Zimbabwe Update -- Mugabe Admits Failure

Even as they are being adopted by South Africa, Mad Bobby Mugabe finally admits that the land expropriation policies he instituted in Zimbabwe were an abject failure.

The Telegraph reports:

President Robert Mugabe admitted yesterday that Zimbabweans were "begging" for food because of his mass seizure of white-owned farms.

After years of official claims that his land policies would improve production and guarantee self-sufficiency, he confessed that many of those awarded white-owned farms were doing nothing with their gains.

"If farming is not in your blood, switch to what you are good at," Mr Mugabe told supporters in the capital, Harare. "We want those with land to use it. We don't want to keep begging for food."

Zimbabwe has depended since 2001 on emergency supplies from the World Food Programme. Almost four million people - one third of the population - needed help from the WFP last year. Food once ranked among Zimbabwe's main exports. The main reason for the switch from self-sufficiency to dependency on outside help is the transfer of commercial farms to new owners with no training, capital, expertise or equipment for farming.

Mr Mugabe's speech at the annual ceremony remembering the war against white Rhodesia of the 1970s amounted to an admission of failure. "Those who can't produce, be warned, we will take the land back," he said. "We now need to distinguish capable and committed farmers from holders of land who are mere chancers and who should be made to seek opportunities elsewhere." Mr Mugabe's regime has evicted all but a few hundred of the 4,000 white farmers who, until the start of the land seizures six years ago, were the backbone of the economy.

The economy has shrunk by nearly 40 per cent since 2000. Inflation, at nearly 1,000 per cent, is the highest in the world.

This is a rather startling admission by the old monster. Unfortunately, rather than learning from his mistakes, other nations in the region are beginning to replicate them.

Sad that the legacy of Marxist anti-colonialism and black racism should still be so powerful that it can continue to destroy nations and peoples in Africa.