(Source : The Times Online )
December 6th 2008
The extent of the suffering in Zimbabwe ‘has reached Auschwitz proportions’
Families in a once agriculturally rich land are living – and dying – on a diet of nuts and berries as food shortages threaten up to five million Zimbabweans. Our correspondent reports from western Zimbabwe on a gathering humanitarian crisis.
For full story see link above.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Lessons of Zimbabwe
(Source - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n23/mamd01_.html )
Lessons of Zimbabwe
Mahmood Mamdani
It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into hyperinflation and poverty. The seizure of white-owned farms by his black supporters has been depicted as a form of thuggery, and as a cause of the country’s declining production, as if these lands were doomed by black ownership. Sanctions have been imposed, and opposition groups funded with the explicit aim of unseating him.
There is no denying Mugabe’s authoritarianism, or his willingness to tolerate and even encourage the violent behaviour of his supporters. His policies have helped lay waste the country’s economy, though sanctions have played no small part, while his refusal to share power with the country’s growing opposition movement, much of it based in the trade unions, has led to a bitter impasse. This view of Zimbabwe’s crisis can be found everywhere, from the Economist and the Financial Times to the Guardian and the New Statesman, but it gives us little sense of how Mugabe has managed to survive. For he has ruled not only by coercion but by consent, and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa. In any case, the preoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the socio-historical issues involved.
Many have compared Mugabe to Idi Amin and the land expropriation in Zimbabwe to the Asian expulsion in Uganda. The comparison isn’t entirely off the mark. I was one of the 70,000 people of South Asian descent booted out by Idi Amin in 1972; I returned to Uganda in 1979. My abiding recollection of my first few months back is that no one I met opposed Amin’s expulsion of ‘Asians’. Most merely said: ‘It was bad the way he did it.’ The same is likely to be said of the land transfers in Zimbabwe.
What distinguishes Mugabe and Amin from other authoritarian rulers is not their demagoguery but the fact that they projected themselves as champions of mass justice and successfully rallied those to whom justice had been denied by the colonial system. Not surprisingly, the justice dispensed by these demagogues mirrored the racialised injustice of the colonial system. In 1979 I began to realise that whatever they made of Amin’s brutality, the Ugandan people experienced the Asian expulsion of 1972 – and not the formal handover in 1962 – as the dawn of true independence. The people of Zimbabwe are likely to remember 2000-3 as the end of the settler colonial era. Any assessment of contemporary Zimbabwe needs to begin with this sobering fact.
Though widespread grievance over the theft of land – a process begun in 1889 and completed in the 1950s – fuelled the guerrilla struggle against the regime of Ian Smith, whose Rhodesian Front opposed black majority rule, the matter was never properly addressed when Britain came back into the picture to effect a constitutional transition to independence under majority rule. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, but the social realities of the newly independent state remained embedded in an earlier historical period: some six thousand white farmers owned 15.5 million hectares of prime land, 39 per cent of the land in the country, while about 4.5 million farmers (a million households) in ‘communal areas’ were left to subsist on 16.4 million hectares of the most arid land, to which they’d been removed or confined by a century of colonial rule. In the middle were 8500 small-scale black farmers on about 1.4 million hectares of land.
This was not a sustainable arrangement in a country whose independence had been secured at the end of a long armed struggle supported by a land-hungry population. But the agreement that Britain drafted at Lancaster House in 1979 – and that the settlers eagerly backed – didn’t seem to take into account the kind of transition that would be necessary to secure a stable social order. Two of its provisions, one economic and the other political, reflected this short-termism: one called for land transfers on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ basis, with the British funding the scheme; the other reserved 20 per cent of seats in the House of Assembly for whites – 3 per cent of the population – giving the settler community an effective veto over any amendment to the Lancaster House terms. This was qualified majority rule at best. Both provisions had a time limit: 1990 for land transfers based on the market principle, and 1987 for the settler minority to set limits on majority rule. The deal sustained illusions among the settlers that what they had failed to achieve by UDI – Smith’s 1965 declaration of independence from the UK – and force of arms, they could now achieve through support from a government of ‘kith and kin’ (as Smith called it) in Britain. In reality, however, the agreement drew a line under settler privilege.
