Mugabe threatens to takeover "white" safari operators in Zimbabwe

[K-man]

yeah. nothing at all to eat on those "farms" unless you can eat dirt. It has nothing to do with rainfall or fertility of the soil, as you can see next door.

 

[johnnyblues]

Sure sounds like opportunity's to in Africa are shrinking rapidly...

 

[mikejones]

On my recent trip to south africa i saw the very same happening , large profitable citrus farms / dairy etc given to BEE ( black economic empowerment ) folks and within the first year they filed bankruptcy. In many other cases the land the BBE so badly wanted has been re-sold back to white farmers for cash and then blew the cash away within 5 months buying lavish things.

I even read some big shot BBE woman in government has a farm that she doesnt even attend to and her pigs started eating each other alive , no food no water for them i think the SPCA managed to save some animals. They just want things and dont want help on how to farm etc.. They really think farming is easy and the money rolls in everyday....

 

[K-man]

they are getting smarter... some farms and/or businesses are getting a 55% "partner" forced on them.. so they still do all the work but give away over half the profit. Saw a tobacco farm after all the crop harvested and dried, then taken away, then given back for the next year, until the crop harvested and dried, etc...starting to sound like Obamacare. Wonder where he got the idea.

 

[ActionBob]

We drove by a formerly beautiful irrigation project every day in Zimbabwe. This was built for the local people as a community project. Then World food aid started coming in and they simply stopped working it. There are good wells there and very prime river bottom land. They do farm parts of it broken into little family plots. But only during the rainy season. This was done to let them crop it year round. I think this is an example of how welfare programs work.... Or rather don't. When free corn was sent in (they were carrying elephant meat in the yellow donated corn bags), not all but a large portion of the people switched from working/farming to drinking beer. Now nothing against a couple good cold ones at the en of a hard day... But when it become the primary activity of the day, there are problems... When I asked what these people need, the answer was to stop getting things fro free so they are forced to help themselves! I thought it was clear that what this area lacked was good leadership and a little capitalism. The building was the his and hers outhouse. This was 65 HA of prime farmland in the middle of a million acres of formerly great wildlife area. By NOT producing on this little plot, they are ravaging the rest of the area. There was one big old dugga boy living in this area...... But totally nocturnal. All we saw was trail cam photos and lots of his tracks at the water hole.

 

[sestoppelman]

How many years have we been saying, "he cant live forever can he"? Maybe. When I was there the first time in '96 hunting with the Greaves family, Fountain Safaris, they were worried then about the takeover. My PH was Mike Smith. Anyone know whatever became of him? He would be about 65 years old now.