Chronicle Editor
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
THE current farming season is very difficult to ignore. It is pregnant with narratives that are likely going to change the political, social and economic order in the country. Although crop assessments to determine the expected output are almost ready, it is by far a bountiful agricultural season that is daring drought while deriding those whose political capital is anchored on population starvation.
It started with correct predictions by the meteorological department before the onset of the rainy season that the country was going to receive above normal rainfall. The reports were quickly dismissed by naysayers — those who thrive on politics of the stomach.
A number of farmers however, hastily made the necessary preparations. They acquired inputs with unrestrained patience and hope typical of all farmers worth their salt. The Government as though seeing ahead of time had earlier on introduced and popularised a conservation agriculture method that it fittingly gave the moniker pfumvudza/intwasa as if it was foreseeing the bountifulness of the agricultural season.
Through the Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme communal farmers got seed and fertiliser packs for the small plots that they were asked to do zero tillage on. For those that followed the seemingly labour intensive method with detailed discipline, the results are amazing and so are their expectations.
The negativity that the sky had gazed at mother earth with a tired yawn in the previous farming season was quickly forgotten as the rains fell, just as had been predicted and the farmers planted. The rains stayed to see the crops germinate. The continued giving the nourishment that mother earth had been longing for and the crops flourished, scorning the drought that had been threatening the country.
The veld and the fields started bursting into life, giving both colour and youth to the land that was now brown and unpleasant. On sunny days which have become uncommon, the green shiny leaves and the virgin gaiety of the crops is enough to give farmers joy and make their hearts swell with expectation.
And because of the joy that the crops give to farmers, they rarely want to leave their fields with a majority of communal and urban farmers enjoying talking in a secret language with the crops and the soil while the plants sway a little as if they are surrendering themselves to the touch of the farmers’ hands and the humid wind.
In urban set-ups, one can easily see joy written all over as the women’s faces glow with anticipation as their small fields’ lush green crops are carrying the hope of skipping journeys to the supermarkets to buy mealie-meal and even groundnuts.
In rural areas, not only the women and children but cows, calves and goats caught the life brought about by the rains too. They jumped about, kicking in the air with their tails twisted into different shapes and directions, itself a sign of satisfaction, joy and bountifulness. Anyone who bothered to put a seed in the soil is happy with the exception of a few that are in wetlands whose crops suffered water logging.
It is however, on the virtual community — on twitter to be specific, where the rains have awoken the debate about the land reform as those with homes, farms and fields are showcasing the evidence of their blessed labour much to the frustration of the indolent ones who for reasons of wanting political showboating ignored the land reform.
A number of people are realising that they were sold a dummy by oppositional political gladiators who were singing for their supper at the doorstep of Uncle Sam’s kitchen and are expressing commitment to line up for a phase of the land distribution exercise after the current farming season.
In hindsight however, it is worth noting that the politically pragmatic discourse of land reform that the country embarked on two decades ago was met with both applause and criticism from different political quotas depending on one’s ideological leaning and it was not surprising.
It was not surprising because even during the war of liberation to unyoke the country from the shackles of colonialism, some indigenous black people were fighting on the side of the oppressor to perpetuate the subjugation of kith and kin.
They were insanely fighting to maintain the colonial status quo of white political and economic domination in a black African country. They had been fed full with politics of white supremacy and they had appreciated their inferiority allowing themselves to be blinded by self-hate, self-condemnation.
And to the masses they remained the big betrayers of the revolution. They were sell-outs who did not have the important sense of belonging. Vestiges of white colonial teaching remained in a number of them even at independence. They are unrepentant.
They hate freedom and all that it entailed. They never appreciated it anywhere. They therefore see no value in the land reform programme that the Government embarked on. For lack of knowledge of the historical narratives that guided the Government’s decision to seize the land the way it did, they, in their warped thinking saw an injustice that needed not only regional intervention but an international one.
In their crooked thinking, they are ignorant of the documented fact that the Lancaster House Agreement provided for willing buyer, willing seller basis where the British Government was to provide the funds but Britain reneged on the agreement.
The then Prime Minister Tony Blair, terminated the arrangement after funds that were availed by the Margaret Thatcher’s administration were exhausted. He refused all commitments to land reform. The position was made official when on 5 November 1997, former British secretary of State for International Development Clare Short described the new Labour government’s approach to Zimbabwean land reform. She said that the UK did not accept that Britain had a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe.
Her government’s position was spelt out in a letter to the then Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister, Kumbirai Kangai:
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers.”
It was after this position was spelt out that the Zimbabwean government embarked on the land redistribution campaign that sought to strike a balance in the distribution of land to the landless black majority.
However, at the inception of the land reform programme a number of people in the opposition political formations were reluctant to get their national share of the cake simply because they didn’t believe in the process.
But if what is being expressed on the virtual space is anything to go by that is evidently going to change as land just like in the colonial days has remained the most prized possession and the fierce clamour for it is therefore likely going to create another headache for the Government.
The current agriculture season coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic that has seen companies shedding off people has therefore created a hunger for land that has not been seen before.
Bongani Ndlovu