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Labour Govt reneged on land deal
Fred Oluoch, The East African (Nairobi)
October 23, 2006

http://allafrica.com/stories/200610231057.html

KELEBERT NKOMANI, the Zimbabwean High Commissioner to Kenya, who is also his country's permanent representative to UNEP and UN-Habitat, recently sought to give the government's perspective on the economic and political crisis facing the country. He spoke to Special Correspondent FRED OLUOCH

Critics of the Zimbabwean government are convinced the crisis has been exacerbated by the failure of SADC members to take President Mugabe to task over his governance style instead of handling him with kid gloves...

Zimbabwe is a founder member of the Southern African Development Community and enjoys the full support of its fellow members. Since the establishment of SADC, we have had very good relations and we work together in all programmes.

Whenever governance or economic issues arise, they are discussed fully in the appropriate SADC forum. In some cases, if there are bilateral issues like migrant labour, we discuss them bilaterally.

You have to understand that Zimbabwe is a landlocked country and a country that emerged from colonialism backed by a number of African countries, particularly our immediate neighbours who become independent before us: Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana and Tanzania.

These countries played an extremely important role in the liberation of Zimbabwe, and the struggle took a very heavy toll of their economies and infrastructure. So we consider ourselves a product of that process and therefore we value the solidarity and relationship that we have with those countries, since we take it as the basis of our independence.

If that is the case, why then is SADC not coming out strongly to intercede on behalf of Zimbabwe in its current trouble?

If you say a country is in trouble, it is better to define the nature of the problem. If you don't, you are likely to come up with wrong solutions. I want to say this: Zimbabwe, as a country, is very stable. But we have very serious economic challenges at this point in time. I can say that it is the main issue that we are facing.

SADC can neither be blamed, nor expected to solve the economic challenges facing Zimbabwe. Yes, on a number of occasions, SADC has strongly argued our case in international forums. For instance, when the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill was being mooted in the US, the SADC ambassador in the US brought a lot of pressure to bear to point out what the implications of such a legislation would be.

In your view, what are the major causes of Zimbabwe's current economic challenges, if not the issue of governance?

It all boils down to the issue of land redistribution, which almost derailed the independence talks at Lancaster in 1979. Andrew Young, the then US secretary of state, helped broker an agreement that the land would be bought from the white farmers systematically over time with assistance and funding from the British government, besides multilateral and bilateral assistance from donors.

It was important that more resources be made available to complete the process of moving land from the white community to the black majority on a willing-seller-willing- buyer basis.

The process went on well during the Conservative rule of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, but when the Labour government came into power, they said they did not feel they had an obligation to fulfil this pact. That it was not their job to adopt the policy of the conservatives.

This was a major departure, because it meant that the British government was disowning what we thought was the agreement at Lancaster House. As a result, Zimbabwe, through a legislative process, adopted a new policy on how to acquire land

The owners of the land would be paid for whatever development they had made on the land: If they had fenced the land, built a road, homestead etc, they would be compensated. But the Zimbabwe government felt that it would not be proper for us as a country to compensate the landlords for the land itself because that land was in the first instance not bought from the African original owners but taken away from them.

After we adopted this policy, the UK and US took a strong position against Zimbabwe. The UK organised the European Union against Zimbabwe, while the US passed what they call the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which essentially made it obligatory for all their representatives in international institutions to ensure that no financial resources would flow to Zimbabwe, particularly from the likes of the IMF and World Bank.

If the policy was popular, why did it result in a mass exodus of White farmers?

The idea was never that farmers should all go away. Indeed, no farmer need have left the country. What we said was that we are going to have a one-man, one-farm policy. And if you had more than one farm, then you give up some of the farms for redistribution. Of course, some of the farms were grotesquely large.

The size of the farm that remained depended on the location within the five national regions. In those with fertile soil and good rainfall, the size had to be smaller; if you were in a drier region, the size of the holding had to be bigger to be economically viable.

The policy was that as long as you nominated what farmland you wanted to keep within the given size, you could continue with your activities. But some of the sitting farmers acted in anger and insisted they were leaving Zimbabwe and relocating to places like Australia. We couldn't stop them.

How far has the redistribution process gone and has it achieved its objective of settling all the landless blacks?

I would say that a large number of people have been accommodated within the land redistribution process to date under the two schemes - A1, targeted at the lower income group, and A2, on the commercial side.

Quite a number of people have been settled, but there are still some people who are in need of land. An audit has been carried out to establish exactly who has taken up the pieces of land allocated to them. Some people in the euphoria [of the initial redistribution] did apply but didn't have an interest in working the land, and the audit report is revealing that there are some pieces of land that have not been taken up.

We know that there are some people who need land but have not been allocated. So a lot of rationalisation will have to be done to ensure that those who need land are settled.

I cannot say that every person in Zimbabwe who wants land will get it, but I think it will go a long way towards meeting the requirements of our population.

What would you say to the fact that some of the farms lie idle and that some of subsidised items meant to help the new farmers, such as fuel, were sold off at a huge profit?

I totally agree with that, that there were some lapses in terms of actual implementation of the subsidy programme.

There were some new farmers who received fuel at a cheaper rate than the market price. Some sold them, but that was an aberration and those who were caught were taken to court.

I am not saying that that it was absolutely smooth.

Still, agriculture is down and tobacco farming especially has virtually collapsed since the advent of land redistribution. Your comment?

In terms of volumes, we no longer realise what we used to produce.

But we understand why: The land is exchanging hands and new farmers are taking over. It takes them time to settle down, to acquire the skills and the capital necessary for those operations,

It is important to note that, unfortunately, at the height of our land distribution programme, between 2001 and 2004, we had a very severe drought in the Southern African region.

So, part of the fall in the level of production is attributable not so much to the reorganisation process as to the drought.

But we still produce tobacco and output started picking up last year. Records show that, in 2005, Zimbabwe exported tobacco worth over $200 million.

It is not much compared with what we used to produce, but we are confident that production will increase over time, with the support of the government.

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