Alexandra Fuller: The bitter harvest

White farmers, like my parents, sowed the seeds of Zimbabwe's current land crisis. Twenty-two years ago, when I was 11 years old, I watched as my mother, pregnant with her fifth child, ran her horse through the freshly planted maize of some African squatters who had settled on a patch of land on our farm in Zimbabwe.
Comments on article "Alexandra Fuller: The bitter harvest"
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M Millard My mother farmed in Tanzania from 1947 - 1962. With her and my father savings of 900 pounds they bought 500 hectares of virgin soil which my mother turned into a productive farm with the help of her black labourers. She grew tobacco. coffee and vegetables and had livestock of English cattles and pigs. She couldn't drive so she walked the farm each day in the hot African sun, burning her beautiful irish skin to a peeling red soreness. Two months ago we went back and saw the farm 43 years from when we had left. The soi was back to dry dongas and eroded - not a tree in sight. There was no work around the area as with all the neighbouring farms which were totally neglected. I am sure the black labourers would wish my mother and her neighbours back to offer them employment, benefiting from friday afternoon health clinic and creating propsperity in the area - there was nothing wrong with being a white settler in Tanzania, now please start answering your own problems of shunting your Aborignals and Red Indians out of sight into far off areas and throwing money at them to feed their additions and not deal with giving them an incentive to achieve on their own merits. My mother came from very humble Irish beginnings and she was a master achiever from 1908 - 1992, don't make excuses - get out there and grow.
From a African Colonial		 2/2/2005
Ute in MS Thanks, Bobo, for allowing me to remember and relive a part of my own childhood in Africa. You brought back many experiences I had forgotten, but they all sprung back vividly....complete with "smells" as your story unfolded. Please write more.... 5/23/2003
alf.lindqvist@glimstedt.se I would like to come in contact with Alexandra Fuller by mail or mail.I have just a translation into Swedish of her book Donīt Letīs Go to the Dogs. It will the next big movie! 3/6/2003
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