#9 Also, more seriously... weren't most of these so-called veterans actually too young to have fought in the revolution against colonial injustice, way back when?
Also, consider the following information, posted by Kim Du Toit at http://www.kimdutoit.com/dr/weblog.php?id=P3115:
ZIMBABWE has placed a $US200 million ($290 million) order to buy a fleet of Chinese-made fighter jets and military vehicles, even as the African country's depleted food stocks and remaining hard currency run out.
...
As relations with the rest of the world have grown colder, Zimbabwe has become increasingly dependent on China, one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Mr Mugabe's government when it came to power upon independence in 1980.
Since then the Chinese Government has helped build Harare's national sports stadium, hospitals, dams and school dormitories. It has also dug wells and established clothing factories.
Last month, a high-level trade delegation, which included the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party, visited Harare to discuss trade.
Chinese construction companies are also involved in building Mr Mugabe's Saddam Hussein-style mansion in Harare.
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Last year a Chinese state-owned company, the China International Water and Electric Corporation, was awarded a government contract to farm 100,000 hectares in southern Zimbabwe from which white farmers had been driven off.
I can't help but think that in the bad old days, this sort of arrangement would have been called "colonialism." |
They were feted by Robert Mugabe as patriots and pioneers in a radical redistribution of land to redress colonial injustice. But the war veterans who ousted white farmers have now themselves been invaded. Last month, police units fanned across Trelawney, a rural district outside the capital, Harare, and erased settlements with matches and mallets. The devastation starts just north of Harare and stretches for mile after mile with hundreds of homes wrecked, fields scorched and families gone, leaving the landscape silent and empty. "Now we are in the position the white farmer was. The authorities used us," Richard Mapuringa, 33, said last week, sifting through the ruins of his house.