Land was & is the issue

It took two liberation wars to defeat the settlers more than a century after they (whites) had settled in this country.  Hundreds of thousands of blacks perished in the two wars.

Fortune-seeker, Cecil John Rhodes was the main man behind the BSAC.  His prime motive was to exploit the territory’s mineral wealth.  Some years earlier, they had settled in what is now South Africa and were plundering that territory’s astounding mineral wealth, chiefly gold. 

 But that was not enough to satiate their inexorable greed for wealth hence they sought a Second Eldorado north of Limpopo. On 28 June 1890, the treasure-hunting corps, making up the Pioneer Column, set off northward. 

The team included soldiers and prospectors.  After travelling for about three months establishing forts along the way, they arrived at the Kopje in present-day Harare on 12 September 1890. They hoisted the British flag at the place where Africa Unity Square stands now, marking the formal annexation of the surrounding territory.  They then went about searching the new land for the gold they thought was just there for the picking.  They did find the gold but not as much as they originally thought, thus decided to shift their attention to farming.

They then launched themselves on a frenzied gobbling of prime farmland around present-day Harare, forcibly removing blacks who had been occupying those lands for centuries.  Those who dared resist the dispossession of their ancestral land were promptly brutalised or gunned down. 

 The settlers helped themselves to huge swathes of fertile lands, grew crops on a commercial scale and reared cattle using forced and poorly paid black labour.  The land-grab continued for decades and soon the best farmland in the territory between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers had been parcelled out among the settlers.  Blacks, intensely bitter at their forced removal, were shunted into marginal soils and mountains where they were expected to eke a living.  This resulted in a racially skewed land ownership structure, which persisted for more than a century.  Blacks were brutalised, dispossessed, disenfranchised and oppressed in their land. 

In the early years of occupation, blacks tried to mobilise against the invaders in the War of Dispossession in 1893 and the First Chimurenga three years later.  They tried to chase the invaders away, but their spears, bows and arrows were no match against the whites’ superior artillery and faster mobility on horseback.  The uprisings were thus ruthlessly suppressed, black military men arrested, some executed.

After the 1893 war, the BSAC formed the infamous Loot Committee which determined that settlers who participated in the war would be rewarded with a free farm measuring 6 350 acres (more than 3 000 hectares) anywhere in Matabeleland, with no obligation to occupy the land.  Each man was also guaranteed 15 reef and five alluvial gold claims, while the Ndebele cattle was to be shared in half going to the BSAC – the remaining half being divided equally among the white men and officers.  

The plunder further angered blacks.  In both wars, they wanted their prime land back – that was the common grievance.  After the 1896 First Chimurenga/Umvukela the settlers went about consolidating their hold on stolen land through a combination of violence, draconian laws, racism and general subjugation of blacks.  However, the brutal suppression of the uprisings did not extinguish blacks’ clamour for their land.  

During colonialism, blacks were not allowed to own land in whites-only farmland, to do certain jobs, walk in certain places, compete with whites, or vote.  The country was run on the basis of race.  By 1914, white settlers, numbering 23 730 owned 19 032 320 acres of land while an estimated 752 000 Africans occupied a total of 21 390 080 acres of land.  By 1930 land available for African use was now 28 591 606 acres or 29, 8 percent for a population estimated at 1 081 000 in 1930.

At the same time a European settler population of about 50 000 was allocated 51 percent of the best land.  It is no wonder that blacks were bitter at their relegation to the ignoble status second-class citizens in their land while settlers enjoyed themselves.  They agitated for equality all the time, but their efforts were crushed.  

It was not until the 1950s that blacks intensified their demand not just for equality, but also for independence and democracy.  Black-led political parties started emerging, but were banned.  Still, land was a key grievance.  

Seeing that a softly approach could not bear fruit against a recalcitrant white colonial class, blacks decided to take up arms to liberate their land.  

During the war and the many rounds of talks liberation cadres held with the colonisers, the matter of land was always prominent.  While blacks demanded it back, whites continued to resist.  So important was our land to them that at the Lancaster House Talks in 1979, whites were prepared to let go of political control of the country as long as their stranglehold on our land remained intact.  Nationalists saw through the chicanery and would not budge on the crucial demand for land. 

