An interesting case of reaping what you sow.
White farmers evicted by Robert Mugabe’s government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in “joint ventures” with those who brutalised them and stole their land.
Gideon Gono, the governor of the country’s central bank, suggested the idea last Thursday as a possible solution to Zimbabwe’s economic crisis.
Greg McMurray, a tobacco farmer who fled Zimbabwe in 2001 and is now a grinder at a factory in Wiltshire, said: “These are empty promises. We have had all the assurances before and then they just turn around and change their minds.
“I had them coming into my garden and threatening my fiancée. Men with a bit of beer in their bellies told me, ‘We’ll come and burn you and your wife and your house’.
“I would love to go back but the economy’s in ruins. The place is a shambles. So many professional people have left. It would need a new regime before most of us would think seriously about going back.”
Actually, make it a case of not reaping what you failed to sow.
During the evictions, some white farmers were murdered and many others were beaten and their families abused. The evictions prompted the collapse of the agriculture sector, the traditional engine of the economy.
Those who took over the farms had no specialist knowledge – and most farmland now lies uncultivated. The machinery has been stolen, buildings have been plundered and the former workers are starving.
Eddie Cross, the economics spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change – which was heavily defeated by the ruling Zanu-PF party in recent parliamentary elections that were widely condemned as being rigged – said that Mr Gono was desperate.
As long as Mugabe reigns without major reforms, the white farmers are correct in declining their burden. Besides, Kipling was so nineteenth century.