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The
Zimbabwe I want: Mandivamba Rukuni on culture, politics and land
reform
Amanda
Atwood, Kubatana.net
March 04, 2010
View audio file details
The Southern
and Eastern African Political and Economic Series Trust (SAPES)
is hosing a weekly seminar
series, alternating between policy dialogue, and discussions
on the Constitution. To kick off their series, the first discussion
was on the Land Question in Zimbabwe.
Renowned land
policy analyst Mandivamba Rukuni lead the discussion, sharing his
thoughts on the challenges facing Zimbabwe, and what role land policy
played in that. Some of his thoughts from this discussion are summarised
below.
Join the SAPES
discussion series every Thursday from 5pm-7pm. For more information,
email admin@sapes.org.zw
Africa has been
declining over the past 50 years over every area - politics,
economics, environment, socially. What has happened that we are
declining in all of these areas? The good news is that if we're
failing generally, it is likely to be for one key reason. I believe
the reason is that we do not have a cultural foundation to development
strategies in Africa. A cultural foundation is what our ancestors
had laid down for us, but we abandoned it. We had strong families,
and strong communities. There was no nation in Africa that was built
on weak families and weak communities. Today we are stuck in the
colonial paradigm. But the colonial powers did not need strong families
and strong communities - they were industrialised. Africa
is 70% rural. A rural population needs strong families and strong
communities in order to thrive. We are assuming, incorrectly, that
a strong state and strong government can solve our developmental
challenges. I don't think that will happen.
Listen
There are four
causal reasons why we are running into these problems:
- Organised
politics
- Organised
religion
- Formal education
which is totally irrelevant to people's lives
- Economic
policies based on greed, individualism and selfishness
Listen
I believe we
should modernise Africa, not Westernise it. It will take more than
200 years to Westernise it. It will be much cheaper, easier and
quicker to figure out what kind of African society we need at family
level and community level, and modernise that.
How does the
land issue fit into all this? This February is 125 years after the
Berlin Conference where the European masters sat around a table
and carved out the Africa amongst them. The best way to rule people
forever is not just to take their land and give it back to them
afterwards. But in the process that you are holding the land, sell
them everything else - the language, the culture, the religion,
the education. Then after that you can let them go. And if you do
it smartly, they'll have a new God, a new name, they'll
eat new food, and then you don't need to be there -
they will be running yourselves on your behalf. This is what has
happened to us Africans.
Listen
So the colonial
legacy in Africa explains our poverty. Our poverty is not material.
We are defining poverty at the wrong level. Africa has material
poverty just because we are producing things we don't depend
on, and we depend on things we don't produce. Look at the
problems in Zimbabwe over the past ten years. You can put them down
to one common denominator: foreign exchange. Why are we short of
foreign exchange? Because we produce things we don't depend
on, and we depend on things we don't produce. We crafted our
economies backwards. The second most important form of poverty is
cultural, when you lose identity and confidence. Confidence is the
most important ingredient for any success. And then there is spiritual
poverty, which is the deepest level of poverty. This is when you
don't believe in your own knowledge, and you don't believe
you can survive without your government.
My issue with
the colonial legacy is not anger or hatred. There is no problem
with history. I don't intend or even desire to reverse history
or to disown it. I'm not trying to say we should not have
had colonialism. If we did not have the Europeans colonise us, someone
else would have colonised us, something else would have happened.
So history is history, let it go. My issue is with creating new
history.
We need to take
land further so that we are able to move it beyond the idea that
party politics has to centre around land. If we don't move
beyond that point we will be in trouble for much longer. Success
is defined as being able to acquire new things we need a nation
whilst keeping the things we already have.
Listen
For two thousand
years before colonisation, Zimbabweans were farmers. They had domesticated
crops and animals. The British South African company was established
thinking that they would find rich mineral deposits to rival those
in the Witswatersrand, and the British would use this to overcome
the Afrikaaners. But by 1900, it was very clear that the deposits
they were looking for were not as great as they were in South Africa,
and they decided maybe agriculture was a better investment than
mining. And it still took from 1908, 1910 until 1940 before large
scale commercial agriculture was viable. I'm raising this
point because this is important to us to know today - it doesn't
matter whether you're pushing for large scale agriculture
or small scale agriculture, it still takes a long time of good investment
by government to be able to make it succeed.
The Zimbabwe
I want to see is in four parts. Culturally, we need to return to
the culture of hard work, saving and investment, collective responsibility,
a belief in education and an enlightened society and a love for
peace.
