Maravi

(HERALD) Land has always been core issue

Land has always been core issue
By Peter Mavunga

BRITAIN had the right to intervene in Rhodesia when, on November 11, 1965, Ian Smith defied the Crown and declared UDI. But it did not because the rebel was Ian Smith, a white man, and Harold Wilson, the then British prime minister, could not bring himself to fight against his kith and kin.

These were Dr Davis Gazi’s words on Wednesday night in a speech to an all-black audience in London where he was promoting his book, "Zimbabwe: Racism and the Land Question".

His words were relevant to those in the audience, some of whom had come from outside London to hear him speak. Britain and her allies are engaged in a flurry of activity to justify such intervention in Zimbabwe.

So Dr Gazi’s grasp of history and his willingness to share it was just the antidote to the daily diet of BBC propaganda his audience needed.

Indeed, a Jamaican young woman confided in me: "I am just fed up of the BBC. I have come to hear an African perspective of the story of Zimbabwe," she said before the meeting started.

Dr Gazi pointed to "a funny irony of history" that meant that the Conservative governments, rather than Labour, had done more for Africans than Labour.

He reminded his guests that it was Harold McMillan, a Tory prime minister well remembered in Africa for his "wind of change" speech, who had suggested buying land for Africans in Kenya.

This was a Conservative, said Dr Gazi, expressing disappointment in another paradox that the Democrats in America — who were supposed to be closer to black people than the Republicans — had on the whole been the slave owners and wanted slavery to continue as opposed to the Republican factory owners who preferred "these niggers" to work in their factories as free men.

He said the only time Britain had the right to intervene in Rhodesia was during UDI.

Today, no amount of posturing will justify Britain and her allies to intervene in the affairs of an independent country. Yet morals or ethics had never deterred Western countries from interfering in the affairs of other sovereign states.

In 1960, Patrice Lumumba, who had been elected by his own people, was removed from office by America, Belgium, Britain, France and others. Here is an example of the intervention by those who murdered Lumumba whereupon they went to defeat the notion of democracy in order to further their own ends.

And after they had murdered Lumumba, said Dr Gazi, they immersed his body in sulphuric acid to dissolve it. They were not going to tolerate seeing his grave turned into a shrine lest it might foster unity among the Africans.

Since this brutal intervention in the Congo by the West, more than five million people have died in the Congo. This is what intervention by the West means in reality. It is concerned with the violation of an African country’s sovereignty; it is about occupation; it is about murder and it is brutal.

In 1971, Milton Obote went to the Commonwealth conference in Singapore where he was going to object to the British selling arms to the South African navy. In doing this, the then president of Uganda was opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa. When he returned home, his country had been taken over by Idi Amin, who was supported by the British, the Americans and the Israelis.

Dr Gazi went on to speak about farms and farming in Zimbabwe. He inveighed against the idea often put forward by those who confuse land and one-man one-vote.

"Never did I hear my mother or father say we were fighting for one-man one-vote," he said. "They said we went to fight for our land, to get our land back."

He dismissed the notion often peddled by white supremacists that white farmers were responsible for more agricultural output in Zimbabwe. He also dismissed the idea that because of white farmers, Zimbabwe had been "the breadbasket" of Africa.

Dr Gazi, a scientist by training, said there was no evidence suggesting that white expertise was responsible for more agricultural output in Zimbabwe, particularly the production of staple food. What evidence there was, pointed to black people doing this.

Reflecting on life in Rhodesia where he grew up, Dr Gazi recalled that from primary school, black children were taught carpentry, agriculture and sometimes metalwork. There was not one, not one, he repeated for emphasis, school where white people went to learn agriculture. He himself started learning agriculture when he was 10.

He dismissed the idea that whites were responsible for feeding Africans as a myth. It was Africans who had the agricultural know-how, pointing out examples of Domboshawa, Chivero, Mlezu agricultural colleges and others where Africans learnt agriculture. And there were many able black farmers, said Dr Gazi.

