Zimbabwe’s Last White Farmer Forced to Quit
Zimbabwe’s once proud white farming community is facing extinction, as President Robert Mugabe steps up his campaign of violence and intimidation on all fronts.
Virtually all of the remaining 280 white farmers have been invaded by government supporters since Mr Mugabe lost the first round of the presidential election in March.
Yesterday Reinier van Rensburg left Upper Romsey farm for the final time, evicted by a senior official in the ruling Zanu-PF party.
He was the last of his family to cultivate the rich soil around Upper Romsey, some of the finest in Africa, on land which stretched from his homestead to the hills on the horizon, and beyond.
“This is my last day,” he said, as his few remaining staff loaded scrap metal and spare parts on to a lorry. “That’s it, we will have to get permission from court before we will be able to come back here.
“I try not to think about it. It’s obviously an emotional thing. That’s your livelihood.”
Moments after he drove out of the gate an eagle swooped low over his vehicle, as if in a farewell salute.
Land and independence are the central planks of Mr Mugabe’s propaganda campaign for re-election as president.
Judicial moves to take over properties have been stepped up since the elections in March, which resulted in defeat for Zanu-PF in parliament and Mr Mugabe trailing Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round of the presidential poll.
“It’s just very disappointing,” said Mr van Rensburg, 37, who is married with two children. “I feel betrayed by the government. All we were doing was growing food for the country. We were not getting involved in politics or anything. What did we do?”
His father, also Reinier, 69, said: “I have been there for 40 years. That’s my whole life.”
Mr van Rensburg is one of 10 siblings and the family used to own 10 properties covering 32,000 acres. But in 2004, four years into Mr Mugabe’s violent land seizure programme, they surrendered nine of them to the government in exchange for a promise that they could keep the last remaining one, Upper Romsey farm, at Lions Den, a mere 2,000-odd acres about 80 miles north of Harare.
“We didn’t even hesitate. We agreed to that immediately,” said Mr van Rensburg. “By then we were already in survival mode.”
But last year Moris Mpofu, an official of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, arrived at the property holding an offer letter from Didymus Mutasa, the minister of land and resettlement, giving him ownership of the land. A series of court actions followed, and in November around 60 Zanu-PF militia installed themselves on the farm. Mr Van Rensburg’s workers were abused and threatened, and his manager’s wife beaten up.
Mr Mpofu is reaping the summer crop of maize and soybeans Mr van Rensburg planted, worth around £400,000, and the business is being asset-stripped. About 70 farm workers were mostly left unemployed and many joined the exodus to South Africa.
Finally a fortnight ago a court issued a final eviction order against Mr van Rensburg, who is Zimbabwean-born.
“They just carry on and do as they wish,” he said. “They are spelling out point blank that there’s no place for a white man in Zimbabwe. If we were prepared to make a deal to give them nine farms and remain with one and that was not good enough, tell me what would be good enough.”
He insisted: “We are staying here and we have no intention of going anywhere.”
But he said change—of policy, not necessarily of government—was essential. “I still hope,” he said. “That’s the only hope we have.”
Zimbabwe’s telephone system is barely functioning and Mr Mpofu could not be reached for comment.
(Posted on June 26, 2008)
Comments
If I were a farmer in Zimbabwe I would salt the earth so nothing ever grows again there (not that anything would any with zimbabwean “farmers” in charge) and burn my home and all non transportable possessions.
Posted by at 6:31 PM on June 26
Rememeber back in the 1980’s when it was “enlightened” to have an “End Apartheit” bumper sticker? I’d like to start a similar campaign, with the letter writing and Cafe Press bumper stickers that say “Save the Rhodesian Whites”. People who are unaware may Google it and figure out what it means; best of all it sounds like an animal, like an elephant or wolf, so it’s less likely to get one’s car vandalized.
Posted by Anglokraut at 7:05 PM on June 26
Why anyone would still want to live there is beyond me. Leave the country and let them suffer for their racism white man.
Posted by A. Windaus at 7:07 PM on June 26
One has to think that without the worlds generosity, Sub Sahara Africans would go
extinct very quickly
Posted by Cafedeflore at 7:10 PM on June 26
The first thing that went through my mind was Wow! They`re really at the last one. Kind of a Saigon/Rooftop/Chopper moment. The second thing I thought of was that last tree in Stalingrad. And how they threw up a 24/7 guard around it.
Then I felt like cryiing about him trading everything for that last 2000 acres and getting betrayed. Care to guess how many memories got plowed under on that one?
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 7:16 PM on June 26
“Mr Mpofu is reaping the summer crop of maize and soybeans Mr. van Rensburg planted, worth around 400,000, and the business is being asset-stripped.”
