The adult faculty at the school were inside having a meeting at the time. The sightings at Ariel occurred at 10am on September 16, 1994, when pupils were outside on mid-morning break.
The booster broke up into burning streaks as it moved silently across the sky, giving an impressive light show to millions of Africans.” Local UFO researcher Cynthia Hind recorded other alien sightings at this time including a daylight sighting by a young boy and his mother and a report of alien beings on a road by a trucker. Īccording to skeptic Brian Dunning the fireball “had been the re-entry of the Zenit-2 rocket from the Cosmos 2290 satellite launch. Although some witnesses interpreted the fireball as a comet or meteor, it resulted in a wave of UFO mania in Zimbabwe at the time. Many people answered ZBC Radio's request to call-in and describe what they had seen. There had been numerous reports of a bright fireball passing through the sky at night. Two days prior to the incident at Ariel there had been a number of UFO sightings throughout southern Africa. Most of the pupils were from wealthy white families in Harare. Īriel School was an expensive private school. At the time of the incident, it was not a town but only a local place-name, “little more than a crossroads in an agricultural region”. Mr Hain says Britain is ''a friend of Zimbabwe'', but sums up current relations as ''a dialogue of the deaf''.Ruwa is a small agricultural centre located 22 km south-east of the capital Harare. Prime Minister Tony Blair came under fire for allowing the sale of spare parts for Zimbabwe's Hawk jets which have been used in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.īritain, which boasts about its ethical foreign plolicy, has since tightened controls on arms exports to Zimbabwe and other countries involved in the civil war.īut Mr Mugabe may soon find it is not just weapons that he cannot buy.īritain has warned that his erratic behaviour is jeopardising Zimbabwe's chances of receiving international financial assistance. However, one of Britain's recent exports landed it in hot water. Mr Hain, the British foreign office minister, has said Britain is ready to advise on proper land reform instead of the present "pistol to the head" seizures.īoth London and Harare stand to lose if relations deteriorate further.Īround 7% of Zimbabwe's imports come from Britain which in turn takes 11% of its exports. They have also warned that the farm invasions are harming production and further damaging Zimbabwe's struggling economy. White farmers do not dispute the need to redistribute land.īut they argue it would be economic suicide to seize land from experienced farmers and hand it over to people with no experience of large-scale farming.
Mr Mugabe is refusing to remove squatters from white farms Yet white farmers still own 70% of the most fertile land.īritish settlers began moving blacks off their farmland when they started arriving in Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, in the 1890s.Ībout half the population were shifted onto barren communal properties - often in drought-prone areas. There are only 70,000 whites left in Zimbabwe, around 0.6% of the population.
The problem of land reform lies at the heart of the tensions between the two countries. He refers to Mr Blair's administration as the "the gay government of the gay United gay Kingdom". The president accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of using "gay gangsters" to attack him because of his controversial plan to seize farms owned by British descendants. Mr Mugabe was infuriated last year when the British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell tried to arrest him during a trip to London over the torture of two journalists. In several outbursts he has even accused Britain of polluting the world with homosexual values. Mr Tatchell tried to arrest Mr Mugabe in LondonĪnd when a fuel shortage brought factories to a halt, he said it was because British-owned banks were hoarding foreign exchange.
0 kommentar(er)
