Online Reporter
Nduduzo Tshuma
Day Editor
ZIMBABWE’S Land Reform Programme continues to be contested both physically on the land and discursively within the global information arena, and President Mnangagwa’s participation at the recently concluded World Governments Summit suggests that the country is registering gains on both fronts.
The President was among nearly 50 Heads of State invited to the summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to exchange ideas on the future of governance in the context of shifting geopolitics and rapid technological change.
He also participated in a high-level plenary session on Africa, where he utilised the platform to challenge hegemonic conceptions surrounding Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and the country’s broader international relations posture.
Titled “Is the next decade African?”, the plenary session also featured Botswana President Duma Boko and the President of Sierra Leone Julius Maada Bio.
Since the implementation of the Land Reform Programme two decades ago, Western nations, largely through their media systems, have persistently sought to recast the process, presenting it less as an effort to redress colonial injustice and more as a source of institutional disruption.
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony is instructive in understanding the Western posture on land reform. He argues that dominant powers sustain influence by universalising their values and assumptions as “common sense”.
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Propaganda Model further explains how media systems filter discourse to align with elite geopolitical interests. Within this paradigm, land reform is frequently framed through crisis imagery like “farm seizures”, “land grabs,” “production collapse” and investor flight while its redistributive justice dimension is marginalised.
Beyond land, Western discourse, again mediated through its global media apparatus, has frequently cast aspersions on partnerships between African states and countries outside the traditional Western sphere of influence.
President Mnangagwa demonstrated acute awareness of this framing, detecting bias embedded in facilitator Tucker Carlson’s line of questioning, particularly in inquiries directed at Zimbabwe’s foreign relations posture.
As early as Mr Carlson’s second question on Zimbabwe’s relations with China compared with other nations, the President, before responding substantively, challenged the premise itself:
“I think the premise upon which you construct your question, I don’t think is perfect,” he said.
“Zimbabwe is a sovereign State and we move on the basis that gives us the best results for our resources, whether it is in relation to the West or the East. What is primarily important is what we ourselves, as Zimbabweans, are satisfied with. We don’t need to please the West or please the East. We please ourselves.”
Zimbabwe’s relationship with China is historically rooted in liberation struggle solidarity, with Beijing providing material and diplomatic support during the anti-colonial war.
In the contemporary era, that relationship has evolved into comprehensive economic co-operation spanning infrastructure development, mining investment, energy generation, agricultural mechanisation and manufacturing.
Constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt’s insight that international relationships are shaped by shared identities and historical meanings is relevant in this case as Zimbabwe–China ties are not purely transactional but are embedded in a shared anti-imperial history that continues to inform present-day co-operation.
On Zimbabwe’s land reform, Carlson’s questioning not only interrogated the implementation of the land reform programme, but the foundational legitimacy of compulsory acquisition to which President Mnangagwa responded:
“I’m not so sure what you have in mind but let me say, our economy has faced challenges, I am sure you are aware Zimbabwe has been under sanctions for decades as a result of us claiming our land from the British and making ourselves independent,” he said.
“We seized the land and gave it to our people, so sanctions were imposed on us. But in spite of all those constraints, we have developed and we are happy that we have developed on our own and we feel very independent.”
The response by the President came on the back of the country’s recognition at the WGS last year when Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries Water and Rural Development Minister Dr Anxious Masuka was named Best Minister in acknowledgement of Zimbabwe’s agricultural transformation and food security initiatives.
At this year’s summit, the country was appointed chair of the World Governing Council for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No.2 – Zero tolerance to hunger at the WGS.
The recognition saw Dr Masuka addressing a meeting on the state of hunger in Africa, while also sharing progress Zimbabwe has made towards ensuring food security and the attainment of Vision 2030.
Carlson further attempted to racialise the land question, prompting a firm rebuttal from the President:
“Land did not belong to a race; it belonged to Zimbabweans, so when the colonialists took land from us, the time came when we asserted ourselves, taking back our land. Those who wanted to have land in the same places as the African people of Zimbabwe remained, but those who felt they were superior left.”
Post-colonial theorists such as Edward Said and Achille Mbembe illuminate how Africa’s policy choices are frequently narrated through external epistemologies that marginalise local historical agency.
Said’s notion of epistemic dominance, where the West defines the knowledge frameworks through which others are understood, is evident in land reform discourse that foregrounds productivity metrics while backgrounding settler land monopolies.
Mbembe similarly critiques the tendency to narrate African governance through crisis rather than historical causality, resulting in the structural violence of colonial land alienation being eclipsed by media emphasis on the disruptions associated with redistribution.
Dependency scholars such as Samir Amin and Andre Gunder Frank long argued that Global South states pursuing structural transformation would encounter resistance from entrenched core powers.
Therefore, President Mnangagwa’s intervention at the WGS decisively set the record straight on the historical legitimacy of Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme by situating redistribution within the unfinished business of decolonisation while affirming the country’s sovereign developmental trajectory and its openness to engage all nations on the basis of mutual respect and shared benefit.
