President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Desperately seeking economic stability and the recovery of the country’s agricultural sector, Mnangagwa is using the compensation card as part of his deck to appease Western powers and end US sanctions, the writer says. Picture: Information Ministry Zimbabwe / X
By Kim Heller
When Robert Mugabe took power in a newly liberated Zimbabwe in 1980, he did what any self-respecting African leader would do. He ushered in a programme to return the land to African Zimbabweans. Pre-independent Zimbabwe, cruelly contoured by colonialism, had brutally dislocated African Zimbabweans from the land.
In a racialised patent of uneven land distribution, abundant acres of arable land were reserved for the small white settler population. In contrast, African Zimbabweans, who comprised most of the population were restricted to inadequate and less fertile plains.
Initially, a “willing buyer, willing seller” land reform strategy was introduced. But this was met by an intransigent reluctance of white farmers to part with the land and was hampered by broken promises from Britain to provide inadequate financial assistance for this programme.
The failure of the “willing buyer willing seller” offer triggered a fast-track land programme in 2000, which saw the seizure of approximately 4,000 white-owned farms for redistribution.
Twenty years later, in July 2020, the Zimbabwean government, under the Presidency of Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa announced that $3.5bn in compensation would be paid to the four thousand white Zimbabwean farmers for infrastructure that they had lost when farms were seized by government in 2000 -2001. Another bonanza for white farmers came just a month later in August 2020, when it was announced that foreign white farmers who had lost land during the Mugabe land reform programme could apply to get the land back.
At the time, government officials stressed that this grand-scale compensation plan was not a reversal of Zimbabwe’s land reform programme, but a ‘clarification’ and ‘correction’. These lofty promises have come to nought given the poor economic state of Zimbabwe. Now four years later, there is an attempt from the Zimbabwe government to breathe life into the compensation programme. Twenty million dollars is expected to be paid as initial compensation to 400 African Zimbabwean farmers and a group of foreign white farmers who lost land during the 2000-2001 land invasions.
It is necessary to contextualise this latest development. President Emmerson Mnangagwa is desperate to mend relations with the West. Over the past two decades, agricultural production has been in freefall. The violent blow of international sanctions has turned Zimbabwe’s green pastures into bleak wastelands. Once an illustrious breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe has crumbled. Zimbabwe’s external debt is estimated to be close to $12 billion. For 40% of Zimbabweans, food insecurity is a lived experience. It is expected, in these circumstances, that the President is holding out a begging bowl in an attempt to salvage the depleted, heavy-burdened nation.
Desperately seeking economic stability and the recovery of the country’s agricultural sector, Mnangagwa is using the compensation card as part of his deck to appease Western powers and end US sanctions. While compensation payments to white farmers may be a sweetener for Western nations, it could well leave a bitter taste for the majority of Zimbabwe Africans who have yet to enjoy even a small patch of land justice.
In a thoughtful piece on Aljazeera written in September 2020, Tafi Mhaka wrote that Britain, not Zimbabwe should pay for colonial land grabs. He questions, “Why should Zimbabwe have to compensate white farmers for land that was stolen under murderous circumstances in the first place? Why should Black Africans who suffered 90 years of colonialism, actually have to pay for Britain’s colonial endeavours?” He also cautioned that practically Zimbabwe could not afford compensation payments given the country’s abundance of economic woes.
Critics argue that Emmerson Mnangagwa is keen to build his legacy. Away from the path of Robert Mugabe, and his large and ever-looming shadow. The President of Zimbabwe may argue that he is refreshing and redefining the land reform process, and positioning the country for growth and prosperity, but for many, he is betraying the liberatory steps taken by Mugabe.
When the Mnangagwa administration proposed compensation in 2020, Tafi Mhaka wrote that the arrangement to “return confiscated lands to foreign white owners, coupled with the compensation scheme for their local counterparts, essentially brings an end to Zimbabwe’s struggle to reclaim the land by British settlers during the colonial era”.
Mugabe’s land reform programme was a noble attempt to reverse the legacy of land theft and dispossession of Africans in Zimbabwe, under colonialism, which saw millions of acres of land made available to white settlers while restricting land to Africans.
In principle, Mugabe’s programme was a legitimate and progressive response to colonial dispossession. In his own words, Robert Mugabe said, “The land is ours. It’s not European and we have taken it.”
But in practice, the Mugabe land strategy went awry, not only due to domestic impediments, shortfalls, his very own leadership missteps, and deep tranches of patronage and corruption, but also extensive international outrage and sanction.
There were three key fault lines in the Mugabe land programme. Firstly, it failed to protect agricultural production in the critical phase of land transfer. Secondly, the key beneficiaries were politically aligned individuals rather than ordinary citizens, creating an ever-greedy political class and an eternally hungry populace. And thirdly, the rage and retribution of the West was underestimated. On a positive note, there are now some green shoots in Zimbabwe, as slowly but surely African farmers rebuild the tobacco industry, engage in crucial agricultural value chains, and invest in commercial livestock farming and horticulture.
There are many lessons for South Africa. Great Expectations can turn into hopelessness if land policies are poorly communicated or implemented. Or if land policies serve elites rather than the people and become a field of corruption and patronage rather than a plane of liberation and equity.
Moving forward, South Africa faces enormous challenges on the land front. For now, land reform in South Africa is almost at a standstill. It is a matter of land delayed, and land denied. In a 2023 interview with Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi described the land redistribution strategy as catastrophic.
The promise of South Africa’s first democratically elected President, Nelson Mandela, that 30% of arable farmland would be transferred back to Africans in the first five years of ANC governance remains a dream deferred. In 2022, the figure stood at just 11%.
The ANC’s land reform programme, based on three key pillars – restitution, redistribution, and tenure reform – is on a slow road to nowhere. The new Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso, will need to fast-track progress if he hopes to shift the landscape meaningfully. One hopes that he is inspired by the words of the great PAC leader, Dr Motsoko Pheko who described colonialism as “a history of robbery, robbery of land, robbery of African power and its riches”.
In addressing the land issue, in both Zimbabwe and South Africa, the real question of compensation should be focussed first and foremost on Africans disposed of land in the first instance by whites under colonialism. That this is not the case is a testament to how the legacy of colonialism and landlessness in Africa is well and kicking.
* Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect views of The African