# Countrymen starving? What to do? Charge farmers with crime of growing food! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 8, 2007, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914 "2007-10-08T08:25:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/1 "2007-10-08T08:25:47Z")
[Robert Mugabe continues his downward spiral](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=NTKAECQ1H4PB1QFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/10/06/wzim106.xml) to new levels of idiocy, by having farmers face charges of growing crops on their own land. > [@](#): > > Since 2000, when the government began seizing white-owned farms, many of them violently, the agricultural sector has collapsed and the economy has gone into freefall, with inflation now at 6,600 per cent, the highest in the world. > [@](#): > > “The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites,” he (Didymus Mutasa) said recently. “Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms.” Yep-you really showed them farmers. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/2 "2007-10-08T09:38:11Z")
Fuck Bush!! ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/3 "2007-10-08T10:29:31Z")
Well, that’s either a pointless _non sequitur_ or a joke too far above my shallow sense of humour. As to Mugabe, well, I don’t have enough rage. It’s embarrassing that my own government is still enabling the fucker. Poor Zimbabwe. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/4 "2007-10-08T10:52:21Z")
I believe **brazil84** was referring to the perceived propensity of some members of the board to blame Bush for everything, whether he had anything to do with it or not. It pisses me off that people are starving while Mugabe and cronies continue to help themselves to that farmland. It’s not as if the white farmers were profiteering from their crops; the article said that the farmers are not being compensated for their crops, and since inflation is around 6,000%, compensation would be meaningless anyway. But as long as the landowner has the right skin color and the right connections, it’s all good. :rolleyes: Robin ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/5 "2007-10-08T11:13:46Z")
[QUOTE=MsRobyn] It pisses me off that people are starving while Mugabe and cronies continue to help themselves to that farmland. [/QUOTE] What pisses me off is that it’s not being used productively. OK, seize the land, give it to your cronies, yeah, we been down that road in history - but the cronies are not growing food! What the fuck? What good is the land to them if they don’t use it for farming? ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/6 "2007-10-08T11:21:10Z")
[QUOTE=Frank] What pisses me off is that it’s not being used productively. OK, seize the land, give it to your cronies, yeah, we been down that road in history - but the cronies are not growing food! What the fuck? What good is the land to them if they don’t use it for farming? [/QUOTE] The land isn’t exactly lying fallow. The cronies are trying to do something with it, but whatever it is they’re doing isn’t working. Robin ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/7 "2007-10-08T11:35:14Z")
[QUOTE=MsRobyn] I believe **brazil84** was referring to the perceived propensity of some members of the board to blame Bush for everything, whether he had anything to do with it or not. [/QUOTE] What the hell. During the run-up to war, I repeatedly asked, “how did we get to the point where Iraq was the country we’re deciding to go to war against? How did we pick them out of the large group of bad actors around the world?” The point was that Iraq seemed to have been chosen without an apparent reason, or process of choosing. If the justification was Iraq as a threat, other nations were more of a threat. If we were invading for humanitarian reasons, the people of other nations were in far worse shape. Zimbabwe was one I repeatedly mentioned. So if one believes in a benevolent, strongly interventionist U.S., as the “liberal hawks” claim to, then one has to believe that Bush fucked up by not using our power to alleviate the sufferings of places like Darfur, Burma, and Zimbabwe, rather than taking on, in Iraq, a problem that wasn’t in nearly such dire need of a solution. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/8 "2007-10-08T12:35:29Z")
[QUOTE=MsRobyn] The cronies are trying to do something with it, but whatever it is they’re doing isn’t working. [/QUOTE] As I understand it, the basic problem is that the original (evil white) farmers knew how to farm the land. They had the discipline, business, knowledge, and leadership skills necessary to farm the huge plots. By contrast, the indigenous folks who are currently squatting on the land lack all these skills, not to mention the fact that they’re corrupt. But this doesn’t matter to Mugabe. He would rather have his people starve than admit the original (evil white) farmers were good for their country, and knew what they were doing. ---
**Author:** ![Mellivora\_capensis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mellivora\_capensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mellivora_capensis)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/9 "2007-10-08T13:33:28Z")
[QUOTE=MrDibble] … Poor Zimbabwe. [/QUOTE] There’s a part of me that agrees, and yet another that thinks “fuck Zimbabwe.” Mugabe and the ZANU-PF party have been in power for over 20 years, and continue to be voted into power. Yes, I know, election fraud and intimidation and all that, but how long can an entire country remain intimidated? (And if you say over 40 years I’m going to slap you) If life in Zimbabwe was so bad, wouldn’t the opposition have won an election by now? Fuck it, people need to draw a line in the sand at some point and take responsibility for their own lives. Blow up a power station or something… ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/10 "2007-10-08T13:47:18Z")
[QUOTE=Mellivora capensis] Yes, I know, **election fraud** and intimidation and all that … If life in Zimbabwe was so bad, **wouldn’t the opposition have won an election by now**? [/QUOTE] Sometimes the questions answer themselves. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/11 "2007-10-08T13:53:43Z")