The inadequacy of the Lancaster House provisions for the decolonisation of land ensured that it remained the focus of politics in independent Zimbabwe. The course of land relations and land reform in Zimbabwe has over the years been meticulously documented by Sam Moyo, a professor who directs the African Institute of Agrarian Studies in Harare. Transfers during the first decade of independence were so minimal that they increased rather than appeased land hunger. The new regime in Harare, installed in 1980 and led by Mugabe and his party, Zanu, called for the purchase of eight million hectares to resettle 162,000 land-poor farming households from communal areas. But the ban on compulsory purchase drove up land prices and encouraged white farmers to sell only the worst land. As the decade drew to a close, only 58,000 families had been resettled on three million hectares of land. No more than 19 per cent of the land acquired between 1980 and 1992 was of prime agricultural value.
As the 1980s wore on, land transfers actually declined, dropping from 430,000 hectares per annum during the first half of the decade to 75,000 hectares during the second. The greater land hunger became, the more often invasions were mounted; in response, Mugabe created local ‘squatter control’ units in 1985, and they were soon evicting squatters in droves. At this point Zimbabwean law still defined a squatter in racial terms, as ‘an African whose house happens to be situated in an area which has been declared European or is set apart for some other reason’. By 1990, 40 per cent of the rural population was said to be landless or affected by the landlessness of dependent relations.
When the Lancaster House Agreement’s rules on land transfer expired in 1990, the pressure to take direct action was intensified by two very different developments: an IMF Structural Adjustment Programme and recurrent drought. Peasant production, which had been a meagre 8 per cent of marketed output at independence in 1980, and had shot up to 45 per cent by 1985, declined as a result of the programme. Trade-union analysts pointed out that employment growth also fell from 2.4 per cent in the late 1980s to 1.55 per cent in the period 1991-97. The percentage of households living in poverty throughout the country increased by 14 per cent in five years. There was now widespread squatting on all types of land, from communal areas to state land, commercial farms (mainly growing tobacco), resettlement areas and urban sites.
The demand for land reform came from two powerful groups at extreme ends of the social spectrum yet both firmly in Mugabe’s camp: the veterans of the liberation war and the small but growing number of indigenous businesses, hitherto the main beneficiaries of independence under majority rule. At the end of the liberation war in 1980, 20,000 guerrillas had been incorporated into the national army and other state organisations, and the rest – about 45,000 – had had to fend for themselves. They found it difficult to survive without land or a job, which is why land occupations began in the countryside soon after independence.
Mugabe and the Zanu leaders tended at first to dismiss complaints from veterans as expressions of resentment on the part of the rival liberation movement, Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu, which had been marginalised in 1980. But after Zanu and Zapu signed a unity accord in 1987, former fighters from both groups became involved in land agitation. Their most significant joint initiative was to form a welfare organisation, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) in 1988, which called for pensions to be paid and land redistributed. It soon gained a large membership drawn from most sections of Zimbabwean society and from the two ethnic groups – the Shona majority and the Ndebele – which had defined Zanu and Zapu respectively. Its members, about 200,000 of them, came from a variety of classes, employed and unemployed, urban and rural, with positions in different branches of the state and party and the private sector. Although their strength lay in the countryside, the war vets formed the only alliance that was both independent of Mugabe and Zanu-PF, and could claim to have national support, giving them a decisive advantage over the better organised but urban-based trade-union federation in the power struggle that would shortly tear the country apart.
War vets were among the first targets of Structural Adjustment, when its effects began to be felt in 1991. Entire departments and ministries that had been heavily staffed by ex-combatants were disbanded and the stage set for a series of high-profile confrontations between veterans and government. Mugabe accused the vets of being ‘armchair critics’ at the inaugural conference of the ZNLWVA in April 1992; they went on to organise street demonstrations, lock top government and party officials in their offices, interrupt Mugabe’s Heroes’ Day speech in 1997, intervene in court sessions and besiege the State House.
After the Lancaster House Agreement had expired, the government tried to occupy the middle ground by shifting from the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ formula with a new law, the Land Acquisition Act of 1992, which gave the state powers of compulsory purchase, though landowners retained the right to challenge the price set and to receive prompt compensation. By the late 1990s, market-led land transfers had dwindled to a trickle. So had British contributions to the fund set up to pay landowners, with a mere £44 million paid out between 1980 and 1992, much less than anticipated at Lancaster House. When New Labour took over in 1997, Clare Short, the minister for international development, claimed that since neither she nor her colleagues came from the landed class in Britain – ‘my own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers,’ she wrote to the Zimbabwean minister of agriculture and land – they could not be held responsible for what Britain had done in colonial Rhodesia.
This effective default coincided with a rise inside Zimbabwe of demands for compulsory acquisition. Veterans led land occupations at Svosve and Goromonzi in 1997, clashing with Mugabe and Zanu-PF. They were joined by local chiefs and party leaders, peasants and spirit mediums (who had played a key role in the liberation war against Ian Smith). The next year, a wave of co-ordinated land occupations swept across the country, with veterans receiving critical support from the Indigenous Business Development Centre (IBDC), an affirmative action lobby set up in 1988 by members of the new black bourgeoisie. From now on, two very different elements huddled under the war vets’ banner: the landless victims of settler colonialism and the elite beneficiaries of the end of settler rule.
It was largely for his own purposes, but also as a response to pressure from squatters, occupiers and their local leaders, as well as from sections of the new black elite, that in 1999 Mugabe decided to revise the constitution drafted at Lancaster House. Two major changes were envisaged: one would allow him to stay in power for two more terms and would ensure immunity from prosecution for political and military leaders accused of committing crimes while in office; the other would empower the government to seize land from white farmers without compensation, which was held to be the responsibility of Britain. The proposals were put to a referendum in February 2000 and defeated: 45.3 per cent of voters were in favour. But only a little more than 20 per cent of the electorate had cast a vote. The urban centres of Harare and Bulawayo were three to one against adoption; voting in the countryside was marked by large-scale abstentions. Post-colonial Zimbabwe had reached a turning point.
Very early on, the colonial bureaucracy had translated the ethnic mosaic of the country into an administrative map in such a way as to allow minimum co-operation and maximum competition between different ethnic groups and areas, ensuring among other things that labour for mining, manufacture and service was not recruited from areas where peasants were needed on large farms or plantations. These areas, as it happened, were mainly Shona and so, unsurprisingly, when the trade-union movement developed in Rhodesia, its leaders were mostly Ndebele, and had few links with the Shona leadership of the peasant-based liberation movement (Mugabe belongs to the Shona majority). I remember listening to the minister of labour in Harare in 1981 complain that workers had failed to support the nationalist movement. When I suggested that it might be useful to turn the proposition around and ask why the nationalist movement had failed to organise support among workers, there was silence.
The Shona-Ndebele divide so conspicuous in the two guerrilla movements produced great tension after independence between the mainly Shona government and the mainly Ndebele labour movement, with Mugabe’s ferocious repression in Ndebele areas in 1986 remaining the bloodiest phase in post-independence Zimbabwean history. The slaughter in Matabeleland was followed by a ‘reconciliation’ that paved the way for a unity government in 1987, but Zanu-PF leaders thereafter suspected all protest – from whatever source – of concealing an Ndebele agenda.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, formed in 1981 with the blessing of the government, had by the end of the decade distanced itself from its Zanu patrons, purged internal corruption and elected an independent leadership. In the 1990s it spearheaded the national agitation against Structural Adjustment and the one-party state that acquiesced in it. Yet its organisation in the countryside was confined to workers on commercial farms. The ZCTU had at first been an umbrella body for private sector unions. The spectacular growth of ZCTU, publicly its organisation of public sector workers, has been written about by two Zimbabwean social historians, Brian Raftapolous and Ian Phimister. After independence, workers in the rapidly Africanised public sector had retained close links to the government. But this began to change when the Structural Adjustment Programme led to public sector job losses and many African workers – especially veterans – were dismissed. When government workers came out on strike in 1996, the ZCTU was able to establish a base in the public sector. A general strike in 1997 and mass stay-aways the following year set the trade unions against the government. Civil servants – including teachers and health workers – who had declared allegiance to the ruling party and the state now began to affiliate to the ZCTU. In 1998, it organised a National Constituent Assembly, with the participation of civic, NGO and church groups.
