Biting the Hands that Feed You - Zimbabwe

Some things I can expect from the Stupid, like Stupidity, but what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe really takes the cake for stupidity and his people are paying for it. It appears that Nigeria is smarter than Zimbabwe.

Victims of Mugabe’s land grab are being invited to set up farms across the border. But how will ordinary Nigerians react to this unprecedented wave of white settlers? Fred Bridgland reports

WILLIAM Hughes used to be regularly voted Zimbabwe’s top dairy farmer, producing 5000 litres of milk a day. Highly respected, he was vice president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union and believed he was immune from land grabs launched by president Robert Mugabe in March 2000.
Mugabe himself issued a decree in 2001 exempting dairy farms " high-tech and high-skilled " from his government’s land distribution programme which has seen more than 4000 white commercial farmers forcibly removed from their properties.

"A year later the death threats began," said 55-year-old Hughes, who had spent 30 years breeding the perfect genetic stock from Holsteins for high milk yields in semi-tropical Zimbabwe. "If some local bigwig wants your farm, it’s curtains for you."

Hughes lost his farm and his life’s work, but now plans to build the first modern dairy in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous state, where white commercial farmers have never previously settled, despite more than 70 years of British colonial rule.

He is one of a core team of 15 Zimbabwean farmers, all thrown off their properties, who are about to become Nigeria’s first white settlers, the advance party of an eventual hundred or so Zimbabweans scheduled to move to the giant West African country.

Let's put this in logical terms: Zimbabwe's leading Dairy Producer, an asset to the country's economy and food production, is threatened and kicked off of his dairy farm because he is White. Now Nigeria want him to settle there, because he has knowledge that they need. Go figure.

They have been invited by Bukola Saraki, the young and dynamic governor of Kwara state, on Nigeria’s western border along the upper reaches of the huge Niger River.

"In Kwara we don’t have oil, but we have a vast amount of land, 2.3 million hectares, available for agriculture, which has the potential to provide jobs and bring down the cost of food," said Saraki from Ilorin, the state capital.

"If I truly thought our peasant farmers could take us where we want to be, I would probably not have invited the Zimbabweans. We decided the only way to push agriculture was through commercial farming, he admitted.

"White farmers in Zimbabwe were having problems with Robert Mugabe. They saw themselves as Africans and wanted to stay in Africa. We thought: if you’ve got what it takes to make it in commercial farming, the opportunities are here."

Bukola Saraki, in Nigeria, unlike his stupid neighbors, realizes when someone has the skills and knowledge to improve their food availability, whether they are white or black, food is food.

Heyby the way, Bukola Saraki, I got that e-mail from you saying that you need some money to get your sister out of jail, and I sent you $10,000. Where is my split of her bank account?

But what about the people? will they like white farmers invading their country and taking their land?

"White people have never settled here, so there has never been discrimination," said Sulu Gambari, the Emir of Ilorin, supreme traditional leader of Christians and Muslims in Kwara state. "They will see we are the perfect hosts." And Mohamed Alasan, headman at Yelwa, where a sugar mill that once employed 4000 people lies abandoned, pointed to his emaciated villagers and said: "We want the whites to come and run the sugar estate because they won’t mismanage it."

So we see that in Zimbabwe the whites are hated because they are white, but in Nigeria they are welcomed, not because of their skin color, but because of the contributions they can make to Nigeria. Zimbabwe used to be called "The Bread Basket of Africa", now it can be called "The Rotten Apple of Africa". Zimbabwe's lose is Nigeria's gain.
This just reinforces one of my views, do not judge someone by their skin color, judge them by their actions.

I'm still waiting for my money Bukola Saraki, please send it soon, I have bills to pay.

Mr Minority