2002: 80 White Farmers Arrested in Zimbabwe

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Original Post Date: 2002-08-17 Published on: ETHERZONE.COM&nbsp Posted By: Jan

The panic accelerated this weekend among the farmers in Zimbabwe who defied Mugabe’s eviction orders. One week after the deadline, the Zimbabwe Police force began arresting them.

Earlier in the week, one farmer had been attacked and killed.
Another farmer had his house set on fire and he was lucky to escape with his life.
They showed film footage of his burnt face on South African TV.
Then on Thursday and Friday the Police began arresting farmers in the south of
Matabeleland (this is the southern part of Zimbabwe which borders on South Africa). On Saturday, the arrests spread countrywide. The Police arrested 50 farmers on Saturday, bringing the total arrested so far to 80.

One particularly bad incident occurred on the farm of Manguru 100 Km North West of Harare. The Police accompanied by “War Veterans”, went to the farm and attacked a black farm worker, forcing him to tell them where the farm owner Mr Smith, was living in Harare. The Police arrested him and handcuffed him in Harare, whereupon the “War Veterans” proceeded to attack Mr Smith. A farming organisation is attempting to get Mr Smith out of Police custody so that he can be treated for a broken leg and head injuries.

Note: This Mr Smith is not Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister. I have not heard anything about his activities, except that he is involved in this resistance. Mugabe has already said that Ian Smith must not think that he can rally the whites around him to fight another war.

According to Human Rights groups in Zimbabwe, 59 people have been killed in political violence so far this year. They say that thousands have either been tortured or raped in the same period. Most of the victims are black members of the opposition.

Mugabe gave a speech on Friday to soldiers who had returned from the DRC (formerly Zaire). In the speech he accused whites of financing the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change).

Eleven member nations of the Commonwealth have said that Zimbabwe should be kicked out of the Commonwealth.

One of the most ridiculous statements this week came from a Zimbabwean MP who said that the whites were hiring blacks to beat them up so that they could get international sympathy!!

The Citizen newspaper in South Africa reported that Zimbabwe has refused some British people entry into the country in a tit-for-tat move against the travel ban against Mugabe.

South Africa’s quiet complicity in this is clear for the entire world to see.
During the last few months, Mr Pahad, of the ANC [African National Congress],
has been coming up with one lame excuse after another for South Africa not to take
action against Mugabe. This shows his clear support of President Mbeki’s
“constructive engagement” policy, which has so far achieved absolutely nothing.
All this has done, from the start, is ensured that Mugabe does as he pleases. As I have said from the beginning, South Africa has tremendous economic leverage over Zimbabwe. Most of Zimbabwe’s imports and exports move via South African ports. This was reiterated by opposition members in the South African government this week. They said that we could bring Mugabe to his knees on short notice by strangling his country. But, as usual, the South African government pretends that this is not a desirable course of action. They similarly rebuke the idea of military action against Zimbabwe. All this does is prove the correctness of my assertions in my book, Government by Deception where I speak of the “Marxist Brotherhood” and how these people keep each other in power. Most African countries have refused to criticise Mugabe.

The SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation), which controls most of South Africa’s Radio
and TV broadcasts, has been amazingly candid in their investigative reporting of events in
Zimbabwe in the last two years. But this may change. It seems as if the SABC’s
candid reporting has caused the government concern, and this week saw sudden changes
“Editorial Policy” forced upon the SABC by the South African Government. All
the opposition political parties went wild in parliament this week saying that the
ANC is trying to muzzle the SABC. The ANC of course denies this. To my knowledge the changes will be taking effect shortly.

According to news reports in South Africa, many white Zimbabwean farmers intend fleeing to
South Africa as refugees because they have nowhere else to go. Some of the commercial farmers in
Zimbabwe have not had any income from their farms in the last year. There was one South African farmer in Zimbabwe who said in a TV interview that he had not had an income for two years.

