take back land
Mercedes Sayagues
They trickled in, women with bundles on their heads, men on bicycles. In small groups they camped on four commercial farms in Marondera, 70km east of Harare.
They arrived on June 17, and today there are perhaps up to 1 000 men and women from 20 villages in the dirt-poor communal area of Svosve, 20km away.
“We are not squatters. We are not foreigners on foreign soil. We are Zimbabweans and this is Zimbabwean land. Our forefathers were evicted from here. Our ancestors are buried here. This is our fatherland,” explained one of the leaders at Doskop farm (all requested anonymity).
The villagers say they are tired of the government’s empty promises of land redistribution and resettlement. “It is not a racial issue. We don’t want to take farm property from white farmers. We want to share the land. We want to mix with whites, our children to play together, to marry.”
The farms were well chosen. Three were on last year’s government list for compulsory acquisition. Two belong to Bruce Campbell and sons, who are said to own seven farms in this fertile district.
The occupation was well planned. The chiefs and headmen were there. So were ex- combatants, one of Zimbabwe’s most militant pressure groups. So were mujibhas, war collaborators recently spurned by the government.
They are an indication of people’s frustration over deepening poverty, their resentment against ruling party Zanu-PF arrogance and neglect of its constituency. This is grassroots; real people voicing real needs.
In Zimbabwe, roughly 5 000 farmers, an overwhelming number of them white, own 18- million hectares of good soil. Some 650 000 peasant families live in a slightly larger area on marginal land.
Last November, the government raised peasants’ hopes of quick and widespread land redistribution when it announced it would seize 1 500 farms. Under intense international pressure, it backtracked, striking less than half of the farms off the list. It also lacks funds for the ambitious project. Yet, President Robert Mugabe kept promising land.
His embattled government cannot risk more unpopularity, riots or economic turmoil. Neither does it want to let go of its stranglehold on the country.
But its rural power base is fast eroding under spiralling poverty and glaring official corruption.
However unpopular it will be to send the police to evict the Svosve people, to let them stay is tricky. The ripple effect of copycat land occupations would send the ailing economy into a nose dive.
“One wouldn’t want to condemn these people but they cannot compromise our policy. If we allow this kind of behaviour, it could spread like a veld fire,” said Minister of Local Government and National Housing, JL Nkomo.
He did not rule out sending the police, “should the local authorities request intervention of the central government”.
Last weekend, the land minister and the provincial governor negotiated a withdrawal with Chief Gahadza Svosve. The chief was promised his people would be resettled before the rainy season. He demanded that be put in writing.
On Monday, waving the letter, Chief Svosve went around the farms telling his people to go home. Some obeyed; at Doskop and Igava farms, many didn’t. To the sound of mbira playing and chimurenga (liberation war) songs, they dug in their heels and said they would wait on the farms for resettlement to begin.
The government announced on Monday that it was speeding up the second phase of its resettlement programme. It had bought 12 farms comprising 16 035 hectares in seven provinces and demarcated them for 183 families to be resettled this year.
Orderliness is the first guiding principle, said Nkomo. Peasants who live near the farms will be resettled there. One of them, in Mashonaland East, will take 40 families. But it is nowhere near Svosve, which has 4 000 adults who need land.
When asked if Svosve villagers would be first in line, Nkomo said: “They are like any other people. They must get their names on a list and wait for their turn.”
This is not what the chief was promised. On Wednesday, the sceptical villagers asked the land minister to sign a letter stating the farms and dates on which they would be resettled, before they return to Svosve
Their determination raises the possibility that their actions could start Zimbabwe’s third chimurenga.
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