MovieChat Forums > Mugabe and the White African (2009) Discussion > This is what happend after the movie too...

This is what happend after the movie took place


1.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6055794.ece


2.
"Harare, Zimbabwe, 02 September 2009




No, this is not a repeat of my story yesterday about the burning of Ben Freeth's farmhouse at Mount Carmel Farm in Chegutu.


Mike Campbell's farmhouse, on the same farm as the burnt house of his son-in-law Ben Freeth, was completely destroyed this morning (that's the morning of 2 September 2009) by another fire.


The State media in Zimbabwe have completely ignored the burning of the Freeth home, which happened over the weekend and they also have not said anything about the extraordinary occurrence this morning.


As I reported yesterday, Ben Freeth said he had only managed to retrieve his computer and his family's passports. They were left, he said, "with only the clothes on our backs".


This morning, comes this news.


Yes, the ZANU PF invaders are still on the farm and it is certain that they started the blazes to consume the houses of these two families in order to get them to leave the farm and allow Nathan Shamuyarira, the ZANU PF Secretary for Publicity, to take it over.


This is of course, coming as it emerged yesterday that the Zimbabwe government has written to the SADC Tribunal in Windhoek withdrawing from that body and informing it that any decisions it has taken or may take in future are "null and void" when it comes to Zimbabwe.


The SADC Tribunal had ruled that the Freeths, Campbells and 78 other farmers could stay on their farms because Mugabe's acquisition of their farms was not legal.


It is understood that the Campbells no longer lived in the house that was burned, having been forced to abandon it by the invaders. The home, however, still contained all the property that they have worked all their lives to accumulate and this was totally consumed by the fire.


The besieged farmers can not now go back to the Tribunal because Mugabe has closed off that avenue.


They can not run to the police. In fact when they were contacted, the police in the area immediately dismissed the incidents as "results of uncontrollable veld fires. We urge the public not to indiscriminately burn grass."!!


Yes, there are veld fires that are sometimes deliberately started this time of the year in the rural areas as peasant farmers prepare for the tilling of lands which should start around October/November.


But to have these fires only on one farm, and the one that a ZANU PF big wig is trying to take by force from its owners?


Is that not too much of a coincidence?




With their irrigation pipes and pumps, tractors and other equipment already stolen, the Campbells and the Freeths will now have to move off while they try to rebuild.


The moment they move off the property, it is doubtful that they will be allowed back onto it.


Already, there is reliable information that Shamuyarira is in the process of shipping scores of "guards" to the area. They have all been given AK 47s and pistols with which to guard the farm once the owners have gone.


All this is based on an "offer letter" from Mugabe given to Shamuyarira for Mount Carmel farm.


Several people have urged the Freeths to move off and cut their losses, to emigrate with their small children instead of staring down Mugabe's gangs, but they have resisted.


Perhaps they should give serious thought to that now.


The main opposition in Zimbabwe, the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has now identified with Mugabe on the land issue and says, just as he does, that the new invasions are exaggerated and that the Freeths and others should leave because the farms are no longer their own.


With no political force speaking up on their behalf, it is certain that the farmers are now on their own.


And that is a dangerous situation to be in.


We know for a fact that Mugabe and his people, as they now vow to finish the land reform process "once and for all" are upping the ante and will not hesitate at all to kill anyone who stands in their way.


The Freeths and the elderly Campbells are in mortal danger, there is no doubt about that. But they continue to hold on."


Aristaeus77-I havenĀ“t found anything after this date.

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[deleted]

Exactly what I thought throughout the film (about why they didn't send the children away). No way could I have left that house with my wife and children still there.

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Gee what a pity. They had 500 workers ( I am sure more like sharecroppers) living and working on their farm and now they have to find some place to live. The way they talked about their workers I would of thought we were in Alabama in 1865 when the slaves were free and the white owners acted condescendingly toward them like they were their children. Well the slaves had no where else to go. Looks like the same situation here. There were no good slave owners. And if the Campbell's were such good employers they would had made sure that their employees would of made a good enough salary so they did not have live like Sharecroppers and worry where they had to go to if the farm closed down. I bet those workers even purchased most of the things they owned and the food they ate from some store the Campbell's ran on that farm.

