Maravi

(STICKY) (HERALD) ‘Property rights’: Rhodie ploy to retake land

‘Property rights’: Rhodie ploy to retake land
By Tafataona Mahoso

AT a Zimra charity dinner on November 20, 2009, Finance Minister Biti confirmed the suspicion of many Zimbabweans that his party, MDC-Tsvangirai, is still pursuing on behalf of that party’s Rhodesian core the defeat and reversal of land reform and all the gains of the African land reclamation movement.

Biti echoed the so-called "economic recovery" rhetoric of the US sanctions law against Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, when he told guests at the Zimra dinner that as Finance Minister in the inclusive government, he saw one of the key objectives of his ministry as "the restoration of property rights."

Property rights have never been abolished in Zimbabwe. Land distribution is not abolition of property rights; it is merely a minor correction of the massive land theft, which subsisted in Zimbabwe for a whole century.

Some Zimbabweans, including those in the liberation movement, Zanu-PF, may not appreciate how really inflammatory Biti’s language is in context.

First of all, the United States and its allies, those who imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe in order to "recover" white Rhodesian property in stolen land, have been battling against the excesses of private property and doing many once-unthinkable things in order to cope with the global financial tsunami which they call the global recession.

The British New Labour Government, for instance, is now the biggest owner of once private stock, having been forced by the current crisis to nationalise those corporations which were deemed "too big to be allowed to go under."

Therefore, the enthusiasm with which Biti and his MDC-T seek to condemn the Third Chimurenga and to lynch Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono for interfering with the racist Rhodesian land tenure system is not only out of step with African thinking here; it is now completely antiquated and out of step with the global shift which has forced the US, UK and EU to abandon the G7 and G8, and to embrace the G20.

The message from those who created the MDC formations for the purpose of restoring white settler property in our stolen land is that they have abandoned neoliberalism in order to protect their societies.

This message to their people is: We must do whatever works in order to save whatever jobs which have not already been swept away by the current crisis; we must do whatever works in order to create new jobs and save our people from destitution.

But here in Zimbabwe, with an economy reeling from ten years of illegal sanctions, with an agricultural sector starved of meaningful inputs or investments because of sanctions, we have a finance minister who sees his primary objective as the restoration of reclaimed African land to those who once stole and monopolised it for 100 years!

That is why a premature land audit is placed ahead of support to farmers; that is why the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe must be stopped from subsiding farmers and be placed under internal sanctions; that is why in the middle of the planting season we hear that UNDP and the inclusive government will pour precious foreign currency into constitution writing instead of financing those growing food to feed the nation.

What Biti’s speech means is that the inclusive Government should return reclaimed African land to the white Rhodies; starve the recently resettled African farmers of inputs and working capital; finance a premature audit whose purpose is to condemn those recently resettled African farmers as unfit even to set foot on their once stolen lands, and then continue indefinitely to rely on food imported from South Africa to feed Zimbabweans, so that those South Africans who have also been clamouring to reclaim their stolen lands forget about it forever!

The True Meaning of Recovery or Restoration

The "restoration" in Biti’s speech and the "recovery" in ZDERA refer to the same thing.

In the 1980s, USAID tried to direct policy research in the countries of the Southern African Development Co-ordinating Conference toward exactly the model which is emerging from Biti’s pronouncements and actions now.

According to Professor Carol B Thompson’s book Harvest Under Fire: Regional Co-operation for Food Security in Southern Africa (1991), USAID sought to prevent land redistribution in independent Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa as well as to ensure that the white settlers in those countries would keep their monopoly on land stolen from the African majority.

This could be guaranteed by making sure that the Frontline States did not change agricultural policies and economics too radically ahead of the collapse of the apartheid regime.

This could be guaranteed by making sure that the economic domination of the entire region by white South African capital would continue undiminished even after South Africa got an African government.

"In addition to various degrees of involvement in military destabilisation and economic restructuring of the Southern African region (as a whole) the US government has tried directly to alter Sadcc’s fundamental policies. At the 1987 annual conference of Sadcc in Gaborone, the head of the US delegation, M Peter MacPherson stated that South Africa would maintain its economic superiority over the region even after majority rule [and even in agricultural production.]"

Professor Thompson said what was at issue among the Frontline States was not the capacity of South Africa to dominate the region or to export food to the region. The issue was that the grossly unequal distribution of land in South Africa was reflected in the grossly unequal and racist health conditions of the people.

As long as white agricultural capital controlled all the land in South Africa, it would continue to export food all over the region and all over the world while millions of poor Africans suffered hunger and malnutrition inside South Africa itself.

So, for the Frontline States, there were two related challenges, not one. The first was to ensure equitable access to land for African smallholder farmers and to increase the numbers of these farmers.

The second challenge was to inaugurate an agrarian revolution among the majority smallholder farmers, which would lead to better nutrition and household food sufficiency.

This second objective is what USAID opposed; it is what MDC-T opposes; because it entails, it has entailed, drastically reducing the land hectare once monopolised by the white settlers who dispossessed the Africans.

The USAID position stated at the 1987 SADCC conference is essentially what Biti is implementing through his sanctions against the Grain Marketing Board and against the RBZ.

According to Thompson: "Another USAID official in Harare was more explicit [in his opposition to SADCC intentions], saying the (SADCC) members would not have to grow much maize after South Africa was free because it alone could take care of their demand.

When questioned about the fact that a new SA government would try to feed malnourished South Africans first before exporting grain and would have to redistribute land which would affect production, she simply replied ‘Well, the US has hungry people and we still export much grain.’ The assumption of USAID with regard to South Africa is that production relations will be maintained as they are".

In other words, the Frontline States understood the difference between food availability and food accessibility.

If the majority of rural households grew their own food they were unlikely to export it during times of shortage or drought.

A small racist minority controlling mega-estates among landless masses would continue exporting food while the masses went hungry or they would raise prices according to global demand, raise prices so high that the masses could not afford the food.

Indeed, in 1985, the Food First organisation published a paper called "South Africa: Hunger in a Land of Plenty" which stated, among other things, that: "The white minority government boasts that South Africa is among the top seven food exporting nations in the world.

"South Africa annually exports US 1billion dollars worth of agricultural products, including grain, beef, vegetables and fruits. Yet an average 136 black children die every day from the effects of malnutrition.

The extent of hunger is so incriminating that since 1966, the government has prohibited public agencies from publishing or even collecting data on malnutrition among blacks . . . Apartheid impoverishes blacks by enforcing low wages, keeping unemployment high, and prohibiting blacks from owning land in the 87 percent of South Africa reserved for whites who are 16 percent of the population."

By sitting on emergency funds from the G20 and from the African Export/Import Bank, by refusing to fight illegal sanctions, and by stopping the RBZ from intervening in the economy to assist farmers, the Ministry of Finance under Mr Biti has returned the country to the apartheid policies of the 1980s, as far as the majority is concerned.

For the African majority, high unemployment, low liquidity, low productivity and wide opportunities for a small and already rich elite are the key achievements of the Ministry of Finance under Mr Biti.

And the Rhodies love it. The only thing they are not sure of is whether indeed land reform will be reversed to enable them to recover most of the reclaimed land they once held exclusively.

Labels: APARTHEID, COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, LAND REFORM, LAND RIGHTS, NEOCOLONIALISM, RHODESIANS, USAID

posted by MrK @ 3:36 PM