Jackson Jambalaya

Robert Mugabe moved one step forward in becoming a black Josef Stalin as he decreed whites can not own land in Zimbabwe. The Christian Science Monitor* reported:

Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has ordered the nation’s remaining white farmers to be booted off their farms in order that the land be given to black Zimbabweans.

In the harshest official policy on race and land reform in a country that has been close to bankruptcy, the 90-year old autocrat said Wednesday that whites may no longer own any land in Zimbabwe. Whites would still be allowed to own businesses and urban apartments.

Speaking to farmers in Mhangura, a small mining town about 120 miles north of the capital Harare, Mr. Mugabe, said all remaining white farmers should leave – and closed the door even on white families renting farms from black owners, as some several hundred have been doing since most were violently chased away a decade ago.....

“I have been given a list of 35 white farmers in Mashonaland West alone,” Mr. Mugabe told an emotional crowd in what was billed a patriotic speech. “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go. … They can own companies and apartments…but not the soil. It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.”...

“There are white farmers who are still on the land and have the protection of some cabinet ministers and politicians as well as traditional leaders. That should never happen. They [whites] were living like kings and queens on our land and we chucked them out. Now we want all of it.”.... Rest of article

I wonder if any of the anti-apartheid activists such as Danny Glover will say anything about this little escapade.  Mugabe began this Stalinesque program over ten years ago.  The results were predictable: food shortages.  Voice of America news reported earlier this year:

The U.S. government has launched a five-year, $100 million program to assist more than a half-million hungry Zimbabweans.

At the launch of the new program, which is aimed at strengthening Zimbabwe's agricultural sector, U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Bruce Wharton said Washington remained committed to the welfare of Zimbabweans.

“The United States wants Zimbabwe to prosper. Our joint efforts on food security are an opportunity for Zimbabweans in drought-prone areas to become more self-reliant," he said. "It will include vulnerable households having greater income options. It will include access to irrigation and clean water sources through rehabilitation and the rehabilitation of the existing schemes.”...


Seasonal humanitarian assistance has become the norm in Zimbabwe since 2000, when agricultural production began a long-term plunge. Authorities blame the trend on drought, while critics of President Robert Mugabe blame his land reforms... Rest of article

14-year drought.  Yes, the program's results just happened  to follow the same pattern as did Stalin's forced collectivization that wiped out much of the Soviet Union's agricultural production and starved millions.  Soviet documents found at the Library of Congress website report:

Stalin focused particular hostility on the wealthier peasants, or kulaks. About one million kulak households (some five million people) were deported and never heard from again. Forced collectivization of the remaining peasants, which was often fiercely resisted, resulted in a disastrous disruption of agricultural productivity and a catastrophic famine in 1932-33. Although the First Five-Year Plan called for the collectivization of only twenty percent of peasant households, by 1940 approximately ninety-seven percent of all peasant households had been collectivized and private ownership of property almost entirely eliminated.... Interesting reading, check it out.

Funny how the systole and diastole of history rarely changes.  

*Other news organizations such as the BBC reported the new decree as well.