life in peace," said Schultz, 57.

Neighbors have urged Schultz to stay on, fearing militants will begin taking their farms if he relents.

It was a painful choice for Schultz and his wife, Monica, 58.

"If they say I married a chicken, I can put up with it. I have no intention of growing old by myself," she said.

The government's campaign to seize white-owned farms has added to more than two years of political unrest, during which about 186 mostly opposition supporters have been killed. Among the dead are 11 white farmers.

Since March 2000, the government has targeted 95 percent of white-owned land for confiscation and redistribution to blacks.

Critics say many prime farms have gone to politicians, military and police officers and government cronies and not landless blacks.

About 2,900 farmers were ordered to leave their land by August 9. About 60 percent defied the order, and the government arrested about 200 of them over the weekend.

The farmers, many contesting the legality of their eviction orders, face up to two years in jail and a fine. Many were released on bail terms prohibiting them from living on their land while awaiting trial over the next few weeks.

Schultz said he contested his eviction in the Harare High Court in June. The order was ruled invalid because the government did not comply with its own land seizure laws.

After being arrested Sunday and detained in overcrowded police cells for allegedly defying his eviction, he was released after producing the court ruling.

But that did not stop the militants from demanding his removal.

Bright Matonga, a prominent ruling party official and former state television executive who now heads a state transport company, said he had been allocated the 1,400-acre farm.

The militants insisted the High Court ruling was an error. Joseph Chinotimba, a leader of veterans of the war that ended white rule here two decades ago, told Schultz and police officers Thursday he did not recognize the ruling.

There were no courts in the 1890s when white settlers stole African land, he said, echoing President Robert Mugabe's claim the land seizures were intended to correct colonial era imbalances in land ownership.

Schultz, a former miner, bought the farm at independence in 1980 from his wife's parents, whose family settled there in 1919.

After two years of threats from militants and settlers, he was forced to stop growing tobacco, wheat and beans but was allowed to grow roses for export this year.

Schultz said he had noted government promises that whites who only owned one small farm would not be stripped of their land. He also offered to subdivide sections of the land to provide plots for black settlers.

"We thought we were home and dry. We put everything we had into the farm. It was going to be our pension. We made no other provisions. We have nowhere to go," he said.

The land seizures and a drought are causing widespread food shortages that relief groups say threaten half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people.

Before "fast track" seizures began two years ago 4,500 whites owned a third of Zimbabwe's farmland and 7 million blacks lived on the rest. An estimated 350,000 black farm workers and their families live on the white-owned land.

South African Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi said Thursday he did not know of any white Zimbabwean farmers seeking permission to move to South Africa.

"I am not aware there is a big deluge of people inundating our country as a result of the Zimbabwe debacle," he said.

Schultz said the militants worked "to soften us up and make sure were go." Police once advised him to go into hiding for his own safety.

"Twenty nine months of this is enough," he said.

- anybody's thoughts on this issue??

**ovrproofmentalz** · 27th August 2002, 22:36

i understand mugabe's plan of land reform, but the people that he is giving it two were too young to fight in the independance war against Ian Smith's white supremecist regime....
mugabe is pressured by the war veterans to speed up the process of land reform... he began the intial stages of land reforms in the late 80's but was critcized for being too slow....
he was elected to power because he promised that he would give zimbabwe back to the africans, but now he only gives zimabawe to his childhood friends and family members.... the rest of the population is left to starve, while mugabe rides around harare in his black mercedes with 2 car ong military motorcade.....

**canikickit** · 28th August 2002, 02:29

Mugabe's an idiot and an asshole. None of his friends can farm for shit, they're fucking up that land...

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