Back to Index

'Behind the Headlines' interviews Geoff Hill - SW Radio Africa
Lance Guma, Short Wave Radio Africa
May 19, 2005

Geoff Hill was born in 1956 and grew up in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe where he became fluent in the Shona language. In 1980 he joined the Manica Post and after the nationalization of the newspaper in 1982 he moved to Australia spending eight years with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. After working in Australia, the USA and the United Kingdom, Geoff returned to Zimbabwe in 1997 where he worked as a journalist. In 2002 he moved to Johannesburg where he is currently Africa correspondent for the Washington Times. In September 2000 he became the first non American to receive the John Steinbeck award for short story writing and he also won the 2000 Commonwealth Short Story Award for Africa. He is well known for his book "The Battle for Zimbabwe: The Final Countdown", and recently, he launched a new book "What Happens After Mugabe". Behind the Headlines tracked him down in South Africa, and asked him about the research into his book.

Geoff Hill: Lance, it wasn't terribly wide ranging, it looked at the issues that allegedly, purportedly contributed to the Zimbabwe crisis and it looked at them in a special way, this is talking to South Africans to see whether any of those pressures exist here in South Africa. And the first thing of course is the Zimbabwe Government has blamed its problems on land, on white farm owners, which in my book, I have said I think that it's a lot of nonsense. My view was always that the problems in Zimbabwe came from urbanisation, from young educated people living in the cities and having no jobs, and living poor. And that's where the MDC was born from. So, we went round South Africa, 2000 people in eight centres across the country, and this was only black people, and said 'if you were offered a choice of a job in the city or a 100 hectares of your own land in a farming area in the rural parts of South Africa, which would you take?'. And 82% of black South Africans said they would take a job in the city, which suggested that the main focus of South African desire is not actually on land at all, but it's on employment.

Lance: Is there a particular reason why people preferred the urban set up to the rural one?

Geoff Hill: I think you've got to see the aspirations, the changing aspirations in Africa, Asia, South America. I think aspirations these days are not so much about land and cattle, they are really about cell phones and cable television and cars. To me the aspirations of particularly young black people here in South Africa are identical to young people in Manchester, Liverpool, New York, Sydney, wherever, there's no real difference. But we then refined it and we asked the same group, the same survey, the 2000 people. We said 'ok, if you won the lottery and you no longer had to work, you won the equivalent of 5 million rand, which is about 600 000 US dollars, and you no longer had to work, where would you chose to make your home? Would you live in a rural area or would you live in the city?' . And this was to see whether there's an emotional attachment to the land and perhaps people are only in town to make a living. And three quarters of black people said no, if they won the lottery they would make their home in the city.

Lance: In your book "What Happens After Mugabe", what was your conclusion of the crisis in Zimbabwe?

Geoff Hill: Very much the same lines as in my first book "The Battle for Zimbabwe", that in 1980, '81, '82, Mugabe did a wonderful thing, and for this, he remains one of my heroes in respect of education. He took an already good education system, a Rhodesian education system, which had created a 70% literate black population, the highest in Africa in 1980, and he expanded it, and he took that literacy level to 92%, and for that Mugabe must always be remembered and thanked. The problem was that his government made no plans for the needs of an educated work force. And in studies in Brazil, Thailand, Phillipines, Kenya you name it, the UN studies have shown very clearly that when you educate people in a rural area, the first thing they do is go to town. And this is what happened in Zimbabwe, kumusha came to town, and of course in town there were no jobs. As one Tanzanian economist put it to me, he said 'once you've taught people to do algebra and read Shakespeare, you cannot ask them to make a life keeping goats', and I think that was very telling, and that's really what happened in Zim. And that was the revolt against Mugabe came from those educated people, his response was to try and buy them off with pieces of land and as we know, that hasn't worked.

Lance: Now obviously Mugabe's fast track land redistribution system has killed commercial agriculture and your book devotes a whole chapter on how to rebuild this. What is needed in order to rebuild commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe?

Geoff Hill: I used a lot of research, I used some from the International Crisis Group in Belgium, some from the rebuilding of farm sectors in South and Central America. The first thing is that you've got to create a rural economy and this is a lot more difficult than it sounds. So, for example one has to understand that in places like say Mutoko or Murehwa or places that are a bit out of the way, particularly Mutoko, Mount Darwin, if you want to get commercial farmers out there, of any colour, you've got to have services, you've got to have veterinary services, you've got to have a local tractor depot and spare parts and so on. Now these things carry an economy of scale, when you have a Massey Ferguson depot at Mount Darwin or somewhere the person operating that business, that tractor business, will only operate there if there is a critical mass of farmers to give him business, maybe 50, 60 farmers or so. Same with a vet, same with things like that.

