Analysis: Mugabe Entrusted to Pioneer White-Owned Land Redistribution

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, March 17, 2002

Analysis: Mugabe Entrusted to Pioneer White-Owned Land Redistribution

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The 78-year-old incumbent President Robert Mugabe has been granted the third six-year term by the majority of Zimbabweans in their March 9-11 presidential poll to enhance the white-owned land redistribution to landless blacks, a move cursed by former western colonialists of Zimbabwe and Africa for years.

Mugabe, who led a 15-year guerrilla war to win Zimbabwe's independence from 90-year British colonial rule in 1980 and has been acclaimed by his African fellows as flag-bearer in the continent's liberation struggle against white minority rules, has vowed to continue the anti-colonial struggle to win an economic independence.

Lancaster Agreement

Mugabe repetitively complains of the notorious Lancaster House Agreement, signed in 1979 between his Zimbabwe African National Union -- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Britain, which retains 10- year (1980-1990) post independence privileges to whites who remained in their vast farms.

His motherland in southern Africa, a territory of some 39 million hectares among which some 33.3 million hectares suitable for agricultural purpose, was colonized in 1890 by Britons, who evicted indigenous blacks from their homeland by guns and bullying legal instruments to remote and barren corners.

They then seized huge tracts of fertile land and built huge crops, tobacco, livestock and various other farms and enjoyed in their more than one farms a life more rich and leisure than their compatriots in Europe.

As of independence, some 70 percent of Zimbabwe's fertile land was in the hands of 4,500 plus whites and some British absentee lords, only about one percent of the then total population, while the majority blacks either scratched out a living on small pieces of communal land or were reduced to workers in the whites' farms, though many of them were left uncultivated.

Overjoyed with the political victory which forced Rhodesian leader Ian Smith to the Lancaster negotiating table, Mugabe and his people found themselves in a dilemma -- they were prohibited from exercising the sovereign and legitimate rights to curb the imbalances by regaining their lost land for redistribution to the landless, as the Lancaster Agreement claimed they had to buy back what their forefathers were deprived of in a "willing seller/ willing buyer" principle.

Willing Seller/Willing Buyer

In the period of 1980-1990 when this provision was effective, the post-colonial Zimbabwean government was "willing" to buy back land for a targeted 162,000 families. But as a result, only 56,500 families were resettled on the redistributed land of some 2.8 million hectares, thanks to the "generous" aid of 44 million British pounds (about 63 million U.S. dollars) by the British government.

But Harare considered the money "far too short of what is required" to redress the land row with roots going back some 100 years.

According to an official estimation, to meet the 162,000-family target, Harare argued that it needs to pay at least 1.1 billion U. S. dollars to the white "willing" farmers, who in fact were either unwilling to sell or asked for double or triple the prices for their unutilized or less fertile land.

However, London cut off the ransom money in late 1980s after allegations of non-transparent mismanagement in Mugabe's government. Much of the best farmland "fell into the hands of Mugabe's associates," it claimed.

Following protracted arguments with Britain, a hopeless Zimbabwe tried every means it could, including the Land Acquisition Act in 1992 and an international donor conference on land funding in 1998, to have redistributed an accumulative total of some 3.49 million hectares to some 71,000 families by 1998, a gain far below the planned resettlement of 500,000 land-hungry families.

Veteran Soldiers and Fast Track

Angry over the slow pace of reform, tens of thousands of Zimbabwean war veterans lost their patience following the failure of two-phased land reform programs and spontaneously occupied, or repossessed as they called, 1,600 white farms in early 2000, trying their way to correct the long-standing legacy of the brutal colonial rule.

The bloodshed in their confrontation with white farmers and their workers proved to be a catalyst to accelerate land reform.

Encouraged by his former subordinates, Mugabe, abandoning the " willing seller/willing buyer" principle, launched a new accelerated "Fast Track" land reform and resettlement implementation plan on July 15, 2000, to acquire a total of some 5 million hectares of land from 3,041 farms to his people, a move which is now at various advanced stages of processing for gazetting, acquisition and resettlement.

The Fast Track was supported by the Constitution Amendment on April 6, 2000, and the Compulsory Land Acquisition Act on May 23, 2000, which transfer the responsibility of paying compensation for land earmarked for resettlement to the former colonial power, Britain, and oblige the Zimbabwean government to pay for improvements only, i.e. irrigation, dams, farm houses etc.

Latest statistics shows that so far more than 7 million hectares of land have been set for redistribution and at least a further total of 130,000 families benefited from it. The government is expected to take further actions against the whites- owned farms, especially large-scale commercial farms.

"Africa's Milosevic"

The revolutionary land reform exercises have since infuriated Britain, the former metropolitan state, and the Fleet Street stopped at nothing to label Mugabe as "a die-hard dictator" and "a Milosevic in Africa" who was behind the mobs and perpetrated the violence against the white descendants.

Incited by Britain, a front by the former European colonialist powers was formed as the European Union, with the support of their former colony the United States, imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's explosive land crisis has sparked their fears of a rural revolt across southern Africa.

The rich West-controlled World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others also suspended aid to have caused recession of Zimbabwe's economy. And an agreement on land crisis between London and Harare signed in Abuja, Nigeria, in September 2001, in which London promised an additional 36-million-pound (about 51.5 million dollars) offer for land reform, was ignored.

The government of Tony Blair initiated collective sanctions and even suspension of Zimbabwe's membership in the British-led 54- nation Commonwealth summit in Coolum, Australia, early this month when it suffered a heavy blow from the African members.

Britain also pinned its hope to topple Mugabe on Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the newly born main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who imposed the toughest challenge in the just concluded presidential election to the consecutive governor of Zimbabwe ever since independence.

However, Mugabe survived from the ballots by winning 56.2 percent of the votes, especially the majority in rural areas. Tsvangirai got 42 percent.

Dominoes for Land Reform

Looking further ahead, Mugabe does not find himself in an isolated position as many countries in the African continent, especially Zimbabwe's neighbors, are experienced the same or similar sufferings -- majority of fertile land remains in the hands of a handful of descendants of former European colonialists.

In South Africa, two thirds of the commercial farm land are held by some 60,000 whites in contrast with 14 million landless blacks.

In Namibia, independence in 1990 only benefited 35,000 indigenous blacks who have been resettled while some 243,000, mostly peasants, are waiting for land. Namibia's black communal farmers have warned 4,000 mainly white commercial farmers to speed up land reform or face Zimbabwe-style invasions.

Zambia, Kenya and others witness the same or similar situations.

Majority Africans have not yet become the real owners of their lands, their abundant natural resources and their destiny. Political independence doesn't necessarily mean a natural economic independence, as the case in Zimbabwe.

"The example of forced land occupation in Zimbabwe might be emulated by black South Africans. This is a worst-case scenario, but it shows what the stakes are," a BBC analysis said, adding that opponents attacking Mugabe for ruining Zimbabwe for holding power.

But many Zimbabweans hold that Mugabe, who has devoted prime part of his life to the liberation and sovereignty of his people, was the first to be determined to unfold a Third Chimurenga ( revolution) in regaining the indigenous ownership of the land on which the blacks lived since ancient times.

Thus, he fell on the first target of former western colonialist powers headed by Britain in prevention of Mugabe's triggering agrarian revolution of Dominoes shock waves across the African continent.

Western media commented that Mugabe has succeeded in focusing world attention on this issue. "It is encouraging that many African leaders have seen the West's hollow stand against Zimbabwe for what it really is: an attempt to perpetuate existing inequalities."

"There are great expectations around land which will soon come to the people in a big way," Mugabe said during campaign. " Zimbabwe should totally belong to the blacks."

Africa observers noted that this is only realistic, for with or without Mugabe at the helm. The land issue will persist until landless Zimbabweans get back their ancestral land.

The history of human development has approved land to the tiller, to the indigenous owner in Europe, in Asia, and in America. The white domination of the most fertile soils is doomed to destruction not only in Zimbabwe but also in the whole continent.

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