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The nationalist narrative and land policy in Zimbabwe
Dale
Doré, Sokwanele
May 04, 2012
http://www.sokwanele.com/node/2373
This paper is
part of the Zimbabwe
Land Series
Executive
Summary
A narrative
is a selection of simplified stories that supports a particular
interpretation of history. It expounds a moral 'truth' in order
to legitimise authority and power.(1) In Zimbabwe an African nationalist
narrative has been constructed around the 'lost lands' to justify
the government's land reform programme. It recounts how British
colonists stole the best lands without compensating the indigenous
African peoples. It speaks of a culture where land, sanctified by
custom, cannot be owned, but is shared equally by wise traditional
leaders for the benefit of the community. It celebrates heroic struggles
to recover the lost lands, regain the dignity of a wronged people,
and defend the country's independence and sovereignty. And, like
all good propaganda, the narrative has a kernel of truth that is
repeatedly reinforced by leaders to convince their followers that
any means are justified to claim their moral right.
Why is it necessary
to challenge this narrative? Firstly, because it explicitly rejects
inconvenient truths. It does not recognise, for example, that the
international community and white Zimbabwean farmers consistently
supported an equitable land reform process to correct historical
injustices. It turns a blind eye to multiple farm ownership by the
new ruling elite while communal farmers remain mired in poverty.
And it ignores international law and the SADC Treaty whose tribunal
ruled that the seizure of white-owned farms was both racist and
unlawful. Secondly, the narrative has become entrenched as nationalist
doctrine. As such, it shuts out alternatives voices for constructive
engagement on government policies based on principles of economic
development and good governance. Any talk, for example, of strengthening
property rights and developing land markets is dismissed as being
foreign to Africans culture and its concept of ownership.(2) Few
policy analysts today dare challenge the current resettlement policy
based on state acquisition, ownership and the reallocation of agricultural
land. And, thirdly, the narrative is exclusive and divisive. Instead
of 'Zimbabwean' meaning a citizen of Zimbabwe, it has come to mean
a black Zimbabwean. It separates the majority 'us' from the minority
'them', who are demonised and denied their constitutional rights
to protection or to own land on the basis of their race or political
affiliation.
Above all, examining
the nationalist narrative on land will open the door to understanding
how it has been constructed by the ruling elite for its own political
ends; how it has justified deeply flawed policy decisions on land;
and how it has trapped policy analysts in a circular and stultified
debate. Only when we unshackle the mental underpinning of this narrative
can we re-enter the debating arena with the confidence that different
policy options can be robustly contested with intellectual integrity,
rigour, and goodwill.
The question
that has baffled so many, including Zimbabwe's friends and supporters,
was why such a promising lower-middle income country, with one of
the strongest agricultural and industrial sectors in sub-Saharan
Africa, suddenly embarked on a controversial land reform programme
which plunged the country into an intractable political and economic
crisis? This article argues that a core contributing factor was
the construction of a nationalist narrative of lost lands. This
narrative initially justified state control over land and a command
approach to policy implementation in the 1980s. After 2000 it re-emerged
to legitimise the seizure and nationalisation of white-owned commercial
farmland. Today it is used to oil the wheels of a patronage system
that includes the seizure of foreign-owned mines, banks and businesses.
Inalienability
of land
The narrative
began to take shape when the winds of change swept through Africa
in the 1950s and 1960's, when the cauldron of discontent over the
Land Apportionment Act (1930) and the Native Land Husbandry Act
(1951) became the focus of nationalist agitation for independence.
It was not just the loss of Ndebele and Shona lands in the 1890s
that were a source of grievance, but the subsequent expulsion of
whole African communities from European Farming Areas after World
War II that made the land issue the centre piece of the nationalist
narrative and emblematic of the liberation struggle itself.
By sanctifying
the inalienability of customary land and invoking the notion of
chiefly trusteeship, the nationalists created a unifying narrative
- both in the name of African tradition and the ideology of
the struggle, socialism. The essence of this narrative was the state's
role as the custodian of land on behalf of the people:
In respect
of agriculture, we have no difficulty because our own traditional
system is identical with the Marxist-Leninist approach: at least
insofar as ownership of land is concerned. Land has never belonged
to individuals... It has always belonged to the people as a whole.
