LONDON – Memories are short, too conveniently so. The life and death drama now being played out in Zimbabwe in southern Africa is a tragic illustration of this human weakness that knows no colour line.
Thirty five 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 in a way that, if it had happened today, would make Saddam Hussein green with envy. 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. Once the whites had capitulated and returned to London the power they had temporarily arrogated and open elections were held, Mugabe’s faction swept the board.
The stepping stone to black rule had been the constitutional conference held at Lancaster House in London. One of the sticking points had been the question of land reform. I interviewed Mugabe at the time 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 at home- the government could not be seen to be giving the whole of 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 to buy out the white farmers. The Americans who, under Jimmy Carter, had been active partners with Britain in seeking a solution to the conflict were even more 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, somewhat naively, that once the election was over, and independence was formerly given that the new Zimbabwe would tackle land reform as its number one issue, even if it had to borrow the money from the World Bank or seek aid from a willing Scandinavia. The facts spoke for themselves. At independence a quarter of the white farmers produced three quarters of the output of white-owned farmlands. The others, as Mr Mugabe himself rightly observed,”were unoccupied, underutilized or under absentee ownership”. A study by the German Development Institute concluded that if this 75% of the European land were bought it would be enough to settle the landless African population.
Yet from Mugabe’s new government there was a deafening lack of initiative. Mugabe appeared to lose interest in the issue. 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 of tobacco and fruit kept the country’s trade balance in the black. With the grain and vegetables they 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 at least have land. Their holdings and soils may have been of inferior quality but they knew nothing of modern scientific methods. Under the vigorous prodding of the Ministry of Agriculture led by a benign and dynamic ex white farmer, production leaped.
Yet, as time passed, momentum, as in so many other things Zimbabwian, slackened. The leadership lost its way. Its reforming instincts, first briefly marxist, then capitalist-liberal-pragamatic, returned to an old fashioned socialist state supremacy, with highly centralized political authority.
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. That became clear with Mugabe’s nonsensical military escapade in the Congolese war. This has only worked to help bankrupt Zimbabwe while unnecessarily complicating an already fraught situation- all, it seems, so that members of Mugabe’s inner circle can pad their bank accounts with diamond and other financial deals in the Congo.
The land reform issue being brought to the rapid boil in Zimbabwe today is more of the same. Until now what little land reform there has been has taken productive white land and put it into the hands of Mugabe’s rich friends and cronies. But, desperate to find a winning issue at the polls in May, Mugabe is using his land reform crusade as a vote-getter. Defying the courts, he has encouraged old warriors to invade 700 white-owned farms while he promises to expropriate them without compensation if Britain doesn’t give him the money.
For once, very belatedly, the British government, is trying to occupy the high ground. If the election is honest, says the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, then London will help finance an orderly and honest land redistribution program. (Over the years Britain has given modest sums towards land reform; these it suspended in 1992, criticizing the program as mismanaged and corrupt.)
But it could well be the promise has come too late. Britain -in its second grave mistake- made its own contribution to the present day imbroglio by not putting serious money on the table for land reform 20 years ago. Now nobody can be can sure if Mugabe got his money he would spend it on the people who really deserve it. That is the tragedy of modern day Zimbabwe.