So when you're first couple of commercial farmers go out to an area like that there are no services and they have to come into Harare for everything and this becomes frighteningly expensive. So you're going to have to have some kind of support system and some kind of compensation if you like, to farmers, some kind of subsidy to get people back on the land. Secondly you have got to get away from this whole racial thing of black farmers and white farmers and say 'we're looking for commercial farmers to go out onto this land. And if we've got somebody who's got the skills to go and use the land you can say, 'look, you can go and use the land, and if, after ten years if you've made the right improvements, the land is yours. Because, a lot of the commercial farmers have left, they've gone to Canada, to Australia; it's no got saying that because Piet Van Der Merwe had a farm in Bindura we must go and give it back to him. Piet Van Der Merwe is now probably living in Newcastle or in Ontario, so we have to look at a way of getting people back onto the land.

Lance: Mugabe's supporters have always said it's easy for people to criticise and that this was the only way they could redistribute the land. What in your view would have been the best way of going around the land issue?

Geoff Hill: well, I just don't think there was a land issue. Now that's just my personal view. I just don't believe there was a land issue, I think there was a jobs issue. You know, when you go into rural areas in Zimbabwe, if you go into the communal areas even, there is plenty of land, and the reason there is plenty of land is that so many people have moved to town. And they haven't moved to town because they couldn't find a piece of land. They have moved to town because their aspirations are not linked to the land. They are linked to cell phones and cable tv and going to movies and getting a good standard of living that is just not available in the rural areas. So, I don't believe there ever was a land crisis. The other thing is that white farming in South Africa, sorry, in Zimbabwe, was on a rapid road to extinction. The farmers were getting older, white farmers, were getting older. Their children were not going back on to the land, they were becoming economists and teachers and lawyers and vets. They were going to private schools and then going on to University in South Africa, and the trend across Zimbabwe was that the next generation of farmers simply wasn't there. So, the land ownership issue in Zimbabwe was resolving itself anyway, over 20 years time I don't think there would have been many white farmers left. Certainly, to cripple and destroy the farming sector and leave the country in starvation was not the answer to anything.

Lance: You make mention of a Truth and Justice Commission in Zimbabwe after Mugabe, will that be possible in Zimbabwe given the levels of violence and retributions we have seen?

Geoff Hill: Lance I think it's critical. And the reason I say that is because in places like Afghanistan, in Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Yugoslavia, in East Timor, in Cambodia, you've had pay-back killings. You've had not civil war but retribution killings, where you've killed my mother so I kill you, or even worse, I kill your innocent mother who had nothing to do with it, to pay you back . And with the people I've interviewed, there is a very real danger of this. Not from Gukuruhundi but from the recent violence. And I think if you are going to stop that kind of chaos which can be very damaging to the image of a country, very damaging to the investment climate, then people have got to feel that the government is doing something about redressing past wrong if a member of their family was murdered. And I do believe that's very important. It's also very important to send a message to a future government in Zimbabwe and to elsewhere in Africa, that if you do these things we will catch you will be prosecuted. You might have to drag someone out of an old age home when they are 80, but we will do that, and I think this sends a message to other people who may be inclined to use violence as a way of achieving their ends that it's just not worth it.

Lance: Richard Dowden, the Director of the Royal African Society, believes the world must talk to Mugabe instead of confronting him, do you agree with this analysis?

Geoff Hill: I think the world talked to Mugabe for 20 years, the world continued to talk to Mugabe when he was making Gukuruhundi down in Matabeleland, that didn't stop him from slaughtering the Matabele. I don't think talking to Mugabe has achieved anything, firstly. But secondly, I think you've also got to look that you are talking to a man of 81, now the future of the world is not in Mugabe's hands, time is not with Mugabe. If you want to talk to a new generation of ZANU (PF) people, that's fine and I can understand Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's approach to South Africa in the 1980's and '90's. They said we need to talk to people like F.W. De Klerk because they are trying to reform the system but I think if people like Verwoerd or John Vorster would have been in power the situation would have been very different. They had no intention of reforming the system. If you had a reformer in Zimbabwe who had an agenda for change, yes, of course you should talk to that person. But I don't believe the last 25 years have shown that Robert Mugabe is the kind of person you can talk to and get him to change his mind, so what's the point?

Lance: I've heard people say we have embarassed Mugabe so much that we've put him in a corner and the only way he could handle the situation is to fight back. Could that be true?

Geoff Hill: it may be, you know I'm not a psychologist, I can't get into Mugabe's mind, but I think he's been fighting back for a long time. He nationalised the press in 1982, he declared genocide on the Matabele in 1987, he's quite happy to starve his people to starve his people to win an election. I don't think he's fighting back, I think he's fighting for survival, and he's not fighting against the West, he's fighting against his own people. Not a single Western correspondent or lawmaker, or member of the European Parliament has been tortured or had their house burnt down or beaten up or killed by the Mugabe government. And actually, very few white Zimbabweans have. His victims have been ordinary black Zimbabweans, if anyone has put him in a corner, it's them. And no, I don't think that you can say we can forget all that and pretend that didn't happen. So, no, I don't think the West put Mugabe in a corner at all. I think he's been put in a corner by his own lack of planning. Going right back to the beginning of the survey, there were no plans to cope with a young educated workforce which was created by Mugabe himself with his wonderful education policies, and I don't see any answer to that until you get a government that is going to rebuild the economy of Zimbabwe, presumably, after Mugabe.

