Atlas Shrugged in Zimbabwe—the end approaches

Just as we need a cultural version of Ronald Reagan, we need a cultural (i.e. racial) version of Atlas Shrugged. But real life is providing us with so much material, who needs a novel? From the Telegraph:

White farmers in court for growing crops
By Peta Thornycroft, in Johannesburg

Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land—in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months….

Since 2000, when the government began seizing white-owned farms, many of them violently, the agricultural sector has collapsed and the economy has gone into freefall, with inflation now at 6,600 per cent, the highest in the world.

The World Food Programme estimates that it will be feeding 4.1 million Zimbabweans, one third of the population, by the end of the year.

Now the Chegutu group is charged with violating the Consequential Provisions Act, which gave the few hundred remaining white farmers a final deadline of Sep 30 to leave their land and homes….

The farmers, aged from 38 to 75, produce a variety of food from chickens to oranges and have already given two-thirds of their farms to the government for resettlement. All but one still work their remaining land intensively and say they intend to try to continue…. They pleaded not guilty and face up to two years in prison if convicted….

Didymus Mutasa, the lands minister, has said that the few hundred remaining white farmers will be forced out, one way or another.

“The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites,” he said recently. “Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms.”

In fact many farms were given to members of the government and their cronies, and one minister has admitted that the new farmers have failed in their cultivation efforts.

Outside the court, the scruffy shops of Chegutu were empty of basic foods, and street vendors sold small, sour oranges….

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 06, 2007 06:26 PM | Send