from the link at #3
Britain promised to fund Zimbabwe’s land redistribution program, if liberation fighters laid down their arms and accepted a political settlement. Britain, under Tony Blair, reneged, finding excuses to wriggle out of commitments made by the Thatcher government. And so Zimbabwe’s government acted to reverse the legacy of colonialism, expropriating land without compensation (but for improvements made by the former owner.) Compensation, Zimbabwe’s government declared with unassailable justification, would have to be paid by Britain
I kinda figgered there was some money involved in all this. some of those Rhodesian farmers have contacts in the UK government and are calling in markers.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 24 2008 16:29 utc | 4

@DoS
Many of the white zimbabwean landowners live in england and/or are english corporations. They don’t need to call in markers if members of english parliament themselves have a financial stake in recolonising Zimbabwe. It’s worth remembering that Tiny Rowlands, probably the richest of the ’80’s english corporate cowboys made his money ‘sanction busting’ in and out of white ruled rhodesia until Zanu-PF troops liberated Zimbabwe.
The commonwealth had forced a policy of economic sanctions against the white minority government of Ian Smith’s rhodesia and the english who fought against these sanctions until the commonwealth’s already worn credibility was threadbare, blatantly flaunted the sanctions during Labour and Conservative english administrations.
I haven’t written on this for a while because I find swimming against the tide on Myanmar and Zimbabwe can be exhausting when one lives in a community which has opinion makers with a vested interest in recolonising both of nations, so they spew out their distortions as facts, on a daily basis.
Trying to demonstrate why it is that Zanu-PF (not just Robert Mugabe. A large section of Zimbabwean society agrees with their president) see this struggle as a continuation of their 120 year old battle for independance is tough when a chunk of the peeps in NZ are from zimbabwe and not just the whitefella racial supremacists of old.
When the english drove the people off their land to give the most fertile land in africa to white owned english companies (corporations in amerikan parlance) those refugees became separated from their heritage, especially among those who succeeded in the western urban lifestyle, began to have their own vested interest in more corporatisation of Zimbabwe. A lot of these people have left Zimbabwe.
Most refugees went to South Africa where, yet another piece of USuk misinformation tells us they have been subjected to rainbow nation xenophobia and to reinforce whitey’s notion of africa being tribal and violent, we are told they were murdered in riots last month by angry poor south africans. (the reality of that would take an even lengthier article and I haven’t done sufficient research on that subject to reinforce my contention that these ‘riots’ were in fact the result of inkatha politics. so moving from that digression back to zimbabwe. Many middle class zimbabweans have moved to NZ. Not just the old whiteys.
Young african professionals began to take advantage of the immigration policy that had been designed by the previous conservative government to grow their base by letting in white south africans and zimbabweans who were fleeing the consequences of their actions.
Obviously there couldn’t be a race factor in the process, an education hurdle had been put in instead but the nationalist governments in Zimbabwe and then South Africa have been investing heavily in educatioin and now many african africans can easily meet the education hurdle and some, the less socially aware shall we say choose to do so. These are the peeps who are classic african Tsvangira supporters. Urban professionals who have drunk deeply of the neo-lib trough.
They often aren’t the complete assholes that many of the whitefella refugees are and tend to be less socially conservative than the pricks who ran the apartheid -lite state that was Rhodesia.
And they are talking up Tsvangira to do other than that would mean a re-examination of their life choices.
So talking up Zanu-PF around here always means someone is going to pipe up with the old “I know someone from Zimbabwe, no not an ex-colonial type and african, and he/she reckons that Tsvangira is the only hope.
The only real way to contend that sort of argument is to go right back to basics. That is this isn’t sdome sort of giant boxing match Tsvangira Vs Mugabe for the heavyweight champion of the nations.
Mugabe doesn’t act alone he has a large section of Zimbabwe society supporting Zanu-PF and the way they have been resisting the USuk encroachment.
The kicker really is that if one accepts the mainstream argument of Mugabe throwing his weiht around to stay in power, it means that the army and police plus a large chunk of zimbabwe’s population are looney too.
But if we look at what has happened since the election as the actions of patriots who are trying to root out treason and subversion then the way that this has been gone about appears much more rational.
I too like b have been comparing the way that kenya was pressured with the way that Zimbabwe’s contentious elections have been handled by USuk and their UN sockpuppets.
Asking why? often gets a blank stare. Kenya was months ago the fat assed spotty tv news addicts can remember that far back and any attempt to simultaneously consider the two situations iat once creates disturbances in the white is right is might paradigm that is tv news in western society.
Call me paranoid but I was co0mmenting on Zimbabwe a few months ago in the guardian news blogs. It wasn’t well received there was literally no one else who wasn’t subscribing to the “Mugabe is a meglomaniac and Zanu-PF are criminals” theory of that natiion. As I said cal me paranoid but after that everytime I tried to read the grundiad it took several minutes for my cookie to get digested and for me to get access to the site. As soon as I deleted the three guardian cookies my connection speeds returned to normal. Anyone would think that my words had upset someone and echelon trackers had to be summoned to record my every keystroke in the guardian blog.
Now the only reason I point this out that if the connection delay (I endured it for several weeks before fixing it) was indeed the monitoring I believe it was, it demonstrates exactly how seriously USuk take this Zimbabwe re-colonisatiion.
Yes the right to grow genetically modified crops in africa (thereby having the wind carry the proprietary seeds across the african continent) is part of this but I doubt it is the biggest part.
Agriculture which was the Cinderella of western industry for the last 50 years, is coming back as a major source of wealth and power.
Farmers in NZ lost al their subsidies in the late 80’s and really struggled for quite some time. Many became incredibly innovative and developed quality produce that could have value added to it before export. Right now as food prices have trebled all the cockies are making big money. Corporates are trying to get in but there jst aren’t enough sellers selling cheap enough for corporate farmers to make a huge thieving agriculture industry with.
Although corporate agri-business has grabbed huge swathes in amerika, in europe particularly england the ‘landed gentry’ will never allow their property to be corporatised so the fertile lands of Zimbabwe have been selected as a quality location for agri-corporations to grow the foods for the bourgeois of england, europe and possibly amerika.
this is the plan and as soon as the backers can see huge returns are guaranteed they will be whipping the sock-puppets on the security council into action.
Zimbabwe will be ‘liberated’ from Zanu-PF and handed over to GFK (General Foods Kraft) or some eqiuivalent. Maybe Harbest although that is japanese it has cut a chunk of peasant farmers off land in the Philippines and knows the game.
It could be anyone, the auction prolly hasn’t even accepted first bid, so how could we know? What we do know is that if the assholes steal Zimbabwe, then millions of people will lose their land and livelihoods.
ps sorry bout the grammer and typos.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 25 2008 0:58 utc | 6