A comment on this thread, from near Zimbabwe:
> Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 10:56:43 +0000
> Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Louis:
> >These questions are popping up everywhere in the world today. The NY Times
> >reported that Mugabe is threatening to finally expropriate the rich white
> >settlers and give the land to the land-based Zimbabweans. The whites
> >complain about the injustice that is about to be done to them. Poor dears,
> >where will they go...
James:
> Quite different questions altogether. In Zimbabwe land-ownership and the
> displacement of blacks is a social condition of their exploitation at
> the hands of white farmers today. There property in land is the
> instrument of exploiting black labour in the here and now, not an
> historical question..
Comrades the sad reality is that Mugabe is not going to give the 1400
farms (mostly white-owned) designated for redistribution recently to
the landstarved peasants. His Agriculture Minister, Kumbirai
Kangai, announced on radio last month that rich folk -- he
specifically mentioned government ministers -- will be the prime
beneficiaries as they are the ones he deems capable of running the giant
farms.
Some designated farms are clearly just political spoils. One
(Simukai) is run by a reknowned left cooperative that came from the
minority Ndebele tribe's liberation army and represents the country's
most advanced form of searching for new agrarian relations of
production. Another is run by a friend of mine in the eastern region of the
country, a white hippy from old Rhodesian stock who married a black
woman, and whose 60 acre farm has 40 acres of steep mountain land, 10
acres of arable veg garden and 10 acres of minefield since it
borders Mozambique and the Rhodesian army lost track of where it laid
mines. Anyhow to illustrate the silliness, this place was designated,
for the sole apparent reason is that it is extremely good terrain for
smuggling goods (especially grass) from Mozambique (there are a
couple of safe trails across the mine field). The local
political bureaucrats who made the call had no other obvious reason.
My bet is that in any case Mugabe doesn't follow through with more
than 20% of these because even giving only partial compensation to
the owners (on buildings not land), his treasury is bust. There is
general chaos in Zimbabwe (I spent much of last month there,
completing a book out soon.) The central bank upped the interest rate
6% in Nov-Dec, the currency fell 55% against the US$, the stock
market is down 45% since August and now the land market is paralysed.
All of this is structural, of course, a reflection of the damage done
by Mugabe's orthodox structural adjustment policies, the failure of
which he's now trying to distract his citizens from through another
round of populist posturing. 17 years too late on land reform, and it
won't even happen.
The good news is that on Red Tuesday, December 9, more than a
million Zimbabweans joined a stay-away and tens
of thousands participated in street protests in all the major
centres. This was a trade union-led protest against increased taxes
to pay for liberation war veteran pensions, but in fact had a very
progressive content against Mugabe's overall patronage-tinged
neoliberalism. The police responded by bashing Harare protesters as
well as thousands of bystanders; the trade union leader -- quite a
tough leftist, Morgan Tsvangirai -- was beat up the next day at his
office; and the scene is now set for some form of (probably
half-assed) popular front political party challenge to ZANU in 2000.
The land designation will cost a couple or more GDP points next year
and probably in '99 if it really gets even partially implemented, but
won't make any other dent in social relations (the minister-farmers
are not great as baases); there's lots more interesting stuff in Zim that
bears watching and solidarity.
Patrick Bond
HOME: WORK:
51 Somerset Road University of the Witwatersrand
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