Research by scholars from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom has highlighted an interesting aspect of the land reform exercise, suggesting that some peasant farmers have done reasonably well on their new plots. The 10-year research that studied land reforms in Masvingo province showed that some settlers had built new homes, 41 percent made from bricks, many with tin or asbestos roofing.
It also showed that asset ownership in newly settled areas was higher than comparable samples in the neighbouring communal areas, with new farmers owning more cattle, farm equipment and even cars compared to their counterparts in the old tribal trust lands.
Of course, the reality that millions of peasant farmers only escaped starvation these past 10 years only because international relief agencies were quick to step in with food handouts is also true. As the study points out it is a highly complex situation.
The study was restricted to Masvingo. However, we hope that the findings of relative prosperity among new farmers in that province is true of all new farmers across the country.
We hope, too, that agricultural production will continue to rise and that tobacco output will soon average around 200 million kilogrammes or more per year, as was the case before fast-track land reforms.
We hope and pray that soon the Grain Marketing Board will be struggling with where to keep excess maize and other key cereals coming from the new farmers.
But let us not forget that prosperity in resettlement areas is no justification for killing fellow citizens. To achieve land reform and for peasant farmers in Zimbabwe to prosper, it was not necessary that war veterans roam the countryside assaulting, raping, torturing and killing.
The lawlessness and violence that has gone hand-in-hand with land reform has sadly become routine in much of the country. And it has been driven by one purpose alone ensuring that power remains in the hands of Mugabe and Zanu (PF).
The white farmer and his worker had to be destroyed because commercial farms, as with all sectors where there was a concentration of the working class, had become a powerful support base for the labour-backed MDC and therefore a threat to Mugabes hold on power. They had to be depopulated.
We have said it before: the true tragedy of Mugabes land policies of the past decade lies is not in the hunger and economic ruin his programmes have imposed on Zimbabwe.
Mugabes greatest crime against Zimbabweans is the way in which he callously manipulated a genuine national grievance the land question and caused the blood of fellow citizens to be shed, all to further a personal ambition to cling to power.
That is truly unforgivable!
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga