Elliot Ziwira Senior Writer

Political freedom alone without ownership of the means of production adds up to nothing, which is why the recent move by Government to rationalise the sizes of individual farms countrywide, is a step in the right direction as it will go a long way in ascertaining that Zimbabweans equally benefit from their ancestral heritage — the land.

As our nation turns 40 on April 18, there is no better way of celebrating our milestones thus far than reflecting on the essence of the land as a collective heritage.

The hunger for land, and the desire to correct historical imbalances culminated in the Zimbabwean Government’s compulsory acquisition of 12 million hectares of arable land since Independence in 1980, previously in the hands of white farmers, who were in the minority.

Though noble, the move saw some black beneficiaries acquiring massive tracts of land, most of which has remained idle years on.

In the face of a relentless onslaught to discredit Zimbabwe’s post-2000 Fast Tract Land Reform Programme, the need arises to scrutinise the source of conflict over land as being not only historically-inclined, for history is a stubborn, yet necessary evil, but how the present can be altered in acceptable ideological models.

Such envisaged models call on the elites to desist from creating animosity and contradictions between the ruling and ruled classes for that envisaged Golden Future Time to become a reality.

The struggle for ownership of the land, should override historical imbalances, to also factor in how the same heritage can be used to benefit everyone to ensure national food security.

The Government’s proposal, therefore, through the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement, to limit farm sizes in relation to natural regions, as provided for in Section 21 of the Land Commission Act (Chapter 20:21), is not only worth celebrating, but apt.

There is really nothing wrong in calling a spade a spade, for land, as an ancestral heritage, belongs to all Zimbabweans, who need to sustain livelihoods.

After all, a farm the size of 250 hectares for Natural Region One, 500ha (Region Two), 700ha (Region Three), 1 000ha (Region Four), or 2 000ha for Region Five, cannot be said to be inadequate if the purpose for ownership is to effectively use it.

Productivity, as the President has always maintained, should be the buzzword, as such, anything that does not translate to a bumper harvest should be censured.

If, in our quest to empower our people through availing them with the means of production to improve their livelihoods, something was overlooked, there is nothing wrong in revisiting that past with the view to correct any anomalies therein.

There is need, also, to consider the possibility of further downsizing the farms so that more people benefit, for land should not be vested in the hands of a few, particularly if it is underutilised.

As it was in colonial Rhodesia, it should not be seen to be happening in independent Zimbabwe.

The existence of presumed elitism in the rat race to the acquisition of the land; a finite heritage; does not augur well with essence of the common good.

In the absence of close checks and balances, the desire to contribute to nation-building will falter if what should be a national heritage remains in the hands of a few; whether black or white.

There is need, therefore, to set parameters beyond which no individual can possibly enjoy the leeway to call the shots at the expense of the majority as regards the land.

Collective memory; both past and present, informs of the way colonialism divested Africans of their land, and how contestations over the heritage impact on the independent nation state of Zimbabwe as it tries to map its destiny leveraging on its key ancestral resource.

Pertinent in the face of the increasing challenges that the country faces, which to some quarters have reduced it to a nation in “crisis” as noted by Raftopoulos and Mlambo in their 2009 book, is how equitable redistribution of the land can be effected without due interference from outsiders, for political independence in the absence of ownership of the means of production, equates to impoverished democracy.

As a result of external interference, the desire to repossess the land on the part of liberation movements, like Zanu PF, to satiate the hunger for the ancestral resource, is erroneously depicted as a political weapon to sustain power.

However, as historical memory is privy to, the way Africans lost their land was never a negotiable one.

The claim to land that white descendants of colonial forebears make is devoid of legal basis, since it is simply an issue of heritage that somewhere along historical spaces, changed hands through dubious means.

The pervading misery rout through sabotage of a well-meaning redistribution of land, through sanctions, and other such machinations smacks of hypocrisy and supremacist tendencies inherent in white settlers and their backers.

Therefore, as a nation, Zimbabweans should not be seen to be playing into the hands of the empire, by clutching onto swathes of land they scantly use.

Historical memory recalls that colonial governments never considered blacks as being capable of shaping their own destiny; therefore, they precipitated divisions for them to remain in enclosed laagers they created for themselves.

Zimbabweans should not allow themselves to be divided by the same ethos that united them; the desire to own and control their heritage — the land.

The valid questions that then persist are: what constitutes heritage, and what is it that makes it heritable and why? How can the issue of heritage at the national level be mirrored at the familial level so that all citizens equally benefit?

If these issues are adequately deliberated on and addressed, there is a greater chance for changes to the Motherland’s destiny, where power tussles, avarice, selfishness, “othering”, corruption and dialectical materialism that all leave the nation in pariah, which situation culminates in civil strife, become a thing of the past.

Eliud Mathu, the first African to sit on Kenya’s legislative council, puts it succinctly when he says of the land: “It is on the land the African lives and it means everything to him. The African cannot depend for his livelihood on profits made through trading.

“We cannot depend on wages. We must go back every time to the only social security we have – the land. The land stolen must be restored, because without the land the future of the African people is doomed.”

Yes, the land is mother to Africans (Lan, 1985).

They simply cannot do without it, for it is a matter of life and death, which is the reason why thousands of gallant sons and daughters of the soil laid their lives on the guillotine to have access to their ancestral heritage.

Indeed, freedom means little if it does not translate to ownership of the land.