- 20 Mar 2003 08:55
#197600
This is from Granma Internation - CUBA. It's weird...interesting history.
ZIMBABWE
The battle for land
'When Africans in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and
elsewhere fought for their independence it meant two things
to them: land and freedom . But when Europe conceded
independence to the African countries it was self-rule
without land and freedom' (Koigi Wamwere, Kenyan political
activist and former presidential candidate)
BY ANGIE TODD
(Special for Granma International)
ROBERT Mugabe wishes to bring the vital issue of land
ownership and equitable distribution in his and other
African nations to the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable
Development. Why does the 78-year-old independence leader
feel the need to speak out at this forum, and why has he
been so vilified by the governments and media of the North
and the internal opposition since fully committing himself
to land reform in Zimbabwe? A look at the charged history of land ownership in what was the former British colony of
Southern Rhodesia provides an answer.
A CHRONICLE OF LAND
In 1889, Cecil John Rhodes, who had made a fortune in gold
and diamond mining in South Africa, helped to further
British interests in the Southern African region by
establishing the British South Africa Company (BSAC) in what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe. What Lobengula, the Ndebele king, perceived as an agreement for the company to mine gold, for Rhodes was a virtual ceding of sovereignty to his company. An invading Pioneer Column of 200 white settlers and 500 armed men set themselves up in Salisbury, now Harare. The first war of liberation against the foreigners, which included the Shona people, took place in 1896, and was lost.
A series of land-grabbing legislation followed, including
the Native Reserves Order in Council in 1898, which
dispersed the indigenous people onto low-potential arable
lands, the communal areas of today.
By 1914, white settlers - 3% of the population - controlled
75% of economically productive land, and the black Africans
were confined in 23% of the land.
Further "bantustan" policies followed with the Land
Apportionment Act in 1930, which formalized land separation
and effectively and intentionally forced Africans into the
labor market. In 1934, the Industrial Conciliation Act
banned Africans from skilled employment, forcing them to
work for subsistence wages on white farms, in mining and in
industry.
By 1967, after the Tribal Trust Lands Act replaced that of
the Native Reserves, 4.5 million blacks (seven-tenths of the population) had been forcibly removed from their home areas and crowded onto infertile land. The task of the unequal redistribution of land and white economic control was complete.
Ian Smith's secession from British colonial rule (1965)
through his Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the
Rhodesian Federation consolidated the white settlers' hold
on land and wealth in Southern Rhodesia.
Mugabe founded the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in Tanzania in 1964, and the war for independence was
initiated. Imprisoned for approximately 10 years on his
return to Southern Rhodesia, he was elected as party leader
in jail. In elections just prior to independence ZANU won a
landslide victory over Nkomo's Zimbabwe African Peoples
Union (ZAPU). The two parties finally united in the ZANU-Patriotic Front in 1987.
When independence was won in April 1980, close to 6,000
white commercial farmers owned 15.5 million hectares or 45%
of the most productive land. Small-scale, mainly black
farming families (8,500) had 5% in the drier regions, and
700,000 black families owned the remaining 50% in low
rainfall areas with very poor soil fertility.
Mugabe threatened to walk out of the independence negotiations at Lancaster House, London over the land issue. The conference only resumed when Britain and the United States made certain commitments to help the Zimbabwe
government acquire land from white farmers for distribution
to blacks. But these commitments were conditioned to what
was entered in Zimbabwe's constitution as a "willing seller, willing buyer" clause, mandatory for 10 years.
Thus, by 1990, the white farming community still held 80% of the land it owned prior to Zimbabwe's independence. With the ending of the "willing..." provision, Mugabe introduced the Land Acquisition Act, allowing the government to acquire land where required. But the government lacked the money, especially as the IMF and the World Bank were insisting that the land had to be purchased at full market prices. The British government came up with GBP 44 million for the exercise (a claim challenged) and then withdrew its support, conveniently alleging that Mugabe was giving the land to his "cronies and political allies".
