You Reap What You Sow

SO the chickens come home to roost, eh. Rather emaciated chickens too.

From the the Telegraph (thanks to Cox & Forkum for finding it):
"White farmers reject Mugabe plea to return."
"White farmers evicted by Robert Mugabe's government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in "joint ventures" with those who brutalised them and stole their land."

In case you missed it (and you probably did, as the American press didn't talk much about it), here's what happened. Mugabe, dictator-for-life of Zimbabwe, needed some party favors to throw around. There is a long history of white-black tension there in Zimbabwe (formerly the British colony of Rhodesia), as whites owned a majority of the land despite being very much in the minority. So Mugabe decided to take the land of white farmers and give it to the members of his political party in exchange for their continued loyalty.

The problem with that plan is that thugs make poor farmers. After several bloody attempts at resistance by white farmers and outright theft by Mugabe supporters, the country's farms rested in the hands of the thugs. And in the five years since, Zimbabwe went from the breadbasket of southern Africa to a starving nation dependant on foreign aid. Most of the farms lay fallow, their equipment stolen, their buildings looted and burned and their fields unworked. And the nation's economy was destroyed.

But here's the key:
"One tobacco and cattle farmer, who was forced off his property by armed squatters in 2000, said: 'He can't be serious. My house has been burnt down, my fields destroyed and he wants to invite me back? There has to be a proper return to respect for property rights. We need facts, not words and a legal framework. No one's going to go back on the basis of this.'"

Oh, and in case you were wondering - we said a few things, but we didn't do anything about it, as we were too busy obsessing over Abu Graib and demanding an investigation as the Army finished its four-month old investigation. Neither the UK or the UN actually did anything about it. I didn't hear any complaints from Amnesty International either.

It's not racism when whites are mobbed by blacks, you see.