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PRESIDENT Mugabe, the Head of State and Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, is an exceptional icon of glory in Zimbabwe and the entire African continent. He is famous for being the only President across Africa who managed to stand firm against white manipulation and domination in the post-independence era and achieving total independence by availing land and transferring economic muscle to his people from the hands of the former colonial masters.
He is 91. President Mugabe is a revolutionary, liberator, strategist, statesman, an academic and an accomplished leader whose leadership credentials are cherished by many people across the globe. He is admired throughout Africa and beyond for setting the pace for the black race which is in continual struggle to shrug off the negative effects of colonial hangover which is haunting former colonies.
Upon attainment of independence on April 18, 1980, Zimbabwe tumbled into a racially skewed agricultural land ownership structure where the minority white large-scale commercial farmers constituting less than one percent of the national population occupied 45 percent of prime agricultural land. Seventy-five percent of this being in the high rainfall and most productive areas of Zimbabwe.
However, it is quite embarrassing to note that 60 percent of this large-scale commercial land was lying idle, while the black majority remained confined to over-crowded infertile areas which the colonial system dubbed ‘reserves.’ This was the most piercing matter to the bone marrow which gave blacks the impetus to take up arms and sacrifice their lives to wage the war of liberation against the imperialistic settlers who usurped our land without regret.
It is against this backdrop that President Gabriel Mugabe, alongside other nationalists, committed their efforts and dedication to break the selfish and callous system led by the tyrannical white minorities. President Mugabe remained resolute and focused on the need to see blacks enjoying the fruits of their national heritage. To satisfy this Zimbabwean dream, President Mugabe and his Government led an expeditious and successful Land Reform Programme which was meant to empower the historically disenfranchised blacks and correct the colonial imbalances which existed unbridled for close to a century when whites ruled Zimbabwe illegally between September 1890 and April 1980.
The Land Reform Programme came to transform lives and to resuscitate hope for blacks who had stayed for decades in abject poverty under a racially discriminatory system.
President Mugabe’s land redistribution programme transferred the means of production from the colonial masters to the rightful owners who deserve the land as their birth-right. It is an indisputable fact that land is a universal capital good which constitutes the best economic value to humanity on any part of the globe. The white men rejoiced this resource at the expense of the indigenous people. President Mugabe made it his core business to ensure the fruition of the ambitions of the liberation war fighters, dead and living. The programme involves restructuring of access to land and an overhaul of the existing farming system, institutions and structures.
This includes access to markets, credit, training and access to social, developmental and economic amenities. It seeks to reinvigorate agricultural productivity, which ultimately leads to industrial and economic empowerment and macro-economic environment in order to raise the living standards for the entire population.
The façade of the selfish inequitable distribution of land in Zimbabwe dates back to the days of the colonial era as spelled out in the British South Africa Company Royal Charter of 1889. The appalling legal consequence of the order in council was entrenched in the sovereign and the property rights in the British Queen thus nullifying the former Zimbabwean traditional leadership style. Large stretches of prime land became alienated and relegated indigenous people to small pockets of marginal and fragile communal areas which could not sustain their needs.
The colonial Land Apportionment Act of 1930 set aside 51 percent of land for a few thousand white settlers and prohibiting the indigenous people from owning and occupying land in so-called white commercial farming areas. The African Purchase Areas were created between the indigenous reserve areas and the commercial white settlers’ areas. The indigenous reserves, metamorphosed into Tribal Trust Lands, following the gazetting of the Act in 1965. This situation therefore, witnessed the creation of three separate categories of land classification in Zimbabwe namely the communal areas, small-scale commercial and large-scale commercial areas. The direct negative impact of the Land Apportionment Act was the expropriation of traditional ancestral land which some families held for generations. Commercial farming was a preserve for families of European descent. They got title deeds to land. Ian Smith’s colonial and Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) government policies favoured whites. Rural road network programmes serviced European farming areas.
By 1979, the white Zimbabweans made up a paltry 5 percent of the population, and counting only 4 500 farmers who owned 70 percent of the most fertile land, while the rest of the citizens were languishing in poverty practising subsistence farming in rocky and infertile fields which could hardly yield enough to feed the household. After the Lancaster House Agreement which negotiated a ceasefire and paved the way for holding of elections which were resoundingly won by President Mugabe as the first post-independence Prime Minister.
The three-month-long Lancaster House Conference nearly failed over critical land issues. The Lancaster House Agreement required the then Prime Minister Mugabe’s Government to wait for 10 years before instituting land reform, which they complied with. The British agreed to fund land reform on a “willing buyer, willing seller” principle, meeting 50 percent of the costs of land purchase and of the investments on social amenities such as water, schools and clinics, required to convert large commercial farms into viable resettlement areas for the peasantry.
About 71 000 families settled on 3,5 million hectares of former white-owned land under this programme.
In 1985, the Land Acquisition Act, which was drawn in the spirit of the 1979 Lancaster House “willing seller, willing buyer” clause gave Government the first right to purchase excess land for redistribution to the landless. However, the Act had a limited impact, mainly because Government had no adequate funds to compensate landowners.
In addition, white commercial farmers mounted a vigorous opposition to the Act and because of the “willing seller, willing buyer” clause, Government was powerless in the face of such resistance. The ultimate result was that between 1980 and 1990, Government acquired merely 40 percent of the targeted 8 million hectares of land and about 71 000 families were resettled.
To accelerate the Land Reform Programme, President Mugabe’s Government enacted the 1992 Land Acquisition Act which removed “willing seller, willing buyer” clause. The Act gave Government the legal force to buy land compulsorily for redistribution and a fair compensation was to be paid for land acquired.
Landowners had the right to challenge in court the price set by the acquiring authority. Opposition by landowners increased throughout the period from 1992 to 1997.
In 1997, Government gazetted 1 471 farmlands it intended to buy compulsorily for redistribution to landless Zimbabweans. On November 5, 1997, Britain’s then secretary of state for international development, Clare Short, wrote a letter to the Zimbabwean Government denying British obligation to the land issue:
“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. We do, however, recognise the very real issues you face over land reform. We believe that land reform could be an important component of a Zimbabwean programme designed to eliminate poverty. We would be prepared to support a programme of land reform that was part of a poverty eradication strategy but not on any other basis.”
In June 1998, Government published its “policy framework” on the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme Phase II, which stated its envisaged compulsory purchase over five years of 50 000 square kilometres from the 112 000 square kilometres owned by white commercial farmers, public corporations, churches, non-governmental organisations and multinational companies.
In September 1998, Government called for a donors’ conference in Harare on Land Reform and Resettlement Programme Phase II to inform the donor community and involve them in the programme: Forty-eight countries and international organisations attended and endorsed the land programme, appreciating that it was essential for poverty reduction, political stability, economic growth and national development.
Online Reporter