admin
Micheal Mhlanga
Beyond the given chasms of essentialism founded global hierarchies of being, black asserts its beauty (black is beautiful). Black reclaims victory trampling the centuries of defeat (Amandla ngawethu).
Black affirms life to the decapitated sense of her being (Africa for Africans to those home and abroad). Black is power (Dead to the black and white oppressor) and black now represents all those rebelling against the set righteous terms of confirming to the supremacy dictates of the West (Mayibuye).
Black is the new resistance — resistance to neo-liberalism and classification of one man (Pamberi neChimurenga). In the words of one of the fathers of today’s African Union, Haile Selassie, “Until the philosophy that holds one superior and another as inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned . . . there shall be war in the North and war down South.” Interestingly, when this reflection is made in synch with emerging Black redemptive episteme this inherently represents the Global North and Global South tussle for self-assertion. To this end, in 2018 we commemorate #BlackHistory month of February, which bears the tag, #Blacklivesmatter, after a series of racially targeted blacks by white armed Police in the USA and the Federal administration doing little to offer justice to the perennial victims, remained a continental-specific struggle.
USA became a symbol of black-attacks in the modern State and the black man was once again subjected to campaign towards saving his life. The proclamation of civil rights and the assassinations of racial equality champions such as Martin Luther King Jr became pointless, and the black man was forced to go back to the street and march for re-abolition of racial segregation. Modern America was haunted by ghosts of history’s rehearsed political correctness.
Africa and #Blacklivesmatter
Time and again, Africa was in solidarity with Black Americans, with Pan Africanists remembering victors of black recognition such as Leopold Senghor Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Nelson Mandela and our very own Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
From a pool of the many men and women who existed and exist, the listed above belong to an inter-generational lineage champions of #Blacklivesmatter before the hashtag became the voice.
A reading of their contributions to what Africa is today exclusively spells shear dedication to fighting land annexation, apartheid and cultural hegemony. With differing tactics of fighting black oppression, they all won, but the protracted systemic exclusion of blacks in means of production and land possession pushed one Robert Gabriel Mugabe to re-think expedited land distribution to empower black Zimbabweans. It is the land question that prompted all #Blacklives champions to gird their loins and go to war, in fact, all revolutions are because of land. If there is one recorded success the black man has to claim, it is an equal chance to fight for their land, one thing history did not offer until independence.
Conveniently, this February, Africa has to question the land question. An audit on whether the black man has won the land debate needs to be done, because from where I am standing, the debate is still raging and the question of land demands a lot of answers now than ever before.
Through this article, I shall attempt to show how the black history month is more relevant to Africa now than ever as questions of #Blackthreats are prominent through governments’ policies across Africa and how. As the series proceeds, black people should be asking themselves if the war on land and race has been won or circumstances are demanding a new approach to dealing with the race matter.
Shifting racism narratives through land access
Interestingly, the past week witnessed debates across Africa on the land issue. The newly sworn in President of Liberia, George Weah promised to review laws on the country’s citizenry that do not permit any non-black from being a citizen. Strategically, the law did not permit whites to be citizens.
To some degree, the existence of this law in Liberia made sense considering that Liberia was founded as a country that accommodates Black American Slaves who wanted to be repatriated back to Africa. They were a group of people whose hatred for White America and anything white represented forced cotton picking and sugar plantation free labour. George Weah also promised that he will repel the law that prohibits foreigners (Including/particularly whites) from owning land in Liberia. The rhetoric was celebrated considering how the country is poor and needs economic transformation that may resuscitate them. Agriculture can be a panacea to abject poverty in Liberia, a country so broke that the new President has vowed to cut his salary by a quarter as a way to save funds by reducing needless expenditure.
Like Liberia, Zimbabwe has reviewed its land policy as well, however, with a varying degree. The Government last Tuesday reviewed upwards the A2 farm leases regardless of race. The underlying argument is that the five- year leases conflicted agro-planning for most commercial farmers (black and white) hence an extension offers adequate strategising and bankability of the leases. Put simply to the ordinary Zimbabwean who was initially misinformed that the extension is for white people only, the new policy ensures that the longer you have leased that land, the further you can plan on land utilisation and ensure food and economy security for the country. It also offers a relief to commercial farmers who need collateral for bank loans as the five-year leases could easily lapse and did not provide security for loaning banks. The move translates to lengthy job security for farm workers who are in constant fear of losing their jobs should the lease not be reviewed.
Zimbabwe’s situation is a rethink of the land progress which for the past 17 years prioritised land distribution to black people and limitations to white citizens because of historical racial privilege.
Land as a financier for racism
To understand this, let us look at racism being a system of prejudicing a group of people based on their looks, not necessarily their origin. During the colonial period, black people were denied opportunities and dignity based on how they look — black. To this effect, being black meant one would not access valuable resources such as land hence the forced removals of our ancestors to reserves. When history teaches us that the black man finally decided to fight to repossess the land which he was denied because of race, then we deduce that racism was financed by land, therefore fighting for land was fighting racism; access to land was demolishing racial barriers and possession of land by many black people than before is a signal for racial equality.
What the new governments are doing is to question the land question by striking a balance, which equally endows its black people but at the same time not being exactly what the settle regime was.
If the black man went to war to fight because racism was bad, how then is he justified to exclude other people because they differ on race?
We have reached a tipping point that indeed white capital monopoly should be destroyed but we should not replace it with black-on-white exclusion or suppression.
Either way, we cannot continue to exclude skill from tilling the land because it belongs to a different race, and at the same time we cannot reverse the gains of independence. The best way, like Zimbabwe is about to do, is to audit the land, re-look at the method of empowering our people and progress will follow.
However, this is not the case across the border where burial space has run out. In South Africa, the land debate has just gone more aggressive than before with many groups already remembering Jacob Zuma’s Radical Economic Transformation policies such as Land Expropriation without Compensation being expedited. The burial space debate finds its way exactly in the centre of the land debate where indigenous communities are denied burial space, either forced to bury their loved ones on top of strangers or in some instances forced to share a grave.
In many indigenous communities this is an abomination. Such a case like South Africa’s, then brings to question if Africa has succeeded in land redistribution. South Africa’s case prompts us as Africans to think deeply about the value of land and what possessing it means.
Yikho Khona Lokhu!
Online Reporter