Underestimate comrades at own peril

12 Feb, 2023 - 00:02 0 Views
Underestimate comrades at own peril

The Sunday Mail

THE significance and symbolism of the current record exponential growth in agricultural output seems to be lost on some people.

Let this sink in: Last year, Zimbabwe produced its biggest-ever wheat crop at 380 000 tonnes after putting close to 80 000 hectares — another record — under the cereal.

This mainly happened at a time when the spectre of wheat shortages loomed large on global markets due to hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, which account for close to 30 percent of world exports, as well as the May 13, 2022 decision by India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, to suspend exports.

It is nothing short of a stunning somersault from the desperate situation where we used to spend an average US$100 million annually importing the key ingredient that is mainly used in our daily bread.

But Zimbabwe’s extraordinary feat, which the mainstream media in the West such as CNN found impossible to ignore, was not only driven by medium- and large-scale producers, but was motored by smallholder farmers and ordinary community irrigation schemes as well.

And, as Bishop Lazi writes this, preliminary tallies from the recently-concluded crop assessment indicate that, ceteris paribus (all things being equal), we could be on the cusp of a record maize haul that could be as much as three million tonnes.

If this comes to pass, it would be the biggest output since the 2,95 million tonnes produced in 1984, about 40 years ago.

Most significantly, it puts paid to the often-repeated racist and bigoted spin peddled during the Land Reform Programme at the turn of the millennium that repossession of land stolen by colonial settlers would inevitably result in a cataclysmic collapse in agriculture, regrettable famine, privation, as well as a hunger-induced humanitarian crisis at a scale never seen before.

The Land Reform Programme, we were constantly reminded, would be an unmitigated disaster.

Of course, this narrative was framed from the patronisingly racist premise that helpless blacks, who could not be trusted with even the basic task of feeding themselves, cannot do without the messianic white farmers, whose divine role was to take care of poor black creatures.

It was another big, fat lie, anyway.

Communal farmers have traditionally been doing the most, as they have been contributing about two-thirds of Zimbabwe’s maize production for the past 20 years.

The preoccupation of white commercial farmers was actually not to feed the nation, but fatten their pockets through proceeds from both food and cash crops.

Their enterprises were made even more profitable through cheap labour from blacks employed on the farms.

The humongous profits reaped from the land were further invested on the stock exchange or used to make strategic acquisitions in industry, making whites the supreme overlords in the economy, hence the obtaining obscene wealth inequalities in our society.

Overall, this built the monolith of white capital and culture of black poverty.

However, a new cadre of capable black farmers is now rewriting the script.

Soon, and very soon, Zimbabwe will inexorably reclaim its status as a major food exporter, which will be an epochal watershed insofar as it steels the resolve of societies that were dissuaded from reclaiming their
land under the false belief that it was a big mistake.

It is also a key milestone that has begun to spawn a new class of rich black farmers that will have a big say and influence in the direction of our economy going forward.

Our land, our curse

You see, land is sacred, as man was made of, and from, the land.

Genesis 2 verse 7 tells us: “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.”

Deuteronomy 11:8-12 is also succinct on the inseparable relationship between man and land.

“Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, and so that you may live long in the land the Lord swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey,” it reads, adding: “The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. 

“But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.”

People making history

We have travelled a long, hard road to be where we are today.

Not many of the younger generation quite appreciate how the struggle for our land, which touched off a brutal 14-year struggle against settlers, has shaped our economics, politics and current circumstances as a people in indescribably profound ways.

Today is exactly 23 years to the day (February 12-13, 2000) when Zimbabwe held its first referendum for a new Constitution, the results of which set off a chain of events that changed the country’s history forever.

The majority of the 20 percent of voters (54,7 percent) who turned up for the referendum voted against the proposed new supreme law at the instigation of a phalanx of civil society, non-governmental organisations and a then-fledgling opposition political party, MDC, which was opposed to the clause that empowered Government to take back land compulsorily.