[QUOTE=MsRobyn] I believe **brazil84** was referring to the perceived propensity of some members of the board to blame Bush for everything, whether he had anything to do with it or not. [/quote] And to sneak in references to the war in Iraq. I think we need a corollary to Godwin’s Law. I propose Brazil’s Law: In an online discussion that concerns foreign politics, the probability that someone will eventually snark the president is close to 1. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/12 "2007-10-08T13:53:47Z")
[QUOTE=Mellivora capensis] If life in Zimbabwe was so bad, wouldn’t the opposition have won an election by now? [/QUOTE] You’re kidding, right? Surely you know how brutal Mugabe has been. You blithely dismiss it as “election fraud and intimidation and all that,” doing no justice at all to the level of fear and violence that has been an everyday part of life for so many in Zimbabwe for so long. The blame for this rests with Mugabe and his cronies and supporters inside Zimbabwe, and with his enablers outside. Also, the level of sympathy for Mugabe’s victims in the outside world is sometimes curiously, er, specific. In the 1990s, when Mugabe’s appropriation of land from white farmers and the level of state-sponsored violence was growing, i was living in Australia, and there was much tut-tutting and sympathy for the victims of these outrages. So much, in fact, that Australia opened its doors to some of the displaced farmers. Of course, the only victims of Mugabe’s violence who could actually afford to take advantage of this hospitality were the white farm owners. The Australian government patted itself on the back for its humanitarianism, conveniently ignoring the fact that the majority of victims of Mugabe’s thugs were the black Zimbabweans who had worked on the white farms and who had no means to escape. Many news reports also focused almost exclusively, especially in the early period, on the white victims, not concerned to investigate or explain the tribal and political divisions that lead to black-on-black violence in Zimbabwe. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/13 "2007-10-08T14:03:34Z")
[Peter Tatchell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tatchell#Zimbabwe) is all like, “I keep telling you bitches!” ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/14 "2007-10-08T14:28:54Z")
[QUOTE=Mellivora capensis] There’s a part of me that agrees, and yet another that thinks “fuck Zimbabwe.” Mugabe and the ZANU-PF party have been in power for over 20 years, and continue to be voted into power. Yes, I know, election fraud and intimidation and all that, but how long can an entire country remain intimidated? (And if you say over 40 years I’m going to slap you) [/QUOTE] Ever heard of the USSR? The population there was “intimidated” for some 70 years. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/15 "2007-10-08T14:29:03Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] So if one believes in a benevolent, strongly interventionist U.S., as the “liberal hawks” claim to, then one has to believe that Bush fucked up by not using our power to alleviate the sufferings of places like Darfur, Burma, and Zimbabwe, rather than taking on, in Iraq, a problem that wasn’t in nearly such dire need of a solution. [/QUOTE] What the fuck? I am hereby proposing that the board adopt what I will humbly refer as: **"Monkey’s Law: There is no Pit thread, no matter how irrelevant to the current administration, that can not contain at least one non- sequitor criticism of Bush and/or the Iraq war** We have it here twice. For the perfect example of Monkey’s Law, and the event that first made me aware of this phenomenon, I refer you to the following:. In an OP pitting an _eight year old Dr. Phil Book_ entitled Life Strategies, we get this: > [@quizot](#): > > [#3: “People do what works.” > Yeah. Iraq really works.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=438303&highlight=Phil) It was about Dr. Phil! ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/16 "2007-10-08T14:30:34Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] And to sneak in references to the war in Iraq. I think we need a corollary to Godwin’s Law. I propose Brazil’s Law: In an online discussion that concerns foreign politics, the probability that someone will eventually snark the president is close to 1. [/QUOTE] Damnit, you beat me to it. ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/17 "2007-10-08T14:33:39Z")
Reminds me of a Soldier of Fortune magazine I saw in the 80’s - Peace Comes to Zimbabwe! Rhodesia Still at War ---
**Author:** ![Mellivora\_capensis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mellivora\_capensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mellivora_capensis)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/18 "2007-10-08T14:36:15Z")
**jjimm** , election fraud has its limits, my point being that if an overwhelmingly HUGE majority of people vote against Mugabe, the fraud would be for naught. **mhendo** , I’m well aware of Mugabe’s reported brutalities, but this is what I don’t get. Verwoerd, Vorster, Botha et al where arguably just as brutal, and yet the ANC, with no vote, was able to rally the majority and implement a plan of sustained pressure, internal and external, violent as well as non-violent, that eventually culminated in the SA we have today. This is not an argument for a violent overthrow of Mugabe (my remark was a throw-away dig at Mandela), it is a frustrated question being asked of Zimbabweans in general. When is enough enough? Is the majority really starving? Surely a 6000% inflation rate hits government supporters as hard as non-supporters? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/19 "2007-10-08T14:37:25Z")
It’s _Atlas Shrugged_ come to life. Mugabe needs to read more. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914/20 "2007-10-08T14:39:07Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I propose Brazil’s Law: In an online discussion that concerns foreign politics, the probability that someone will eventually snark the president is close to 1. [/QUOTE] But you’re automatically disqualified for both causing the reference and invoking the law. So it can’t be named after you. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countrymen-starving-what-to-do-charge-farmers-with-crime-of-growing-food/421914.md?page=2)