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British colonialism, Zimbabwe's land reform and settler resistance
by Steve Lawton
ZIMBABWE'S Black majority gained independence from British colonial
rule over 20 years ago, after a long war of African resistance. It
culminated in the Lancaster House agreement, following protracted
negotiations in London between the liberation armies and the newly
elected Tory government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
The outcome ensured Black majority rule, based on the Lancaster House
Constitution, which sealed the fate of the racist Rhodesia regime led
by Ian Smith. An independent Zimbabwe ('Large House of Stone') was
born, and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
(ZANU-PF) formed the government under President Robert Mugabe.
The roots of the current conflict over land reform and the Zimbabwe
Government-backed campaign by the War Veterans Association to
expropriate white settler land, lead back to that agreement.
In all the demands made the most significant political and diplomatic
struggle over the course of those talks - headed by the then Foreign
Secretary Lord Carrington - that often threatened to collapse, was
centred on land reform.
Rhodesia's white minority rulers were implacably opposed to the
liberation struggle and would concede nothing. The solution was sought
in what became the Lancaster House negotiations.
Liberation leaders were determined to ensure that Britain, which
backed the Rhodesia Government, would not prevent Zimbabwe from
beginning the battle to address the huge vested interests of white
farmers in any agreement. The roots of that crisis, of course, go back
to colonial days.
Colonial land theft
There was a time when fertile land was said to be plentiful and freely
available in Zimbabwe, as in many African states - a time when, by
comparison, 'life was easy' and tribal lands were worked relatively
free of interference. British empire builders, invading troops and
colonial rule put paid to that.
Over a hundred years ago, in 1890, British forces occupied a part of
Africa that would long be associated with its 'founder': The cunning
and ruthless imperial merchant Cecil John Rhodes, after whom Rhodesia
was named. This was part of Britain's unholy mission to bring the
'uncivilised worlds under British rule'.
Rhodes' view was that the English had an inherent right to imperial
rule because they were the "first race in the world and therefore the
more of the world [they] inhabited, the better it would be for the
human race." Such racist justification for empire-building echoes on
white-owned farms in Zimbabwe today.
In 1889, a year before troops arrived, white settlers were given
rights to the land of indigenous people. The British South Africa
Company (BSAC) was formed to buy concessions from the British crown
and this formed the basis of the subsequent wholesale land theft.
Profit went into British coffers; Africa's people saw none of it.
Over the next ten years or so, as the take over of land unfolded,
white settlers hemmed in the majority Black population on what they
called Native Reserves (known today as communal areas). This began the
division of African peoples' land. They got small, largely infertile
tracts while expropriated land in the hands of white farmers was the
biggest and best.
Conquest through land grab and livestock seizure brought stiff
resistance. The first major national Chimurenga (uprising) soon
exploded in 1893. It was bloodily suppressed, but the tide that would
turn decisively against settlers today was rising.
In the years to the start of the First World War the white settlers
and their administration created and entrenched a system of racial
segregation to reinforce the unequal farmland distribution.
In a relatively short period of time to 1914, the division of land
became vastly disproportionate: Just three per cent of the population
controlled 75 per cent of the land, while most of the rest were
harshly restricted to a mere 23 per cent of the worst land in
designated Reserves. There were only 28,000 white settlers to nearly
one million Africans in Zimbabwe at this time.
To this day, 70 per cent of the best land is still held by white
farmers, despite the fact that many thousands of Africans have been
allocated land.
After the war, in 1925, the Morris Carter Commission set out to
prepare a comprehensive picture of ownership. It led to the Land
Apportionment Act of 1930 which defined and set in stone for decades
the grossly unequal 'apportionment' of private, state and communal
property.
In the main, it aimed to protect and strengthen the huge
privately-owned settler farms that were largely situated in high
rainfall areas.
In the 1950s the Rhodesia Government imposed conservation standards on
communal Black smallholdings, causing an eruption of resistance that
drew them closer to the growing guerrilla movement.
The rising Black population, with many moving into the communal areas
having been dispossessed by white farmers elsewhere, could barely eke
out an existence on poor soil that became little more than
'homelands'.
