Land is the economy and the economy is land!

The people of Mozambique are not only our neighbours but family as well.

Communities on either side of the expansive 1 423-kilometre border between the two countries are inextricably linked by blood ties and also share the same culture, norms and values.

During the brutal war to dislodge the colonial regime, which ended just a little over 40 years ago, ZANU and FRELIMO cadres lived, fought and died together, all united by a common past and shared vision for the future.

In particular, the Battle of Mavonde, from September 29 to October 6, 1979, when Rhodesian forces attempted a blitzkrieg on the new ZANU military headquarters in Mozambique —  deliberately calculated to crash the spirit, resolve and momentum of the liberation movement during the Lancaster House discussions —  is a revealing tale of how deep the comradeship with FRELIMO ran.

President of the United Republic of Tanzania Samia Suluhu Hassan (left) and Namibia Vice President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah

While the liberation fighters bravely defended their fortress, the intervention of the camaradas, who famously deployed the Katyusa (a devastating weapon of death and killing machine that the Russians affectionately nicknamed “Stalin’s Organ”) to neutralise the Rhodesian security forces’ superior airpower, proved decisive.

You should take time to listen to the song “Zimbabwe Mozambique” by Thomas Mapfumo. Harare and Maputo are inseparable, and our future is tied.

So, we naturally have a vested interest in the outcome of elections in Mozambique, as we do in other regional countries were liberation movements still hold sway.

We, however, know that the new FRELIMO leader, Cde Daniel Francisco Chapo, will emerge head and shoulders above the rest (no pun intended. Kikikiki).

But the ascendance of Cde Chapo, who is just 47 years old and was born after Mozambique’s independence in 1975, has an added significance, as it represents the evolution of liberation movements in line with changing demographics and realities.

In fact, he is the younger of the presidential candidates who were on the ballot last week.

And, as has become the norm, the meddlesome forces, not least the Brenthurst Foundation that is sworn to upend liberation movements in the region, were clearly pushing for 50-year-old ex-RENAMO official Venancio Mondlane, who has already curiously pre-emptively claimed victory and threatened violence should results go the other way.

We have seen this before.

By last week, some civil society organisations sponsored by these malignant forces were hard at work trying to compile a parallel tally.

All this is, however, in vain.

They know Cde Chapo will win, but the overall plan is to degrade his political capital by claiming irregularities and fraud.

Viva FRELIMO!

Viva Mozambique!

A luta continua!

Long live the revolution!

Victoria ascerta!

Progressive

Another significant development is also expected in Namibia’s general elections next month (November 27), as a sister revolutionary party, SWAPO, will be led by a female candidate, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, a struggle veteran who also comes with weighty and impressive credentials.

It would be the first time a liberation movement will elect a woman as Head of State, signifying the progressive movement of parties that have often been criticised by adversaries as backwards, archaic and not fit for purpose in the current epoch.

Ceteris paribus, the region might, in all likelihood, have two elected female Heads of State after next year when Tanzania, where Samia Suluhu Hassan took over after the death of John Magufuli, goes to the polls next year.

So, the revolution is alive and well.

Another bold masterstroke

But this instalment is not about Mozambique, Namibia or Tanzania, but about the momentous and potentially seismic development that took place in Zimbabwe last week, when President ED took another of his signature progressive bold moves by making the first steps to make the land, which we wrested back from colonialists, registrable, transferable and bankable.

However, there is a caveat: The security of tenure of all agricultural land regularised under the programme will only be transferrable among indigenous Zimbabweans.

Of course, the thinking behind this is to prevent the reversal of the Land Reform Programme. And, in the bigger scheme of things, all this is meant to unlock massive investments in infrastructure and production in agriculture. An uncertain tenure system, owing to perceptions and fear of the unknown, clearly held back investments by risk-averse individuals and banks, among other sources of investments.

The new policy, therefore, essentially converts the land from a seemingly “dead asset” to one that is collateralised and provides comfort to the investor(s). Again, most importantly, such a progressive move makes ZANU PF, especially under the Second Republic, a political party that is not encumbered by ideological rigidities but is pragmatic to a fast-changing world. This has been a running thread and consistent theme over the past five years.

The inertia associated with well-founded fears and reluctance to adopt a system that could potentially put back the land in the hands of the former owners cannot be underestimated.

However, it is not fortuitous that this milestone development is happening at a time when output in agriculture, led by a new energetic army of young farmers, has been progressively rising, particularly over the past five years, while new markets are opening up in both Europe and Asia.

China, for instance, continues to open up its markets to local produce.

So, considering Zimbabwe’s potential, an exponential increase in investments in agriculture, which supports many households and livelihoods, would be revolutionary, as it would boost rural incomes, lift many out of poverty and add impetus to the ongoing drive to establish an empowered, modern and prosperous country within the next six years.

Land, which defines a people’s heritage and identity, is sacred.

Genesis 2 verse 7 says: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

Out of the land we came and back into the land we shall return. The land also sustains us and shapes our circumstances.

As we used to say during the Third Chimurenga, “land is the economy; the economy is land”.

Whispers from China

In their own reform process, the Chinese learnt the efficacy of trial and error.

They had a famous saying of “feeling for the rocks with your feet as you cross the river”, which is premised on the need to wade through challenges on the road to progress.

One of Deng Xiaoping’s popular attributes was to swiftly change course whenever a plan became impossible to execute.

Instructively, one of the major hallmarks of China’s reform programme, particularly in agriculture, was driven by 21 farmers from Xiaogang village in Anhui Province, in November 1978. Tired of years of toiling under an unproductive communal agricultural system through which they jointly worked the land (obviously as a result of the ideological prescriptions of the obtaining political system), they decided to split the fields by household and cultivate the plots on their own.

The results of the new system (known as da-bao-gan) were instant.

The following year, for the first time, a village that relied on government subsidies of grain for food, financial assistance and loans for inputs produced a bumper harvest.

They even gave government some grain and repaid their loans.

Such a milestone was not lost on the authorities. To cut the long story short, the system was subsequently promoted throughout Anhui Province as a preferred model to follow.

It also spread throughout China.

Fortune and victory favour the brave and bold. What ED effectively did last week was to cut the Gordian knot, and history will remember him for that.

Bishop out!