ZIMBABWE: THE TRUE STORY INTRODUCTION For many years beginning 2000, Western media houses led by the BBC, CNN and Reuters went overdrive on a campaign of disinformation about Zimbabwe’s political situation for reasons which can only be interpreted as racist or parochial or both. It has been argued by some that western media houses act as mouthpieces of their governments on foreign policy issues and their reportage on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe has not helped neutrals to think otherwise. As a result of their propaganda, most young minds in Western capitals do not have accurate knowledge about what actually happened in Zimbabwe and why it happened. Everything has just been explained as resulting from Mugabe’s brutal rule, without giving any due cognizance of the historical perspective to the problem. This 3-part series aims to give an objective analysis of the problems confronting the nation of Zimbabwe. Part 1 of this series shall explore British colonialism in Zimbabwe and show how the current challenges bedeviling Zimbabwe have their genesis during the colonial era. Part 2 shall look at Zimbabwe under ZANU (PF) rule and will highlight the country’s major achievements during the period 1980-1999. Part 3 will explore the economic crisis that has consumed the country since 2000, climaxing in 2008 and from which the country is still painstakingly trying to extricate itself. It will also show how Mugabe, useful as he may have been in the past, has become a liability, and indeed a stumbling block, to the development of the country and why it is in the best national interest for him to go now. COLONIALISM AND THE SYSTEMATIC IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE AFRICAN In September 1890 the British South Africa Company (BSAC), armed with a Royal Charter granted by the British Monarch, hoisted the Union Jack in Harare and declared Zimbabwe a British colony. They named the country Rhodesia in honour of Cecil John Rhodes, a fiery white supremacist who had made much wealth through gold and diamond mining in South Africa. Rhodes was at that time Prime Minister of the Cape in South Africa and dreamt of extending British influence and rule from Cape to Cairo. He formed the British South Africa Company in 1888 and, through chicanery and thuggery, obtained the royal charter to colonize the land between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers (Zimbabwe). The country was to be run as a private business of the BSAC (for profit). The immediate result of colonial rule was the systematic dispossession of the indigenous people achieved largely through violence and legislative enactments. In 1893, the settlers destroyed the Ndebele Kingdom and took over 80% of the cattle numbering over 250,000 at the time, claiming they were spoils of war. Half of the looted cattle went to the BSAC while the other half was distributed equally among the men and officers who participated in the Anglo-Ndebele War. In addition, each man or officer was to get 6,350 acres of land anywhere in Matabeleland with no obligation to occupy it. The officers chose the best land which was already inhabited by natives whom they drove into the dry and tsetse fly- infested Gwaai and Shangaani areas with no compensation. Gwaai and Shangaani are areas of low agricultural potential with poor soils and low rainfall which the white rulers called tribal trust lands (TTLs) or native reserves. By mid-1894, more than 10,000 square miles of Ndebele land had been docketed for white farmland. Land grabs and livestock plunder spread across the whole country and was given impetus by the British Government’s Southern Rhodesia’s Order in Council of 1898 which codified racial segregation and legalized the despoliation of the indigenous people. The expropriations became so massive and rapid that by 1914 land distribution in Rhodesia disproportionately favoured the white minority: white settlers, numbering 23,730 owned 19,032,320 acres of land while an estimated 752, 000 Africans occupied a total of 21, 390,080 acres of land, (R. Palmer: Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia: Heinemann 1977). After losing their livestock and alienated from their land, the natives’ lives became miserable and this became a cause of bitter resistance to colonial rule. In 1930, the settler government passed the Land Apportionment Act which divided the country into European and African land. The Act gave an African population then estimated at 1,081,000 only 28,591,606 acres (29.8% of the land) while a European settler population of about 50,000 got 51% of the best land. The Act was amended 44 times to make it more effective in entrenching racial segregation in land ownership and it was largely responsible for making Rhodesia a country of two nations; one modern and affluent for whites and the other backward and extremely poor for Africans. Once land was declared European land, Africans living on that land had to immediately vacate it; those that stayed became tenants of the new owner to whom they had to pay rent.” In the decade 1945-55 at least 100 000 people were forcibly moved into the Reserves, some of which were located in the inhospitable and tsetse-ridden areas such as Gokwe and Muzarabani.” (Chitsike 2003). There was a wave on European immigrants in that decade escaping post Second World War hardships in Europe, and besides, some WW2 heroes were awarded land in Rhodesia. Land Apportionment in Rhodesia in 1930 CATEGORY ACRES % OF COUNTRY European Areas 49,149, 174 51 Native Reserves 21,127,040 22 Unassigned Areas 17,793,300 18.5 Native Purchase Area 7, 464, 566 7.8 Forest Area 590,500 0.6 Undetermined Area 88,540 0.1 TOTAL 96,213,120 100 Displacements of Africans were often accompanied by seizures of their livestock and that turned once prosperous natives into paupers. Impoverishment of the African was at times pursued as a way to force them to become servants in mines and European owned farms. The method was easy and took the following pattern; expropriate their land, steal their livestock, destroy their property and impose taxes. To meet their subsistence needs and tax obligations, natives had to seek employment from the settlers. In cases where natives resisted these strategies to turn them into labourers, the settlers used brute force to get them to work (forced labour/ chibharo). Land seizures continued into the 1960s and many victims of those crimes are still around. Given the above it is not surprising that the land question was the most emotive issue in colonial and post colonial Zimbabwe. Three major wars (Anglo-Ndebele War of 1893, The First Chimurenga 1896-1897 and The Second Chimurenga 1966-1980) were fought over land and tens of thousands of lives were lost as a result. At the London peace negotiations which resulted in Zimbabwe’s first all races elections in 1980, the British Government successfully played protector of their kith and kin in post independent Zimbabwe. Land was not to be immediately transferred to its rightful owners, the natives. Instead it had only to be transferred on a willing seller-willing buyer basis in the first decade of independence. Since the people of Zimbabwe could not be taxed to buy back their land, Britain promised to give the funds to compensate white farmers who opted to sell their land. No one discussed how the victims of colonial land grabs were to be compensated for over a century of deprivation. It is surprising that to this day people find it acceptable and justifiable to compensate victims of Nazi and Japanese excesses during WW2 while there is a deafening silence on the need to compensate post- WW2 victims of colonial plunder. Maybe the colour of the victim matters more. The willing seller-willing buyer policy did not work such that by 1999 over 12,000,000 hectares of the best land were still in the hands of 4,500 white farmers. Many farmers were reluctant to sell their land; those who did only sold land in marginal areas. Meanwhile seething anger was building up among most indigenous Zimbabweans about why the land they had sacrificed so much for was not coming back to them. The ruling elites had sold out and were not willing to let the land return to the people and the people decided to take action and marched to the farms. That is how Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme started. The land problem is at the centre of the current impasse between Western governments and the Government of Zimbabwe, not human rights (unless protecting white privileges against the rights of indigenous people is human rights). That is not to absolve the Government of Zimbabwe from its governance issues; only to say they are peripheral. The western world would have cared less for governance issues if the ill gotten privileges of their kith and kin had not been threatened. The examples of Mobutu’s Zaire, Saudi Arabia and Bahamas testify to that fact. The next installment of this three part series will look at some post independence achievements of Zimbabwe and how they contributed directly or indirectly into the current challenges.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 08:33:23 +0000
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