Mr Matashu, 34, says he was allocated land by the government in 2001 after a white-owned farm was seized and its former owner emigrated to South Africa. He grew cotton for a decade before switching to tobacco. This year he earned $34,000 and won an award for being the best small-scale tobacco farmer in Karoi.

Mr Mugabe said he embarked on the land-grab programme in 2000 to address the expropriation of land from blacks during the 90 years of white rule that ended after a civil war in 1980. While it helped him win rural votes and retain power, the economy was gripped by a decade of contraction, with plummeting exports of crops ranging from tobacco to roses. Zimbabwe’s economy, once one of Africa’s strongest, shrunk to half the size it had been in 1980

evil white farmer gets whats coming to him according to the independent.

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About 18 white farmers were killed in violent takeovers of their land while almost all of the country’s 620,000 permanent and seasonal farm-workers were driven away from their homes, John Worsley-Worswick, the head of Justice for Agriculture, a Harare-based lobby group, said. Together with dependants, those workers accounted for two million people, he said.

While many maintain that Mugabe loyalists remain the main beneficiaries of the bloody land reform (the Mugabe family is now said to own more than 30 farms), some have suggested that it was not all bad. For example, though it says the methods used were inexcusable, a book entitled Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land by Professor Ian Scoones of Sussex University concluded: “In the biggest land reform in Africa, 6,000 white farmers have been replaced by 245,000 Zimbabwean farmers. These are primarily ordinary poor people who have become more productive farmers.” NOTE DESPITE THE FACT MILLIONS FACED STARVATION ONE TIME BECAUSE OF THESE COMMUNIST POLICIES.

Brisbanites fighting for Mugabe victims

“We tackled the enemy head on and we got the land,” Agriculture Minister Joseph Made said in an interview. “They will never, never accept that there are now new owners on the land who have done wonders.”

full story in the independant

I wonder what the independent thinks of these photos, if they can justify the murder of white farmers by the wonderful gov apparatchiks. then what about these people

This man was beaten by mugabe thugs

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HOW ABOUT THIS HEADLINE FROM THE INDEPENDENTS WONDERFUL LEADER

HOW ABOUT THIS

Zimbabwe’s voters told: choose Mugabe or you face a bullet

THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER IS FULL OF DISGUSTING DEGENERATES OF THE LOWEST ORDER.