- Dear Family and Friends
-
- "Land to the people!" has been President Mugabe's
call for the last four years and seven months. It was a call that saw
almost a million people in the form of farmers, farm workers and their
families and extended families being made jobless, homeless and destitute.
It was also a call that saw Zimbabwe go from being a regional seed and
food exporter to a destitute beggar in less than four years. "Our
Land is Our Prosperity!" was the call that persuaded ordinary rural
peasants to go and squat on commercial farms around the country. This
call led to hyper inflation soaring to over 600% in January this year and
a massive brain drain with more than three million people streaming out
of Zimbabwe. "The Land is the economy!" was another slogan which
our government shoved down our throats while over 300 opposition supporters
were killed in political violence and foreign journalists were expelled
from the country. "Our land! Our Land! Our Land!" was the
increasingly hysterical call by the government as they clamped down on
freedom of speech, movement, association and publication.
-
- While all of this went on most of Zimbabwe's African
neighbours have kept shamefully quiet. Perhaps they believed the scores
of hateful racist speeches that have been spouted by our leaders or perhaps
they were scared that they'd be called racists if they criticised events
in Zimbabwe. In the last three weeks some diabolical things have been
going on in Zimbabwe and yet still our African neighbours cannot find their
voices. Hundreds of black peasant farmers and their families have been
forcibly evicted from the land they have been living on since February
2000. Evictions have apparently been undertaken by soldiers and police
who have set light to people's homes and left peasant farmers with their
wives, children, furniture and livestock stranded on the side of main highways.
-
- Quoted in the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper last week,
one evicted peasant farmer said: "We are convinced that the government
is now evicting us from the farms to pave the way for Zanu PF officials."
-
- White commercial farmers lived in fear and were powerless
when the Zimbabwean government came and grabbed their farms in 2000. Black
Zimbabwean farmers are now also living in fear for the powerlessness that
is about to engulf them as our government kicks them off the farms too.
Skin colour is irrelevant, we are all victims. Events in Zimbabwe have
surely now become the shame of Africa.
-
- Until next week,
-
- with love,
- Cathy
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