Zimbabwe -- How the land lies

ZWNEWS ^ | July 2, 2002

[Clive]

Mugabe's ramshackle cavalry rides on many lies. One in particular seems to serve them well. It is the claim that every white farmer has been allowed to keep one farm and has been encouraged to carry on farming it.

This claim is utterly untrue: hundreds of farmers have lost all that they have ever owned already, illegally evicted by Zanu PF supporters. Mugabe's chaotic fast track resettlement process makes no distinction between one of the thousands of farms it would destroy, and another.

Mugabe's henchmen and supporters are equally unfettered when they set off into what was once commercial farmland in search of plunder. Yet Mugabe and his mouthpieces continue to spout the lie. And some African leaders choose to believe it.

Gaborone, November 2000: wounded by the (then) Zimbabwean Supreme Court's contemptuous rejection of Mugabe's fast track land resettlement policy, his security chief, Nicholas Goche, tells the SADC conference that Mugabe's clear intention was to abide by the findings of the 1998 donor's conference and acquire only those farms which meet certain criteria: an absent owner or one who owns other farms, under- development, proximity to a communal area.

The same line has been trotted out at every SADC or AU conference since. Every visiting delegation, every interested head of state, the UN, the EU, all have been subjected to the same plausible, reasonable, argument.

Mugabe was at it again last week, telling the visiting Human Rights forum that every farmer would be encouraged to farm one farm.

Often delivered more in sorrow than in anger, these lines suggest a benign administration, resolved to repair a crippling colonial legacy but stymied by the reactionary resistance of a rump of feudal white land owners.

African leaders, increasingly concerned as Mugabe slams down the cards of death, famine and war, are reassured by his trump card, 'land' - faded and unconvincing though it may be - and, yet again, sink back into inaction and ineffectiveness.

Some argue that Mugabe speaks from the heart, that he really believes that out there on the farms brave, resettled, indigenous farmers are defending rich fields of maize and sprouting wheat against the prowling Selous Scouts and Rhodesian Light Infantry. His henchmen, particularly the spectacularly incompetent Minister of Agriculture, Joseph Made, and the rest of the boys, keep the truth from him. He knows nothing of the wasteland that Zimbabwe has become, of the tens of thousands of farm workers now homeless and unemployed and the millions waiting to join them, of the most competent farmers in the world swept out of their homes by a tide of racism and violence.

It is certainly true that Mugabe and his inner circle now inhabit a neo-Maoist cell, luxuriously appointed and utterly remote from the hungry Zimbabwean family on the Masvingo road. But can it really be true that Mugabe has no idea how his policies are being implemented? Let us hear from the man himself:

"Whatever the courts might say, the land is ours and we'll take it." (November 2000);

"The courts have no role to play in the resettlement process." (January 2001);

"This is the land-based 3rd Chimurenga (liberation war)." (April 2001);

"To those of you who support whites, we say 'down with you'." (September 2001);

"This is war, this is not a game. This is the 3rd Chimurenga. We must do without the white man in this country"; (December 2001);

"To those farmers we allowed to continue farming - we have reconsidered. We have no mercy left. We are going to take all the farms. All of them." (February 2002). "White settlers have not repented - the British should keep their pink noses out of our business."(March 2002);

"Land redistribution is under attack from radical and reactionary (sic) racist commercial farmers" (June 2002).

This is pretty conclusive. Neither Mugabe, nor his threadbare apologists, can claim that he does not know what is happening on the farms when his public utterances so enthusiastically direct his followers to throw the white farmers off their farms, and throw Zimbabwe into poverty as they do so.

He wishes to see all the white farmers gone from Zimbabwe: that is his policy and it is implicit in every howling drunk outside a remote farmhouse, every confused and mis-directed despatch from the Ministry of Lands, every battered family leaving its farm village and shuffling off to poverty and hunger.

To Mugabe, truth is whatever he says it is, whatever is of use to him.

In conversation with the leaders of Africa he is a nationalist freedom fighter who, nevertheless, is prepared to include the agricultural expertise of the whites in his land plan.

In Zimbabwe he is a war leader who will destroy his country rather than yield power, brandishing the banners of race and land until he drops.

It is bizarre that anyone should still believe a word that Mugabe says.

His land reform programme is illegal, unconstitutional and incompetent.

The parliamentary majority that passed the laws that license it, and the self-styled president who signed those laws, owe their position to stolen elections. Mugabe's Supreme Court judges, who seconded those laws, have personally benefited from the programme. Constitutional practice, legality, due process, all lie shattered in its path. Human rights and natural justice have been ripped up in the interests of Zanu PF and plunder.

The incoherence and the randomness of the land programme beggar belief. Already Zimbabwe is hungry. Soon it will starve. Mugabe's land policy may be a lifeline for him, but for Zimbabwe it is a suicide note.

When will the likes of Mbeki, Chissano, Obasanjo, and Kofi Annan look at the facts and, by so doing, see Resident Mugabe's lies for what they are?

For how much longer can he make fools of them?

[Clive]

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[Dustbunny]

Another African nation that is down the tubes because of stupid, self indulgent, criminal leadership.