Even though I do not condone Mugabe tactics I surly can understand where they come from. The colonial government who ruled this country for over a century. They taught him well. Now the shoe is on the other foot and people like you are now up and arms. Where were you folks when the black people who lived in that country and South Africa were regulated to %1 of the land and were treated like animals? Only now are you folks concerned. Well I say too bad. You reap what you sow or perhaps the white colonialists should of thought of this before decided to treat the Africans like 3rd class citizens in their own country.... "Be careful how you treat people because the toes you step on today may be attached to azzes you have to kiss tomorrow"

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I agree with everything you said. My only counterargument would be: how is Mugabe kicking these people out of the farms doing anything to help black Zimbabweans? In fact, your words are sort of telling, that yes, the oppressive white colonialists did train Mugabe well, with his party members driving brand new cars monthly while 50% of the population faces starvation. In a way, isn't Mugabe himself the neocolonialist in his own native land? As hard as it is to think, might he be worse than the foreign invaders?

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Oh I do not condone what he was doing. What I think he should of done is force the people who ran these farms to give the workers are good wage so they could move off the farm and become more upper mobile. And I think if these farmers did treat the workers better the workers would of not allowed the new government to evict the farmers. See this nut was only able to have support and do this is because the average black African was so disenchanted from what has been going on for so long they for the most part went along with it. Sort of like Cuba. People who had money are the ones who complain about Castro. But the average Cuban was poor and mistreated by the rich so he had the support of the people. I don't care what any of these exiles say about freedom. They were not thinking about freedom when they were supported the oppressive regime of Baptista.
There is a saying that talks about how oppressive rulers better take care because the people they oppressed may be worse then them.

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[deleted]

I realize this is an old post but, seriously, do you have any understanding of economics? In Mugabe's regime there was no method to become "upwardly mobile" and no such thing as a good wage. You can't destroy a nation and then whine about the plight of the victims as if it's the fault of the other victims.

http://www.libertydwells.com

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No one is saying Mugabe is good. I never once said that. But I am not sympathetic to the Campbell's. They were part of the problem and now they can't complain about who they created. Too bad. In a good world there would be no Mugabe's but people the former regime and the Campbell can't complain when their world is shattered and is now ruled by the monsters they created. That is the problem with Colonialism in some places

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marbleann, you are an epic idiot and have zero clue what you're talking about.

"black people who lived in that country and South Africa were regulated to %1 of the land"

Really??!!

Go read a history book, numbnuts.

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Sound like you might have a revisionist view of what was going on. Ok let's say they owned 20% of the land, is that ok with you? In any case it seems you are unable to make a point without calling people a name. It shows your immaturity and your ignorance. So who is going to listen to you anyway, even if you had a valid point? Not most folks. Ignore.

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Well, marbleann. Since the farm is gone, doesn't that also mean that 500 black laborers are also out of work?

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Gee I am sure you can say the same thing about slavery. When the south lost and all of those folks had to start paying black folks for working I guess they were out of work too. But here is the jig I rather be out of work then a slave or a sharecropper tied to the same master for everything I buy or do and never have enough money to own my own property. And there is no prospect in the future that the person who I am working for is going to let me work for the land but I guess you don't understand that concept. Hopelessness.

