Roundup: Land Redistribution, Milestone in Zimbabwean History

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 01, 2002

Roundup: Land Redistribution, Milestone in Zimbabwean History

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The land reform program seen as a milestone in the Zimbabwean history has ushered in a new era of economic emancipation to millions of blacks, who have been disadvantaged since 1980 when the country attained political independence from Britain.

The program will see thousands of landless black Zimbabweans resettled on commercial farms once owned by the minority white community.

Today, a total of 210,000 families have been resettled under the Model A1 scheme while 54,000 new commercial black farmers havequalified for land under the Model A2 scheme, bringing the total to 264,000 households.

The government recently promised that all successful applicantsunder the Model A2 scheme will receive their letters of offer before August 31 this year.

President Robert Mugabe said that it was immoral for numbering less than one percent of the white Zimbabweans in the whole population to own about 70 percent of all the country's land whileblacks, who cover the majority of the population, were squeezed inless fertile and rocky communal areas.

Mugabe, who was elected to a further six-year term of office inMarch this year, said that his government would make sure that theland issue was resolved once and for all, adding that no compensation would be given to the white farmers because the land was stolen during the colonial days and it was time to return to its rightful owners.

At leas 5,326 commercial farms covering 10 million hectares remain gazetted for compulsory acquisition under the fast track land resettlement program which kicked off in the year 2000.

An additional 3,178 farms with a settler capacity of 160,340 households have already been sub-divided by the government for resettlement.

The government was also ensuring that resettled people get proper arrangement so that important social structures such as hospitals, schools and clinics would be built.

After realizing that people have already lost impatience for waiting, Zimbabwe, an agrarian society hoping to modernize its agriculture sector, undertook a fundamental exercise to acquire land on its own without assistance from donors or any outsiders.

It was solely the farmers, war veterans and the government thatcarried out the exercise which had nothing to do with the outsiders who wanted to dictate what Zimbabwe should do.

The government says the on-going land reform has the potential to create at least one million jobs and increase agricultural production, claiming that part of the agrarian reform now under way deals with production matters.

This was a systematic re-organization of the farming system so that land was fully utilized. The government was currently puttingin place infrastructure in both AI and A2 models.

To ensure the success of the agrarian reforms, the government had recruited more workers for this program in every ward throughout the country.

The landmark Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Act N0.16 of 2002 was passed by the parliament in May this year. The act amendsthe Constitution of Zimbabwe to make it legal for the government to compulsorily acquire land or resettle the landless black peoplewithout paying compensation to affected white farmers.

In that context, history has caught up with the descendants of the Rhodesian white settlers under the British South Africa Company who crafted the notorious Land Apportionment Act in 1930 to dispossess the indigenous blacks of their land.

African analysts here said by passing such laws as the Land Apportionment Act, the Europeans were trying to legitimize illegalacts of expropriating the land of the black Africans. But the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Act seeks to correct such injustice by compulsorily acquiring white-owned farms for redistribution to the previously dispossessed black majority.

However, Zimbabwe's former colonial master Britain has severelycriticized the land reform program, saying it was a land-grab by politicians to enrich themselves and their cronies.

Since February 2000 when the war veterans and peasants began toinvade white-owned farms, relations between Harare and London havedeteriorated with Zimbabwe accusing Britain of meddling in the country's internal affairs.

Other African leaders have rallied behind Mugabe with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo saying the invasion of commercial farms in Zimbabwe could have started much earlier if it had not been for the intervention of the African leaders.

Obasanjo said Mugabe's land reforms would have begun in 1990, but the African leaders intervened fearing it would damage the anti-apartheid efforts in South Africa.

Nigeria was a co-broker with the Commonwealth of a deal last September in Abuja, which was intended to end Mugabe's policy of invasions of white-owned farms by the war veterans.

Zimbabwe agreed to halt forceful farm seizures in return for British commitment to rendering international assistance to fund orderly land reform, but both countries have since accused each other of breaching the Abuja agreement.

Analysts say Zimbabwe's land crisis would spill into other countries in the region and set the ball rolling for Africans to begin a fight which will unshackle the economic bondage still being suffered by black people, decades after they gained political independence.

The South African government moved swiftly in July last year toevict about 2,000 people who had invaded vacant state land near Johannesburg.

Fearing that slow land reform would trigger Zimbabwe-style landoccupations, South African President Mbeki recently said his government would speed up restoring land to thousands of families evicted under apartheid.

White and black farmers in South Africa welcomed Mbeki's remarks and analysts said his remarks signaled the aim to accelerate further the process seen as vital to removing one of that country' biggest political risks and restore foreign investorconfidence in the economy.

Neighboring Mozambique was however preparing packages of leasedland and tax-free incentives to persuade more farmers to cross theborder.

The Commercial Farmers Union in Zimbabwe said that about 100 white have already resettled in Mozambique. For Mozambique, Zimbabwean farmers' arrival offers a chance to help galvanize the country's almost non-existent agricultural industry.

With Zimbabwe suffering an economic crisis believed to be one of the worst in the two decades, Mugabe's dream of an agrarian revolution championed by blacks seems to be an uneasy task.

The inflation rate in Zimbabwe stands at 113 percent while the unemployment rate at 60 percent. Thousands in this country's 12.5 million people are threatened by starvation and yet a big financial commitment is required for the government to kick-off the agricultural program.

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