Lance: Moving back slightly, to South Africa and your research. The research itself seems to dismiss xenophobia in South Africa as a myth but people who have been there seem to have a different view. Is xenophobia that insignificant a phenomenom.

Geoff Hill: Well, this is very interesting, because when we asked black people if they had a problem with white immigrants living in South Africa, 65% of them said no. When we asked black South Africans if they had a problem with black immigrants, like Zimbabweans, living in South Africa, 71% of them said no they didn't have a problem with it. When we asked white people if they had a problem with blacks from the rest of Africa living here, interestingly only 52% of those white people said no, which was the smallest in the survey. Which suggests, that if there is xenophobia it is more actually white South Africans who are somewhat xenophobic to blacks from the rest of Africa, then it is blacks who are xenophobic to white immigrants or indeed, to black immigrants. 71% of blacks had no problem with black people from the rest of Africa, but white South Africans, it seems, do have a problem.

Lance: Your research in general on the attitudes of South Africans towards the Zimbabwean crisis, does this explain Thabo Mbeki's stance on Zimbabwe? Can we draw a link to the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Geoff Hill: It's a very interesting question. You can't draw a link from my research, but the same polling company, last year, did another poll with a different sample of people, not for me, for somebody else, where they asked whether they thought South Africa should do more about Zimbabwe. And actually, not a majority, but about half, it was split about half and half, that South Africans felt South Africa should do more. But certainly, there was no groundswell of support for sanctions. As I recall, I think it was only 40% of South Africans, across all races, who thought that South Africa should impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. So, that may mean that South Africans approve of Thabo Mbeki's handling, or it may just mean that it's not an issue, it's something that people are not thinking about and not talking about that much. But, no, the approval rating recently come out, again from a different survey, the approval rate for Thabo Mbeki is 59% for Thabo Mbeki, the highest for any president in South Africa's history.

Lance: Is there potential for disaster for South Africa because of Zimbabwe's problems?

Geoff Hill: I don't think so, I think the Zimbabwean economy is now too small to affect South Africa. I think the Zimbabwe scenario has a danger here in South Africa, in that, from research, we have seen that huge numbers of South Africans, young black South Africans are pouring into the cities. One of the statistics we got from the South African statistics website is that the cities in this country are growing at 3.6% per year, the rural areas in South Africa are shrinking in population at a rate of 0.3% per year. So rural areas are shrinking in population and cities are mushrooming. Just to put that into context, South Africa's overall population growth rate is 1.4% and cities are growing at 3.6%, two and a half times the national rate. And, I can see the same problems as in Zimbabwe that the government is not putting enough time, enough resources and enough money into creating urban jobs for people, and if they don't, yes I do believe there could be disaffection against the government from young, black, urban, unemployed people who feel the state has let them down.

Lance: Geoff, in concluding the programme what is the way forward in Zimbabwe? We seem to have a glut of pro democracy groups pulling in different directions in Zimbabwe. What is the way to go?

Geoff Hill: I still think that the only way to go in Zimbabwe is a free and fair election, and in any country in fact, the only way to go is for people to feel that they have a legitimate government and for the world to then re-engage with Zimbabwe. And, to me, I think the pressure just has to stay on. Until there is a free and fair election this problem that is bothering Zimbabwe is not going to go away. But, having said that, I do believe that one has to be very careful in this idea, this is what my book talks about, very careful of this idea that if you simply get rid of the people who are in power now, Mother Theresa is going to come down from heaven and run the country for you. And, that is what the book is really about, the book is about what can be done to rebuild Zimbabwe, and things that can be done right now to create a better future in that country. Plans and projects that could be carried out right now in Britain and in South Africa and in some cases, in Zimbabwe. Because, just changing the government as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn't guarantee peace, stability, democracy or anything else.

Lance: It's a difficult question Geoff, but I have to ask it. What happens after Mugabe?

Geoff Hill: Well, if you buy the book you might find out! But, may I add that the title of the book is not 'What Happens after Mugabe', it's "What Happens After Mugabe?" - question mark , so I'm imposing a question in the title, I'm not providing the answers. But I am looking at places like Mali, Somaliland, not Somalia but Somali Land, and places like Kenya, Zambia, as both good and bad examples of countries that have been liberated from tyrannical or oppressive regimes. And some have done well, and some not done that well, and we have looked at why they have succeeded and why others, like Kenya have failed and why corruption is almost as bad now as it was under the Moi government, and what you can do to prepare a country for a better future. That's really what it's about; the things that need to be put in place to make sure there is a better future when change comes. And, as we said, we are talking about a man who is 81 so sooner or later that change will come, whether we will be ready for it is another question.

Lance: Geoff Hill, thank you for joining me on 'Behind the Headlines'.

Geoff Hill: Thanks Lance.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP