February 1, 2006
YET ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR THIRD WORLD LAND REFORM
Zimbabwe crops fail despite good rain (Peta Thornycroft, The Telegraph, February 1st, 2006)
Food crops in Zimbabwe have failed again despite ample rainfall.Zimbabwe is expected this year to grow less than half of what it needs to feed the population and the rains have denied President Robert Mugabe his standard explanation of poor weather for slumping production.
Foreign exchange-earning crops, such as tobacco, flowers and coffee, are now almost too small to count.
More than 20 million acres of Zimbabwe's well-developed agricultural land has been confiscated from about 4,000 experienced white farmers since 2000 and handed to Mr Mugabe's cronies, senior civil servants and members of his extended family.
About 90 per cent of that land is now fallow and the infrastructure is destroyed.
Slight miscaluation on Mugabee's part, but correctable. He should have confiscated the white farmers, themselves, and distributed them to the various "cronies, civil servants, and members of his extended family". This is the sort of thing you get into, when you take half measures.
Posted by: h-man at February 1, 2006 7:33 AMNational Review used to run a list of predictions for the New Year in their last issue of each year. One of these was always the nth crop failure in the then Soviet Union, n being the number of years since said Revolution.
Posted by: Lou Gots at February 1, 2006 8:53 AMThe WSJ had an article last year about how Mozambique has been trying to lure the white farmers leaving Zimbabwe to their country with incentives to establish farms there.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at February 1, 2006 10:23 AMNo problem, comrade - everyone will just eat 60% less (to account for all the new mouths to feed).
Of course, how are they going to increase to food supply to ruling clique and all the thugs needed to maintain the oppression? Must be importing it from somewhere....
Check Mbeki's bank balance - please.
Posted by: ratbert at February 1, 2006 10:51 AMAIDS in Africa, IIRC, is not diagnosed by a blood test, but merely by the presence of the same symptoms (diarrhea, fatigue etc) as in simple malnutrition.
Mugabe is not only gonna starve his people to death, he's gonna blame it on AIDS and asked to be paid for his genocidal efforts.
I think the great lesson is just how fast you can absolutely ruin a country.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at February 1, 2006 5:29 PM