The handwriting has been on the wall for Mr. van Rensburg since at least last November when the militia installed themselves on his farm, and yet he sowed so that another could reap! How senseless is that?
“They are spelling out point blank that there’s no place for a white man in Zimbabwe.”
Mr. van Rensburg should have arrived at this conclusion quite some time ago. None is so blind as he who won’t see.
Brace yourselves for pleas for aid to starving Zimbabweans.
Posted by Belle at 7:19 PM on June 26
Sounds like Mugabe has been successful in his efforts to promote diversity in Zimbabwe. Mission Accomplished!!!!!!!!
Now, what happens to the remaining blacks is a whole new issue that he will soon address. His main strategy will probably be to accuse the Western Nations of racism and demand UN/US contributions/reparations.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 7:30 PM on June 26
“We are staying here and we have no intention of going anywhere”…….
What a shame that we dont have an infrastructure to take care of our helpless white brothers and sisters around the globe.
Please.. lets put our heads together…how can we help to repatriate, support, pay for expenses…anything!
God bless the noble white race!
Posted by at 7:45 PM on June 26
Why would ANY white man want to live on that hell-hole continent?? I would consider it an absolute gift from GOD almighty to be able to vacate that backward, corrupt and violent hell spawned place and get to a more peaceful and safe home. Once the white man leaves Africa to her doom, blacks will realize that all they have is a DIRECT result of white men. Let’s create a scenario: ALL WHITES and western governments, doctors, businesses, missionaries, leave Africa entirely—-just walk away—-no more foreign aid or help of any kind— let the world see clearly the ruination of an already ruined continent.Then you would see totally rampant AIDS, rape, extreme violence, genocide to make Rwanda look like Sunday school, abundant resources plundered, voodoo and witchcraft, indolence,poverty, starvation, slavery basically a return to 10,000 B.C. only with about 1/4 of the population left. If we stopped interfering with their inevitable demise, they would extinct themselves right before our eyes. We are not their problem—they are and have always been their own biggest problem.
Posted by at 8:30 PM on June 26
Considering the fact that the government of the U.S. was behind the movement to reduce Rhodesia to black rule, I think the U.S. government should bring all white Rhodesian and South Africans to this country and set them up in whatever business they were in over there. It is the U.S. govt. fault this happened to them. Another example of our policy of foreign entanglements.
Posted by roller at 8:53 PM on June 26
Now watch the bumbling Africans starve. I would salt the land and lay it waste but it will turn back to wasteland soon enough with Africans in charge. Meanwhile as Whites get kicked out, blacks are pouring into Britain.
Posted by at 9:31 PM on June 26
Put black folks in the driver’s seat, & this is the inevitable outcome. If only there were some way to make everyone understand that by the time the election rolls around in November.
Posted by JustPlainMean at 10:24 PM on June 26
Someday all of Africa will be taken over and modernized by people from either the East or the West. I think it’s inevitable in the long term. Just wait until resources start to become scarce. Are people just going to sit back while unfathomable riches lie completely untapped due to the primitive state of Africans? Not forever.
Posted by at 11:27 PM on June 26
And things will be done in the rest of the world as it is in Africa. Whites are going extinct, and we are being dispossessed.
Posted by at 12:09 AM on June 27
Why any whites stay is beyond me.
The sooner they get out and let the buggers starve the better.
Catch this spoof of old Farmer Mugabe:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkGjjUp4zJo&feature=related
Posted by Geoff Miller at 12:31 AM on June 27
Well, that’s the last of them. Now as soon as these farms turn fallow, there will be nothing left to eat for anyone. Only a year or so back, Mugabe was issuing a call for White farmers to return to the land, claiming the land would not steal the land this time. Nobody fell for it, so now he has become so desperate he is back to strong-arming the last few remaining farmers into vacating the land. This only shows how utterly incompetent and lazy his own people are. And just how hopeless they are without Whites there to tend the farms. Now that the last white farmer is gone, they will likely have to stoop to cannibalism. Bon Appetit losers!
Posted by at 1:11 AM on June 27
Salt the land, poison the well with a dead animal, pour gas on the house and set it alight, take all your possessions and drive.
Posted by at 1:30 AM on June 27
The Jimmy Carter Follies
“President Jimmy Carter invited Robert Mugabe to the White House in 1980 and fully supported this dictator’s rise to power in Rhodesia. Moderate black Bishop Abel Muzorewa had been elected to the post of prime minister. However, President Carter with the support of the world press succeeded in declaring the election null and void. Mugabe, an avowed Marxist, was elected in a second election. The totals of the Zimbabwe disaster under Mugabe are still being tallied: 70 percent unemployment, a total dictatorship, the displacing of productive white farmers and the resulting destruction of productive farms, an exodus of three million Zimbabweans from the country.”
http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1587065/posts
Posted by at 4:39 AM on June 27
It makes no sense to kick out the only people in your country that are producing food, where is the logic??? Oh, wait I forgot, this is Africa we’re talking about.
