Hi Jabou,

By the way belated happy valentine's day to you and all the
sisters on the L. I totally agree with you that land in
Zimbabwe should be redistributed to the majority of black
farmers in the name of fairness. After all their land was
forcibly taken from them during UDI. My contention is why
has it taken Mugabe almost 20 years to do something about
it and now he is accusing the opposition of citing with the
white farmers, which is a lot of nonsense. My observation
is that he is trying to use the land issue (which is very
noble and playing on peoples sentiments) to consolidate
himself in power. It would have given him the authority to
rule with an iron fist allowing him to dissolve parliament
and the cabinet and rule by decree. Now i don't think
that's what Zimbabwe needs at this point in time.

Frankly the land issue should have been the first thing
settled after independence and did he really need a draft
constitution to do so. Thanks for sharing the radio
commentry.

basil


On Wed, 16 Feb 2000 20:13:08 EST Jabou Joh <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Basil,
>
> i heard a very good commentary on the radio today. The assessment was that
> the results of the vote were more of a desire on the part of the people to
> curb Mugabe's powers, and not actually a dissatisfaction with the plan to
> seize land from White farmers.Infact, i think a majority oif Zimbabweans
> would not be opposed to re-distribution of farm land that was more or less
> illegally seized by these White farmers in days gone by.Prior to the vote,
> people had clearly indicated that they wanted Mugabe's powers curbed and
> thought they would get this, only to find later that this wwas not the case.
> Their vote was to drive home the point that the people are not going to have
> decisions made for them anymore. Mugabe has been advocating taking land from
> the White farmers and re-distributing them for years, and a lot of the
> Zimbabweans friend i have say that he has not delivered on this one.
> Personally, i cannot see why the majority of Zimbabweans would be opposed to
> that proposal. I spent many years in that part of Africa, and was in and out
> of both Zimbabwe and South Africa, and saw the arrogance of those White
> farmers, and how all the Africans were relegated to just farm hands.
> Re-distribution would be justice, but they have to make sure that they
> provide assistance in the form of trianing, etc to the prospective African
> farmers so they can run these farms efficiently, and this will have to be an
> unfolding process that has to be well planned.
>
> Jabou Joh
>

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