At the time, the Morgan Tsvangirai-led outfit was just five-months-old, having been conceived on September 11, 1999, with Western countries, who had become decidedly antsy because of the nascent upheaval on the farms, acting as midwives.

You see, a year earlier, in June 1998, about 4 000 people led by the late Chief Svosve (Enoch Gahadza) had occupied four sprawling white-owned properties — Bruce Farm, Daskop Farm, Igava and Homepark — to repossess land that had been taken from their ancestors.

Some of them even showed the purported owners graves of their relatives as proof of title to the pilfered land.

And this made the West fretful.

The MDC and forces that conveniently coalesced around the National Constitutional Assembly to kill the proposed new Constitution in 2000 were one and the same, as the two entities were inextricably linked in terms of source of funding, motive and resource personnel.

For example, some of the core team of the MDC such as ex-Rhodie David Coltart (then head of legal affairs) and Welshman Ncube (secretary-general) were members of the National Constitutional                                                 Taskforce.

Today, they find themselves safely ensconced in Nelson Chamisa’s CCC, which is just a latter-day version of the MDC. 

The sponsored no vote, however, was a pyrrhic victory for the opposition and its allies, and outed the identity and motive of powerful forces that were determined to blunt the land reform.

This naturally triggered veterans of the liberation struggle, who found themselves cornered, including by a white-dominated Bench, whose Justices made successive judgements on March 17, April 10 and November 10, 2020 that ruled that the entry of “uninvited persons” on “commercial properties” was “unlawful”.

Apparently, the England-born and apartheid South Africa-educated Supreme Court judge, Anthony Gubbay, who ironically was made the country’s youngest-ever chief justice at 58 in 1990 by Cde Robert Mugabe, had become the face of the institutional bulwark standing in the way of Zimbabweans and their land.

FLASHBACK . . . War veteran Cde Joseph Chinotimba speaks to reporters after persuading Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay to resign in 2001

Enter Cde Joseph Chinotimba. 

Well, the forces that were fighting against the land reform clearly underestimated the gritty resolve and indomitable willpower of our valiant breed of intrepid veterans, who, after being frustrated in their noble quest, activated the nuclear option. Kikiki.

As comical as it might sound, Cde Chinoz, who had taken a liking for grass-weaved straw hats as part of the zeitgeist associated with the unfolding land revolution, invited himself to CJ Gubbay’s chambers on March 2, 2001 for a “cup of tea”, which culminated in the latter taking an early retirement on the same day. Kikiki.

“I talked to him personally and I told him to vacate the office today. No one is above the law,” said Cde Chinotimba in an interview after his tête-à-tête with Gubbay.

“We ought to teach him how cases are finalised here. We will declare war.” Kikikiki.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Far from the caricature he is made out to be in some quarters because of his jocular nature, Cde Chinoz, as many of his ilk, played a huge part in shaping our history at the time.

Today, Zimbabwe stands alone as the only country with the remarkable distinction of unclasping colonialism through a fundamentally seismic process to reclaim land lost to colonial settlers.

The ongoing siege on Harare is designed to tank the economy and blame the country’s wretched circumstances on the land reform programme.

However, the current success in agriculture is rewriting this and charting a new path for Zimbabwe.

A revolution reborn

But it is not fortuitous that Zimbabwe’s economic growth indicators are trending up, especially after Operation Restore Legacy in 2017, which was essentially meant to put the country on a growth path to a prosperous future.

Almost everything is growing at record or near-record levels — maize and wheat output, gold production, diaspora remittances, investments in mining and transformative infrastructure development projects.

Bishop has said this and will say it again: You underestimate ZANU PF cadres at your own peril. The party’s leadership is not made by people who are shaped by history, but people who shape history.

Those who fancy prospects of reversing the revolution should always be prepared to face a formidable gladiator.

Bishop out!

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