United States and British attacks on Zimbabwe’s independence are escalating. On April 9, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, warned that U.S. economic sanctions would be increased unless President Mugabe and the ZANU-PF implemented all imperialist-imposed economic measures.
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The sanctions were imposed when the country’s land reform movement, supported by the ZANU-PF and Mugabe’s government, began rightfully expropriating white-owned farmland that had been stolen from the people through a century of racist colonial domination and violence.
Zimbabwe is currently governed by a unity government, which is made up of the ZANU-PF and the imperialist-favored Movement for Democratic Change, led by U.S.-supported Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. On March 27, Tsvangirai, appearing on BBC World News report, defended the right of the white settlers to hold onto the majority of the country’s rich agricultural land:
“This government is aware that most of the ongoing disruptions of agricultural production, which are being done in the name of the land reform process, are actually acts of theft. … Those continuing to undertake these activities will be arrested and face justice in the courts. … I have asked the minister of home affairs to ensure that all crimes are acted upon and the perpetrators arrested and charged.”
On April 9, Mugabe replied, “Zanu-PF’s participation in the inclusive Government was premised on conditions that certain national aspirations and fundamental principles are not tampered with. Chief among these, is our sovereignty that we would never exchange for any price in the world.”
“We have also been firm in underlining the policy that our land reform exercise is not reversible. …Those who now wish to cause confusion by claiming that there are ‘farm invasions’ should be warned that their malicious and wicked lies will not deter the government from its pledge to economically empower the people, by giving them access to the means of production in the agricultural, mining, tourism and manufacturing sectors.”
Prime Minister Tsvangirai, siding with the United States, continues to assert an out-of-date colonial directive that ignores the popular and completely legal land reform program of Zimbabawe. Tsvangirai’s statement clearly articulates the interests of the imperialists over the needs of the people.
The colonial roots of the land conflict in Zimbabwe
The process of colonization of natural resources by private commercial interests is the main factor that has defined conflicts involving land and land rights in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. Land rights, especially within the context of developing countries, are closely linked to the right to food, the right to health, and the right to work and thus constitute inviolable human rights. In many circumstances, the right to land is inextricably bound up with an oppressed country’s liberation, livelihood and its very survival.
The background of the issue dates back to the early period of the colonial era. The British South Africa Company Royal Charter of 1889 gifted property rights to the British Monarch and supplanted the former Zimbabwean leadership. Large stretches of land became commercial property, which forced indigenous people to settle in small, marginal and fragile communal areas.
The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 set aside 51 percent of the land for a few thousand white settlers and strictly prohibited the indigenous people from owning and occupying lands in white commercial farming areas. The African Purchase Areas were created between the indigenous reserve areas and the commercial white settlers’ areas.
The indigenous reserves were re-named Tribal Trust Lands in 1965, whose title was later changed after independence to the Communal Area under the Communal Lands Act of 1981.
This situation witnessed the creation of three separate categories of land classification in Zimbabwe: the Communal Areas, Small Scale Commercial and Large Scale Commercial Areas. The racially skewed agricultural land ownership manifested in this manner: White large-scale commercial farmers, consisting of less than 1 percent of the population, occupied 45 percent of agricultural land. In 1980, 70 percent of the country’s best arable lands were owned by 4,100 whites of mostly British descent.
Shortly after the April 18, 1980, Independence of Zimbabwe, the Land Reform Program was initiated with the objective of addressing the imbalances in land access, ownership and use, which existed in Zimbabwe before independence.
Zimbabwean land reform involves the restructuring of access to land, and an overall transformation of the existing farming system, institutions and structures. It includes access to markets, credit, training and access to social, developmental and economic amenities. It seeks to enhance agricultural productivity, leading to industrial and economic empowerment and macro economic growth in the long term.
The Land Reform Program is further buttressed by the African Charter on Human and People’s rights. Article 21 section two reads: “In case of spoliation, the dispossessed people shall have the right to lawful recovery of its property as well as to an adequate compensation.”
Far from being the threat to “civil-society” that the land reform movement is portrayed as being in Western media, redistribution of land in Zimbabwe is central to the country’s independence from the United States and their former colonial master, Britain. As long as the best agricultural lands were owned by racist settler families whose private ownership and wealth are supported by imperialist sanctions and threats, there can be no justice for the people of Zimbabwe.
