Zimbabwe Land ReformZimbabwean farm labourers stri

[ptaured7]

The world is a complicated place.  Governments of all stripes are to be challenged at all times......Not that this is the whole story, but it could be integrated into an overall view in the difficult situation in Zimbabwe. What would Nkrumah or Bikko think of the present regime in Zimbabwe one wonders?  There's a name people seem to have forgotton - Steve Bikko.....

 Zimbabwean farm labourers strike against wage cuts

Workers at a horticultural farm at Kondozi in the province of Manicaland, Zimbabwe, have gone on strike against low wages. The farm, previously privately owned, was taken over by a government parastatal earlier this year.

According to an IRIN report the property was seized in April by armed men acting on behalf of the Agricultural Rural Development Authority (ARDA). This was in spite of the fact that the farm should not have been liable for compulsory acquisition because it had been designated an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) and was earning hard currency.

Following the requisition, the ARDA slashed the workforce from 5,000 to approximately 150. Around 1,500 workers living on the farm were displaced and more than 3,000 from outlying areas were sacked.

Those still employed on the farm were reclassified as basic labourers and effectively their wages were cut by 50 percent.

General and Allied Plantation Workers Union (GAPWUZ) official, Gift Muti, commented, ?They were initially agro-based workers receiving about $Z130,000 ($US23) per month because they are involved in processing, but ARDA turned them into general agricultural workers and is paying them $Z72,800 ($US13)?that?s why they had to engage in this industrial action.?

According to a report by Refugees International released last month, the government?s ?land reform? programme, which began in the year 2,000, has created a population of over 150,000 former farm workers who now have no jobs or homes.

The report said, ?The government of Zimbabwe refuses to acknowledge that their implementation of the land redistribution programme has caused forced displacement. To further compound the issue, governmental authorities have increasingly restricted access to farming areas by humanitarian agencies and independent analysts, making it difficult for the displaced and other vulnerable groups to access humanitarian assistance.?


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[PatriotWarrior]

Greetings!

I think it shouldn’t unduly surprise us that the economic situation in Zimbabwe is now in tatters, for that’s always the price to pay for long overdue dependence on foreign hands and control, “humanitarian aid”, foreign handouts and etc. I don’t know exactly what Nkrumah or Biko would have thought about it; … Biko died at the very young age of 30 (without ever having attained a meaningful political position nor expertise of some sort in racist South Africa of that time; he never even left S/Africa for any other country, Afrikan or otherwise), but I prefer to think that the situation in Zimbabwe wouldn’t have surprised Nkrumah so much, for such were also the repercussions of the measures he took to wrest the Ghanaian economy from foreign colonialists, to place it firmly into Ghanaian/Afrikan hands … There’s a price to pay for everything, and there is no short-term immediate magic formula for a BOLD move such as the Zimbabwean government’s!

National economics have become even more complicated and inter-dependent in today’s “Global Village” ... (small wonder the salaries of those unfortunate workers -- and just all other unfortunate Afrikans/(or other Third-World modern slaves) -- are always contemptuously described in terms of {meagre} “US dollars” …). But shall we allow ourselves to be perpetual economic slaves of foreigners for fear that once we kick them out, the engines they came with -- running our economies -- will stop running??? Sometimes, there is need for COURAGE (which some myopic people would rather call “chaos”). Let’s think of this and its benefits in the long-term sense; … and what is happening in the rest of Afrika, anyway? Is it any better there, or getting better? How much (or how many) “US dollars” do like labourers/slaves -- even qualified personnel such as doctors, engineers -- earn elsewhere in (Black) Afrika??? … [The answer is: Just about twice or thrice -- rarely more than 4 times -- the amount you mentioned (for doctors) in many Black Afrikan countries!]

The whole thing is really like a double-edged knife: turn it any which way and it cuts!! But I think the long-term benefits shall be clothed in gold: (ONLY as long as the alien slave drivers are not returned).

That’s my opinion.