Listen
The Zimbabwe
that I want - business and economics - small businesses,
not large ones, but adding up into large businesses. I want a rural
middle class, not an urban one. 70% of the population is rural.
We can't wait for the 30% of the population which is urban
to be middle class before we have serious engagement with government,
we need it tomorrow. In terms of politics and governance, I want
to see a highly decentralised system where land issues are dealt
with right where the land is, not in Harare and Bulawayo. I want
a Constitution which is very clear about what conduct political
parties must observe. Finally in terms of technology, I want a Zimbabwe
where it is low cost, energy efficient and with more solar and wind.
Listen
When it comes
to land, I want to see a Zimbabwe where there is abundant and affordable
food, and where each family has a home. Our land policies should
make it possible for any adult to be afforded a small piece of land
on which to build a home - even if it's not arable.
This policy alone could transform how we relate to land. If everyone,
girls and boys, got a piece of land when they turned 18, you join
the land market, you begin to understand your relationship with
land.
The African
dilemma is: does democracy lead to development, or does development
lead to democracy? Africans are struggling with the relationship
between democracy and development. We have been sold a dummy for
ideological reasons. Democracy does not lead to development. Democracy
moves us towards what we had in the past: humanism. Democracy is
an attempt at a good social order. But you can have development
without democracy. So how do we have both? Let's separate
the issue of material development from the issue of humanism or
democracy.
Now that we
have the land, how do we get agriculture moving? The six prime movers
of agriculture drove it in the past, and will have to drive it again.
These are: title deeds and resources to develop the land so that
it is productive, human resources (farmers, managers, researchers,
etc), physical and biological infrastructure (roads, feeder roads,
dams, genetic resources), technology through research, effective
farmers' institutions, and a conducive policy environment.
The Minister
of Lands and the President have recently said they think we are
ready to do a land audit. I know from the political perspective
it's not that straightforward. But as a technician, I would
say that for the land audit to be strategic, it needs to be more
than a registry of who is where and who owns what. The problem with
that is that it doesn't allow you to figure out what to do
next. So you almost want to deal with the land policy issues at
the time that you're dealing with the physical land audit.
I know government doesn't work that way, but it should deal
with the land policy issues - tenure, administration, compensation,
development, productivity, the environment and sustainability -
at the same time as the audit.
In terms of
land tenure, let us focus on tenure security and enforcement. Without
that, no tenure is secure in Zimbabwe. Let's hear how, when
someone gets a piece of land with a certain tenure, that is going
to be secured. That includes communal areas. The biggest sin that
happened in Zimbabwe was after independence, in continuing with
the assumption that communal land is state land. Because the moment
it becomes state land, arable land and residential land is secure,
but the communal land is open access land. That means anybody can
walk in and build a house. Traditionally, you couldn't do
that; the community had rights over that land. Today it's
the government. But where is the government? In the cities. So how
do they stop someone from building a house there? It deteriorates
from community land to open access land. That's where the
state has a problem.
Government needs
to strengthen the traditional tenure system, not weaken it; strengthen
community based systems, not weaken them. Support and empower local
communities. Strengthen the decentralisation process, but don't
build everything on chiefs and headmen. They are just representatives
of the system which is another colonial legacy. You don't
pay chiefs. You develop a leadership system which they just preside
over.
Listen
When I say there
is something evil about formal education, it is something about
thinking that there is always one answer to everything. The confidence
that you build as a youngster, up to the age of five, and you start
going to school and you fail grade one - then you easily end
up gone in life. The system says you have failed, you will never
succeed. The system also says there is only one answer to the problem,
there is always one right answer, and you have to find it. The inability
to live with ambiguity, with things which can be debatable, in which
there is not one right answer, is a problem. How do we build a society
which is capable of tolerating ambiguity.
Listen
The best form
of tenure is a traditional system that has been strengthened and
modernised. But most African governments don't believe that
rural traditional people know anything about anything. We are just
as bad as the colonial masters. So the two other tenure models are
the state knows everything, or the market knows everything. If you
ask me to make a choice, I'll go onto the market first, before
I go onto the state knows everything. That's why I dabble
with a short lease with a title deed, because I prefer that to an
African government which is trying to manage a million leases.
Listen
The land audit
should not be an event. It should be the means of creating a system
that will catch the culprits down the road. I know politically you
want to catch all your culprits today. But you need to ask how do
you build a system which tenure wise, administratively, will continuously
catch the culprits and rotate them until you have a brilliant, productive
agriculture sector which transforms our society to where want to
go.
Listen
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Summary:
Language: English
Duration: 32sec
Date: March 04, 2010
File Type: MP3
Size: 510KB
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