A former commercial farmer said to me some time ago, “it’s because of you guys in the MDC that Zimbabwe is in such a mess!” He expanded his view by explaining that if the MDC had not challenged the hegemony of Zanu (PF), they would never have destroyed commercial agriculture. I think there is a lot of truth in this.
Following the No Vote in the 2000 Referendum, against the adoption of a new Constitution that would give even more powers to the head of state, Zanu (PF) carried out an analysis and discovered that, despite rigging the vote, they had lost massively and that the vote had been split between the urban areas, which had voted MDC and the communal areas, which had voted Zanu (PF). The “swing vote” had been 6 000 large scale commercial farms with 350 000 workers and their families – probably 600 000 voters, who had voted for the new boys on the block, MDC. To compound this analysis they concluded that the white farmers, financially strong and well organised, had played a key role in this. Within two weeks, the farm invasions began under the guise of a “Fast Track Land Reform Programme”. Thousands of farm workers and a few farmers were beaten and murdered.
Assets stolen
In the following years nearly all farmers who do not have good links with Zanu (PF), have been forcibly removed from their farms and in many cases, rendered homeless and destitute. Many were not even allowed to take their personal belongings. All focus was on the white farmers – televisions showed pictures of gangs of thugs burning homes and killing dogs. Very few followed what happened to the 350 000 farm workers and their families. They were dispossessed and made homeless, many creeping back to the farms after the owners had been driven out and squatting on the properties they worked on. The farms – worth many billions of dollars with nearly 3 million head of cattle, 287 000 hectares of irrigation, 10 000 farm dams and millions of miles of fencing and water pipelines, homes, sheds, 25 000 tractors – were trashed. The assets were stolen and sold for scrap or transferred to new places.
In 2005, when it became apparent that crushing the farm communities had not been enough to stop the MDC threat, Zanu (PF) launched a campaign in May – the coldest time of the year – to destroy informal homes in urban areas and informal traders, most of whom are fiercely independent. In three months they destroyed 300 000 homes, displaced 1,2 million people into the rural areas and destroyed some 700 000 small business ventures. Subsequent studies have shown that up to half the men so displaced died, the women were more resilient. Small children had little chance of survival. Because they had been forcibly removed to remote rural areas, these people were unable to vote in the 2005 elections.
Birthday binge
While Mugabe and his 20 000 acolytes recover from their birthday binge at Victoria Falls over the weekend, over 90 per cent of Zimbabweans struggle to survive, 70 per cent on less than 35 cents a day. Life expectancy is just 34 years, our hospitals are morgues, our schools are care centres for kids with nothing else to do. We are among the poorest people in the world, when before this protracted democratic war began, we had been a middle income state with the second most advanced economy in Africa and a major net exporter of food.
So should the MDC have not been formed? Should we not have taken to the field of this conflict? Should we have done what Joshua Nkomo did when the price of democratic resistance simply became too high? – cave in and leave the field? After all you cannot eat a vote! The MDC is not a party drawn from the middle or upper classes, it’s a party of the poor and nowhere else is the suffering of this campaign for democracy, human and political rights and even freedom, more keenly felt because they have nowhere else to go. When I speak to our supporters across this beautiful, but broken country and I ask “do we carry on the fight?” faces light up and the response is yes, no matter the cost, this is a struggle we have to win – for our future and our children. We are at war for democracy vs tyranny.
Post published in: Opinions