Discontent over such treatment gradually took shape within the
guerrilla movement which emerged as a major challenge to the Rhodesian
state and its army in the early 1960s. Fighters of the liberation
forces roused the country to defy the colonial order.
The armed struggle moved from the towns into the villages and communal
areas, involving Black trade unionists as well as peasant communities
in the national uprising.
They advocated an end to colonialism and called on communal farmers to
refuse to implement conservation measures in the government's battle
to prevent communal farmers from cultivating any neighbouring
wetlands. The crops on dry lands with poor soils invariably failed.
And carrying out the conservation measure was seen as slave labour.
Nevertheless, the problem of the liberation was that it was not a
revolution, even though it was a major advance for Black national
development. In the Cold War era Western interests were forever fixed
on Soviet and Chinese influence and assistance which was reflected in
the political struggle for liberation.
The West did not want a major upheaval in Rhodesia, in the context of
southern Africa, with Zimbabwe socialising the land and economy and
developing anti-Western international political allegiances.
A negotiated settlement was preferred and the Lancaster House
conference, while laying the foundations for creating a more balanced
country -- which did occur to some degree -- was nevertheless
conceived as a basis for change that did not uproot the entire system
of exploitation.
Important sectors of the land are controlled by big industrial
interests that have yet to be broken. And the crucial issue here is
the parallel impact of international capital following the conference.
That made all the difference to how Zimbabwe then developed.
Zimbabwe 'structurally adjusted'
In 1980 the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
intervened in Zimbabwe's economy to disastrous effect and since then
it has undermined the country - bringing it almost to the brink of
social and economic collapse in the 1990s.
The impact of its pressure, by the late 1990s, caused the Zimbabwean
Government to begin opposing IMF 'reforms'. These demanded savage
public spending cuts to meet loan obligations - which could never be
met and were intended to shackle the country to Western interests -
especially to enable easier foreign direct investment.
As part of the trap, the IMF ordered that the state push its
privatisation programme to the limit supposedly to offset those
unattainable obligations. Zimbabwe's chief industry is mining,
contributing about 20 per cent of GDP, while agriculture dominates at
60 per cent.
The Zimbabwean Government, increasingly squeezed in this vice, began
to shift from the IMF plan. But the British Government today, in
fact, while attacking Zimbabwe for consequent economic mayhem, makes
no allowance for the fact that since 1991 the country has been
'structurally adjusted'. Britain advocates it.
This underlying factor of social and economic destabilisation is
crucial to the progress of the land reform programme and, ultimately,
for the farm invasions. The IMF has reacted to Zimbabwe's defensive
approach by terminating all loans in 1999 for supposedly defaulting on
its obligations. No debt 'forgiveness' here it seems.
And now pressure is being exerted by Britain, the US and Europe to
impose economic sanctions. In July the US Senate Sub-Committee on
African Affairs approved the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Act
proposing partial sanctions and passed it to the House of
Representatives. The US Senate, meanwhile, has approved sanctions
action against Zimbabwe.
The Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group, at the
same time called for a Yugoslav-style solution to be brought against
Zimbabwe if next year's presidential elections prove 'undemocratic'.
Europe is expected to take similar sanctions action in October if
"dialogue" fails.
Mugabe, ZANU-PF demonised
The media focus in Britain on the way the Zimbabwean Government has
handled the land reform, has been to suggest that President Robert
Mugabe is an unhinged, corrupt and cynical tyrant who is out for white
settler blood.
In conducting the campaign he is said to be trampling over opposition
'democratic' rights to secure his re-election early in 2002. The
ZANU-PF War Veterans' actions, the British Government decided, should
be stopped.
Not surprising then that the Zimbabwean Government's own analysis and
efforts at land reform is ignored and its formal decisions are given
no credence. The extent of internal legal opposition through the
courts has also been a factor in hampering the conduct of real change
and the resolution of the farm seizures.
The attack on Zimbabwe's leader and its Government is a familiar
approach that we continue to see in the denigration of political
leaders in all countries targeted by US and British imperialism.
Whether they be consistent outright opponents of imperialism, or
'pragmatic' leaders who turn and bite the Western hand that initially
fed them, the treatment meted out to such weaker countries that dare
defy Western diktat continues to be swift and murderous.
It is all done under the guise of promoting 'democracy', the
'democratic opposition' and safeguarding 'human rights'. But it is no
accident that African human rights should suddenly be discovered after
so many years.
Or, for that matter, that farm invasions - which have resulted in some
farmers' deaths - should appear like a bolt of lightening with chaotic
brutality. The forcible expropriation began four years ago in 1997.
At any given moment in Africa, one country's human rights record is
elevated above others in order to exercise pressure, in this case
against Zimbabwe, as part of the strategy to keep Western interests
safe and prevent any African state from falling out of line or
standing in the way.
President Robert Mugabe, it is now said, was looked upon as someone
with whom the Western powers could do business; an instrument of
African stability for Western capitalist interests while allowing
certain limited reforms.
But over the latter part of the last 20 or so years, he and the
Zimbabwean Government have begun to assert an independent role that
does not reflect the blueprint Big Business and the British Government
have decided for Zimbabwe.
The whole point of building this increasingly demonic picture of
President Mugabe and ZANU-PF that is now emerging, is to prepare for
and to encourage the undermining and wrecking of the Zimbabwean
Government. This is the barely concealed British concern, not the
militant treatment white farmers are receiving from the War Veterans.
Even the Sunday Telegraph (August 26) had to admit that while there
were "decent, likeable" farmers (as if the issue were about manners!),
there were those who were not "innocent victims of the Mugabe regime."
It pointed out: "Some are openly racist; some even undisguised
fascists, with paintings of Mussolini over the fireplace and dogs
named after Hitler's generals."
In general the degree of racism still runs very deep among the 50,000
or so white people and farmers (about 4,500 of them). Many fail to
recognise the negative impact of years of Rhodesian segregation and
because they have persisted in maintaining their exclusive control of
prime land, they have remained separate themselves from African
people. On those big farms, the Black farm workers invariably live in
run-down, inadequate conditions.
But meanwhile, the British Government is handling white farmers'
compensation - as required in the Lancaster House agreement - and the
dispute over it with the Zimbabwe Government with care.
This is partly because of the effect the War Veterans are having
beyond Zimbabwe's borders, especially in South Africa and Namibia. But
also there could well be repercussions from the move by white farmers
to other African countries, such as Mozambique.
Zimbabwean Government forces are currently a central part of the
defence arrangement bolstering the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
led by President Kabila. The US, Belgium, France and Britain have
spent most of the last century tearing that country up.
The US backed the Ugandan and Rwandan invasion of DRC and to protect
the DRC, an alliance of forces including Zimbabwe, Angola and others,
went in. Zimbabwean forces have been there for almost three years at
the invitation of Kabila.
This presence and the fact that it is a significant power in the
southern region of Africa, is a thorn in the side of Britain's
interference in the DRC. The IMF also objects and has argued that its
forces should withdraw.
So the combination of the Zimbabwe Government's refusal to accept
World Bank/IMF constraints and demands, the role of the country's
forces in the DRC and the militant uprooting of rich farmers, adds up
to an unpalatable and volatile cocktail in Whitehall.
It has upset the transnationals' vision, yet again, of a pliable
collection of divided states played against each other according to
the requirements of Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. This put the
ZANU-PF Government on the hit list for removal.
'Democratic' subversion
The threatening Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), which is a 'free market', pro-IMF Trojan Horse, has in recent
years been trying to unseat ZANU-PF.
According to The Guardian (March 31), MDC is being used and supplied
by US and British sources - euphemistically called "well-wishers" - to
undermine ZANU-PF in the countryside. It reported that millions of
pounds worth of equipment have been allocated for its campaign.
But the key institution behind this in an 'advisory' role, The
Guardian said, is the London-based Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT)
whose patrons include former Tory foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd,
Malcolm Rifkind and Geoffrey Howe, together with major business
interests linked to Zimbabwe.
