I have long believed that Robert Mugabe, ruler of the hapless Zimbabwe, will die before he ever admits to having made a mistake. Yet the Telegraph now offers this report, about how Mugabe has admitted to making a mistake!
President Robert Mugabe confessed yesterday that millions of acres of prime land seized from Zimbabwe’s white farmers are now lying empty and idle.
Confessed.
After years spent trumpeting the “success” of the land grab, Mr Mugabe, 81, admitted that most of the farms transferred to black owners have never been used.
Admitted.
But what did Mugabe actually say?
… in his home province yesterday, Mr Mugabe chided the new landowners for growing crops on less than half of their land.
“President Mugabe expressed disappointment with the land use, saying only 44 per cent of the land distributed is being fully utilised,” state television reported. “He warned the farmers that the government will not hesitate to redistribute land that is not being utilised.”
In other words, Mugabe admitted no wrongdoing at all. He made the right decision. It was the people who were charged with implementing the decision who did wrong, by failing to grow as much food as they should have.
Plenty of other people are saying that Mugabe made a mistake with this larcenous policy:
Critics said Mr Mugabe’s admission exposed the land grab’s “failure”.
“It has been a phenomenal and absolute failure on every level,” said Tendai Biti, secretary for economic affairs of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. “It has failed both in terms of production of crops and in terms of the occupation of the land.”
And what is more, they seem to have supplied the Telegraph with a reason for the failure of the new farmers to farm successfully:
The new farmers are unable to raise bank loans because their properties are formally owned by the government and they have no individual title deeds. Without loans, they cannot buy seed, fertiliser or farming equipment and the regime has broken a pledge to supply them with tools.
Some farmers have resorted to using horse-drawn ploughs. Many have given up trying to produce anything at all.
So Mr Mugabe has made yet another mistake, this time in mishandling the arrangements for the new farmers with whom he has replaced the previous ones he stole from. But has he admitted it? No. Has he shifted the blame onto the hapless farmers? Yes. I would not want to be in their shoes now.
Par for the course. Mugabe is infallible. Reality is unworthy of him and has let him down.
But more importantly, this is a revolution that is starting to devour its own, to implode. Those “new farmers” are, or were, enthusiastic Mugabe supporters, were they not?. Now they are being blamed for the failure of a Mugabe policy. With luck, this means that this vile regime is now starting seriously to weaken itself, rather than merely to weaken its enemies.
If that is right, it might help to explain this:
Zimbabwe will hold parliamentary elections on March 31 and, for the first time in 10 years, Mr Mugabe is no longer holding out the offer of white-owned land as a vote-winner. Instead, his speeches are dominated by attacks on Tony Blair, who he claims is plotting to recolonise Zimbabwe.
I daresay many of his listeners are thinking: that sounds good. When is the Great White Blair due?
As I have said before, Robert Mugabe is now the leading spreader of the idea that Africa should be reconquered by white people.
I daresay many of his listeners are thinking: that sounds good. When is the Great White Blair due?
That quote reminds me of when the people of New Amsterdam invited the duke of York to conquer the place, so as to get rid of Peter Stuyvesant.
Robert Mugabe is now the leading spreader of the idea that Africa should be reconquered by white people.
Why in God’s name would “white people” want the place?
The diaspora of farmers driven from Zimbabwe seem to be good for other parts of Africa, and are being courted by African leaders. Perhaps one day a new government in Zimbabwe will do the same.
Yet another vindication of the idea that any successful society needs at least a sprinkling of reasonably high-IQ members to function normally. When the average IQ drops below a critical level, the whole thing falls apart.
At this junction, I truely wonder how many black Zimbabwe citizen would welcome re-cololization by England. At least, English would administered the place better than Mr. Perminent Revolution.
I very much doubt that you could give many of the white farmers credit for high IQ’s. As for “elections” in Zimbabwe (note the quotation marks) does anyone really believe any more that they would be at all fair?
It is a well known fact that everywhere that an agrarian reform (i.e. land confiscation and redistribution) was implemented – agricultural production dropped disastrously.
Agrarian reforms were very fashionable and were implemented in most third world countries after WW2.
Recolonization? This sounds like a job for the UN. And don’t forget to blame those stingy western nations for not providing the necessary funding!
“It is a well known fact that everywhere that an agrarian reform (i.e. land confiscation and redistribution) was implemented – agricultural production dropped disastrously.”
That’s putting it mildly, remember Stalin? Millions dead in an artificial famine.
That quote reminds me of when the people of New Amsterdam invited the duke of York to conquer the place, so as to get rid of Peter Stuyvesant.
You mean even then they were trying to ban cigarettes? Well some things never change.
Several decades ago, what became Zimbabwe was exporting food to other African states. Today, its people – or, rather, select groups of its people – starve.
Sound like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory that only a corrupt government could achieve.
“Civilization does not principally consist of bricks and mortar, but in a set of commonly accepted values and restraints. If the inhabitants of the sub-Saharan Africa and the United States could be exchanged instanteously; the one materializing in suburban homes and the other in wattle huts, the material imbalance would be reversed again within ten years, because the technology and civilization of Americans is carried in their heads and not in their possessions. There would be nothing Americans could not rebuild in Africa; and there would be nothing Africans could repair or replace in America.”
-Wretcherd
Wanna bet ol’ muggsy blames it all on the banks and nationalizes them?
“I very much doubt that you could give many of the white farmers credit for high IQ’s”
That’s not a very smart remark. I expect most farmers could do better.
Thus recapitulating in every essential the central thesis of Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital.
I was in Durban just last month. Met a black refugee from Zimbabwe who was telling me all about how bad it was up there. I reminded him of that nasty guerrilla war black Zims fought to end white supremacy and obtain immediate majority rule. He looked pretty shamefaced. When I asked him if people in Zim would like to see British colonial rule again, he told me the majority would even welcome Ian Smith’s government back, and do so with open arms. All I could do was look at the ground and shake my head. Post-colonial Africa–from Ghana in 1962 to Zimbabwe in 2005, it’s been nothing but a study in misery and failure. It’s been forty-plus years of watching “Groundhog Day”–except the Africans never improve.
This is the very first site on the internet that I’ve come across people who are actually “calling it as they see it” regarding Africa. Thank you and bless you! I am sick and tired of the same excuses being perpetuated in black Africa as to why things are so bad. IE: “Even America had a civil war, the Europeans taught us these corrupt and brutal ways, multi-partyism is to blame…we were just fine before that was introduced.”
I think that a lot of the last comments are racist….how can someone say such a demeening thing ” am sick and tired of the same excuses being perpetuated in black Africa as to why things are so bad” shame on you! you come to africa, use us as a stepping stone to success then this is what you have to say…infact the western world should be thanking Africa. In africa, we we had kings and queens living greatly while you were all hitting yourselves with clubs, living in a cave somewhere in europe.