Posted by at 7:55 AM on June 27
I read recently that something like 50% of the food in africa is from foreign aid. After the population of Ethiopia increased multiple times due to food aid since the 70’s they are starving again. Dr. Watson was right.
Posted by at 8:02 AM on June 27
I can certainly understand how this man feels! To work his entire life to develop a piece of land into something of beauty and productivity, only to have his life, his soul, his land then usurped and ripped out of his hands by a bunch of thugs!
Without Western intervention the so called citizenry of this country would soon, once again, be eating each other; and, of course, the politically correct, affirmative action, multicultural, eggheads here would be tirelessly pontificating from every college lectern: “it all the our fault for abandoning this country”! But of course, we WILL send money and aid (unless of course, the price of gas continues to rise).
And before the change came this was one of the most beautiful countries on the continent!
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 8:46 AM on June 27
What the hell is wrong with these people? I worked for a black-run business once. He was actually quite bright. But he never paid his bills, drove the most productive people out, had sex with people on staff, and acted arrogant as all get out. I have few doubts that if he were running a country, rather than a business, it would quickly have become like one of these sub-saharan hell holes.
Posted by at 10:06 AM on June 27
“They are spelling out point blank that there’s no place for a white man in Zimbabwe. If we were prepared to make a deal to give them nine farms and remain with one and that was not good enough, tell me what would be good enough.”
What would be good enough? For Mugabe’s thugocracy, nothing short of his severed head on a pike would be good enough. And if this brave white farmer doesn’t exit Mugabeland but pronto, that’s exactly what will happen.
“Mr van Rensburg, who is Zimbabwean-born…”
If Mr van Rensburg is 37, as the article also states, then he was NOT born in the black-run hellhole currently known as “Zimbabwe,” but in a long-gone, never-to-return, white-run paradise called RHODESIA.
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 10:13 AM on June 27
“Someday all of Africa will be taken over and modernized by people from either the East or the West. I think it’s inevitable in the long term. Just wait until resources start to become scarce. Are people just going to sit back while unfathomable riches lie completely untapped due to the primitive state of Africans? Not forever.”
It will be from the East if this happens, likely the chinese. The West won’t do it because it is too politically correct but the chinese won’t care.
Posted by at 10:44 AM on June 27
It’s really quite remarkable how quickly black Africans can revert back to the tribal savagery and primitive existence that characterized sub-Sahara Africa for thousands of years. Once the white power and economic structure is turned over to black Africans it seems to take no time at all for them to utterly destroy what white European leadership, ingenuity, and science have created.
This sort of behavior forms an immutable pattern wherever black Africans are found, whether it be the Americas, the West Indies, or Africa itself.
They are truly unique among all the world’s races in their destructive reversion to barbarism once the whites are forced to leave. And even when they’re gone black African behavior is still attributed to white racism, the only politically acceptable explanation for black failure. Of course, nobody truly believes this, even in university sociology departments, though it remains perhaps the most durable and oft-repeated lie in modern history.
Posted by john at 12:23 PM on June 27
The problem with the Rhodesians is that they have nowhere to go to.
All of the white countries are eager to accept immigrants and refugees and furnish them with housing, allowances and jobs.
As long as their skin colour isn’t white.
We all will be paying for every black African or Muslim immigrant with their anti-white ways for decades to come, but apparently hard working skilled whites aren’t desireable in our multicult utopia.
Posted by ODDL at 1:11 PM on June 27
“It makes no sense to kick out the only people in your country that are producing food, where is the logic?”
The logic is that of jealousy on the part of the black man of the White man (or to a smaller extent any other non-black man). You will not believe the rage this feeling of inferiority brings and how this clouds logical thought (of which the black has very little). One of the easiest ways of getting rid of those inferiority feelings is getting rid of the object which causes those feelings. People like “Dr.” Kamau Kambon only blurt out what most blacks think. A canine is smart enough to not bite the hand that feeds it, but that is too much to expect from black humans.
