Iden Wetherell
CROSSFIRE
‘African regional leaders have rallied behind President Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s principled stance on land,” crowed Harare’s Sunday Mail – the ruling Zanu-PF party’s main mouthpiece – after the Victoria Falls talks where Mugabe met with three neighbouring heads of state last weekend.
This triumphalist message was reinforced by Minister of Information Chen Chimutengwende who said Zimbabwe was particularly pleased that South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki had backed Mugabe at the meeting.
This was a setback for the country’s Western detractors, he pointed out, who had expected the regional leaders to whip Mugabe into line.
The beleaguered government in Harare has derived enormous comfort from what appears to be a firm endorsement of its aggressive land policy from South Africa’s president.
While we can safely assume some frank talking took place behind the scenes, and that Mbeki’s public call for a return to the positions adopted at the 1998 Harare donors’ conference implies acceptance of the conditionalities spelt out at that meeting, the fact remains his statements at Victoria Falls have been interpreted by Mugabe’s government as carte blanche to continue with its campaign of land invasions and political intimidation.
More farms were occupied this week and tobacco barns burnt. Mbeki made no reference to the need for governments to uphold the rule of law.
He ignored the role of Mugabe’s supporters in unleashing violence to bolster Zanu-PF’s election campaign. He gave no indication of the political climate required for his “African renaissance” to thrive.
Instead, together with presidents Joachim Chissano of Mozambique and Sam Nujoma of Namibia, he became bogged down in the nationalist mantras that have so obscured what is at issue in Zimbabwe’s current wave of unrest.
The critical issue was resources for land reform, Mbeki declared. “Therefore we have all agreed to urge the British government to act, to fulfil its promises.”
He appears unaware of the facts.
Britain provided 44-million in the 1980s and early 1990s for land reform. Of the land acquired from commercial farmers over 300 000ha has not been resettled while another 250 000ha belongs to state corporations. Some of the farms have been allocated to Mugabe’s cronies who produce little or nothing on them.
At the 1998 donors’ conference it was agreed there would be a two-year land reform inception phase during which the Commercial Farmers Union would identify farms for resettlement. Of the 120 farms they have so far offered to the government only 70 have been taken up.
The derisory amount set aside in the budget for land acquisition – Z$200- million – is a good indication of the government’s lack of seriousness on land reform.
Britain and other donors say they are prepared to mobilise the billions of dollars needed to kick-start the programme. They just need to see some commitment from Harare. The government has not even appointed a team leader – let alone a team – for the technical support unit agreed to with donors under the 1998 accord.
Why has nothing been done? Very simply, any properly organised and transparent land reform process aimed at poverty alleviation, such as donors are urging, would prevent Zimbabwe’s leader from posing as the agent of revolutionary redistribution – the scourge of the whites.
Mugabe has been the single biggest obstacle to land redistribution in Zimbabwe. That he prefers populist posturing to tangible reform is self-evident to Zimbabweans.
It is therefore a pity regional leaders have decided to support his smoke-and- mirrors act.
With some prescience, opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai declared, ahead of the Victoria Falls conference, that it would be of little use.
“They just use these occasions to provide excuses for each other,” he said.
By colluding with Mugabe to pretend land hunger and British obduracy are at the root of Zimbabwe’s problems, the regional leaders have solved nothing.
Zimbabwe’s current civil strife stems solely from Mugabe’s determination to punish people who exercised their democratic right to support the opposition.
Despite the focus of most reports, ordinary black farm workers, not whites, have been the main targets of his campaign of rural terror.
Workers have been beaten, abducted, dispossessed and lynched by what has become the president’s private militia.
Mostly, they have seen their compounds ravaged and destroyed. This is the price they are paying for having defied an imperious and increasingly desperate ruler.
Ministers have made it quite clear they will only obey the law when it suits them. This includes ignoring the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act passed by Mugabe’s government in 1992, which unambiguously provides for compensation, while observing to the letter the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act passed by the colonial government in 1960 which penalises journalists for spreading “alarm and despondency”. Misgovernance is at the root of the country’s escalating economic crisis.
South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative Ronnie Mamoepa says South Africa’s foreign policy works on a softly- softly basis.
“You don’t have to stand up and shout labels,” he advises.
It would be useful if he stood up for something. When it was launched a few years ago with much fanfare we were told Pretoria’s new human rights-based foreign policy would provide a road map for the region. It now seems to have become stuck up a cul-de-sac.
By declining to identify the rule of law and democratic governance as the foundation stones of Southern Africa’s future growth, and by pretending land is the big issue when Mugabe’s abuse of power has brought this once prosperous nation to its knees, Mbeki has not only let down Zimbabwe’s democratic movement, he has missed an opportunity to establish abiding principles for the region’s evolution.
Iden Wetherell is deputy editor of the Zimbabwe Independent