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Botswana to feature in Zimbabwe crisis research
Donny Dithato, Mmegi
October 15, 2004

http://allafrica.com/stories/200410150440.html

A major comparative study to investigate the conduct of foreign and domestic policy towards the Zimbabwean crisis in four Southern African countries including Botswana is underway. The study is a joint effort between the London School of Economics (LSE), the French Institute for South Africa and the Institute of Global Dialogue.

Dr Wad Anseeuw of LSE who is the project researcher and coordinator, told Mmegi this week that the consultancy will undertake four case studies into the impact of the Zimbabwe land issue in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana.

Specifically, the research team will investigate district level conflicts within South African Wakkerstroomm district in Mpumalanga, Catandica district in Manica province of Mozambique, Waterberg or Hereroland in the Otjozondjupa province of Namibia and Kweneng District in Botswana.

Anseeuw said the central aim of the project is to gain insight into the nature of policy making and the broader African state system as well and the degree to which the challenges are facing it - in the form of new norms of governance of state and markets.

The study seeks to establish whether the challenges most recently articulated in the NEPAD initiative, will result in a sea of change in the conduct of inter-state and regional relations and policy outcomes.

The study is motivated by the fact that unlike many (if not most) foreign policy issues in Southern Africa, the land crisis in Zimbabwe resonates deeply with domestic populations of neighbouring states.

All of these states have experienced dispossession of land in favour of white commercial farming interests.

"As such, governments have had to tread with an unusual degree of care in managing this crisis, conscious of their domestic populations and the potential for opposition political parties to seek advantage from policy positions adopted by the state," Anseuuw said.

The research team includes Dr Chris Alden of the LSE as the project director as well as Dr Garth le Pere of the Institute of Global Dialogue in Johannesburg.

The team maintains that prevailing scholarly analysis of the tepid response of SADC countries towards the Zimbabwean crisis has attracted considerable attention.

It has served as a rationale for the "quite diplomacy" pursued by the South African government.

However, the general interpretation of the response to the Zimbabwe crisis ignores significant anomalies in the conduct and policies pursued by SADC states.

As an example, the researchers say that despite support for "constructive engagement" with President Robert Mugabe, the governments of Mozambique and Zambia have been quick to invite Zimbabwe's white farmers to settle in their agricultural regions, providing considerable incentives (and willingly risking the ire of local peasant farmers) to secure their presence.

The Namibian government on the other hand, is said to have initially upheld the position of white commercial farming in the country through adherence to constitutionalism (within the framework of willing buyer/willing seller).

But it has moved towards an increasingly radical redistribution scheme in concert with its regional support for Mugabe's programme.

By contrast, the researchers say South Africa's government has famously prevaricated, pursuing dialogue with Mugabe while (seemingly reluctantly) imposing penalties upon the regime at the Commonwealth.

At the same time the South African government has maintained a strictly legalistic approach to land restitution and resettlement seen initially in Namibia and pre-1998 Zimbabwe.

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