The Lancaster independence talks were at the point of collapse because of disagreement over land as whites refused to let it go with blacks obviously and rightfully demanding it back.  As this happened, nationalists readied themselves for a fresh military onslaught to actually drive whites off the land.  They decided a decisive military solution was the only option.  It was clear at that time that the Zanla and Zipra onslaught was headed for a crushing military breakthrough. 

Britain and the US did not want that eventuality, knowing that their interests and kith and kin would be extinguished and they would do nothing about that.  So they pledged to provide funding for the new black-led government to buy land from white farmers.  Still, they ensured that they inserted a more silent but equally effective encumbrance in the Lancaster House Constitution – that land transfer had to be done on a willing-buyer willing-seller basis even after political independence was granted. 

Land, which was never bought in the first place, but was simply grabbed from unwilling blacks, was to be sold at market prices only if there was willingness among white farmers.

In the first 19 years of Independence, the land ownership structure remained largely intact – white land barons continued to accumulate wealth from stolen lands, whereas blacks continued scratching the barren lands for a morsel of food.  Indeed Britain and USA provided some funding in the first nine years of Independence to buy land on the basis of the willing buyer-willing seller basis, but the money was little as white farmers demanded extortionate prices for the land. 

These frustrating tactics notwithstanding, the Zanu-PF government continued to take a conciliatory line.  In an attempt by blacks to reclaim their land in a more orderly fashion, the Government hosted the Land Donor Conference in September 1998.  It was meant to raise funds for use in buying back stolen land.  Still the owners of capital, who happened to be supportive of their white kith and kin, refused to provide funding.   

It dawned on the leadership of the country that any attempt to resolve it through negotiations would not yield any success. Yet, it appeared there was no alternative – land would never return.  Any radical route appeared suicidal because we were always warned of “ghastly consequences” if whites lost the land.  Still the Government remained willing to implement an orderly land transfer from whites to blacks. 

Thus during the 1999-2000 constitution-making exercise, a clause was included in the draft that sought to speed up land reform, but Britain funded some local elements to oppose the entire draft.  The draft was rejected in the referendum that followed, and with it the land reform clause.  

Spontaneous occupations of white-held farms followed in some parts of the country soon after the rejection of the draft constitution.  War veterans, the same people who had fought for 15 years to reclaim their land, Independence and democracy, took it upon themselves to take over land from whites. It indeed needed a brave and committed leadership to take on whites on a matter so emotive as the land.  Zanu-PF were equal to the task.

Despite the odds staked against the party, its leadership and the Government, the revolution to take over their land intensified.  Thus the Third Chimurenga was officially launched on 15 July 2000, five months after the first spontaneous land reclamations had started.  The land reform programme would forever be one of Zanu-PF’s greatest legacies it will leave for the people.

At Independence, about 15 million hectares was held by large-scale white commercial farmers, numbering around 6 000 farmers.  The three phases of the land reform programme have benefited 260 000 formerly landless blacks who have been resettled on 14, 5 million hectares of land that used to be held by whites.  The first phase started in 1980 to 1998, followed by the second one from 1998 to 2000 and then the revolutionary fast-track land reform and redistribution from 2000.  

The first years of the revolutionary land reforms were very difficult.  Britain, the US and their Anglo-Saxon allies sought (and continue to seek) to reverse the programme by not only throttling the economy through illegal sanctions, but by also creating political parties locally to oppose it. 

Zanu-PF has refused to reverse the programme with President Mnangagwa making that position clear last week while addressing the Zanu-PF National Youth Assembly in Harare.

“In agriculture, the land reform is irreversible and Section 72 of the Constitution is very clear in this regard,” he declared.

“However, the same Constitution provides that no compensation is payable in respect of its acquisition, except for improvements effected on the land before its acquisition.  For a long time Government has provided through the fiscus for such payments in respect of the said compensation on improvements of the land. Government will meet its obligation as outlined in the Constitution.  — For the avoidance of doubt, we fought for land and there is no way we will retract our position with regards the land reform.  Neither will we betray our fellow comrades who lie in marked and unmarked graves who paid the supreme sacrifice for this land.”