Rural Zimbabwe empties

schumi

schumi

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Cape Town - Forests engulf fields that used to produce some of the world’s best tobacco around the northern Zimbabwean town of Banket, while barns that once stored the leaf stand empty, their corrugated iron roofs ripped off and sold for scrap. Most of the farm workers have left.

“We are 15 here now, from roughly 50,” said 25-year-old Bruce Mahenya, who lives in a mud-and-grass hut behind a defunct trading store on a farm about 95 kilometers northwest of the capital, Harare. “My mother, father and brother have gone. I said I would remain alone in case things get better, but it’s hard.”

It’s a familiar story across vast tracts of Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe’s goal of transforming the countryside through the seizure of about 4 500 white-owned commercial farms remains illusive. Some of the best acreage fell into ruin because senior ruling party officials who took it over had no farming expertise. Other farms also failed because they were given to small producers with no money to pay for fertilizer and equipment. In recent years, the crisis has been compounded by drought followed by torrential rains.

Many of those who have abandoned their farms joined an exodus of an estimated 3 million Zimbabweans to South Africa and other countries or moved to overcrowded urban townships. As many as 4 million Zimbabweans, about a quarter of the population, need food aid, according to the government.

“We thought when we were placed there that we’d be helped, but no, we were just left,” said Alec Kaitano, a 23-year-old who abandoned his smallholding outside the northeastern town of Bindura a year ago and survives by selling blemished fruit he finds in garbage cans in Harare. “Those white farmers we displaced had money to farm, but we didn’t so we failed.”

Data

United Nations data shows the proportion of the population living in towns surged to about 32 percent in 2015, from 11 percent in 1950, a trend that’s broadly in line with other African countries. While more recent data isn’t readily available, observations of the countryside and anecdotal evidence suggest migration is accelerating.
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More at: http://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/rural-zimbabwe-empties-7985837
 
“Those white farmers we displaced had money to farm, but we didn’t so we failed.”

Nobody just has money. Somewhere along the line somebody worked to accumulate it and used it grow their farm.
 
How one man can cause such ruin and devastation to what was once the gem of Africa.

What I find truly impressive about Mugabe, is he managed to rally most of the population to his side while he did it.
 
Solarion said:
How one man can cause such ruin and devastation to what was once the gem of Africa.

What I find truly impressive about Mugabe, is he managed to rally most of the population to his side while he did it.
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It's not one man. It's the general mentality.
 
stricken said:
It's not one man. It's the general mentality.
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Well to be fair its only the mentality of about 50-60%.
Half of the people,(the ones above average) are normally good people.
 
Who cares anymore? Look what the Zuptas are doing to this country, it.must be what the people want..
 
evilstebunny said:
Who cares anymore? Look what the Zuptas are doing to this country, it.must be what the people want..
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Destroy to rebuild. That might actually work if you have something to replace it with. In this case all that will be left are a few scattered tribes, brick huts and bush.

In the case of Ancient Egypt or Rome, they had a chance flourish, to actually build a thriving civilization and they took it leaving a lasting legacy for all time. In the case Zimbabwe, they were given all the opportunities to do just that and even more so. They were handed everything on a silver platter and nearly 30 years later what is left is nothing but ruin, poverty and misery.
 
Solarion said:
Destroy to rebuild. That might actually work if you have something to replace it with. In this case all that will be left are a few scattered tribes, brick huts and bush.

In the case of Ancient Egypt or Rome, they had a chance flourish, to actually build a thriving civilization and they took it leaving a lasting legacy for all time. In the case Zimbabwe, they were given all the opportunities to do just that and even more so. They were handed everything on a silver platter and nearly 30 years later what is left is nothing but ruin, poverty and misery.
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There is a big difference between Egypt/Rome and ZimBoBwe or the Mideast/Europe and Africa for that matter. Just cannot compare.
 
Reminds me of these paragraphs from Atlas Shrugged:

=====

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

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Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
 
But you have land, is the mentality not that if you have land you will be rich?
30 years later and still nothing but still they vote for the master Mugabe every freaking time.
 
Acid0 said:
But you have land, is the mentality not that if you have land you will be rich?
30 years later and still nothing but still they vote for the master Mugabe every freaking time.
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you lie it was sanctions not taking land from farmers.. and that had nothing to do with sanctions... They were just being mean and nasty. Bob is a hero and everything is the sanctions fault.
 
crack2483 said:
“Those white farmers we displaced had money to farm, but we didn’t so we failed.”

Nobody just has money. Somewhere along the line somebody worked to accumulate it and used it grow their farm.
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They will always blame it on somebody or something else. He also forget to say those white farmers worked very hard and due to this gained large amounts of knowledge on how to run a farm successfully.
 
Bryn said:
Reminds me of these paragraphs from Atlas Shrugged:

=====

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

=====

Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
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Thanks for this. This was excellent to read.
 
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