“Former white farmers who had their properties and assets seized during the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in the early 2000s are reported to have written to President Emmerson Mnangagwa demanding a compensation of US$8.6 Billion. The farmers wrote to the president just after his inauguration in November last year,” reported Spotlight Zimbabwe.
There are many Zanu PF chefs, who became millionaires literally overnight, because they got a piece of paper saying they were the new owner of Farm XYZ measuring so many thousand hectares complete with all the fixed and movable assets including buildings, animals and crops on the said property worth millions of dollars. The evicted farm owner was often forced to leave with the shirt on his back and very little else. Some were hurried off the farm with a boot or worse.
Many thinking Zimbabweans have condemned the barbarism and gross injustice of the Zanu PF’s racist and politically motivated land reform; at the time and still do so to this day. Zanu PF allowed the farm invasion to flare up during elections periods; the violence would spread to include the rest of the country – directed at the opposition supporters who were accused of siding with the white farmers.
However, the white farmers demanding compensation must accept that their demands must be directed and single out, like heat seeking missile, those individuals who benefited from the farm seizures. The white farmers must seek out those overnight millionaires, many of who are still living at the farms and demand they be paid fair compensation and recover what they can if the individuals cannot pay.
Many of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite, who are the new multiple farm owners, are filthy rich. The white farmers will only have to shake them a little and $1.3 million diamond rings; 40 gold watches; mansions in Singapore, SA, Zimbabwe; posh cars; millions is bank accounts under different names; etc. The white farmers will be cursing themselves for having demanded only $8.6 billion compensation!
The idea that bill to compensate the white farmers must be added to the nation debt is a none-starter. Ordinary Zimbabweans, who include the white farmers’ workers who were booted off the farm too at the same time as the white farmers, are as much victims of the farm seizures as the white farmers themselves.
It is a matter of historic record that farm invasions was one of the major causes of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse; the country is yet to recover. Today 90% of our people are out of work and a staggering 72.3% of the population are living on US$1.00 or less a day. If these people are going to be burdened a massive US$ 8.6 billion debt then to whatever economic recovery period the nation was projecting one must add 50 years – not that economic recovery to a nation that has sunk this deep is ever a certainty, it is not.
Those who benefited from the seizures of the white farms must pay the white farmers their dues. To ask the Zimbabwe taxpayer to foot the compensation bill is collective punishment designed to allow the looters to continue to benefit from the ill-got loot – double dipping – whilst the ordinary people who have paid dearly because of the economic collapse the farm invasions brought are being forced to pay dearly to compensate the white farmers – double jeopardy.
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These Zanu PF idiots have lived in their own world a far cry from the real Zimbabwe in which unemployment has soared to 90%, 72.3% of the people live on US$1.00 or less. The tyrant and his minions used to spend US$1 million on his birthday bash when the is failing to buy essential drugs for the sick; the country needs $65 million per week to buy essential drugs but was only spending $3 million, less than 5%, because that was all treasury had.
If anyone thought the November coup had seen the end of the madness in Zanu PF, they now can see that nothing has changed. President Mnangagwa assured Mugabe he could continue to enjoy his health tourism to Singapore at $3 million a trip plus all his other benefits plus keep all the billions of dollars he and his family have looted over the years. Now the Zanu PF youths are shamelessly organising a birthday bash for the tyrant.
The local (Nyanga) Newsday reports that the Zanu PF youth League is planning Mugabe's birthday and will take cake to his Blue Roof residence.
"Mugabe didn't wrong (President Emmerson) Mnangagwa, but was being influenced by his wife. The party asked him to rest after realising that he had no capacity to lead, as Grace was now running the show. The former President admitted to that and he voluntarily agreed to resign. He (Mugabe) is the father to (President Emmerson) Mnangagwa," youth league deputy secretary, Lewis Matutu is quoted saying.
Only a first-class idiot would believe that nonsense! Even if one believed that Mugabe was under the spell of his pushy wife, the country was already in serious economic and political trouble by 2014 when she busted onto the political stage like freak hail storm!
For Pete's sake! The country is in a serious mess because of his decades of corrupt, vote rigging and murderous rule. The nation should be demanding that he gives back what he looted and face justice for all his treasonous crimes against the good people of Zimbabwe and not showering his praise, honour and more lavish gifts!
"Mwana asingachemi anofira mumbereko!" (The baby who does not cry will die on his mother's back!) so goes the Shona adage. The white farmers have never stopped crying ever since the farm invasions and now their cries have been heard and they will be fed. However, the suggestion that the impoverish povo of Zimbabwe should be the ones to pay the white farmers the compensation is certainly tantamount to collective punishment. The ordinary Zimbabwean is as much a victim of Mugabe and his Zanu PF's reign of terror and thuggery as the white farmers themselves.