We must go back to that traditional position. . . What we would
like to see established is a system which brings land into the
ownership of the people as a whole. This means the state will
act as the custodian for the whole people.(3)
In seeking to
forge the tenets of communal tenure with those of socialism, the
nationalists simplified the narrative, ignoring the fact that customary
tenure was a tradition largely invented by the colonialists.(4)
They downplayed the fact that traditional production systems consist
primarily of economically independent households with their own
gardens, fields and livestock. Despite calls for 'individual title'
by smallholder farmers,(5) the narrative stressed traditional methods
of labour co-operation: 'The government policy on co-operatives
is based on the functions of traditional societies in Zimbabwe,
which have always worked together in the form of nhimbe
or ilima during harvesting.'(6) The narrative then went
on to underline the moral imperative of socialism while denigrating
capitalism and, implicitly, markets as well.
Socialism
. . . rests fundamentally on the principle of morality. It is
a moral question first and foremost. . . . Surely, our own political
history, with the obnoxious system of land deprivation and concentration
of resources in the hands of a racial minority very familiar to
us, demonstrates vividly the injustices that attend the capitalist
system.(7)
The Zimbabwean
government's alternative to markets was centralised planning. So
it was that the Communal Land Development Plan of 1985 envisaged
the state's hand in planning villages, determining farm sizes, allocating
land on a leasehold basis, and evaluating farmers' performance.
Only the state would have the right to subdivide or sell communal
farmland. Typically, an inter-ministerial Co-ordinating Committee
and a National Coordinating Committee involving 20 ministries and
departments were to oversee the programme's planning, coordination
and implementation at national, provincial and district level.
For all the
seriousness with which the government deliberated on these plans,
they came to naught. The top-down command style of planning and
implementation had not only proved to be impossibly inefficient
and alienating, but the Land Tenure Commission of 1993 found that
smallholders in the communal areas were actively opposed to it.
By the 1990s, it had been largely shelved and forgotten. As the
government's land policy began to focus almost exclusively on resettlement,
so the communal areas again became a backwater of neglect and poverty.
What remained was state control over communal land, and the President
as its trustee.
Unsustainable
resettlement model
The most obvious
way for one farmer to compensate another for the transfer of land
would be to simply buy it. To assist poor but deserving black buyers,
the state could simply have provided soft loans with repayment moratoriums
to acquire land from white farmers. But, by denigrating capitalism
and markets as un-African and exploitative the narrative justified
the state capture and control of commercial farmland for resettlement.
It envisaged a central role for the state which, represented by
the President, would repossess the land from white farmers and -
not unlike traditional leaders - redistribute it equitably
amongst its black subjects. Initially, the beneficiaries were to
be the poor and landless Zimbabweans who could not afford to buy
land. Indeed, the narrative saw no reason why they should pay for
land that had been 'stolen' in the first place. But, especially
after 2000, it would justify the seizure of commercial farms and
reallocate them to any black Zimbabwean, whether rich or poor. Beneficiaries
had only to believe in the narrative's moral authority: that they
were simply taking back what was rightfully theirs. Thus, without
any sense of irony, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the former Prime Minister
of Zimbabwe Rhodesia (1978-79), would say that he only wanted land
that was taken from his forefathers without compensation. He called
his action a 'correction of injustice'.(8)
A more insidious
side-effect of state control, however, was the financial implications
of the resettlement model. Since the narrative precluded individual
ownership or transfers via a land market, the state first had to
pay for the land then reallocate it, but without any institutional
mechanism of recovering the costs of either the land or the infrastructural
development that was needed to support newly settled farmers. In
essence, the contradiction was this: the more land and resources
that were acquired to make a success of resettlement, the greater
the government's financial burden. Within the nationalist narrative,
therefore, lay the seeds of a land policy which would produce an
economically unsustainable model of resettlement. Its ramifications
would reverberate throughout subsequent policy decisions which were
driven by the need to meet political commitments written into the
narrative, but without the financial means to deliver them.