Earlier this week I saw a thread on a forum where an American said that whites who
remain in Africa must be the dumbest people on the planet. What I would like to point out to
such people is that whites have actually been leaving Africa at a steady rate since the 1960s.
(Note how Africa has fallen into an ever greater state of disrepair as whites have pulled out of
it). The white population of Zimbabwe was close to 300,000 at its greatest in the early 1960’s.
The current white population in Zimbabwe is probably about 10-20% of that.
People already began leaving that country in the early 1960’s. The rate increased during the Bush War of the 1970’s. The biggest mass migration of whites occurred in the period of 1980-1985 when more than 60% of the whites left Zimbabwe to come to South Africa. The whites who remained there did so because they were either too poor to leave, or they decided to take advantage of the opportunities which came to them as a result of others leaving. Most of those who remained were also very liberal. Most of the conservative whites left in the period 1980-1985 after the war had been lost.

Here in South Africa, a similar trend is at work, except it is much more difficult to leave
the continent as a whole if one does not have the necessary skills or money. So many will
remain trapped here indefinitely. South Africa had about 5 million whites. Officially that number is down to 4.2 million as at the last census. Note, there was an influx of lots of liberal whites from other countries and also from the former Soviet Bloc, so that number does not truly show how many people have left South Africa. But it would be fair to say that about 1 million whites have left South Africa over the past 15 years.

It is easy for people to just say, “run away”, but many people don’t want to either – especially in South Africa. In South Africa especially, one finds lots of whites who don’t believe they are under any obligation to run because they have deep roots here. They have lived in Africa for about the same length of time that people have been in America. This is home and they have no roots elsewhere.

Ian Smith, for example, will not leave Zimbabwe because he says he is born there and has a history there. He refuses, on principle, to abandon his farm or anything he has. He faces extreme danger, but he has always said whites should not leave Africa at all.

There has however been a general trend since the 1960’s for whites to leave Africa
or at least to move southward where conditions were better.
Here in South Africa, for example, you will find whites who come from Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola. These are people who lived there and who then fled southwards. There are many people here who have lived in more than one African country and who have their story to tell of how they watched beautiful, prosperous countries being destroyed.
You will be hard-pressed to find any liberals among whites who have lived in more than one
African country. As a rule, their experiences have hardened them, and they became more conservative.

My barber, for example, is a Portguese man who told me he came to South Africa in the late 1960’s. He had never been to Africa, but was called up into the Portuguese army to fight the communists in Angola. He told me Angola was a beautiful country back then, and it was potentially wealthier than South Africa. (Angola is one quarter the size of Europe!). He told me that dreadful things happened there. I have mentioned on my website (www.AfricanCrisis.org), that white people were sawed in half and white women had their breasts cut off. But my barber told me, that in a Portuguese Police station he saw a photograph of a pregnant white woman who had her stomach cut open. Her unborn baby was taken out and cut to pieces. After his stint in Angola, my barber fell in love with Africa and came to live in South Africa. There is a sizable Portuguese community in South Africa who are people who lost everything they had in Mozambique or Angola and who now live in South Africa.

Angola was the African country, which inhabited by whites for the longest period of time – 500 years. South Africa has the second longest history of habitation. Angola’s white population at one time stood at 500,000. I suppose people outside Africa do not realise that we whites are used to facing tremendous odds, and by all calculations, we have never had it as good as we have it in South Africa. Here we have 4 million of us. We have never had such great numbers in one place, and so we are not finished yet. The real fight for South Africa has never been fought. There have been proper wars in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Nambia, but a real war has never been fought in South Africa.
South Africa’s downfall was mostly a propaganda and psychological warfare exercise coupled with
tremendous world pressure. It was mostly an exercise in psychology rather than a proper
confrontation. If a real confrontation had to come, there would be plenty of corpses.

Mugabe may be paving the way for the last fight. In Zimbabwe, we may yet see all manner of problems – among them starvation, civil unrest, or masses of people fleeing. Rest assured, the Zimbabwean problem is yet going to have a big impact on South Africa in the years to come.

Stay tuned, the last chapter of so-called “African Liberation” has not yet been written.

Etherzone Articles by Jan Lamprecht

Source: http://archive.africancrisis.info/?p=100773

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