Out of the Citizens Informer April 8, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Africa, Racial Dispossession.trackback
Better late than never — This AP story, written on April 7, 2008, reads like something out of the Citizens Informer ten years ago.
A sample:
Mugabe’s land reform program was supposed to redistribute among poor blacks large commercial farms owned by about 4,500 whites that covered 80 percent of Zimbabwe’s best land. Instead, he used the farms to extend his patronage system, giving them to ruling party leaders, security chiefs, relatives and friends.
Zimbabwe had been a major food exporter until then, but its agricultural sector collapsed and the economy started unraveling. Today, a third of Zimbabweans depend on international food handouts, and another third have fled abroad looking for work or political asylum.
Eighty percent of Zimbabwe’s workers don’t have jobs, and the country suffers chronic shortages of medicine, food, fuel, water and electricity as inflation blazes at 100,000 percent a year.
The elite that still lives in luxury has a vested interest in keeping Mugabe in power. He makes them rich with gifts of land, government contracts and business licenses.
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