And so, in 1997, Mugabe's government took the only option
left: to compulsorily acquire land for redistribution,
declaring: "It is not the intention of the government to
drive white commercial farmers off the land. No farmer will
be without land in Zimbabwe. Even those farmers whose
properties are designated by reason of their proximity to
communal areas will still be invited to select from
properties elsewhere." The land to be acquired in this way
(with compensation for improvements) was categorized into:
derelict or under-used land, land owned by absentee
landlords (including members of the British House of Lords), land owned by farmers with more than one property, and land contiguous on communal areas. Even the World Bank
acknowledged that large-scale (read white) farmers have
utilized less than half of the 11.26 million hectares they
own.
At a conference on land reform in 1998 in Harare, 48
countries and international organizations from the 'donor'
community unanimously endorsed the need for land reform as
being "essential for poverty reduction, economic growth and
political stability."
POST-INDEPENDENCE: GAINS AND REVERSES
In the first 10 years of independence education absorbed
10-22% of the national budget. Primary education became free and compulsory, and schools and hospitals were built in the rural areas. From 1978 to 1989 infant mortality dropped from 130 per 1,000 births to 65.
But in the early 90s, faced with economic decline - at least partly derived from the land situation and external
problems - Zimbabwe came under the malign influence of IMF
structural adjustment programs (SAPS). They spelt
devaluation, the liberalization of trade and capital flows,
the abolition of food subsidies and cutbacks in the health
and education sectors. The result: inflationary pressure due to increased import prices, businesses closing due to an inability to compete on the international market, the export of capital funds and increased prices on all staple foods. In five years the IMF destroyed 40% of industrial output. While Zimbabwe was forced to sell its maize reserves for IMF-ordered profits, white farmers were diversifying, using land for tobacco and horticulture cultivation for export, and innovative and lucrative options such as game shooting and safari parks. Zimbabwe was feeling hunger.
But, as pointed out by the International Herald Tribune in
March 2000:
"In a country where farming is the single largest generator
of foreign exchange, nearly a third (of Zimbabwe's) most
productive farmland remains in the hands of 4,500 white
farmers and almost half the land is owned by the country's
70,000 whites. Racial and economic inequalities persist
despite Zimbabwe's transition to majority rule.">
THE BATTLE INTENSIFIES
The Zimbabwean 1997 legislation on the compulsory
acquisition of white-owned properties - or recovering land
that belonged to the nation - produced certain results. By
July 1998, the government had recuperated 3.8 million
hectares, albeit at a reduced hectarage, plus compensation
for land value as well as improvements to it. It had
produced other results too, in the shape of a vicious and
concerted backlash from the UK and powerful white national
organizations like the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union,
the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, and the former's
international allies, in an essentially political context.
Parliamentary elections in 2000 gave ZANU/PF a majority over the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a social democrat movement with a certain strength in the cities and
substantially financed and directed by white Zimbabwean
money and foreign forces opposed to Mugabe and the equitable land redistribution program.
In April 2000, Mugabe's government moved further and adopted a constitutional provision authorizing the government to acquire land without compensation, while envisaging that compensation would be paid by the UK, which after all had collected the revenue from the same land when it was grabbed by the BSAC in 1890. The response to that was a resounding no, although Britain had promised repatriation to 'dispossessed' white farmers. That step resulted in a ferocious and systematic attack on Mugabe in person and his government by the UK, the European Union and the United States and other allies. To quote just one example, Mugabe's government has been consistently charged with corruption and cronyism, reiterated without any hard evidence. The Zimbabwe opposition Daily News and British Labor MP Peter Hain have asseverated that all... or half... of redistributed land has gone to government or middle-class blacks. In answer to a question in the Zimbabwean Parliament in January 2000, Zimbabwean Margaret Dongo was informed, with the relevant details, that the total land given over to this sector amounted to 7% since 1997, or 6% of 370,000 hectares.
