Since 2000. some 4,200 white farmers have been driven from their land and at least 18 have been murdered. Don Stewart, the last to die, was strangled and burnt to death in his farmhouse in December. Of the 300 still farming, more than half - like Ray Finaughty's family (pictured) - have been served with official eviction notices. In another blow, Zimbabwe’s High Court last week rejected a South African regional court ruling, which the government was meant to follow, that the land seizures were racist and illegal and white farmers should be allowed to return to their land.. “Enforcement of that judgment would be fundamentally contrary to the public policy of this country,” said the judge.
“Without a doubt the agenda has always been to get rid of us whites. They do not want us,” responded Deon Theron, the president of the Commercial Farmers Union. Mr. Theron had hoped that the unity government would oppose the new wave of farm seizures. Since becoming prime minister in the unity government, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has dismissed the seizures as “isolated incidents”. “They [the MDC] cannot be seen to be supporting white farmers. They are still caught up with that, instead of saying what is right is right and wrong is wrong,” Mr. Theron said. “This is happening at a time when we need investors to revive the economy. But no investors want to put their money in a country that has no respect for property rights or the rule of law.”
Booker Rising response: I find it ironic that colonial occupiers who stole the land in the first place now wanna cry foul about property rights and rule of law. I don't have a problem with the land reform policy itself. Where I fault Mugabe is using the land seizures to reward his incompetent, Marxist cronies instead of pursuing capitalist, pro-economic-growth policies and training indigenous Zimbabweans to oversee commercial farming enterprises. I also don't condone the murders. And while he claims to be the great-grandson of one of Zimbabwe's first white settlers, Mr. Finaughty (and one of his sons) doesn't look white to me.
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Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe Closes In On Last White Farmers
