Zimbabwe 'running out of bread'

[eppur_se_muova]

Source: BBC

Reports from Zimbabwe say bakeries have run out of flour and there will be no bread in the foreseeable future.

The Agriculture Ministry has confirmed that this year's wheat harvest yield of 145,000 tonnes is only one third of the country's requirements.

Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo is quoted as blaming the shortages on the failings of what he called the "new farmers" created by the land reforms.

Last week, the government announced it would import 100,000 tonnes of wheat.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7022653.stm

[Kutjara]

1. Who knew that handing over all the farms to people...

...who have no knowledge of farming would produce this outcome? It's a total and complete surprise.

Let's hope that the people rise up and boot Mugabe's sorry ass out before the country starves to death.

[GeminiProgressive]

2. Good Lord he has really made a mess!

If they really wanted to enact meaningful land reform rather than giving the land to his political buddies..they should have trained new farmers in the best farming procedures and then given them lines of credit through the gov. at low or 0% interest to purchase small patches of land and gone from there.

[ohio2007]

3. Zimbabwe's last white farmers face final push

Ringed by a clutch of Zimbabwean soldiers clicking automatic weapons, Charles Lock handed over the keys to his farm and drove off his land for the last time.

Scores of white farmers, the last survivors of President Robert Mugabe's land grab, and thousands of their black workers are going through similar agonies.

They now face the final deadline. As from today, any white farmer still on his land will be deemed to be trespassing on state property.

snip
Before the onset of the land grab, Zimbabwe had about 4,000 white farmers. Perhaps a few hundred are left — and the great majority are only able to cling to portions of their land.

snip

The United Nations says that about four million Zimbabweans will need food aid next year. Until the land grab, Zimbabwe exported food.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=2UJIDKEPUOVPRQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/10/01/wzim101.xml




.... since Mr Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms in 2000, the population has fallen from 12 million to eight million.
Of the estimated four million who have fled, up to three million have moved to neighbouring South Africa and a large number has moved to London. It is estimated that 100,000 Zimbabweans are crossing into South Africa every month.

The stated aim of Mr Mugabe's land grab was to make Zimbabwe self-sufficient and assert its independence from Britain. Instead it has rendered half its population dependent on the outside world for their next meal.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=OYJ2WWONDFWLVQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/09/27/wzim127.xml

Well,hey,
at least the imperialists have been kicked out taught a valuable lesson in how social economics work ......

/sarc

[KamaAina]

4. Oh, great journalism, Torygraph

:sarcasm:

I'm no Mugabe apologist, but really, the loaded phrase "land grab" appears four times just in the little snippet you posted. Practically Murdochian!

[ohio2007]

5. Can't find any links where Mugabe and land grab don't appear in the same sentence

I recall Mugabe was being given props for his socialist programs. Problem is, he isn't sitting on an ocean of oil he can use in order to float his worthless currency.
btw
how is he going to pay for that foreign wheat?

With his good looks ?

[Cobalt-60]

7. out of luck there, too

Well if he doesn't care to re admit the white devils, perhaps they might crack a book on Agriculture.
They stole the land from those white farmers.
And now they're paying the price.

[mainegreen]

10. He stolen land from blacks as well as whites.

It has nothing to do with race nor fixing 'colonial issues' in Zimbabwe and everything to do with bribing people of power to stay in charge of the coutry, the military and the ZANU-PF.

The Gukurahundi is not over yet.

[Rage for Order]

6. Ain't collectivization grand? n/t

[Yupster]

9. Famous quote attributed to Stalin

"In the future there will be fewer, but better Russians."

Lots fewer Zimbabweans. Don't know if they're better or not.

[Vogon_Glory]

8. Mugabe's Policies Cause Starvation

Sorry, I don't have any sympathy for Robert Mugabe. His so-called land reform was a land grab to benefit his political supporters, not to give the formerly white-owned land to the guys who actually farmed it. The Mugabe regime is a black eye to those of us who supported or hoped for a more humane, just future for Black Africa after the collapse of white minority rule and the end of apartheid. I hate to say it, but the Mugabe regime is worse for Zimbabwe than the white supremacist regime of what was once called Rhodesia.

Mugabe deserves no sympathy because he's a black man any more than Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime deserved sympathy because Saddam was an Arab.