Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
The British media have gone totally overboard over the Zimbabwe issue. No doubt because of President Robert Mugabe’s intemperate use of language – especially his unwise homophobic remarks, among others – he is being portrayed in a manner akin to the treatment received by Idi Amin of Uganda in the early Seventies.
But that is totally unfair. Amin would never have held a referendum on his constitutional proposals, let alone allow himself to lose it. Amin would also have fed Morgan Tsvangirai to crocodiles long before he turned his trade unions into a political party.
One British reporter, Alex Duval-Smith of The Independent, has even made an extremely muddled suggestion that “a creeping coup” is taking place in Zimbabwe. She is not sure whether Mugabe is mounting one against himself by giving top civilian appointments to military officers, or is trying to pre- empt the opposition coming to power in the election he doesn’t want to hold, or both! If Ms Duval-Smith had ever had to live under a military regime as a citizen of the country taken over by soldiers – with nowhere else to go – she would have been a bit more careful before muddying the waters over Zimbabwe by uncharitably dangling the spectre of military rule over it.
That the dispute in Zimbabwe is not about democracy is evident from the fact that Mugabe lost the referendum. So, really, the two main issues are not at all intertwined and should not be. One is the legitimate right of the opposition to do whatever it can, within the law, to try and win the next election and throw out Mugabe and Co.
The second is the right of the people of Zimbabwe to seize back lands that were taken away from them, with the help of the Maxim gun, by Cecil Rhodes and his Jameson gang, blessed by Whitehall and milked by the likes of Edgar Whitehead before Ian Smith and his Cowboy Cabinet came in to secure the fence with jet fighters and Selous Scouts.
It is a pity that Tsvangirai has not been able to distinguish between his genuine wish to replace Mugabe through democratic elections, and the wish of his white supporters to use him and his struggle to frustrate the attempt of the black people of Zimbabwe to take back their lands.
It is, of course, difficult for a politician fighting an incumbent government not to wish to make use of every bit of support he can garner. But to ignore your own country’s history and make common cause with people who, only a quarter of a century ago, were hanging your father’s generation as terrorists, or forcibly rounding them up into village concentration camps under the Law and Order Maintenance Act, is to forfeit the respect of history.
I hope Tsvangirai read the report in the London Guardian by Andrew Meldrum published on April 12. In this report, Meldrum quoted the Zimbabwe Minister of Health, Dr Timothy Stamps, as saying of the current land crisis: “At last reality has begun to be faced in regard to the land situation . The current upheaval may well pave the way for a peaceful and progressive resolution of the problem. Land has been this country’s most crucial question for 110 years. What is surprising is that it has taken so long for there to be this push for redistribution.”
Stamps pointed out that land seizures were not new in Zimbabwe and that smaller groups of land-hungry Zimbabweans had invaded white-owned farms numerous times since 1980. “Each time the government has told the people to wait for land redistribution,” he said. “How long can the government’s credibility be maintained when people are told repeatedly to wait?”
Meldrum reported that Stamps, who was born and raised in Wales, had been health minister for nearly 15 years – for much of that time the only white in Mugabe’s Cabinet.
He moved to Zimbabwe in 1968, when it was Rhodesia, and worked as deputy medical officer for the municipality of Salisbury (now Harare).
According to Meldrum, Stamps “became the chief medical officer in 1970, but was ousted in 1974 by Ian Smith’s government, which objected to his efforts to improve healthcare for black Rhodesians.”
Meldrum continued: “As chair of the Freedom from Hunger campaign, Dr Stamps – who owns a small dairy farm – organised a land resettlement project for 2E000 people in the early 1980s. ‘It is called Vuti farm and we got a grant of DM3- million from AgroAction in Germany,’ [Stamps] said. ‘A great deal of work needed to be done, but after seven or eight years it became self-supporting.'”
Stamps told Meldrum his experience showed it would take much more than simply providing new land to end grinding rural poverty. “It’s hardly surprising that people are angry. Rural people are facing extreme poverty, where a man cannot provide for his family.” But he hoped the current farm occupations, now affecting 1E000 farms, would be temporary.
“Provided the strong emotions on all sides are put away in a Cabinet for a while, I think we can find a solution that will bring a fair and orderly redistribution process. The international community has a responsibility because it has the capacity to recognise that this is the fundamental issue.”
Now, if the white farmers of Zimbabwe understood that, half the problem would be solved. But I guess they would much rather seek African quislings behind whom to hide to camouflage their wish to retain hold of the land they stole, all in the guise of fighting for “democracy”, of course.