Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

On August 31, the government of Zimbabwe announced that foreign white farmers settled in the country who lost land between 2000 and 2001 under former President Robert Mugabe’s controversial programme of land reform designed to empower landless Black peasants could apply to get it back.

To enforce this dubious arrangement, the government will revoke offer letters to Black farmers who were resettled on the land formerly belonging to white farmers. And where restitution proves impractical, white farmers will be offered land elsewhere.

A month earlier, the Zimbabwe government had already agreed to pay $3.5bn in compensation to local white farmers “for infrastructure on the farms they lost” when their lands were forcibly taken by the government.

The arrangement to return confiscated lands to foreign white farmers, coupled with the compensation scheme for their local counterparts, essentially brings to an end Zimbabwe’s struggle to reclaim the land grabbed by British settlers during the colonial era and serves as the latest “final resolution” to the land question.

Under British colonial rule, Africans could not occupy or buy land freely. The 1930 Land Apportionment Act, passed by the Southern Rhodesian legislature that year and accepted by the imperial British government in 1931, made it illegal for Black Africans to own land outside of established “native reserves”. These “native purchase areas” comprised some 22 percent of the country’s least arable land, while the white people living in Southern Rhodesia, who constituted 4.5 percent of the country’s population, gained access to around 51 percent of the country’s most arable land.

So approximately 50 million acres of land were made available to a white population of just 48,000 settlers, and one million Africans had to share 20 million acres. What’s more, as with most British colonial heists, the Land Apportionment Act led to African communities being removed from fertile lands to accommodate newly arrived white settler communities.

Subsequently, the low agriculture yields accumulated within “native reserves” led to rising economic hardships and poverty within African communities. With time, land became the colonial administration’s raison d’etre and an emotive rallying point for African nationalism. In 1973, Herbert Chitepo, a leading nationalist, said: “To us, the essence of exploitation, the essence of white domination, is domination over land. That is the real issue.”

Later, at the 1979 Lancaster House peace talks that eventually led to a negotiated agreement for independence, Britain made a commitment to fund Zimbabwe’s land redistribution programme. It provided £44m ($96.8m) in aid in the years after independence, but that meagre amount could not fund a comprehensive land reform programme.

And despite repeated calls for it to honour the commitment made in 1979, Britain reneged on that pledge in 1997. Clare Short, the then-international development secretary, advised the Zimbabwean government that the election of a Labour government “without links to former colonial interests” meant Britain no longer had “special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchases”.

Short also emphasised that “My government recognises that the present pattern of land ownership needs to be fundamentally changed. We remain willing to assist with a land reform programme which is transparent and fair and has the support and participation of beneficiaries and stakeholders.”

Even Boris Johnson, a man with unbridled passion for the British Empire and colonial relics, criticised former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s handling of Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.

In 2015, in a column for the Telegraph, Johnson wrote, “The British government agreed to fund the arrangement, compensating the former colonial farmers for land that they gave up. Under that arrangement the white farmers were able to survive – more or less; Zimbabwe remained economically viable – more or less.” He added, “And then in 1997, along came Tony Blair and New Labour, and in a fit of avowed anti-colonialist fervour they unilaterally scrapped the arrangement.”

New Labour’s decision to reject Britain’s responsibility towards providing money for the land reform played a role in motivating and advancing the violent farm seizures that gripped Zimbabwe in the 2000s. It also led to a rushed and badly executed land distribution programme that subsequently established a toxic political atmosphere which still prevails in the country.

So it just beggars belief that Britain found it expedient to extricate itself from assuming responsibility for the actions committed under the banner of the British Empire’s colonial designs. Southern Rhodesia was established in 1923 as a self-governing British Crown colony and the land at the centre of today’s questionable compensation deal was not acquired through a cordial negotiation process: settlers occupied land and committed atrocities in the name of the British Empire.

British settlers, for example, hanged Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi, two spirit mediums, in 1898, after they led a people’s revolt against attempts to appropriate land and impose colonial rule. The settlers also shipped Nehanda and Kaguvi’s remains to a London museum, to be displayed as war trophies.

So 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? Amid the widespread economic problems that it is experiencing, Zimbabwe cannot afford to pay $3.5bn in compensation to white farmers.

