On Zimbabwe and Emancipation

By Gareth W. Stewart, Contributor

Mugabe

AFTER READING the letter in today's Gleaner (August 16) by R. Anthony Lewis concerning your August 10, 2002 editorial on the Zimbabwean government's land seizure/distribution policy, perhaps another dimension to that at once unfortunate and unnecessary saga should be introduced to your readers.

Contrary to R. Anthony Lewis' suggestion, the question in Zimbabwe was/is emphatically not and never was equitable land redistribution. That categorical assertion is so because the Zimbabwean government, like all governments, has the power of condemnation (sometimes called "eminent domain") which was designed to and can be used to condemn and seize land -- any land -- for legitimate public purposes. Hence, the Zimbabwean government could simply have condemned the targeted farmlands now occupied by white farmers and pay those dispossessed farmers the requisite reasonable compensation, and doing so would have incidentally (among other things) both fostered respect for and entrenched the rule of law -- without which a society cannot, except in a state of nature, exist.

Had the Zimbabwean government so done, however, it is quite likely that a debate would have ensued among Zimbabweans as to the wisdom of seizing large agricultural farmlands and splintering them into parcels for distribution to technologically-ignorant and penniless small farmers (land redistribution to small farmers was the government's stated rationale; we now know, however, that land distribution so far has been to cronies of the government).

Most certainly, given the colonial history of Zimbabwe, such a land redistribution scheme (as originally advertised) has understandable emotional appeal -- but most clearly, also, the resulting methods of farming and production would be inefficient and not viable even absent the inescapable reach and imperatives of the animal we now call globalisation: a country simply cannot feed its city-dwelling non-farming millions, let alone competitively produce for the export market if its economy is founded on agricultural exports as Zimbabwe's, utilising such peasant-farming techniques and means of production.

Perhaps then, given the world we do live in year 2002, even properly and legally condemning large farms and splintering that land among a multitude of small farmers may not be an entirely brilliant idea -- therefore (the question becomes), what other methods could reasonably be employed to alleviate or redress the current inequities in Zimbabwe's land distribution? The answer obviously goes something like this: the inequities must surely be addressed, but good governance dictates that the remedy imposed does safeguard and not needlessly disrupt the country's vital capabilities (feeding itself, and export - its hard currency). One need not be cynical to appreciate that, with an open debate on these issues, Zimbabweans might well decide that -- after all -- maybe the best thing is to not seize and splinter the large farms because the resulting dislocation is not worth the lost capabilities.

That debate, wholly essential to enlightened democratic governance, simply was not engaged in Zimbabwe -- indeed, the government's land seizure/redistribution policy was for all appearances designed to circumvent it. Stripped of rhetoric, the government's land policy is simply a race-based stratagem to garner political support from an otherwise illiterate, economically impoverished populace, and thus perpetuate itself in power. In essence, the Zimbabwean government's land seizure/redistribution policy was and is at base a quite deplorable appeal to racial politics: however historically or emotionally warranted or justified land redistribution may appear to be, or actually is as a matter of national policy, the Zimbabwean government's current land seizure policy is utterly divorced from economically prudent land management or the interest of the country (feeding itself; hard currency).

Indeed, as a result of the government's bizarre land policy, the United Nations and aligned charities are currently delivering food to Zimbabwe to alleviate starvation and much greater starvation is portended. That is so; pretending it is not, because the writer like Zimbabwean government actors is black, will not change these facts on the ground.

So the land seizure/redistribution policy measurably makes zero economic sense -- but there was in fact more, greater, danger to the body politic from the Zimbabwean government's antics: As a result of that racially-driven land seizure/redistribution policy, the rule of law there suffered immensely and ordinary Zimbabweans will suffer for untold years to come. The government obviously did not have to proceed the way it did, because legally sanctioned condemnation would have provided an orderly and non-inflammatory procedure -- and while it would correspondingly have opened the wisdom of the land policy to debate and question, questioning is indeed essential and necessary in a democratic society.

In a wholly crude political manoeuvre, the government instead embarked on a racial-pandering course and in so doing completely trashed the perception of stability of economic relations and the predictability and enforcement of existing laws, the very pillars of confidence in any democratic and fear-free society.

Perhaps the current government of Zimbabwe cares for neither a democratic nor a fear-free society (indeed, that is pretty much clear from other activities of the government), but for Zimbabwe's development and investment possibilities the land policy is absurd and on its face wholly self-defeating - that fact has been camouflaged, masked by the unnecessary racial shuffle. But for the Zimbabwean government and cronies, all is indeed quite well -- they do get to remain in office, incidentally, and to enjoy the attendant perks (already, as noted: the land already seized was not exactly splintered and redistributed to small farmers - in whose name the seizure took place - but to cronies of the government).

