This week's issues
| What a tragedy |
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| Written by The Editor |
| Sunday, 28 June 2009 13:19 |
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Perhaps the biggest tragedy of President Robert Mugabe’s land reforms may not be the gross human rights violations that have characterised the crude campaign to expel white farmers from the land or the hunger and suffering it has imposed on Zimbabweans, white and black alike. The tragedy, it would seem, is that Mugabe appears somehow genuinely convinced that his land reform programme – we use the term with utmost reservation – is a necessary extension and indeed the ultimate fulfillment of the anti-colonial struggle. Addressing the central committee of his Zanu (PF) party in the past week, Mugabe vowed: “Being in the inclusive government does not mean the abandonment of the land reform programme . . . it is a process that is legal and was recognised at Lancaster House in 1979.” Yet, no one wants land reform abandoned! We can guarantee Mugabe that every Zimbabwean, white, black or of whatever hue is prepared to line up behind him were he to adopt a rational land reform programme designed to ensure equitable distribution of land, stimulate agricultural production, ensure food security and end poverty in rural areas. It is the violent and racist agrarian reform programme that Mugabe has implemented since 2000 and which has left our once self-sufficient nation surviving on food handouts from international relief agencies that Zimbabweans want abandoned. Precisely because of Mugabe’s so-called “Fast Track Land Reform Programme” the food supply situation remains dire even as the international community and the unity government are trying so much to improve food availability. The latest crop assessment report released last week by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) says Zimbabwe faces a cereal deficit of almost 700 000 tonnes this year, condemning about three million people to another season of hunger. Shop shelves have filled up again with food and other basic commodities since the currency and other reforms implemented by the unity government. However very few people have access to enough foreign currency to purchase the imported items, meaning many basic goods remain out of the reach of the poor. But perennial hunger has not been the only reward of Mugabe’s land reforms. Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector had far reaching consequences as many factories, starved of inputs and orders from the farming sector, downsized operations or closed shop altogether – throwing thousands of workers onto the streets. On our continent, there is no shortage of examples of leaders setting out to empower their people but only to condemn the same people to everlasting hunger and poverty through some dimwitted and corrupt empowerment programme. But Mugabe is probably the only one to have taken a country that was truly on the verge of economic success and through a series of ruinous policies, the hallmark of which is the fast track land reform programme, dragged it down into the mire. And for a man who earlier in his career gave so much for his country, it is such a tragedy. |
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