Worse still, it cannot just revoke the land offers presented to Black farmers, as that would not be fair. On what basis should the “new farmers” lose their land? Similarly, how will they be compensated for their losses? And, as the government capitulates to the West’s unreasonable demands, will the large tracts of fertile land lost under colonial rule ever be compensated? The latest deal, far from solving the land issue might, in the long run, lead to further instability on the farms.

The government is at pains to stress that compensation is for infrastructure improvements made on farms and the landmark agreement is a prerequisite to mending ties with the West. The United States government, for instance, has reportedly made compensating farmers one of many requirements for lifting economic sanctions. But why is America not insisting that Britain compensate Black Zimbabweans for the original loss of land?

Without compensation from Britain, the land deal simply affirms the ill-gotten gains of white supremacist rule in Zimbabwe. It flies in the face of global efforts to demonstrate that Black lives matter too. Surely, Britain must reassess the compensation claims arising in Zimbabwe, and pay up. The West cannot insist on one standard for Britain and white Africans, while promoting another for Black Africans. Britain, not Zimbabwe, must pay for the land appropriated during the colonial era.

He also wanted all mining companies to be monitored to observe whether the enterprises were operating legally, whether they complied with Zimbabwe’s environmental protection and labour policies, and whether they were trading mineral products through legal channels.

It was a rare position taken by a Chinese official, contradicting Beijing’s policy against challenging another country’s domestic affairs. It was even more extraordinary given that Chinese companies had been at the centre of controversy over mining in a national park.

Zimbabwe last week banned two Chinese companies – Zhongxin Coal Mining Group and Afrochine Smelting – it had previously licensed for coal exploration at the Hwange national park after campaigners and environmentalists took the government to court to avoid “ecological degradation” in parks. Hwange is home to more than 45,000 elephants,

Inger Andersen, the executive director of the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), welcomed Zimbabwe’s ban, calling it an “absolutely correct decision by Zimbabwe”.

“We don’t need new coal mines. Protecting biodiversity is vital for people, for the planet,” Andersen said.

The licences were cancelled last week, days after dozens of elephants died at the park from suspected bacterial infection.

A year ago, China was criticised by activists for importing 30 young elephants from Hwange, which went against the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) directive that banned the sale of the wild animals.

In Kenya, Chinese companies and their Kenyan partners last year had a major setback when a court stopped the building of a US$2 billion coal-fired power plant after environmentalists moved to court arguing that the project endangered a Unesco World Heritage Site in the coastal town of Lamu. Of the plant’s estimated US$2 billion cost, US$1.2 billion is coming from the Industrial Commercial Bank of China.

China is funding eight coal-powered projects in Africa – including Egypt’s Hamrawein coal-fired plant, which has an estimated cost of US$4.2 billion and is expected to generate 6GW of power – despite the Asian economic giant’s commitment to cut emissions as part of the Paris Agreement.

Across Africa, from Kenya to Mozambique, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chinese companies have fought environmentalists accusing them of destroying ecosystems in their search for commodities, including oil, metals and timber, and during the building of massive projects such as railways cutting through national parks in places like Kenya.

Greenpeace, a non-governmental environmental organisation, said China’s growing demand for timber was putting pressure on forests in the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rainforest after the Amazon. The Congo Basin spans Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

China is the biggest importer of logs coming from Central African countries and Chinese firms now manage forest concessions equal to about 25 per cent of allocated concession area in the Congo Basin forest, according to Greenpeace Africa.

Tal Harris, the international communications coordinator for Greenpeace Africa based in Dakar-Senegal, said the Chinese government had championed impressive afforestation and reforestation programmes but “it cannot be accepted that Chinese companies are allowed to trash the world’s second largest rainforest”.

Elizabeth Losos, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, said China had some positive policies to promote sustainable development in Africa.

However, “despite these good aspirations and policies, there is still an enormous shortfall between intentions and actual projects on the ground”, she said.

“There are continuing problems across the African continent. For the most part, these are being pushed by individual Chinese enterprises, mostly state-owned enterprises, and sometimes provincial governments. To date, the central government has not been able to regulate these overseas companies,” she said.

But corrupt African leaders are also to blame. David Shinn, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International ­Affairs, has done studies on the environmental impact of China’s investment in Africa.

He said that because of leaders in Africa who were corrupt, “African officials often turn a blind eye to illegal activity or environmental damage. The officials and African loggers are at least as complicit as the Chinese company”.