During the latter half of the last century Zimbabwe was one of the most agriculturally rich countries in Africa. The agricultural produce of the country was so abundant that the country even engaged in rendering food aid to neighboring countries.
The "problem" with this? The vast majority of those agricultural farms were owned and run by white people of mostly European descent.
In the early 2000's the then dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, decided to correct this "problem" and forcefully expropriated all of those farm lands, kicked out all of the white farmers, and gave the lands to the native people.
Unsurprisingly the agricultural production of the country plummeted very fast. It didn't take even ten years before the country was facing an enormous famine. It was so bad that very soon Zimbabwe was in need of aid from its neighboring countries rather than the other way around.
It became so bad that Mugabe reversed his policies... almost. He begged for the white farmers to come back and continue running the farms. Except that he was still not willing to actually give the ownership of the farms back. He just wanted the white farmers to run the farms, not to own them. Needless to say, this didn't go too well.
And before I get accused of anything, the reason why over 90% of the farms quickly failed has nothing to do with race and intelligence. It has to do with lack of experience and a detrimental local culture. Locals didn't have the necessary knowledge and experience on how to successfully run large agricultural farms, so they literally just didn't know what to do. And while this may sound negative stereotyping, it's just a fact of life (that most Africans of the region who are honest will admit) that a lot of the local culture in those parts of Africa is of the "instant gratification" sort that is too lazy to go to lengths to learn and do hard work that ensures long-term success. They want everything now, and they don't have a lot of interest in spending a huge amount of time and effort to ensure that everything is working fine ten years from now.
As the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
And what do you know, South Africa is currently doing the exact same mistakes, to a T, as Zimbabwe did. The South African government, using the exact same principles and motivations, is expropriating farm land from white farmers, kicking them out, and giving these farms to non-white locals.
And, just like in Zimbabwe, over 90% of these once-successful farms are failing completely, and for the exact same reasons. And this even though the South African government is providing hefty grants to these new farmers to try to keep the farms running. It isn't helping.
One of the most prominent examples (among hundreds and hundreds) is the Zebediela estate: In its heyday, in the early 2000's, it was one of the largest citrus farms in the entire southern hemisphere, valued at about 30 million US dollars, and one of the biggest producers and exporters of citrus fruits in the world.
That farm was expropriated by the South African government and given to non-white locals, who were given hefty grants to keep it running. Today, the farm doesn't exist anymore: The land is a completely barren wasteland without a single citrus tree left. In the end, all the trees were chopped down for firewood (something that really symbolizes the "instant gratification" culture if there ever was a better example.) Once the biggest exporters of fruit in the world, the land now produces absolutely nothing.
And all that because the South African government wanted to take revenge on its white citizens. That's literally the reason.
They learned absolutely nothing from Zimbabwe, and now they are reaping the consequences.
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