| Re: Zimbabwe en setlaars-lou [boodskap #29868] |
Vr, 14 April 2000 00:00 |
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Oorspronklik gepos deur: @home.com
Reenen van Niekerk wrote:
> Jy moet darem onthou die hofbevel is nie van toepassing op die regering nie.
> Hy mag nog steeds doen wat hy wil. Ek dink demokrasie werk so.
>
>
Aanhaling uit 'n artikel in die Globe and Mail deur Clyde Sanger,April 14, 2000.
I believe that the debauchery we are witnessing now..could have
been avoided if the British government of Margaret Thatcher had
worked sincerely with Mr. Mugabe's men in the first decade of
independence. A comparison with Kenya, and how Jomo Kenyatta
and an earlier British government tackled the issue of land transfer
there in 1963 will make my point.
In both countries, white settlers took much of the best farmland. In
Kenya, white farmers claimed the Rift Valley had been deserted because
of rinderpest cattle disease. In Rhodesia, by the time the 1896 uprising
had been quelled, settlers had grabbed some 15 million acres along the
spine of the country without compensation. The independence struggle
in both countries was fought over land ownership. Kikuyu forest fighters
and Mugabe's Zanu forces operating from Mozambique in a seven-year
bush war.
Here the stories diverge.. When independence neared in 1963, the
government of Harold Macmillan took responsibility for buying out the
white farmers in the Rift Valley and handed over 18 million pounds
for that purpose....
Of course there were squatters. Truckloads of forest fighters came
over the Aberdare range and occupied land above the Rift Valley.
Agricultural officers of the departing colonial government moved in
quickly, and gave the squatters land title and working plans for their
new acres.
By contrast, Mrs Thatcher placed strict rules on land transfer when
her goverment negotiated Zimbabwe's independence constitution in 1979.
For 10 years the basis of transfer was to be "willing buyer, willing seller."
The predictable consequence: Individual farms were offered that were
scattered and unsuitable for intensive development for small-scale farming
with irrigation and other services, or else they were mostly "baboon land" -
bush country with a small part cleared for farming.
The Thatcher government offered 20 million pounds for resettlement -
hardly enough.... also attched tight strings...Britain would not help finance
settlements of co-operatives...
The Mugabe government in 1982 set a target if resettling within three
years 162,000 families... this was quite unrealistic. By 1993 the program had
placed only 55,000 families on former white farms... In 1993 the Mugabe
government brought in the Land Acquisition Act, with the object of acquiring
5.5 million hectares. Originally some 1,500 white farms were to be on the
list... but numbers shrank as farmers exercised their right to complain to the
Land Board....Last year, some 4000 squatters trekked onto commercial
farms... Now Mr Mugabe is riding the wave of their despair....
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