admin
Panganai Kahuni
During the Rhodesian era and at the peak of the legally imposed UN sanctions, banks such as Barclays and Standard Chartered played a pivotal role in financing sanction bursting strategies that the now loud-mouthed John Robertson and Eddie Cross together with other Rhodesians crafted for Rhodesia to survive that long.
For Rhodesia to have managed to survive the financial problems that were inflicted by the UN imposed sanctions and the blazing guns of the liberation war, it was bankrolled by the supportive banking institutions that poured in millions of dollars into agriculture which resulted in huge tonnages of tobacco being produced across the stolen fertile land in Zimbabwe.
Cigarette manufacturing companies produced cigarettes that were inscribed “made in South Africa” and used the apartheid South Africa to export the finished products that were produced on land which was stolen from Zimbabweans. Apartheid South Africa, according to a book titled “Sanction Burst”, exported the cigarettes on behalf of Rhodesia.
The questions that arise are: Was this not value addition born out of UN legal economic sanction? Was this not product beneficiation that the same banks asking for collateral security financed agriculture to save Rhodesia from collapsing? This calls for an answer from captains of industry. I further ask; were there no financial risks that were threatening the shareholders and depositors’ funds due to the ensuing war? What security guarantee did the shareholders and depositors of that time have against the war and terrorists in the imminent takeover of government when those banks supported agriculture during that time of clear uncertainty?
Agriculture is the mainstay of our economy hence when it booms everything else booms. It is surprising how the same banks have now grown interests to support tobacco. Is it that tobacco production has attracted financiers from China and the Arab world who are now making huge profits out of tobacco growing? The very same banks are into financing sugarcane growing in Chiredzi and Triangle where they fear outside investors may take the business opportunity away from them. So, does it mean our banks only act when threatened by outside financiers?
Tobacco and sugarcane are grown on the same land by the same black farmers whom the banks describe as telephone farmers. The farmer who is in tobacco and sugarcane is producing these raw products from the same land that has a 99-year-lease which the banks claim not to be bankable. The land is the same land the bankers claim to be contested land. What hypocrisy is this? I thought banks had the capacity and ability to assess the viability of any loan application tendered. This writer got a loan from Agribank and Arda for agricultural purposes. The loan has since been paid in full without the banks dragging him to the courts. I know of hundreds of others who did the same and given their permission I would name them.
In Rhodesia, it is not true that all farmers lived on their farm. Most of the farms were run by managers whilst the owners ran government offices. During the war of liberation, farm owners left their farms in the hands of managers as they went on call-ups to help fight the war to suppress Africans and keep them to servitude.
Most Rhodesian cabinet ministers and white senior civil servants owned farms that were run by managers. Ian Smith’s farm in Shurugwi was run by a manager whilst he was in Salisbury crafting strategies to defend Rhodesia from the liberation onslaught that was coming from Mozambique and Zambia. Peter Walls, too, had a farm that was run by a manager while he was in Salisbury busy directing the Rhodesian Army to carry out massacres in Mozambique’s Nyadzonia and Chimoio and refugee camps in Zambia. So where does the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe (BAZ) get all these lies that every financed farmer lived on the land?
It must be clear in all Zimbabwean minds that the banks back then were run by whites who did not see any financial risk in supporting agriculture. What they saw were security risks posed by not supporting agriculture for it would mean the collapse of industries and the fall of Rhodesia. If banks had not supported agriculture, Rhodesia would have fallen too easily.
It is with the above that I question the wisdom of BAZ not supporting agriculture. It then boggles the mind if executives of the financial sector in a country that is waging an economic war do not support the mainstay of the economy and still expect to be financially viable. Agriculture, if financially supported and bank agronomists monitored it, has the potential to provide the much needed financial and material capital needed to trigger economic growth.
Panganai Kahuni is a political socio-economic commentator.
Online Reporter