POLITICAL EDITOR: New farmers have more than justified themselves

16 Nov, 2014 - 06:11 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

That they lack experience and resources cannot be held against them as a disqualification.

Debate around Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and its indigenisation and black economic empowerment policies always stirs controversy and this is likely to be the case for a very long time given that not even Zimbabweans themselves are agreed on the merits of these policies, the methodology used to execute them and their justification.

It is partly this lack of consensus among black Zimbabweans which appears to embolden former white commercial farmers who lost land to blacks to continue their legal challenges beyond the country’s jurisdiction, and entertain the hope that a change of government, or, to use the preferred lingo, a change of regime, could lead to a reversal of these policies.

For now however, the positive development is that the debate about methodology is almost an academic exercise to the extent that the broad objective to acquire the land has been achieved. What is left is to achieve full productivity on the acquired farms so that they fully benefit those who now own them and the country. While former white commercial farmers have tried to harp on the issue of productivity to prove that the land reform was/is a failure, they deliberately ignore that their own enterprises were fully funded jointly by government and banking institutions at the time.

Fellow Zimbabweans who for political reasons did not support the land reform programme have joined in this campaign of calumny and even tried to make a case for the return of displaced farmers on the basis of their so-called skills and experience, as if these are inborn and a preserve of a particular racial group.

There is no doubt that with sufficient resources for tractors, seed, fertilizer and other chemicals and infrastructure such as dams and irrigation equipment, the debate around productivity would have been buried a long time back because it lacks merit. The harvest achieved in the past cropping season demonstrates what the new farmers are able to do with good rains. Both maize and tobacco production set new records at 1,4 million tonnes and 210 million kg respectively. Unfortunately, farming which is dependent entirely on natural rain is risky business. The farmer cannot set concrete targets.

Thus while the land redistribution has been achieved, funding remains a major outstanding issue which Government cannot outsource for the time being until a final agreement with financial institutions on the matter of title deeds and collateral is settled.

Debate on whether there was merit in carrying out the land reform revolves around productivity, the legal requirements and moral basis or social justification for the undertaking.

As already indicated briefly above, the new farmers have more than justified themselves.

That they lack experience and resources cannot be held against them as a disqualification. It is more a matter of growth. In any event, the new farmers don’t need to justify themselves to whites.

The legal debate, whether Government was justified in forcibly taking the land from a minority without monetary compensation to meet the needs of the majority, was settled through the Land Acquisition Act and subsequent amendments barring former white farmers from challenging the programme in the courts.

The Land Acquisition Act itself was necessitated by the failure of whites to appreciate the whole point of the liberation struggle, that at the core of that war, the core grievance of the blacks was to get back lands from which they had been displaced during the many years of colonial occupation.

Formal independence in April 1980 and the policy of reconciliation left land redistribution as an outstanding item. This was to be resolved through a willing seller, willing buyer model which Britain and the United States had agreed to fund during the Lancaster House negotiations. There was hope that the two countries would provide enough funding for orderly, large-scale resettlement of formerly, racially marginalized blacks. It was also believed that in accepting the hand of reconciliation, white commercial farmers who owned more than 70 percent of the country’s best arable land would in turn act in good faith, and sell part of their best land at reasonable prices.

History, when finally written, will record that neither the British and Americans nor the white farmers acted in good faith once the threat of a return to the bush war faded. This historical imperative, the emotive land issue, was pushed to the back burner; it was treated as mere political rhetoric for electioneering purposes. Even when the rhetoric turned into a storm in 2000, it was initially sneeringly dismissed as an election gimmick, some election madness soon to evaporate.

The whites are very bitter that they can’t get “their land” back and that all their political investments in regime change are aborting, hence spirited efforts now to attach Zimbabwe’s embassy properties abroad and the latest bid to seize diamonds meant for auction in Belgium.

Finally, I don’t know whether there can be any social or moral justification for the land reform programme than that all people under the sun have a God-given right to own and control every inch of their geographical territory. That should be self-evident as it is the international norm and “meets” international best practice!

Yet Zimbabwe has gone beyond attainment of a natural right. The land reform has become an economic empowerment and development tool for formerly marginalized people. Government has placed the primary means of production, land, in the hands of the people who work it. They are not keeping land for its sentimental value, but earning a living out of it.

Article 96

The Europeans are getting tired of the sanctions they imposed on Zimbabwe. Current efforts to normalize relations are not out of piety or love for the people of Zimbabwe.

More than being tired, the Europeans are beginning to feel the cost of their sanctions in terms of business opportunities lost to India, Brazil, Russia, China, etc. T

hey now want to come and partake in the implementation of Zim Asset after the “lost decade” of hypocritical sanctions.

Head of the EU to Zimbabwe ambassador Phillipe van Damme says the lifting of Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement opens the way for the bloc to deal directly with the Zimbabwe Government.

He is not talking about charity or humanitarian issues here. He is not talking about human rights.

He is talking about investors and their anxieties. He is worried about a “level playing field” for investors, perhaps feeling a bit jealousy that those countries which came earlier were given preferential deals. He should know better which bird catches the fat worm.

Listen to him speak: “The problem with the indigenisation law is not the options taken by Government because that is the political decision of the Government.

The problem is that the indigenisation law contains loopholes and ambiguities which put investors in an uncertain footing and Government needs to clarify this.

Investors cannot make investment decisions on the basis of negotiated exceptions to law …”

This is an important breakthrough. One hopes that our reporters get it. Investors have given up contesting indigenisation per se.

That is a political decision of the Government of Zimbabwe just as every individual EU member has a political mandate to make decisions for its people.

Their only worry is the quantum of profits from their investment. Government should thus speed up the review process and state its legal position in bold.

No more loopholes and ambiguities please!

The Europeans want to join the Russians and Chinese at the party. Indigenisation must ensure this new scramble for our minerals doesn’t leave us poorer.

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