Posted by Jasper at 4:12 PM on June 27
The Hollyweirdos who were whining over Rwanda and Darfur seem strangely silent on this issue. Why might that be?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:18 PM on June 27
I had to laugh out loud when visiting another website with a thread regarding the topic of Zimbabwe. On it a black man was saying all Whites living in Africa were fake Africans, and had no business being there. Pure pro-black anti-white propaganda! But the real irony was, he was posting from the UK. This is so typical of them. They will cry out that Whites have no place in Africa since it is not their homeland, even if they founded Rhodesia, and fed the nation. Meantime, they feel blacks have every right in Europe, and every right to free medical aid, and welfare. This is so typical of their selfish and hypocritical mindset.
Posted by at 9:05 PM on June 27
The Hollyweirdos who were whining over Rwanda and Darfur seem strangely silent on this issue. Why might that be?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:18 PM on June 27
Because it’s whites and not black getting killed. Not only that, the liberals say “oh well, those whites are racist and the blacks are oppressed, so it seems justified”
Posted by at 9:15 PM on June 27
China will not “develop” Africa. China will exterminate the Africans and repopulate the continent with the Chinese.
See Darfur as an example of Africa’s future.
Posted by at 10:45 PM on June 27
not a penny for any of the save the children, Oxfam, Angelina Jolie, or any “Christian” charities that feed black Africans, including their hyper-large, low IQ families.
Africa was self-sufficient in food under white colonialism. Let the blacks truly enjoy the full benefit of “freedom”. The freedom to starve and to die of AIDS. Not a penny of US aid to Africa, including the stupid billions Bush ships to buy AIDS medications the Africans are too stupid to know how to use anyway. Not a penny to charlatans like “Bono” (what’s wrong with your normal Irish name, bub?) for their useless, guilt-ridden charities. Also, can we stop buying music and movie tickets from idiots like Madonna and Angelina Jolie who live in luxury, adopt black African babies, and want the world to subsidize this continent whose inhabitants should simply become extinct.
I also was sick at the sight of all the self-congratulatory celebs and thousands of ordinary British whites at the public 90th birthday celebration in London this week for Communist butcher Nelson Mandela.
Posted by at 6:16 PM on June 28
“including the stupid billions Bush ships to buy AIDS medications the Africans are too stupid to know how to use anyway.”
This while we have many americans, especially the elderly, who can’t afford their medicine. Makes you feel real good doesn’t it.
“Not a penny to charlatans like “Bono” (what’s wrong with your normal Irish name, bub?) for their useless, guilt-ridden charities”
Actually he’s not a charlatan, he’s just a another misguided white idiot.
Posted by at 8:20 PM on June 28
What happened to my comments about the goings on in the Congo in ‘65 by the 5th Commando, commanded by Brit Mike Hoare? His 300 totally wiped out the Congolese army AND the Mau Mau. If I recall it was because the black despot king Kenneth Mobutu (think I got his name right) decided that after the 5th had kept him in power he shouldn’t have to pay them. Some of us, if not all know what happened then. Why not AGAIN?? Surely these Zim and SA white farmers could hire the same type of men again and clean up the political and racial scene of those two curcuses. I see too, surprise! surprise! that it appears that Mugabe may win the presidential election again!!
Posted by Skip at 8:38 AM on June 29
“Mr Mpofu is reaping the summer crop of maize and soybeans Mr. van Rensburg planted, worth around 400,000, and the business is being asset-stripped.”
Someone has to feed Mugabe, his shopaholic wife, and the Generals keeping him in office.
Posted by Kellie at 3:07 PM on June 29
I respect the farmers and the hard work they put into tending the land. But for me, even though Africa is rich in resources and a beautiful contitent, because of it’s native people I consider it hell on earth.
Posted by at 7:35 PM on June 29
I’ve been spending most of my time over at www.peakoil.com lately. What I get from there is good news/bad news.
The good news that the percentage of whites as a % of population may be going up radically in the next 100 years.
The bad news is the reason: the deaths will fall more heavily on people living in warm regions, and on people that haven’t prepared. There will be plenty of deaths to go around, though.
Search that website for “methane” and “arctic”, and stop worrying about Mugabe and Zimbabweans getting what they deserve. (They will). Start worrying about staying alive when the world gets at least 10 degrees hotter and oil is prohibitively expensive.
We are running short on quite a few things besides oil. Water, arable land, fish, and phosphorous to name four. Natural gas and coal are not far behind.
Posted by semi-dormant poster at 1:03 AM on July 4
Africa has over 300 tribes. Tribalism is the most powerful force on the continent. Check out the history, both past and recent. Western-style governments are doomed to failure. Research closely and you will see that there are at least a dozen wars in progress at the moment. Even “progressive” countries such as South Africa and Namibia will not be immune. Central and southern Africa is ready to explode. The stubborn types who insist on staying will not only be caught-up in the violence but will be the first casualties.
Posted by Joe M at 12:00 AM on July 5