There were three
ways in which the state tried unsuccessfully to bridge this ever-widening
financial gap. The first was to gradually erode the constitutional,
legal and property rights of commercial farmers, and thereby reduce
the amount payable in compensation for land. Rather than paying
market-based compensation, a 'fair' price was to be administratively
determined. At the same time, a 'reasonable' period for paying compensation
would be redefined and extended. After 2000, the government paid
less and less for land, improvements and equipment, and eventually,
with the nationalisation of most commercial farmland in 2005, nothing
at all. A second method of reducing the cost of resettlement was
to provide less and less support for new settlers. In its original
conception in 1980, the provision of infrastructure and extension
services was seen as a sine qua non for new settlers to make a success
of farming. But no sooner had an intensive resettlement programme
began when an 'accelerated' programme was designed to settle families
urgently. Planning procedures were therefore cut to a minimum and
only basic infrastructure provided.(9) After 2000, not even the
rudiments of infrastructural and extension support were provided
for those settlers occupying commercial farms. The third method
of reducing resettlement costs was to transfer responsibility for
paying compensation for land. As the resettlement programme faltered,
demands for Britain to resume funding became more strident. Eventually,
in 2000, Zimbabwe passed Constitutional Amendment No.16 which made
Britain responsible for paying compensation to white commercial
farmers whose land had been compulsorily acquired.
State
control over land
State control
over the communal land was extended into resettlement areas by issuing
those who occupied it with various permits. As one World Bank report
noted: "It would be difficult to imagine a less secure form
of tenure: uncertain duration, broad powers of termination on the
part of the Ministry, and few rights to compensation for investments."(10)
The ruling party
then used its narrative to exercise control over commercial farms
and their white owners. As a first step, an increasingly powerful
executive undermined the restraining hand of the judiciary. In the
name of the narrative's moral imperative, farmer's fundamental rights
were systematically undermined after 2000 by post hoc legislation
and other legal changes that were described by a UN mission as 'openly
at variance with the doctrine of natural justice.'(11) After 2000,
the rule of law itself was suspended as court orders were ignored
and personal protection withdrawn. Land disputes were no longer
to be settled through the courts of law, but by negotiation, supplication,
and the prerogative of the executive. The latest count shows that
barely 200 out of Zimbabwe's original 4,800 white farmers remain
on the land. Worse, over 200,000 farm workers lost their jobs, and
their families lost access to housing, schools, clinics and other
social services.(12)
With the state's
control over land, hardly anyone in Zimbabwe today enjoys secure
property rights. Communal farmers lack transferable rights, resettlement
farmers' permits offer no protection, and white commercial farmers
are still prey to predatory government officials. AI settlers who
seized land after 2000 are being forced off land by those A2 farmers
who are being issued with 'offer letters'. But even these confer
little security because of the wide discretionary powers granted
to the Minister to cancel them.(13) All those possessing land are
subject to party sanction and are beholden to the state to continue
farming their land.
The road ahead
Informed debate
on restoring property rights and agricultural productivity requires
re-examining the premises and implications of the nationalist narrative.
The fundamental question is whether property rights should vest
primarily in citizens or the state. It means going back to the principles
and practices that underlie economic development, human rights,
and calibrating land policies to reduce poverty though pro-poor
agricultural development and economic growth.
Notes
1) Jean-Francois
Lyotard (1984) The Postmodern Condition, University of Minnesota
2) Preamble,
Communal Lands Development Plan (1985)
3) Robert Mugabe
(1983) Our War of Liberation: Speeches, Articles, Interviews (1976-1979).
Mambo Press: Gweru
4) Terrance
Ranger (1983) The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa. Cambridge
University Press
5) Zimbabwe
Farmers Union submission to the Land Tenure Commission, 1994
6) The Herald:
'Transformation to Socialism the Main Aim,' September 9, 1983.
7) Inaugural
address by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe at a series of lectures
entitled The Construction of Socialism in Zimbabwe launched by the
Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies in 1984.
8) SW Radio
Africa, 24 January 2008
9) Appendix
E, Intensive Resettlement: Policies and Procedures (Zimbabwe, 1985).
10) World Bank
(1991) Zimbabwe: Agricultural Sector Memorandum. Washington D.C.
11) UNDP (2002)
Zimbabwe: Land Reform and Resettlement, New York.
12) Sachikonye,
L (2003) The Situation
of Commercial Farm-workers after Land Reform. Report: Harare.
13) UNDP (2002).
Ibid.
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