Mugabe Zimbabwe: Land Repossession No Act of Iniquity

26 September 2009

By Reason Wafawarova

WHILE the truism of bemoaning the alleged abuse of the human rights of Zimbabweans is the official basis of all the Western vilification of President Mugabe in the last 10 years, the reality of the matter is that the actual iniquity lies in the land reform programme.

The story line is that President Mugabe embarked on a chaotic land reform programme that destroyed agriculture directly and the entire economy subsequently.

This we are told was a result of Zanu-PF’s decision to dispossess "skilled and capable white commercial farmers" and to give the expropriated land to "unskilled landless blacks".

The whites referred to here are part of a legacy that was created by Cecil John Rhodes, when he expounded his vision in 1895.

This was a legacy of imperial conquest made necessary by Britain’s failure to look after her own children. Britain’s population then was 40 million and the country was on the brink of a bloody civil war because of a class struggle between the haves and have nots.

Rhodes was among the leading figures of South Africa’s first generation of Randlords and to him Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today) was just a by-product of the South African gold-mining industry, and he believed that the interests of mining capitalism in South Africa and indeed of British capitalism as well, were intimately connected with the expansion of the British colonial empire into Africa.

Rhodes explained this vision to journalist W.T. Stead in 1895: Said Rhodes: "I was employed in the East end of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed.

"I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism . . . My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, that is; in order to save the 40 million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and the mines.

"The Empire, as I have always said is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists."

This traditional mindset is still today the basis of modern day Britain’s philosophy behind foreign policy, indeed the capitalist mindset that sets up foreign policy in the entirety of the Western polity. The whole world is meant to abide by a world order that serves to solve the social problems of Western communities and any deviance is dealt with ruthlessly.

Rhodes had to contend with conquering first the Afrikaner republics in South Africa through the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 although he did not live to see the final victory of his countrymen.

He also had to contend with the rivalry of other imperialists, as the German armies were conquering Tanganyika and South West Africa (Namibia), and as ambitions by the Portuguese to occupy Zimbabwe and Zambia in order to link up Angola were also backed by the Germans.

Zimbabwe in particular was then most coveted because it was believed to be a "second Rand".

Rhodes successfully forestalled the Germans and the Portuguese, cutting off Afrikaner republics’ rear at the same time.

He then tricked King Lobengula into signing a mineral concession over to the British South Africa Company, which led to the occupation of Zimbabwe by the Pioneer Column of white settlers and police in 1890.

Three years later, the company had concocted a pretext to invade the Ndebele Kingdom and the Ndebele Warriors were mowed down by machine guns, and King Lobengula is believed to have died in hiding that time.

In a collective sense of resistance in 1896, the entire country, both the Ndebele and Shona rose against the settlers who were taking their land and forcing them to work on the white farms, the very farms that have today been repossessed by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF.

This was the First Chimurenga that ended partly because Cecil John Rhodes personally intervened and secured a negotiated settlement with the Ndebele people.

That left the white settlers’ real ferocity reserved for the Shona.

At this time a Catholic missionary wrote; "It seems to me that the only way of doing anything at all with these natives is to starve them, destroy their lands and kill all that can be killed."

Today, the natives are starved through ruinous economic sanctions, their land is destroyed by sabotaging their agrarian processes and all that can be killed are killed by less explicit means.

The methods may have changed but the mentality is still there in Western elites.

The formula suggested by the missionary was scrupulously followed by the white settlers and consequently it yielded success.

Despite a long and heroic resistance, the Shona rebellion was gradually crushed — crops were destroyed and kraals were besieged village after village.

The Shona Warriors took refuge in caves and dynamite was thrown in after them by the white settler forces.

The leaders of this uprising were executed, most notably the heroic lady of the First Chimurenga, Mbuya Nehanda, as well as her comrade-in-arms, Sekuru Kaguvi.

This way, the colony of Southern Rhodesia was founded and whatever promises had been made to the Ndebele were not kept in the least.

Rhodesia did not turn out to be the "second Rand" that it was anticipated to be, as mineral deposits were scattered and of variable quality.

This meant harder work for the native labourers who were forced into the compound system on a forced "African wage".

Between 1900 and 1933, over 30 000 black mine workers died as a result of accidents and occupational diseases, and not much of this is ever repeatedly told in history.

The conquest and suppression of the uprisings helped to strengthen the power of white settlers in relation to both the BSA Company and the Queen’s Imperial government back in Britain.

In no other colony in Africa had settlers been directly responsible for colonising the country and this has always made Zimbabwe a special case, and this is precisely why the country had to go through 14 years of a gruesome war of attrition to regain its independence, regardless of the fact that sister states in the region were granted independence at negotiating tables.

The saying "Zimbabwe ndeyeropa", meaning Zimbabwe is born out of blood, was conceived in this vein and not the misleading propaganda that says it is all from the "violent nature" of Zanu-PF.

The fact that the anticipated "second Rand" did not exactly materialise meant a shift to settler agriculture. The shift meant that when Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing colony in 1923, most power was vested in the hands of settler farmers.

Both the BSA Company and the British government were opposed to this arrangement, as they both preferred the incorporation of the country in the Union of South Africa.

The pattern of colonisation followed closely to that of South Africa and this is why the land issue is inevitably a big issue in South Africa as well. In fact it is a lethal time bomb for South Africa.

By 1902, 75 percent of the land had been taken from indigenous Zimbabweans. The Land Apportionment Act of 1931 limited land purchases by indigenous people to the "Native Purchase Areas".

In 1969, the Land Tenure Act entrenched a 50-50 division of the land between blacks and whites; despite that the ratio was 25 to 1 black majority.

By 1970, 98 percent of the land suitable for afforestation, fruit growing and intensive beef production lay in the European areas of this new 50-50 arrangement, as did 82 percent of the land suitable for intensive farming, while 100 percent of the land unsuitable for any agricultural purpose lay in the African areas.

The settler economy was built on mining and agriculture and settler farmers producing for export received generous help from the state.

This was never criticised as quasi-fiscal activities as we are told President Mugabe’s efforts to help the new black farmers are.

There was a semi-feudal system that permitted settler farmers to allow blacks to remain on occupied land as labourers or tenants. John Rodgers and Alex Callinicos in the book, "Southern Africa after Soweto", wrote this about this era of settler farmers:

"The moment a man had pegged his farm, he regarded the African villagers on it as his serfs who would have to work for him.

The chief means of mobilising this pool of labour in the first years was the sjambok, (or chamboko) or hippo hide whip, and after 1908 labour agreements which committed tenants to work several months, usually three, for the privilege of remaining on their ancestral land."

Meawhile, mine owners were recruiting labour through chibharo or forced labour and this writer has sad memories of how his own father used to narrate the brutality of this process of slavery which he went through as a teenager.

Just like in South Africa, the extensive methods of agriculture that was practised by the blacks were appropriate for the land that was available before the settlers came in.

When this otherwise useful method of agriculture was restricted to the Bantustans in South Africa and to the Tribal Trust Lands in Zimbabwe, it wrought devastation and the face of it was overpopulation, overstocking, soil erosion, and malnutrition.

The African children were then taught in schools that these disastrous ills were a result of ignorance and lack of good farming skills on the part of black peasants, not a good method gone wrong because of forced displacement to unsuitable lands.

This writer recalls vividly the zealous and energetic teachings of his Geography high school teacher at Zimuto Secondary School where it was made abundantly clear that overpopulation, soil erosion, malnutrition and skinny cattle were all "due to ignorance".

This colonial legacy has been overturned by the land revolution in Zimbabwe and it is most certainly going to be overturned one way or the other in South Africa, most likely by a similar revolution.

Now that land has been taken back in Zimbabwe we are being told of the iniquities of President Mugabe as a "racist African dictator" and we are reminded ever again that we are "ignorant" in as far as farming skills are concerned.

It took a lot of state help and up to at least 30 years for white settler farmers to export meaningfully and we are told the nine years that Zimbabwe has gone through with the land reform programme is long enough to judge a whole population as unskilled.

It took the destruction of the entire African economy to build the settler economy and to have our people remain with no option but to sell their labour for next to nothing but we are told we needed to have preserved the settler agricultural economy and that we were supposed to kindly ask the settler famers to train our people on how to farm.

If the settler farmers are full of farming skills and if they can train people into skilled farmers, they might as well do it right now because we have the land where such magic training would work wonders.

What sense would it have made for us to ask to be trained how to farm when our land was occupied?

While narrations about the loss of little possessions like crocodiles, pigs, tractors and televisions might portray a barbaric image for Zimbabwe, the overriding principle of correcting a bigger iniquity that was increasingly becoming unsustainable remains the logic that Africa will never fail to see.

Sadc, AU and other formerly oppressed nations will never fail to see this logic and this explains the support that Zimbabwe gets from all non-Western nations.

There is need to make sure that there is a conclusion to the land reform programme, so we can move into the next stage where we can carry out our own internal audit to make sure the agrarian policy does not only reclaim land but does so fairly and in a way that will productively benefit the nation.

This writer is no fan of idle land occupiers who derive happiness in pretending to be successful farmers for the fun of it.

Whoever is entrusted with land owes it to the nation to produce or must just leave unconditionally and apologise to the nation for wasting the country’s time.

We owe it to the fallen heroes of our independence war and to those who were crushed and executed in the First Chimurenga and we have a duty to atone for their suffering by making the land reform programme a success; our success and not the success endorsed by those from whom we reclaimed our stolen land.
 

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