That campaign reached a crescendo to coincide with
presidential elections this year, which Mugabe won, despite
a torrent of vituperative charges of violence against MDC
supporters and electoral fraud. Speaking with some nerve,
given his ascent to the White House, decided by a Supreme
Court ruling in violation of the popular vote, Bush declared on March 12: "We do not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it is flawed... We are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election." Mr. Bush has no moral right to judge those elections.
Walter Kansteiner, U.S. undersecretary of state for African
affairs, stated on August 20 that the United States and
countries bordering Zimbabwe are seeking ways of aiding the
opposition (MDC) and winning a change of government. This is an open declaration of U.S. intentions to overthrow the
president of a sovereign nation for reasons that have
nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with its
interests in the African continent.
Alexander Downing, the foreign minister of Australia, a
country whose own history of land distribution is shameful,
declared on August 25, Mugabe is "effectively conducting a
policy of ethnic cleansing on the farms..."
Mugabe's reelection has doubtless helped him continue the
battle for the equitable redistribution of Zimbabwean land
in the only way possible, by retaking it.
GLOBALIZATION VERSUS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development is about
the future survival of all humanity, as opposed to the
destruction of our planet by an all-powerful and greedy
minority. As such it would be an appropriate forum for the
issue of land ownership in a global context. Ironically,
President Robert Mugabe and British Labor leader Tony Blair
are scheduled to speak there within an hour of each other.
British Conservatives have called on Blair to make Zimbabwe
an issue at the UN Summit. Labor Environment Secretary
Margaret Beckett stated on August 23 that it was "singularly unlikely" that Blair and Mugabe would shake hands, and that Blair would ensure that the "summit...isn't hijacked by issues, by concerns such as those about Zimbabwe."
That is understandable, as such issues and concerns could
prove dangerous, given that Mugabe and the government of
Zimbabwe have their defenders in Johannesburg, not least
among their African neighbors.
ZIMBABWE
The battle for land
'When Africans in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and
elsewhere fought for their independence it meant two things
to them: land and freedom . But when Europe conceded
independence to the African countries it was self-rule
without land and freedom' (Koigi Wamwere, Kenyan political
activist and former presidential candidate)
BY ANGIE TODD
(Special for Granma International)
ROBERT Mugabe wishes to bring the vital issue of land
ownership and equitable distribution in his and other
African nations to the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable
Development. Why does the 78-year-old independence leader
feel the need to speak out at this forum, and why has he
been so vilified by the governments and media of the North
and the internal opposition since fully committing himself
to land reform in Zimbabwe? A look at the charged history of land ownership in what was the former British colony of
Southern Rhodesia provides an answer.
A CHRONICLE OF LAND
In 1889, Cecil John Rhodes, who had made a fortune in gold
and diamond mining in South Africa, helped to further
British interests in the Southern African region by
establishing the British South Africa Company (BSAC) in what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe. What Lobengula, the Ndebele king, perceived as an agreement for the company to mine gold, for Rhodes was a virtual ceding of sovereignty to his company. An invading Pioneer Column of 200 white settlers and 500 armed men set themselves up in Salisbury, now Harare. The first war of liberation against the foreigners, which included the Shona people, took place in 1896, and was lost.
A series of land-grabbing legislation followed, including
the Native Reserves Order in Council in 1898, which
dispersed the indigenous people onto low-potential arable
lands, the communal areas of today.
By 1914, white settlers - 3% of the population - controlled
75% of economically productive land, and the black Africans
were confined in 23% of the land.
Further "bantustan" policies followed with the Land
Apportionment Act in 1930, which formalized land separation
and effectively and intentionally forced Africans into the
labor market. In 1934, the Industrial Conciliation Act
banned Africans from skilled employment, forcing them to
work for subsistence wages on white farms, in mining and in
industry.