The Guardian said: "The British High Commission in Harare denies that
the UK is officially involved in the operation, Mr Whitehead [a
Zimbabwe retired mining engineer running the show] has been in regular
contact with one of its members, a man regarded by the diplomatic
community as an intelligence officer."
The Commonwealth, meanwhile, has been pushed by Britain to interfere;
and increasingly there are calls for direct US-led intervention.
Financial services groups like Abbey National have launched
international anti-Mugabe campaigns aimed at lobbying US President
George Bush and calling for his direct intervention.
Britain retains a strong influence in Zimbabwe through its business
connections with industrial conglomerates, the proliferation of
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and via the so-called
independent press that regularly has run-ins with the Zimbabwean
Government. The MDC has found a ready outlet in sections of that
press, which ZANU-PF accuses Britain of fostering.
Zimbabwean Government media have suggested that British intelligence
has, among other activities, focused on a Kenyan-registered NGO called
Global Witness, Environment and Law. In May, officials from Britain
said to have intelligence connections, arrived in Harare representing
this body. They were apparantly there to carry out an assessment of
the country's forestry commission timber logging activities in the
Congo (DRC).
The Forestry Commission has had DRC-Zimbabwe agreed concessions in the
Congo since March this year. But at a time when there was said to be
no official British involvement with the Commission, the two arrivals
were said to have shown "unprecedented interest" in Zimbabwe's
operations. Their alleged purpose was to develop a strategy to control
both sides of timber company activity in the two countries.
In the event of the election of the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai
against President Mugabe, this would bolster British control - in an
attempt to exclude competing interests - and provide one of many
routes into tapping African resources for the West's profit amid the
turmoil. There is, in fact, nothing unusual in this as we can see with
the corporate vultures' agenda unfolding in former Yugoslavia.
According to the South African Mail & Guardian (May 13) The Zimbabwe
Government has passed legislation outlawing the raising of funds from
foreign sources by its political parties. It was enacted in the teeth
of opposition from MDC - the intended target - as fears grow that a
concerted international effort is being mounted to bring down ZANU-PF.
That will have been reinforced last weekend with the hundreds of MDC
supporters who demonstrated outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London,
demanding that the British Government support sanctions against
President Mugabe. Ahead of the demonstration MDC supporters had
appealed for US and British funding for their campaign.
They also handed in a petition to Prime Minister Tony Blair. MDC's
deputy chairman Jennings Rukani called upon him to "move into top gear
and mobilise the international community and take a leaf from the
American Government which has imposed selective sanctions."
MDC is no doubt getting bolder here given the comments of the Labour
Government's present Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. He told BBC radio
last week that at next month's meeting in Nigeria with Zimbabwean
ministers and six other Commonwealth countries, he hoped "a process to
try to put further pressure [on Mugabe] and to resolve the issue of
land reform..." would be discussed.
He said there are "wider issues of the economic state and need for
economic reform in Zimbabwe and the issue of the rule of law, because
they are linked." The imperial tone resonates. It will no doubt harden
at the preliminary September 3-4 meeting of the London meeting of
foreign ministers from the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.
Conclusion
It is, therefore, not too difficult to see why the Zimbabwean
Government think Britain is hatching a conspiracy to destroy their
country, despite earlier strenuous denials in Parliament from former
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
There can be no surprise at British foreign policy toward Zimbabwe
when both Britain and the US continue to undertake bombing raids on
Iraq with impunity; or when the British Government has contributed to
the smashing of Yugoslavia, threatening to extend it to Macedonia and
perhaps even to Greece.
The sanctions road is part of a pincer movement with the IMF/World
Bank and so-called 'democratic' opposition undermining Zimbabwe from
within. Any effort by Britain to promote this would fly in the face of
developing African unity and would undermine its struggle to reach out
of its crisis existence that often borders on extinction.
Rhodes and his imperial bandits may have lost no sleep over the
bloodshed the British empire indulged, but real civilising missions
today should allow genuine development, economic democracy and fair
trade to solve problems. The British Government must not compound its
callousness in Iraq and Yugoslavia with yet more destruction in
Zimbabwe.
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