He blamed the Government for the poor farming output which, he said, did not implement the right pricing policy. He thought the low price for staple food like maize was the only reason, apart from seasonal factors, why agricultural output went down.

"Agriculture was destroyed by the policy of cheap prices for maize and so on which meant that it was better for the farmer to go and buy cellular phones in South Africa and come back and sell them for profit than to farm," said Dr Gazi.

On whether President Mugabe had been in power "for too long", as is often said by those advocating change, Dr Gazi said this depended on the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

He pointed that President Mugabe had been in office since 1980 while Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had become president in 1981. While there was clamour for President Mugabe to be removed from office, no one was asking Mubarak to leave office.

He went on to say that no one was saying President Mugabe was still in office because he breached the Constitution of Zimbabwe. If that was the case, this would mean he had been in office for too long. But since he was in fact complying with the Constitution, Dr Gazi urged his audience to reflect on the reason why there was pressure on President Mugabe and not on Mubarak. He challenged his audience directly and asked them why, if they were concerned about starvation in Zimbabwe, they did not send a container load of food or medicines to the poor.

Dr Gazi was asked to comment on violence reported in the media. He said he had no view on this until he had the facts.

He said he would not excuse anybody who violated Africans. That included South Africa where people were beaten up simply because they were foreigners.

His view on this was that this was meant to frighten Zimbabweans in South Africa so that they could go back to Zimbabwe and vote or influence the outcome of the election. He was driven to this conclusion because of the timing of the violence. Why did it happen just as preparations for the run-off got underway?

As regards violence in Zimbabwe, he said he did not know who was committing the violence against who. He said we had to find out and urged his audience not to be misled by those who are quick to blame the Government. He referred anecdotally to a section in his own book in which he described how the MDC once claimed that one of its members had been murdered by Zanu-PF when, on closer examination, it turned out it was a member of Zanu-PF who had been murdered by the MDC. Reality and what is reported don’t always coincide, he said.

A South African woman in the audience asked Dr Gazi whether he would comment critically on her former president, Nelson Mandela, given what she saw as a man who was being used by white society?

Dr Gazi would not be drawn to do so, saying Mandela, who was apparently speaking about "failure of leadership in Zimbabwe" as Dr Gazi was delivering his own speech, was a black man. He said there was a danger of concentrating our criticism against our own people who have got it wrong when there were many white people to criticise for doing untold damage to our own people.

He went on to say he did not join those who criticised Morgan Tsvangirai for being "so stupid" for the simple reason that he (Tsvangirai) "is my brother" who, he went on, "did have the right not to rule Zimbabwe", he said to much laughter.

People here are confounded by Tsvangirai’s judgment following his decision to seek refuge in the Dutch embassy rather than one of the African missions. One man in the audience remarked, to the amusement of the audience, that he had to run past the Nigerian embassy to reach the Dutch embassy and our Nigerian brothers are very upset about this!

The most heated exchange came when Dr Gazi was challenged by a former member of Zipra who complained that he did not get the land that he went to fight for. He complained that the Government of Zimbabwe had been discriminating against those in Matabeleland.

That is when Dr Gazi came to life. He said this was not his experience and he said this with certainty "because I was there".

He explained in minute detail his own role in trying to persuade people in Matabeleland to accept land being offered to them by the Government. He rejected the idea that land was being given by Zanu-PF.

"I know because I took 60 forms myself from the Ministry in Bulawayo, trying to persuade people to take up land but only six were taken because people were wrongly advised to reject it on the grounds that ‘ngo kwe Zanu konoko’."

Dr Gazi was applauded for holding his own ground on this and for winning over his brothers who later agreed that a discussion about the rights and wrongs made by individual personalities like Robert Mugabe at this stage was, in fact, a distraction from the real issue facing us today.

The issue is that "we want our land and we want to keep it", said Dr Gazi.

Labels: LAND REFORM, RHODESIA, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 8:25 AM