Melville Cooke, Contributor
WHAT A difference a couple years makes. In the earlier part of this decade (which is already at the midway mark), we were inundated with stories about white farmers being killed and chased off their farms in Zimbabwe. War 'veterans' (and the point was made repeatedly that some of the black people involved were not old enough to have fought in the liberation war that transformed Rhodesia into Zimbabwe in 1980) were running amok, the stories would have us believe, hacking their way to land ownership.
Many of the visuals came courtesy of the British Broad-casting Corporation (BBC) and there were stark scenes of bloody farmers on the television. There was no background information to the land situation, no questions raised as to why this was happening, simply that the blacks were on the rampage.
Then the stories stopped. It is, of course, hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened, as the flood of Iraq stories all but obliterated everything else.
Then I heard a story on BBC Radio on Tuesday and I thought, what a turnaround. It was the story of a white farmer who had a new neighbour a black farmer and Mugabe supporter, new to the business of agriculture. And they were getting on quite well. In fact, the white farmer was helping his black neighbour, who was farming land that once belonged on the other side of the racial divide, with advice and equipment.
It was an incredible turnaround, not only in the nature of the story but the tone of the reporter. And there was a quote from the white farmer, that "no one was against land reform, but the way in which it was done." Really, now.
AGRICULTURAL SECTOR
The British former colonial masters had absolutely no intentions of addressing a situation where the whites owned most of the 39 million hectares (do the conversion to acres yourself) of land in the country, totally dominating the agricultural sector.
In fact, under the Lancaster House agreement of 1979, the British under Margaret Thatcher pushed through an independence 'deal' that ensured the whites property rights (which they did not have) would be sacrosanct for a decade.
In 1980, the British put up 20 million pounds sterling for land resettlement as their half of the expected cost of repurchasing land.
The 10-year limit came and went and it soon became clearer than ever that the British had no intention of being a part of a more equitable distribution of land in Zimbabwe, where the blacks (who were, after all, thrown off their land by the whites) could own a substantial part of their own country.
Then, on October 29, 1998, Robert Mugabe made the last stop in a three-part 'land reform launch', if you may call it that, opening the speech that effectively set matters on an irreversible course with "may I say how delighted I am to be here at Wakefield A Farm in Makoni District Manicaland province, in order to, yet again, mark the unfolding of the second phase of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme. As you may be aware, the Gov-ernment marked the inception of this process at Mount Pleasant Farm in Murewa District, Mashonaland East, in August, 1998, and at Manyoni Farm in Matobo Dis-trict, Matabele-land South Province, in September 1998.
RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME
"This is a clear demonstration of my Government's determination to implement the Resettlement Programme as expeditiously as possible." The rest is not quite history, as the books are still being written. However, the deluge of stories on Zimbabwe has gone the route of the water at the Yallahs Fording in St. Thomas bone dry. Apart from that story on BBC Radio, I have heard nothing of current developments.
And I do not expect to hear much, although there will continue to be stories about starving Zimbabweans.
The land reform programme, as set up by the British, was a no-go from day one. It was based on 'willing seller, willing buyer' and which group of people, pray tell, has ever given up the smallest fraction of immense wealth and privilege willingly?
There was no other way to right the wrong of Zimbabwean land distribution other than the way in which it was done. It is not a matter of revenge. It is a matter of setting things right. Africa is, after all, for the Africans, at home and abroad, although we do (to our everlasting detriment) welcome guests.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
