Chronicle Editor
Bongani Ndlovu, Online Reporter
PRESIDENT Mnangagwa has expressed his condolences to the family of veteran farmer and former president of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) Mr Nick Swanepoel who died in South Africa following a long illness.
In a statement, the President said Mr Swanepoel will be remembered as a great figure of post-independence racial conciliation.
“I was acutely distressed and deeply saddened to receive yesterday news of the death in South Africa of Mister Nick Swanepoel, a long-time leader of the Commercial Farmers Union, CFU. A veteran farmer and leader, Zimbabwe remembers and mourns the late Nick Swanepoel for his role as a key and progressive player in the search for an amicable, negotiated settlement to the vexatious and historically-rooted Zimbabwean Land Question,” he said.
President Mnangagwa said from the year 2000 when the struggle for the recovery of land entered a decisive phase, Mr Swanepoel and like-minded progressive white farmers kept their heads and tirelessly pushed for a non-confrontational and non-political approach to the land question.
“Even calling for the removal of the then right-wing CFU Executive, led by Tim Henwood, which they correctly saw as an obstacle to a just resolution of the Land Question,” he said.
President Mnangagwa said due to his conciliatory, mature and realistic approach, Mr Swanepoel and his group tabled to Government land settlement proposals as early as in 2001.
The proposal called upon white commercial farmers to, not only endorse and cede land which Government needed for resettlement but also to participate in the actual resettlement of landless Zimbabweans through various inputs to the new black farmers.
“While these proposals by his progressive group of white farmers failed to win the immediate support of hardliners then in control of the CFU and other splinter organisations representing white farmers, subsequent turn of events showed the futility of headstrong resistance by these hard-line white farmers, while vindicating Mr Swanepoel’s conciliatory approach, which today wins him a proud place in the annals of post-colonial land settlement models,” said President Mnangagwa.
He described Mr Swanepoel as an honest, hopeful and diligent actor straddling across the colonially-derived racial divide.
The President said Mr Swanepoel was instrumental and remained seized and engaged in the search for lasting settlement and closure to the National Land Question.
“The result was the historic Global Compensation Deed which Government and the CFU signed on 29 July, 2020, after more than two years of hard negotiations, and in which both sides agreed to a figure of US$3,5 billion as compensation to white farmers for improvements on acquired land, as required by our Constitution,” he said.
President Mnangagwa said his Government remains committed to fulfilling the dictates of that Deed, and continues to make yearly budgetary allocations towards it.
He said Mr Swanepoel’s life presses home the message that only a just, collaborative and conciliatory approach resolves outstanding issues emanating from the baneful legacy of settler colonialism, a legacy which confronts our Southern African Region.
“No amount of political wiles, vexatious litigations or intransigent forum-shopping ever deliver an amicable resolution to this one question which persists in our region, even after political Independence,” said President Mnangagwa.
He said as the nation mourns and remembers this great figure of post-independence racial conciliation through just settlement, Zimbabweans should re-commit themselves to deepening and entrenching further the vision for a just, non-racial society.
“On behalf of Government, my family, and my behalf, I wish to express my deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences to the Swanepoel Family on this their saddest loss. Indeed it is a loss which we all keenly feel and share, for he was one of us. May his dear soul rest in eternal peace,” said President Mnangagwa.
Online Reporter