African Utopia (yeah right!)
Johnson
Zimbabwe falls further
into anarchy
Murder of whites continues while famine grows nearer
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Posted: March 30, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Anthony C. LoBaido
Š 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
"This is a great victory against the white colonialists. Soon we will
cleanse Namibia and then South Africa of all Europeans and whites."
- A Namibian commenting on the election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe
WINDHOEK, Namibia - The election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe,
strongly condemned as fraudulent by outside observers, has given the
strongman a platform to continue a crackdown on his opponents - both black
and white - as the nation grows closer to a full-fledged famine accompanied
by increasing anarchy.
Some observers believe the dictator's recent "victory" has spiraled the
nation to perhaps the point of no return. The Movement for Democratic
Change, or MDC, is Mugabe's main opponent in Zimbabwe. They have thus far
refused to form a coalition government with Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF Party.
As Mugabe's land confiscation policy has driven white farmers off their
land, a famine is coming to the nation. Scores of Zimbabweans are heading
for South Africa, creating a refugee crisis in a nation that already has
lost control of its vreemdelingehabeer, Afrikaans for "border influx
control."
Says Nina Van der Hausen, a South African policewoman in Cape Town, "The
Marxist leaders in Namibia, South Africa and Angola are watching Mugabe's
terror tactics go unchallenged by the West, and this only eggs them on to do
the same, I'm afraid."
Mugabe recently passed a law in Parliament banning all foreign journalists
from the nation. News is hard to come by. Last week, the British Daily
Telegraph's Zimbabwe correspondent, Peta Thornycroft, was jailed by Mugabe
under new security laws. Thornycroft, a 57-year-old woman, is being held by
the Central Intelligence Oganization in Chimanimani, east of Harare,
according to her lawyer, Tapiwanashe Kujinga.
Mugabe ordered the arrest of Daily News editor Geoffrey Nyarota last week
for running what Information Minister Jonathan Moyo called a "patently
false" story in Zimbabwe's only independent daily paper.
Nyarota had written a story stating that a meeting of parliamentarians from
the African, Caribbean and Pacific organization and European Union had
jointly agreed on a resolution calling for a redo of Zimbabwe's recent
election.
How is Mugabe kept in power, many may wonder. To begin, Mugabe is backed by
a series of "white angels" in the UK who fund and launder his many African
adventures and financial operations. Mugabe is heavily involved in fighting
UNITA in Angola and in the Marxist Congo, where he has lucrative mining
deals going on.
South African military intelligence officer Pieter Coetzee told
WorldNetDaily, "Famine aid will surely come to Zimbabwe, and the West's
powerful food conglomerates, through the United Nations, will surely profit.
Mugabe makes money from sanctions, farming, famine, mining, ivory, drug
laundering - you name it."
Last week, Zimbabwe's finance minister, Simba Makoni, issued a public
statement in which he said he would revise Zimbabwe's budget to find money
to feed the country's citizens.
Makoni said that preliminary forecasts showed that Zimbabwe would need to
import more maize and other grains than was anticipated when the budget was
presented last November.
Under white rule until 1979, Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, was a net
exporter of grain. Times have changed, however. Makoni's public statement
said that Mugabe's government has so far spent about US$37 million on
imports of maize and grain. Even Mugabe's own government officials say that
over 500,000 Zimbabweans will need food assistance. That figure, say
international aid agencies, is grossly underestimated.
One British SAS commander, who asked that his name not be revealed due to
political considerations, told WND, "The Labor Party [in the UK] supports
Mugabe. The Conservative Party does nothing. The British army is apolitical,
but in reality, our troops get sent overseas to Sierra Leone to guard
diamond mines owned by our wealthy countrymen when Tony Blair should be
sending us into Zimbabwe to put the MDC into power."
Former South African civil servant Alan Grieve commented that the ANC
government of South Africa "is unlikely to pressure Mugabe. South Africa's
leaders are not elected by popular vote. South Africans vote for a party,
not an individual. Even Nelson Mandela called this phenomenon 'a serious
flaw' in South Africa's new dispensation. Mugabe can tell [South African
President] Mbeki that he [Mugabe] has been popularly elected, while Mbeki
was not."
From inside Zimbabwe
Zimbabwean Cathy Buckle, a white farmer who has survived Mugabe's farm
invasions and chosen to remain inside the country, reports that conditions
are worsening in Zimbabwe.
"The picture on the front page of this week's Zimbabwe Independent is
gruesome and shocking. It is of murdered farmer Terry Ford, lying in a pool
of blood, his body covered from top to bottom in wounds and bruises. Terry,
trying to escape from his farm, was overrun by a mob, caught, tied to a
tree, bludgeoned and then shot," she told WorldNetDaily.
"Terry's family were brave enough to allow the world's cameras in to expose
this horror, but his murder is only one of seven that have taken place in
the last 10 days [at the hands of Mugabe supporters.]"
Those seven, Buckle said, are Terry Ford, Ernest Gatsi (MDC activist -
beaten to death), Tafi Gwaze (MDC polling agent - abducted, tortured and
beaten to death), Laurence Kuheya (MDC activist), Funny Mahuni (MDC
supporter), Owen Manyara (MDC activist - beaten to death) and Darlington
Vikaveka (farm security guard - beaten to death).
"In each case, the brutality has been barbaric in the extreme, and I offer
my condolences to the families and friends of them all. In addition, scores
of people have been beaten. A dozen farms have been looted or trashed, and
an estimated 1,200 MDC polling agents have been displaced from their homes
and are on the run, being hounded by government supporters who seem intent
on hunting down anyone who dared to differ in our recent elections," Buckle
said.
Buckle told WorldNetDaily that the only comfort for ordinary Zimbabweans "is
that world pressure is mounting."
"We have been suspended from the commonwealth council for a year. Denmark
has closed its embassy in Harare and suspended all development aid, and
Switzerland has imposed travel and financial bans on President Mugabe and
other top government officials. We all know that the horrors in Zimbabwe
cannot and will not last, and each day has become one of survival. I
continue to wear a tattered and frayed yellow ribbon on my chest in support
of all who are suffering and in silent protest of anarchy."
Says Herman Davids, a white Zimbabwean farmer who recently fled Harare with
his family to come to Cape Town and live with relatives, "Mugabe has killed
Zimbabwe."
"Where is the West?" Davids asked. "Where is President Bush and Colin Powell
on this issue? We are bleeding and dying in Zimbabwe while the world does
nothing. It's almost as if the West has an unwritten agreement with the
communists to hand over control of all of Africa to interests hostile to the
West. Only God knows why."
Previous stories:
African group sees 'calm' in Zimbabwe
International community turns on Mugabe
Land-grab policy causes Zimbabwe famine
Tales of Mugabe's rural cleansing
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Anthony C. LoBaido is an international correspondent for WorldNetDaily
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27021