By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--November 16, 2017
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“Deposed vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, a veteran of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation wars who was sacked by Mugabe earlier this month, has returned from exile. “It was not clear this morning where Mugabe, 93, was being held, but the military said last night that their 'security is guaranteed'. Opposition MP Eddie Cross this morning said that he believed Mugabe's wife Grace, 52, had fled to Namibia having been allowed to leave the country last night.”Because of the thousands killed by the Mugabe Regime, in a country whose economy has collapsed into a decades-long chronic shortage of foreign currency, energy shortages and the pangs of human hunger, the Nov. 15, 2017 military takeover of Zimbabwe, should it succeed, is destined to be one of the most celebrated coup d’etats in modern history. Canada Free Press has been following the history of Zimbabwe under the regime of Robert Mugabe and his brutal ZANU-PF government since August 16, 2002, the day I first met farmer-cum-member-of-parliament Roy Bennett. “In August, the Canadian media was invited to meet with the Zimbabwean MP at a downtown Toronto hotel. Only two reporters, including myself, turned up. A smorgasbord was part of the lunchtime media event, and Bennett heartily tucked into the scalloped potatoes and poached salmon. (Canada Free Press, Dec. 13, 2004)
"This food is delicious," he told me as he returned to the table for seconds"Noting he had paid dearly for his courage in speaking out about starving Zimbabweans, I asked if he ever considered giving up and leaving his mother country for a safer life elsewhere.
"You can’t run away from everything. There are some things in life worth taking a stand for," Bennett told me, winning a place in my heart forever as a bona fide, true-life hero. “A farmer at heart, Bennett was never the type to cut and run. In my column after our meeting, I wrote that he struck me as more of a farmer, husband and father than a politician, a belief I carry to the present day. “Caring for others is the lure that took him away from a farming life and his family to the harsher world of politics. “At home, Bennett became so popular among local people, he was dubbed with the nickname, "Pachedu–"one of us". It was the local masses who convinced him to stand in 2000 Zimbabwe elections. And that he did, winning an overwhelming majority in what had been a stronghold of the ruling party. “The heartbreak that came from his election will haunt supporters all the way to their graves. It started only two months later when Charleswood, his coffee farm was for the first time invaded by self-professed "war veterans". (ZANU-PF) “Bennett’s wife, Heather, who was almost four months pregnant, was held hostage at knifepoint and made to dance and sing ZANU PF songs in the rain. Two of the farm’s workers were brutally killed in front of her. When she finally managed to escape, she had miscarried what was never to be their third child. “Charleswood, which hired hundreds of blacks, was driven into bankruptcy, when its animals were slaughtered wholesale and its tons of coffee exported to Germany. The invasion of the coffee farm came within months of the bank loans that started it having been paid off in full. “But, like so many things in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Charleswood is only a fading memory of a better day.”The fate of millions of Zimbabweans under Mugabe and his brutal ZANU PF forces are both horrific and heart-rending. They never cared about the tears of blacks forced off farms, sent out onto the roads on their own, and pretended not to see blacks and whites clinging to each other in forced farewells to the only life they ever knew, all because the owners of the farms happened to be ‘white’,
“The body of Terry Ford—the tenth white farmer murdered by the Mugabe regime—was found doubled up beside the gate of his home farmstead with his faithful dog curled next to him on March 19, 2002. “Even in death Squeak refused to leave the side of his master, and was with him until authorities bundled the 55-year-old farmer into a tin coffin. Squeak, who went everywhere with Terry Ford, was with him in the last desperate moments of his life when he was trying to leave his farm in a vehicle. “Ford also had two border collies taken by the SPCA and turned over to friends of the family. But it was Squeak who was allowed to follow the farmer’s coffin up the church aisle behind his girlfriend and family members at the funeral. Of the one thousand mourners at the funeral, including former Rhodesian President Ian Smith, Squeak remained on the lap of Ford’s girlfriend during the sermon. There reportedly wasn’t a dry eye when the devoted little terrier went up to sniff at the coffin before going off to the church garden. “Surely, Squeak, a sort of Greyfriar’s Bobby of Africa, deserves a special place in the recorded history of man’s best friend. It was the unforgettable Jack Russell terrier, which became the defining moment in the broken dreams and uprooted lives of countless farmers being forced off their land even to the present day.
"Dr. Gordon, 42, a veterinarian, is leaving for New Zealand, unable to take the strain of destroying family pets and horses any longer. For the past six months he has done little but put down the pets of fleeing white farmers. " ‘I worked in Cumbria (in England) last year during foot and mouth,’ he said. ‘This is worse. I have put down hundreds of family pets and hundreds of horses recently. Some families want to stay with their pets when I do it. Others can’t take it, and leave first.’ ‘I have nowhere to bury the animals as I was chased off my farm. So the farmers have to take the bodies away. Sometimes we put the horses down mine shafts. ‘I respect farmers who decide they have a final obligation to their animals, and put them down.’ “ “The 650 guard dogs belonged to a security company in Banket, 70 km north of Harare, the capital, which employed more than 400 farm guards but closed its doors because of political unrest. “Gordon would rather use chemicals to put the animals down. Problem is the few vets left in Zimbabwe are putting down pets at such a rate, they have run out of chemicals. “After putting down the first 20 guard dogs, Gordon, who decided to leave his beloved Zimbabwe forever, said he just couldn’t take it anymore.
"Who could ever forget that Prime Minister Tsvangirai, and his six children at the Memorial of his wife, Susan, alleged to have been killed in a mysterious car accident? "Or that some 15,000 Zimbabweans attended the public memorial, at Glamis Stadium, some arriving on foot, others hitching rides from as far away as 150 kms? "Morgan Tsvangirai, with his wife at his side, became prime minister on Feb. 15, 2009 under a power-sharing deal in the same stadium among rousing cheers.Tsvangirai, now reported to be suffering with colon cancer, told his wife’s mourners:“Let’s celebrate her existence as God’s gift to me and you.” Roy Bennett has been in exile in South Africa since September 2010. My fervent hope today is that Bennett, Tsvangirai, and the CFP writer will live to see a better day. My prayer, that if it is God’s Will, that Zimbabwe will remain safe from the terror of Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.
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