Zim plagued by century-old land question


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By DARREN SCHUETTLER in Harare
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The roots of Zimbabwe's land crisis are nearly a century old, but the
latest upheaval has its origins in a "gentlemen's agreement" reached 20
years ago across a negotiating table in London.
The Lancaster House agreement ended a costly bush war and paved the way for
the country's first all-race election and the victory of black majority
rule in white Rhodesia.

But it failed to resolve the emotive land issue in a country where 70
percent of the richest soil is still in white hands.

In the two decades since the deal, Harare and London have bickered over
ambiguous British promises to fund land reform.

President Robert Mugabe has promised land, but poor planning and corruption
over the years have left landless blacks cynical.

And white farmers, who enjoyed a decade of protection from expropriation
under the Lancaster deal, have been criticised for doing little to tackle
the land problem themselves.

"The situation has taken turns that I don't think anybody would have
foreseen 20 years ago," political economist John Robertson said.

Nearly four months into a violent land grab, 29 people are dead, the
agriculture-based economy is a mess and fuelling fears of a regional
contagion, and Zimbabwe's image is in tatters.

Thousands of black war veterans and Mugabe supporters have occupied
hundreds of the country's 4,500 mainly white-owned farms, demanding land
they say was stolen by the British during the colonial era a century ago.

Lured by Cecil Rhodes' promises of wealth, white settlers in the late 19th
century seized huge tracts of land from local Matabele and Shona peoples
and built tobacco and livestock farms that formed the backbone of modern
Zimbabwe's economy.

Sowing seeds of war


During the next century whites tightened their grip on the country's most
productive land while landless black peasants sank deeper into poverty.

The land issue provided fertile ground for a guerrilla struggle led by
Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo after the Unilateral Declaration of
Independence by Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front white government in 1965.

After a 15-year bush war and crippling sanctions, Smith was forced to the
negotiating table at Lancaster House where the major stumbling block was
land.

Mugabe and Nkomo wanted a fundamental redistribution of the country's
lifeblood, but white farmers demanded property rights.

Mugabe, who once vowed that "none of the white exploiters will be allowed
to keep an acre of their land", backed down after the United States
brokered a deal that would see foreign donors provide funds for land
redistribution.

The Lancaster House constitution specifically protected private property
from expropriation for a decade and guaranteed compensation if under-used
land was acquired by the state.

Britain and the United States offered to help fund the acquisition of white-
owned lands on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, but a specific sum was
never spelled out.

"The British said we will assist you with your land deal exercise when the
time comes, but no money was set. The most concrete item was that no
(expropriation) could be done for 10 years," Robertson said.

"A lot of things that should have been tightly worded were left to a
gentlemen's agreement," he added.

Lord Carrington, Britain's Foreign Secretary during the Lancaster talks,
has said the agreement was the best that could be achieved at the time.

"It is very far-fetched of people to say what is happening in Zimbabwe,
which is truly awful, is due to the Lancaster House agreement," he told a
British newspaper in April.

Britain paid out £44-million (R67-million) for land reform but has tied
future aid to an end to political violence, the holding of free and fair
elections and a return to principles outlined at a 1998 land conference.

Land as political football
Mugabe has accused Britain of reneging on promises to fund land reform and
regrets not settling the land issue through the barrel of a gun two decades
ago.


"If we had gone for a military victory, some of the problems we are facing
today would not have arisen," he said recently.

But analysts say Mugabe has used the land more as a means to get re-elected
than redress colonial injustices.

Since 1980, when Mugabe announced an ambitious three-year plan to resettle
160 000 black families, only 70 000 families have been relocated.

Under the 1992 Land Acquisition Act, which allowed the government to
compulsorily acquire land for compensation, about 400 farms were purchased
to help black farmers get into commercial farming. But the farms were
snapped up by senior party officials and army officers in a scandal one
newspaper headlined "Land to the Chiefs."

Again, on the eve of the 1995 election, Mugabe promised land by Christmas
but failed to deliver.

War veterans vented their frustration with the slow pace of reform in 1997
when they shouted down government ministers at public meetings with demands
for land and compensation.

A shaken Mugabe responded by targeting 1 500 white-owned farms for
acquisition and paid the veterans off with hefty compensation cheques.

In 1998 Mugabe sought land aid from Britain, the United States and other
donors, but they refused until the government delivered a transparent plan
that alleviated rural poverty and ensured farms went to those who deserved
them the most.

Mugabe responded by re-writing the constitution to allow the state to seize
804 targeted farms without paying compensation, foisting that burden onto
London.

The new constitution was rejected in a referendum in February and weeks
later veterans began invading farms. In April Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF
pushed the changes through parliament.

Critics accuse Mugabe of enlisting the veterans in a political terror
campaign against rural voters suspected of backing the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) ahead of parliamentary elections on June 24-25.

The resulting chaos is expected to cost the industry, the country's biggest
hard currency earner, up to Z4.3-billion.

White farmers are hedging their bets. Some are buying land in neighbouring
countries, while hoping the veterans and farm seizure programme will be
forgotten after the election.

Colin Cloete, a spokesman for the mainly-white Commercial Farmers Union,
said he recognised the historic land imbalance, but he blamed the lack of
reform squarely on the government.

Of the 120 farms offered to the state by farmers last year, 67 were
acquired. Of those, 50 have yet to be redistributed.

In the present crisis, he said some farmers have unfurled maps and worked
with black farmers to hand over parcels of land.

"There has been a lot of help across the fence between white and black
farmers," he said.

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