A Special Kind of Arrogance -- Mugabe on Food Shortages

The Times reports:

PRESIDENT MUGABE provoked outrage yesterday when he hosted a UN conference on “food safety” in Africa and used the occasion to defend his policy of land seizure.

Speaking before 170 representatives from 47 African countries, the President of Zimbabwe blamed African food shortages on droughts and “weak food safety control systems”. He also accused the West of dumping genetically modified crops on the developing world.

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But he defended his policy of confiscating about 5,000 white-owned farms, which many blame for the collapse of his country’s agricultural sector.

Mr Mugabe said: “Zimbabwe’s much-vilified land reform programme is our response to the challenge of empowering more of our people, and therefore creating a wider base of farmers in the country. In our fight for freedom and independence one of the pillars of the struggle was land grievance — land, land, land, which means food, food, food to the people.”

So that's what was behind his destruction of his nation's economy. Wedded to an obsolete marxist ideology, and infused with vicious racism, he expropriated white owned farms and distributed them to his cronies in ZANU-PF hoping to produce "food, food, food!"

Well, it didn't turn out that way.

Although Zimbabwe once exported food, about four million people now rely on food aid to survive.

Read the whole thing here.

And now South Africa is emulating his actions and beginning down the same road to ruin.

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AP reports:

The International Monetary Fund, which is weighing whether to expel Zimbabwe for being behind on payments to the lending institution, raised concerns about deterioration in the country's economic climate.

IMF policy-makers, in a report released Tuesday, expressed "deep concern over the continued sharp economic and social decline in Zimbabwe, with prospects of continued triple-digit inflation, further output declines and increased poverty."

Read it here.

And this is the guy who is lecturing other countries on food production and distribution.

Faugh!