AWARE

Let it be noted that I was born in Jamaica, and I am very far from being white. I am well aware, however, that because I now live in the USA, persons who in the name of same-ethnicity endeavour mightily to align Jamaica with the politically and morally bankrupt and corrupt dictatorships of Africa will contend that I have been brainwashed by the white man in America (or, perhaps, that I had no brain to begin with). To those who would say that, I would simply counter that while it is not necessary to here fashion symmetries between occurrences in Jamaica and the Zimbabwean government's land seizure/redistribution policy, freedom from mental slavery does first require (in my view) the ability to call a spade a spade -- regardless of the colour of that spade.

Having now taken up reading The Gleaner everyday, prompted mainly by my experience during a recent brief visit after many years absence, I find irritating the views of far too many Jamaicans who will not see beyond the colour litmus to absurdities and racial politics perpetrated and perpetuated by fellow blacks. Blacks can criticise what black politicians do, and why not (at least in Jamaica one can criticise)! Indeed, my own suspicion is that the state of the black world (if there is such thing) is so dismal precisely because -- supposedly on ground of "solidarity" -- many blacks have defaulted from challenging fellow blacks. I am not anti-black if I condemn horrors perpetrated by blacks, rather than cast a blind eye or remain silent. Your letter writer, R. Anthony Lewis, is misguided.

So therefore (to now give a recent example from year 2002 Jamaica), instead of loudly celebrating Jamaica's Independence Day and creating a thousand "Independence Parks" (or, even, one such park in each parish), the Jamaican Government unearthed and has apparently sold to Jamaicans a historical occurrence labelled Emancipation Day and, to boot, an Emancipation Park. Not meaning to rain on that Emancipation parade, but it does seem to be a rather cynical, continuing exploitative mental slavery and now racial politics. For what precisely should it mean to Jamaicans in this year 2002 that, 160 years ago, ancestors of the predominant segment of the current population were emancipated from slavery? (Of course, not all our black ancestors were slaves at Emancipation.) What, exactly (apart from as a footnote in Jamaica's chronology), is that now supposed to mean to me in this day and age? Is it not a fact that in 1962 the island of Jamaica, and all persons who then inhabited that land (regardless whether their ancestors arrived by imperial, slave trading force or arrived and settled voluntarily) became independent with a flag and national anthem and motto which proclaims out of many one people?

Absent the desire to now introduce racial politics to the forefront as an organising political principle (like, for example, the sad Indian/Black political dichotomy in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago), an organising principle hitherto unknown to Jamaica, was it in any way necessary let alone desirable for the government of Independent Jamaica in year 2002 to construct a monument commemorating an event 160 years ago personal only to one section of the population?

Please don't misunderstand me: private black citizens of Jamaica may if they so chose build a thousand monuments commemorating Emancipation from slavery -- and while I certainly would not have supported such a project given my view that it is time enough to move on (such a project would indeed perversely continue the suffocating post-independence diet of mental slavery and cult of victimisation sold to black Jamaicans as a means of social control; but blacks, really, have not been the only enslaved people -- and right now slavery continues in Africa), the government of independent Jamaica has no race-neutral or legitimate business engaging in such racial pandering -- indeed, racial racketeering. Poverty is widespread and the suffering of people is all too real, so there will always be plausible and reasonable sounding rationales for racial scams like the Zimbabwean government's land seizure/redistribution scheme and the functionally equivalent "Emancipation Park" in a place like, of all places, Jamaica in the year 2002.

As to Jamaica's Emancipation celebration, some have asserted in the pages of this very newspaper that Emancipation is organically linked to Independence. That assertion needs no refutation because it is idle and altogether lacks basis in reality: emancipation, firstly, was not unique to Jamaica and acts of Jamaican did not cause or propelled emancipation -- and witness the fact that, to this very day, some of our Emancipated "brothers" still remain, by their own election, non-independent from Great Britain so emancipation and Independence are not linked.

Moreover, self-government preceded independence in Jamaica and the Jamaican people (save the political elite in the JLP and PNP) did not participate in the any debate on the merits of independence. And by the way, was it not the whites who transported the blacks from Africa to Jamaica? Are the descendants of those whites, then, not more Jamaicans than black Jamaicans? Do they, in other words, not have a superseding claim to adorn the land with whatever they chose?

Why exactly did the Jamaican government now feel the need to extract Emancipation as a date worthy of official recognition, celebration, and a monument costing a reported about JA$100 million when Independence Day is but days away? Why was the monument not named "Independence Park." And utterly overlooked in this Emancipation shuffle is the fact that the East Indians and Chinese and the Middle Easterners and whites, no less Jamaicans, have subsidised this racially-based scam perpetrated by the Jamaican government ... Where, respectively, is their Park? Is it forthcoming at taxpayers' expense ... or does the government now suggests that they are not exactly Jamaicans, because they visibly have little or no ethnic roots in black Africa? Is there any doubt that sometime in the past a yoke/burden was lifted from the backs of East Indians and Chinese and Middle Easterners and whites? Why not therefore for them build a park, at taxpayers' expense, commemorating relief from that burden and sufferation? Are there, indeed, people who have never experienced oppression? The now-almighty Americans? (By the way, their first capital, New York City, was trashed by the British? Moving to what is now Washington, D.C., provided no respite because that too was ravished by the British). Answers anyone ... anyone?

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