In essence, Joseph Hanlon argues in Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land that while a small group of white commercial farmers (around 400) still have an important role to play, the fact that almost all the country’s best agricultural land is now in indigenous hands is no bad thing.
Here is a work that should be read by all those with the short and long-term interests of a country once called the Jewel of Africa in their minds and hearts.
The US-born but British naturalised academic, who is a respected scholar and authority on Mozambique, argues that the violence that accompanied what’s commonly called “fast track land reform” was unfortunate, but that the invaders of 2000 and beyond learned their lessons and tricks from the British.
First by grasping what the Pioneer Column under the sponsorship of Cecil Rhodes was all about in 1890 and then by examining what the British government did to local people after the Second World War when they encouraged the settlement of white ex-servicemen in southern Rhodesia and then went on to design, and partly finance, the Central African Federation (CAF) which started in 1953 and ended in 1963. In terms of helping the layman understand the historic background to land reform this is, in my opinion, easily the best book so far.
What Zimbabwe has produced (or not produced) over the last 13 years, I leave to others who are better informed to discuss. When I examine page after page of figures, I bear in mind what Benjamin Disraeli quipped some time back – Lies, lies and damned statistics.
For the purpose of these three brief reports, I ask the reader only to listen to what Hanlon has to say because, again in my opinion, it is the quintessence of the liberal, socialist, quasi- Marxist, African nationalist viewpoint which (since the publication of Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth) demands that the invasion of European owned farms in Africa was not only economically needed but psychologically vital if a new generation of post-uhuru Africans are to stride with confidence and dignity in the future.
And already I hear the cry: Yes, with the dignity of an empty stomach.
At his large and book- lined penthouse in London’s Southampton Row, on 24 January (a week before his book was launched) Joseph Hanlon spoke:
“It’s sad that they (the invaders) weren’t any better than the settlers. But I think that we, the British, taught them how to do this – this is how you do a transfer of land.
On violence
By violence and occupation. I think the occupations of 2000 were simply following the colonial model and the Cecil Rhodes model and I think that the war veterans learned their lessons very well, a lesson that we taught them – the British. There was violence in the occupation. No question. But I think there was less violence in that occupation than in the white occupation 30 years before.
“What’s interesting is to compare Zimbabwe with South Africa. The number of white farmers who have been killed in KwaZulu/Natal is huge. The number of deaths in Zimbabwe was very small. Okay, even a very small number is too many and yes, it should not have been so violent but the campaigners against the occupation have used that violence without ever realizing it has a history – and that history comes from the liberation war. They should remember that many of those white farmers were fighting against those guys in the liberation war”.
“A number of those farmers were actually veterans of the Rhodesian Army and one of the things that does come out of the literature now is that the most vicious attacks were on those who’d been soldiers in the Rhodesian Army and they were targeted.
Why the invasion started:
If we’re going to worry about the violence, we should think about the violence of the liberation war and we should think about the violence of the 1950s and the evictions of farmers and put this into context and I think that the violence of this land reform is much less than the previous violence that beset Zimbabwe.”
“After Independence (in 1980) racism in Zimbabwe remained very high. I remember being in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. The whites remained in total isolation. They didn’t integrate into the new country and I think that isolated them from the political process. What is interesting about the white farmers who have kept their farms is that they are the ones who integrated into the new Zimbabwe, who built links with the new communities, who built links with the black farmers. There are still several hundred white farmers.
“There are many whites who are involved in agro-business and trading and they see themselves as Zimbabweans and they’re still there. But there was this group of white farmers who remained very much in isolation and some of these big commercial farmers were exporting large amounts of capital, doing transfer-pricing and a number of things and then the critical thing.
When the MDC was formed, they were photographed giving cheques to Morgan Tsvangirai. It just looked bad. You don’t do that sort of thing. You can give money to the MDC but don’t do it quite so publicly. I think that led to hostility because Mugabe was already under pressure and he was seeing whites aligning quite openly and publicly with the opposition.”
On Gukuruhundi
“I wish the international community had taken more of a stand against Gukuruhundi. It would have made a difference. But the other thing we must never forget about it was how important South Africa’s de-stabilisation was at that time. A lot of that was set up by South African agents who were still in Mugabe’s security services who, a year later, were suddenly appearing in Johannesburg in the South African security services.
Gukurunhundi was very complicated but if the international community had taken a stronger stance, it might actually have been useful.
Next week: Robert Mugabe – the reluctant land reformer and how 10 percent of the land is now owned by his sycophants and cronies.
Post published in: Agriculture