By 1967, after the Tribal Trust Lands Act replaced that of
the Native Reserves, 4.5 million blacks (seven-tenths of the population) had been forcibly removed from their home areas and crowded onto infertile land. The task of the unequal redistribution of land and white economic control was complete.
Ian Smith's secession from British colonial rule (1965)
through his Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the
Rhodesian Federation consolidated the white settlers' hold
on land and wealth in Southern Rhodesia.
Mugabe founded the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in Tanzania in 1964, and the war for independence was
initiated. Imprisoned for approximately 10 years on his
return to Southern Rhodesia, he was elected as party leader
in jail. In elections just prior to independence ZANU won a
landslide victory over Nkomo's Zimbabwe African Peoples
Union (ZAPU). The two parties finally united in the ZANU-Patriotic Front in 1987.
When independence was won in April 1980, close to 6,000
white commercial farmers owned 15.5 million hectares or 45%
of the most productive land. Small-scale, mainly black
farming families (8,500) had 5% in the drier regions, and
700,000 black families owned the remaining 50% in low
rainfall areas with very poor soil fertility.
Mugabe threatened to walk out of the independence negotiations at Lancaster House, London over the land issue. The conference only resumed when Britain and the United States made certain commitments to help the Zimbabwe
government acquire land from white farmers for distribution
to blacks. But these commitments were conditioned to what
was entered in Zimbabwe's constitution as a "willing seller, willing buyer" clause, mandatory for 10 years.
Thus, by 1990, the white farming community still held 80% of the land it owned prior to Zimbabwe's independence. With the ending of the "willing..." provision, Mugabe introduced the Land Acquisition Act, allowing the government to acquire land where required. But the government lacked the money, especially as the IMF and the World Bank were insisting that the land had to be purchased at full market prices. The British government came up with GBP 44 million for the exercise (a claim challenged) and then withdrew its support, conveniently alleging that Mugabe was giving the land to his "cronies and political allies".
And so, in 1997, Mugabe's government took the only option
left: to compulsorily acquire land for redistribution,
declaring: "It is not the intention of the government to
drive white commercial farmers off the land. No farmer will
be without land in Zimbabwe. Even those farmers whose
properties are designated by reason of their proximity to
communal areas will still be invited to select from
properties elsewhere." The land to be acquired in this way
(with compensation for improvements) was categorized into:
derelict or under-used land, land owned by absentee
landlords (including members of the British House of Lords), land owned by farmers with more than one property, and land contiguous on communal areas. Even the World Bank
acknowledged that large-scale (read white) farmers have
utilized less than half of the 11.26 million hectares they
own.
At a conference on land reform in 1998 in Harare, 48
countries and international organizations from the 'donor'
community unanimously endorsed the need for land reform as
being "essential for poverty reduction, economic growth and
political stability."
POST-INDEPENDENCE: GAINS AND REVERSES
In the first 10 years of independence education absorbed
10-22% of the national budget. Primary education became free and compulsory, and schools and hospitals were built in the rural areas. From 1978 to 1989 infant mortality dropped from 130 per 1,000 births to 65.
But in the early 90s, faced with economic decline - at least partly derived from the land situation and external
problems - Zimbabwe came under the malign influence of IMF
structural adjustment programs (SAPS). They spelt
devaluation, the liberalization of trade and capital flows,
the abolition of food subsidies and cutbacks in the health
and education sectors. The result: inflationary pressure due to increased import prices, businesses closing due to an inability to compete on the international market, the export of capital funds and increased prices on all staple foods. In five years the IMF destroyed 40% of industrial output. While Zimbabwe was forced to sell its maize reserves for IMF-ordered profits, white farmers were diversifying, using land for tobacco and horticulture cultivation for export, and innovative and lucrative options such as game shooting and safari parks. Zimbabwe was feeling hunger.
But, as pointed out by the International Herald Tribune in
March 2000:
"In a country where farming is the single largest generator
of foreign exchange, nearly a third (of Zimbabwe's) most
productive farmland remains in the hands of 4,500 white
farmers and almost half the land is owned by the country's
70,000 whites. Racial and economic inequalities persist
despite Zimbabwe's transition to majority rule.">
THE BATTLE INTENSIFIES
The Zimbabwean 1997 legislation on the compulsory
acquisition of white-owned properties - or recovering land
that belonged to the nation - produced certain results. By
July 1998, the government had recuperated 3.8 million
hectares, albeit at a reduced hectarage, plus compensation
for land value as well as improvements to it. It had
produced other results too, in the shape of a vicious and
concerted backlash from the UK and powerful white national
organizations like the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union,
the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, and the former's
international allies, in an essentially political context.
Parliamentary elections in 2000 gave ZANU/PF a majority over the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a social democrat movement with a certain strength in the cities and
substantially financed and directed by white Zimbabwean
money and foreign forces opposed to Mugabe and the equitable land redistribution program.
In April 2000, Mugabe's government moved further and adopted a constitutional provision authorizing the government to acquire land without compensation, while envisaging that compensation would be paid by the UK, which after all had collected the revenue from the same land when it was grabbed by the BSAC in 1890. The response to that was a resounding no, although Britain had promised repatriation to 'dispossessed' white farmers. That step resulted in a ferocious and systematic attack on Mugabe in person and his government by the UK, the European Union and the United States and other allies. To quote just one example, Mugabe's government has been consistently charged with corruption and cronyism, reiterated without any hard evidence. The Zimbabwe opposition Daily News and British Labor MP Peter Hain have asseverated that all... or half... of redistributed land has gone to government or middle-class blacks. In answer to a question in the Zimbabwean Parliament in January 2000, Zimbabwean Margaret Dongo was informed, with the relevant details, that the total land given over to this sector amounted to 7% since 1997, or 6% of 370,000 hectares.
That campaign reached a crescendo to coincide with
presidential elections this year, which Mugabe won, despite
a torrent of vituperative charges of violence against MDC
supporters and electoral fraud. Speaking with some nerve,
given his ascent to the White House, decided by a Supreme
Court ruling in violation of the popular vote, Bush declared on March 12: "We do not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it is flawed... We are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election." Mr. Bush has no moral right to judge those elections.
Walter Kansteiner, U.S. undersecretary of state for African
affairs, stated on August 20 that the United States and
countries bordering Zimbabwe are seeking ways of aiding the
opposition (MDC) and winning a change of government. This is an open declaration of U.S. intentions to overthrow the
president of a sovereign nation for reasons that have
nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with its
interests in the African continent.
Alexander Downing, the foreign minister of Australia, a
country whose own history of land distribution is shameful,
declared on August 25, Mugabe is "effectively conducting a
policy of ethnic cleansing on the farms..."
Mugabe's reelection has doubtless helped him continue the
battle for the equitable redistribution of Zimbabwean land
in the only way possible, by retaking it.
GLOBALIZATION VERSUS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development is about
the future survival of all humanity, as opposed to the
destruction of our planet by an all-powerful and greedy
minority. As such it would be an appropriate forum for the
issue of land ownership in a global context. Ironically,
President Robert Mugabe and British Labor leader Tony Blair
are scheduled to speak there within an hour of each other.
British Conservatives have called on Blair to make Zimbabwe
an issue at the UN Summit. Labor Environment Secretary
Margaret Beckett stated on August 23 that it was "singularly unlikely" that Blair and Mugabe would shake hands, and that Blair would ensure that the "summit...isn't hijacked by issues, by concerns such as those about Zimbabwe."
That is understandable, as such issues and concerns could
prove dangerous, given that Mugabe and the government of
Zimbabwe have their defenders in Johannesburg, not least
among their African neighbors.
- By Unthinking Majority
- By Saeko
- By Tainari88
- By MistyTiger