Zimbabwe has signed an agreement with
the Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe and the Southern African Commercial
Farmers Alliance which mandates Zimbabwe to pay white commercial farmers US$3.5
billion.
The money will be raised from Zimbabwe
taxpayers.
The compensation agreement is “for
improvements and assets on the more than 4,000 farms that were seized and
doesn't pertain to the land itself,” Ben Gilpin, a director of the CFU, explained.
No one objects to the white farmers
being compensated. What anyone with half a brain would object to is that the Zimbabwean
taxpayer should be the one paying the compensation. The ordinary taxpayer is
not the one who benefited from the looted assets; it is the ruling elite and their
families and cronies who benefited.
Indeed, the beneficiaries of the
seized white-owned farms have also benefited from freebees from the 2007 Farm
Mechanisation Programme and many other similar looting schemes all at taxpayer’s
expense.
Those who benefited from the looted
assets from the white-owned farms must pay the US$3.5 billion just as those who
benefit from the multitude of looting schemes must repay the money.
40 years of gross mismanagement and
rampant corruption by this Zanu PF dictatorship have left the Zimbabwe economy
in total ruins and 34% of our people already live in extreme poverty – i.e.
they cannot afford one decent meal a day much less other basic essentials such
as education for the children, health care, etc. Digging these millions of
ordinary Zimbabweans out of the abject poverty is not going to be a walk in the
park without piling on them the burden of debts from which they benefited
nothing.
"Today we signed a historic
compensation agreement with the Commercial Farmers Union, bringing closure and
a new beginning to land discourse in Zimbabwe. The agreement re-affirms the
irreversibility of land and is as a symbol of our commitment to the rule of law
and property rights,” said Mnangagwa.
"It is a testimony to the fact
that as fellow Zimbabweans, we can peacefully resolve our differences. We
cannot change the past, we can only learn from it. Let us build on the trust
demonstrated today, let us choose dialogue over confrontation and let us move
forward together."
How can this agreement bring closure
to this messy land seizure problem when:
1)
The burden of compensating the white farms is being imposed of the
impoverished ordinary Zimbabweans whilst those who benefited from all the
looting, keep their loot.
2) Zimbabwe’s
economic recovery is totally dependent of the nation reviving the country’s
once productive agricultural sector a.s.a.p. Whilst the new farm owners have
failed to put the land to productive use, they have nonetheless profited from
the many corrupt scheme designed to help farmers. The new farm owners are now holding
the nation to ransom!
It is not only the white farmers who
have been the victim of Zanu PF’s corrupt and tyrannical rule; the ordinary
Zimbabweans too have suffered untold injustices under the regime. The white
farmers have voiced their suffering and povo have no such voice.
You, Mnangagwa, and your fellow ruling
elite benefited from looting white-owned farms; you must pay the US$3.5 billion
compensation and not the taxpayer.
“Let us move forward together!” How
can we move forward when all you have done is taken your foot off the white
farmer’s neck but only to plant both feet on the long-suffering povo’s neck!
7 comments:
POLICE Commissioner General Godwin Matanga has ordered all officers to sleep at their respective police stations Thursday evening pending deployment to quell anti-government rioting at 3am the next day.
This follows threats by the opposition to roll out countrywide protests against high level corruption in government corridors coupled with grinding poverty under the Zanu PF led administration.
One has to ask: could we have avoided these street protests?
The honest answer has to be yes. Zanu PF could have save the nation all this chaos and suffering if the party had never imposed this corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical dictatorship in the first place. The party has had many opportunities to repent and dismantle the dictatorship and for 40 years it has done the exact opposite and dragged the nation deeper and deeper into the abyss.
Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have had many golden opportunities to dismantle the dictatorship but they have sold-out.
It is a great shame that this nation should find itself being dragged into a violent political confrontation and having to admit nonetheless that the option for a peaceful resolution was never fully explored.
@ Fungai Chiganangana
Total repentance and total confession and above all return the looted wealth so we can use it to rebuild the lives of the ordinary Zimbabweans, the real victims of the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship, whose lives are hell-on-earth!