The chefs who benefited from the farm invasion and/or these who inherited the stolen farms are still living on the farm. The white farmers must go after the looters and no one else.
Just because the ordinary Zimbabwean does not have a voice, never had, it is not right that she/he never pay for other people's sins. It is not a sin to have no voice and be the oppressed!
Jonathan Moyo did not deny that Mugabe had rigged elections in the past he dodged addressing that issue by asking a question; "Does that justify the coup?"
The lady should have also have asked Jonathan to confirm that Zanu PF staged a coup to stop Tsvangirai and MDC taking over power in 2008 following the March 2008 elections in which Tsvangirai had gunned 73% of the vote. Of course, he would not have dodged that issue by asking the same stupid question: "Does that justify the coup?"
The honest answer to Moyo's question is when you rig elections, stage coups, etc. you have per se elected to disregard the peaceful and democratic way of effecting regime change. By rejecting peaceful and evolutionary change you have not stop change happening - change will always happen those who think otherwise are deluding themselves - what you have stopped is peaceful and evolutionary and opened the door to the only other change violent and revolutionary change.
Mugabe can mourn and bitch about the coup the truth is he invited it upon himself.
In 2013 SADC leaders said Zimbabwe should postpone that year's elections to allow the democratic reforms necessary to ensure the elections are free, fair and credible to be implemented. It was none other than Mugabe himself who refuse and even threatened to take Zimbabwe out of the regional body if they insisted that the elections must be postponed.
"You can't expect us to reform ourselves out of power," answered Professor Moyo during his happier Zanu PF days when he was pressured about implemented the reforms to ensure free and fair elections.
It is ironic that he and his former boss, Mugabe, should now be the ones furious that SADC leaders, the international community and the people of Zimbabwe did not condemn the November coup. The truth is the people condemned the coup but tolerated it as the lesser of the two evils - the evil of the tyrant Mugabe who was in power by rigging elections and staging coups!
Professor Jonathan Moyo and his G40 friends are dreaming that one day they will return to power again in Zimbabwe; that is one dream that will never come truth. As much as the nation is grappling with the challenge of how to force Mnangagwa and his Lacoste thugs out of office the nation has no appetite to have the G40 take their place!
"Please be informed that the Minister Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement has directed that all remaining white commercial farmers be issued 99-year leases instead of the five-year leases as per the previous arrangement," reads the statement.
While the new administration has reiterated the need to compensate white former commercial farmers, it has also moved in to enforce a ban on new illegal farm occupations.
Every thinking Zimbabwean welcome the end to the years of pure madness that caused so much suffering and hardship all round to please a greedy few! The white farms must seek out those who seized their farms and get compensation from them. The compensation bill must not be added on the overburdened and impoverish povo who gained nothing and suffered a lot from the farm seizures!
US President Donald Trump's local envoy has announced a massive influx of US business men and women flying into Zimbabwe to set up business here.
In a statement, the embassy said even top US government officials are headed for Zimbabwe.
There is overwhelming evidence that President Mnangagwa will not implemented any reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. Elections are due in four or five months and the regime has not implemented even one reform. There is simply no time left for any reform to be implemented. The question then arises: Are the "massive influx of US business men and women flying into Zimbabwe to set up business" aware the country will NOT be holding free, fair and credible elections?
It is hard to believe they are not aware. So, the only logical explanation will be that they do not care that Zanu PF is going to rig the elections. Americans and many in the West have wringed their hands in sheer frustration to watch the Chinese, Russians looting Zimbabwe's resources for a song; they could not join in because of the targeted sanctions the West had imposed on Zanu PF leaders.
It is the people of Zimbabwe's own fault that we did not make the most of the window of opportunity to implement the reforms all these last 16 years when the sanctions were in place. Although no democratic reforms have been implemented in the sanctions years, the West are now going to lift the sanctions for selfish business interests. If America lifts the sanctions the rest of the West will follow.
Am I surprised? Hell no! This is what one would expect with President Trump's America first!
@ Tiger Shona
Some those who got the farms, some even got as many as five farms or more, are all saying they cannot pay the compensation but povo of whom 3/4 now live on US$1.00 or less a day can afford to pay? Where is the common sense and justice in that?
Many of the chefs who got the farms live in multi-million dollar mansions, a loud "here lives a wealthy man" statement if you ask me. Just because we have the same thugs in government who benefited from the looting and thus are making decision to favour the looters; it does not mean that makes sense or that justice is being served. Those who benefited from the farm invasion must pay the compensation even if that means losing their mansions!
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