June 11, 2004

The utilisation of the land for national prosperity  

It's not clear at all what is going on here. The article says that all farmland is to be nationalized

The Zimbabwe government has announced that all farmland will be nationalised, including all privately owned game parks, and private land ownership banned. The move has been described as the "single biggest shock" of President Robert Mugabe's rule since independence from Britain in 1980.
and criticizes the move harshly, but there's no explanation for why the government would want to take such an action. Apparently it has something to do with the desire to take farmland from white farmers and give it to black farmers, but there's no reason given for why the government doesn't just take this more limited action. Certainly it would be much easier; 200 white farmers shouldn't be all that hard to oppress! This article gives a little more context, but it still doesn't give a mechanical explanation of what this is all about.

Comments
mwiemuth  {June 18, 2004}

Trying to derive some sensibility of purpose from Robert Mugabe is a bit of a fool's errand. For better insight into this issue, Samantha Power's Atlantic article "How To Kill A Country" is quite illuminating. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2003/power_kill_country_am_1203.htm


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