The sides of
the argument
in Zimbabwe
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
January 11, 2007
LONDON - Memories are short, too conveniently so.
Forty-two years ago the then named Rhodesia, a British colony, ruled by
a white minority, made its unilateral declaration of independence. The
break with the mother country had come after an acrimonious period of
resisting pressure from London to modestly widen the franchise.
For fourteen years Rhodesia was a pariah state, boycotted
by order of the UN Security Council, yet finding ways to circumvent the
embargo and prosper. Even the big British oil companies, Shell and BP,
connived in the sanctions busting with, if not a nod, at least a wink
from Britain's Labour government.
That was Britain's mistake number one: forcing the Africans to fight their
cause by guerrilla warfare for want of pressures on other fronts. Led
by Robert Mugabe, now Zimbabwe's prime minister, the guerrillas weakened
the white government to the point where it was persuaded to sue for terms.
Both London and Washington favoured a compromise with a less militant
black leadership than the avowed Marxist, Mugabe. Yet, as is usually the
case, the lack of British and U.S. commitment in the early days of the
struggle meant that the militants held most of the cards, not only on
the battlefield but in electoral appeal as well.
The stepping-stone to black rule had been the constitutional conference
in London. One of the sticking points was the question of land reform.
I interviewed Mugabe and when I asked him what the main issue for his
party was he replied, "land, land, land, land, land." The British,
however, were constrained by public opinion; the government could not
be seen to be giving Rhodesia, lock, stock and barrel - and that meant
the highly productive white owned farms - to the insurgent blacks. So
the British mumbled their way through the conference, saying that while
they favoured a sensible land reform they couldn't be explicit about how
much money they would set aside. The Americans were also reticent. "We
would never get an appropriation for land reform through Congress, if
it means giving white farmers a tough deal," Andrew Young, the U.S.
ambassador to the U.N. told me.
Nevertheless, I assumed that once the election was over that the new Zimbabwe
would tackle land reform, even if it had to borrow the money from the
World Bank or seek aid from Scandinavia.
Yet from Mugabe's new government there was a deafening lack of initiative.
A few months after independence I met an old acquaintance on a London
street, Bernard Chidzero, Zimbabwe's minister of finance. "What's
going on about land reform? What are you planning to do?”, I asked.
"Not for now," he replied. "It's not on our list of priorities"
I couldn't believe my ears, even though I knew it had a superficial rationale.
The white farmers with their exports kept the country's trade balance
in the black. They also kept the urban population fed. Moreover, and this
seemed the sensible part, there was much to be done in upgrading the productivity
of those millions of peasants who did have land. Their holdings may have
been of inferior quality but they knew nothing of modern methods. Under
the prodding of the Ministry of Agriculture led by a benign and dynamic
ex white farmer, production leaped.
Yet as time passed momentum slackened. The leadership lost its way. Its
reforming instincts, first briefly Marxist, then capitalist-liberal-pragmatic,
returned to an old fashioned socialist state supremacy.
The arrival of black power in South Africa, which
should have been liberating for Zimbabwe, seemed to pose a personal challenge
to Mugabe. He made it abundantly clear in more ways than one that he didn't
like the limelight of liberation moving from him to Nelson Mandela. Mugabe
seemed to take a personal delight in going in an opposite direction to
South Africa.
Desperate to find a winning issue at the polls in May 2000, Mugabe used
his land reform crusade as a vote getter and a way of embarrassing the
cautious Mandela. Defying the courts, he encouraged old warriors to invade
700 white-owned farms while he promised to expropriate them without compensation
if Britain didn't give him the money.
For once, belatedly, the British government, tried to occupy the high
ground. If the election were honest, said the Foreign Secretary, Robin
Cook, then London would help fund an orderly reform program.
But the promise came too late. Britain - in its second grave mistake -
had made its own contribution to the present day imbroglio by not putting
serious money on the table for land reform at the time of independence.
Mugabe, increasingly besieged by opposition at home, resorted to rigging
that poll and every succeeding one. Mismanagement of not just the land
but many other aspects of the economy increased sharply over the next
seven years.
Now Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is in terminal crisis but I doubt history
will record that Mugabe is the only one to blame.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
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