Some Reasons Behind ‘Zimbabwe’s Madness’

Re “Staying On Amid Zimbabwe’s Madness,” Commentary, March 28: As someone who, like Douglas Rogers, was born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), I cannot fault his disgust over the tragedy that the Mugabe regime has wrought. However, there are a few crucial factors that Rogers ignores.

First, white farmers like Rogers’ family were the most fervent and militaristic supporters of Ian Smith’s illegal, and internationally condemned, government before it collapsed in 1980. Second, though the white farmers certainly employed millions of laborers, they paid them barely subsistent wages while living high on the hog.

More profoundly, however, Robert Mugabe has come to terms with the fact that a political power that leaves economic power in the hands of a minority -- as is the case in neighboring South Africa -- is no real power. For all his brutalities, Mugabe has grasped this post-colonial nettle. And it must be grasped if Zimbabwe is ever to recover its soul after a century of white racist exploitation. Perhaps it’s time that Rogers’ family realizes that the old colonial life of “high walls and sports clubs” is really over in Zimbabwe.

Leon Whiteson

Los Angeles

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Your March 26 article on Zimbabwe neglects to explain the reasons for the “catastrophic decline in farm production and economic collapse.” Persistent drought is undoubtedly a major cause of food shortages. But one cannot ignore President Mugabe’s forced expropriation of white-owned farms from 2000 to 2002. Not all of these farms produced food, but the combined loss of agricultural and economic efficiency in Mugabe’s racist “agrarian reform” hurt Zimbabwe badly.

Only a small percentage of black Zimbabweans received expropriated land; a large percentage are hungry. Communist-style land seizures do not work any better in Africa than they did in Russia.

William R. Snaer

Lake Arrowhead