I set money aside for Zim land reform — Blair
http://www.theindependent.co.zw/
Friday, 20 May 2011 09:00
By Bernard Mpofu
FORMER British Prime Minister Tony Blair has for the first time revealed
that London, during his term in office, had set aside funds for Zimbabwe’s
land reform programme.
He insisted that the UK was still committed to bankroll a genuine exercise
via a United Nations agency despite President Robert Mugabe’s hard-line
stance on the emotive issue.
Blair recently told the NewAfrican magazine that plans by his government to
fund the controversial land reform exercise, over a decade ago, failed to
take off amid fears that Mugabe’s administration would misappropriate the
funds.
While Mugabe has publicly announced that government had “successfully
completed” the land redistribution exercise, Blair said Britain’s current
coalition government led by David Cameron are prepared to sponsor a genuine
land reform programme in Zimbabwe.
During the chaotic reform exercise in 2000 thousands of white commercial
farmers forcibly lost vast tracts of land to native Zimbabweans. Britain was
prepared to make £36 million available to Zimbabwe provided the UNDP
approved a plan that reduced poverty and enhanced production, reports at the
time indicated.
“One of the myths that Mugabe used was this thing that we wouldn’t provide
money for land reform,” Blair said. “I set aside the amount of money they
needed for land reform, but one important thing was that the money had to go
through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and not through his
government machine, because if it went through his government machine it
wasn’t going to be used for the purposes for which it was directed.
Therefore, that was the issue; not that we wouldn’t fund the land reform, we
were happy to do that. And still are, by the way!”
Blair’s sentiments were, however, contrary to what the then British
Secretary of State Claire Short wrote to the Zimbabwe’s government.
On November 5 1997 Short wrote a letter to then Agriculture minister
Kumbirai Kangai that Britain would not fund the land reform exercise, a
decision which according to Zanu PF, riled Mugabe and prompted the chaotic
land programme.
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special
responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe,” she wrote.
“We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former
colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were
colonised not colonisers,” read the letter. “We do, however, recognise the
very real issues you face over land reform. We believe that land reform
could be an important component of a Zimbabwean programme designed to
eliminate poverty. We would be prepared to support a programme of land
reform that was part of a poverty eradication strategy but not on any other
basis.”
In September 1998, the UNDP organised an international land donor conference
where Britain and other Western countries pledged to fund a systematic land
reform programme.
The Commercial Farmers Union had agreed to release about 120 farms for the
first five-year pilot land reform exercise. This did not take off as two
years down the line war veterans embarked on farm invasions after the
electorate voted against Mugabe’s constitutional proposals.
The white commercial farmers took their cases to the Sadc Tribunal
challenging the seizure of their properties. The tribunal ruled in their
favour, but the government did not abide by the judgment and in turn
questioned the legality of the regional body.
The legality of the Sadc Tribunal could today come under scrutiny at the
Sadc heads of government summit in Windhoek, Namibia, although the Zimbabwe
delegation is planning to block it.
Meanwhile, the government of national unity formed in February 2009 which
undertook to carry out a land audit of the chaotic exercise has been slow in
carrying out the audit, citing limited funding.
Critics contend that the audit is likely to expose Mugabe’s cronies accused
of multiple farm ownership. The European Union has since the formation of
the inclusive government in 2009 pledged to support the audit, a move Mugabe’s
Zanu PF strongly opposes.