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Did you even watch the movie? There was no way the Freeth's could be compared to slave drivers, or anything other than model employers. By your logic, anyone who's boss is of another race is committing slavery, since you're dependant on someone in a more powerful position of another race. The family had 500 workers, Five Hundred! They depended on them for jobs, and the family were doing everything to help them, as they knew they wouldn't find employment elsewhere if they lost the farm.
None of the black workers wanted to leave the farm, because they liked having the family as employers, and it was one of the few jobs they could get in the current climate, when Zimbabwe was in economic ruin.
The other thing you should look into, is how the farms had been managed. If Mugabe gave the farms to blacks, and actually farmed them it probably wouldn't be so bad. Sure, the whites would deserve compensation, but at least they would be used. None of the farms went to the poor, only to cronies and friends of Mugabes government. The only working farms in the country, are the few black farmers that owned farms before the land reform program.
Colonialism has passed, people realized that in 1980. You can't keep on blaming the past for the faults of today. Yes blacks were treated appallingly, but every country in Africa is independent now. You can blind yourself to the fact that Mugabe is doing terrible things, or just accept the truth that what has been done in Zimbabwe was wrong. Mugabe isn't doing any of this, because he cares about his fellow man. Seeing how the Freeth's were treated should be clear, that Mugabe doesn't value a fellow man.

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Why are we still discussing this? I agreed that Mugabe was not a good person. But I feel he got his teachings from the people who ran the country. They had created their own monsters and now they had to pay for it, oh well. And I do believe the family were slave drivers. They treated their workers as if they were children and they never gave them anyway to move off the farm and do better. THAT IS A SLAVERY. So nothing is going to change my mind about the family.

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Marbleann is an absolute fool. In a poverty-stricken country like Zimbabwe, where the average citizen is scared to death of being beaten/raped by government backed gangs wielding ak-47s, the only stability is provided by the few remaining large white-owned farms.

The only slavery being propagated in Zimbabwe is by the ruling Mugabe regime.

The only revisionism is that being espoused by your incoherent ramblings, devoid of any historical or factual premise or fact.

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The best thing I see is to put a raving maniac like you on ignore. You and Magube might have more in common then you think. You both are crazy and seems like a little more things. Get help.

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It is quite clear that it is you, marbleann, who is the "raving maniac" here--or to put it more civilly, it is you who are burying yourself in slogans and half-baked revolutionary leftist rhetoric.

And I'm saying that as a bit of a leftist myself, so don't even start. For instance, I find the U.S.'s demonization of Hugo Chavez completely unjustified and appalling, and I completely oppose neoliberal economic colonialism wherever it occurs. So it's not like you're talking to somebody who's philosophically opposed to the most basic broad strokes of where you're coming from. It is absolutely right to say that much of the residual anger, resentment, and sense of taking back their own land that black Zimbabweans felt was a result of hundreds of years of colonialism. But in your oversimplified construction, you essentially excuse Mugabe (although you deny it) and seek to tie every individual person to only a racial or other group-defined identity, as if Mike Campbell were responsible for the sins of colonial ancestors. If that is true, you are damned as much as I am, or as much as any black tribesman who ever murdered or enslaved a rival is. At some point we have to decide whether to move on with modern, civil, productive life, or whether to make it "an eye for an eye, and the whole world blind."

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[deleted]

It's not just blacks. Every racial or ethnic group, and quite a few religious groups as well, has engaged in this "got you last" downward spiral, where whatever violent thing you do was always justified by what the other guy did--so it escalates until everybody's dead, because nobody can stop the cycle, because there's never an equilibrium to it.

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You seem pretty manic to me. I have stated my opinion about this. Time and time again. So deal with it, because I have you on ignore from now on and all of you other folks who seem to be having a hard time dealing with my feelings about the Campbell's and their like. They are just a bunch of people who decided that they could not get away with slavery anymore, so they used peonage to side step it. Get help NOW!

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So true, marbelann. Only you know the truth, and only you are not "manic."

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"So nothing is going to change my mind about the family."

Yeah, it seems so.

Apparently, you think Mugabe is a slave himself--a slave to whatever "the people who ran the country" created in him. Why, he was practically forced to do what he did.

I mean, you have heard of Nelson Mandela, I'm sure.

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For Chrissakes, if you don't understand the difference between slavery and voluntarily working on a farm (whether for wages you consider too low or not), why are you posting your ignorance here for everybody to see?

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