The trouble with you is you are so easily fooled, easily tricked!
In November 2008 the rate of inflation had soared to dizzying heights of 500 billion per cent and the difference between the official US$ to Z$ exchange rate and the black-market exchange rate had also soared into the stratosphere. The bank bought and paid for the tractor and harrow in US$ and Kasukuwere paid the bank in Z$ at the official exchange rate. He was able to but all the Z$ he needed to settle the bill with just US$100 or less! No wonder he insisted in paying the bill and has carefully kept a record of the transaction.
The real jest of the corruption here was in allowing those with the political connections to get the bank pay for whatever they needed in US$ and allow them to settle the bill with the bank in Z$ at the official exchange rate.
The banks would never ever give away any foreign currency to an ordinary Zimbabwean. If they needed any foreign currency they had to source it themselves on the black-market and pay an arm and a leg for it!
People like Kasukuwere could walk into the RBZ and walk out with a briefcase full of British £, US$, SA Rands, etc. all paid for at the official exchange rate. They then sold the foreign currency in the black-market at black-market rate which could be millions of times higher than the official rate. Only a village idiot like you Mwembe cannot see this as corruption!
@ Julius Machingura
From the look of things, we are in very big trouble. Our take on the situation could be exaggerated yes, but should we be correct, then only a revolution can free Zimbabwe from the grip of this vice.
The opposition in Zimbabwe has no capacity to carry out such a revolution, neither are they built to carry out one.
This is just a rumbling and idiotic article starting nowhere and ending nowhere else. So, you have already made the conclusion that “opposition in Zimbabwe has no capacity to carry out such a revolution, neither are they built to carry out one”, without saying what it is exactly the opposition lacked. You then moved on to talk about a mythical body that will carryout the revolution without say what or who will constitute this mythical body.
You want us all to join the revolution now, today!
The revolution is “to extricate the country from the grip of heartless individuals and organisations” who remain nameless and you do not know whether Mnangagwa is part of the system or has himself been captured by it!
In short, you have no clue what is wrong much less have a solution. All you want is for people to join the street protest and the rat race!
No wonder the country has been stuck in this hell-on-earth of our own making for 40 years – with idiots like you the nation will never ever get out of this hell-hole.
Zanu PF is a party of ruthless thugs, they will always be fighting among themselves especially now with the available wealth for them to loot shrinking by the day. As soon as one faction is eliminated another will emerge and the fighting will continue!
It is a great pity that Shiri died before he faced justice. We have taken far too long to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. 40 years and it is still going strong!
With COVID-19 aggravating an already severe hunger crisis in Zimbabwe, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed for an additional US$250 million to support a rapidly expanding emergency operation for millions at-risk.
WFP projections indicate that by year's end, the number of food insecure Zimbabweans will have surged by almost 50 percent to touch 8.6 million - a staggering 60 percent of the population – owing to the combined effects of drought, economic recession and the pandemic.
"Many Zimbabwean families are suffering the ravages of acute hunger, and their plight will get worse before it gets better", said Lola Castro, WFP's Regional Director for Southern Africa. "We need the international community to step up now to help us prevent a potential humanitarian catastrophe."
A nationwide lockdown, reinforced last week, has precipitated massive joblessness in urban areas, while rural hunger is accelerating because now unemployed migrants are returning to their villages and the absence of the vital remittances they provided is more keenly felt.
This makes very sad reading especially for a country that used to be the breadbasket of the Southern Africa region! The Zanu PF ruling elite seized the farms and the country’s agricultural sector collapse together with the economy! Now the country spends US$ 3.5 billion on Command Agriculture, supposedly to encourage the new farm owners to produce food; they have looted the money and produced nothing.
Indeed, the various schemes to encourage the new farmers to farm have only become a source of ease money. The nation is not only paying these ruling elite farmers money and getting nothing back the ruling elite are now holding the nation to ransom – they will never give up the farms come what may. What a nightmare!
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