By the time Mugabe put forward amendments to the Lancaster House constitution, an impressive alliance of forces – not only trade unions, churches, civic and NGO groups, but white farmers and Western governments – was arrayed for battle. The Movement for Democratic Change was formed a few months before the 2000 referendum, to campaign for a ‘no’ vote. The coalition was diverse, containing, on the one hand, public sector workers trying to roll back the tide of Structural Adjustment; on the other, uncompromising free-marketeers such as Eddie Cross, the MDC secretary of economic affairs and a senior figure in the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, who was intent on privatising almost everything, including education.
The veterans reacted to the defeat of the constitutional proposals by launching land occupations in Masvingo province. This prompted a split in the ruling party. With Mugabe out of the country, the acting president, Joseph Msika, told the police to torch the new squatter shacks. This was consistent with Zanu-PF policy: in the early days, Mugabe had been praised as a ‘conciliator’ by the international community for ensuring the security and property of those whites who remained in Zimbabwe, and evicting black squatters. Two decades later the position had changed: the support of the whites was no longer so important to Mugabe, and he was under enormous pressure from the veterans. With much to gain from casting his lot in with the rural insurgency, he returned from his trip and announced that there would be no government evictions. As land occupations spread to every province – 800 farms were occupied at the height of the protests – the split in the government and party hierarchy deepened. Inevitable tension between the executive and the judiciary undermined the rule of law; the executive sacked a number of judges, replacing them with others more sympathetic to land reform, and enacted pro-squatter legislation.
‘Fast-track’ land reform was now underway. The types of land that would be acquired compulsorily were specified by the government: unused or underutilised land, land owned by absentees or people with several farms; land above a certain area (determined by region) and land contiguous with communal areas. The white owners of around 2900 commercial farms listed for compulsory acquisition and redistribution were given 90 days to move out. Government directives specified that ‘owners of farms marked for redistribution will be compensated for improvements made on the land, but not for the land itself, as this land was stolen from the original owners in the colonial era.’
The closing date for ‘fast-track’ land acquisition – August 2002 – came and went, but occupations continued unimpeded until mid-2003, and on a diminished scale for a year or so after that. Chiefs fought for land for their constituents and for themselves, and so did their counterparts in the state bureaucracy and the private sector. In Matabeleland, a minority of pro-MDC chiefs were sceptical of land reform, but later submitted claims. The black elite made a brazen land grab in direct contravention of the ‘one person, one farm’ policy, provoking a hue and cry in society at large and within the ruling party; the government set up a presidential commission to determine the facts. Crucially, in 2005 the government passed an amendment declaring all agricultural land to be state land. Land was seized from nearly 4000 white farmers and redistributed: 72,000 large farmers received 2.19 million hectares and 127,000 smallholders received 4.23 million hectares.
What land reform has meant or may come to mean for Zimbabwe’s economy is still hotly disputed. Recently there have been signs that scholarly opinion is shifting. A study by Ian Scoones of Sussex University’s Institute of Development Studies – in collaboration with the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape – challenges some of the conventional wisdom in media and academic circles within and beyond Zimbabwe. The problem with this wisdom is that certain highly destructive aspects of reform – coercion; corruption and incompetence; cronyism in the redistribution of land; lack of funds and an absence of agricultural activity – have come to stand for the whole process. In particular, Scoones identifies five myths: that land reform has been a total failure; that its beneficiaries have been largely political cronies; that there is no new investment in the new settlements; that agriculture is in ruins; and that the rural economy has collapsed. Researchers at PLAAS have been quick to point out that over the past eight years small-scale farmers ‘have been particularly robust in weathering Zimbabwe’s political and economic turmoil, as well as drought’. Ben Cousins, the director of PLAAS and one of the most astute South African analysts of agrarian change – who had previously argued that the land reform would destroy agricultural production – now says that the future of Zimbabwe lies in providing small farmers with subsidies so that food security can be achieved. According to researchers at the African Institute for Agrarian Studies in Harare, new farms need to receive subsidised maize seed and fertiliser for a few seasons before achieving full production. Some might give up during this period, but not many – partly because the land tenure system doesn’t allow land sales; only land permits or leases can be acquired.
Zimbabwe has seen the greatest transfer of property in southern Africa since colonisation and it has all happened extremely rapidly. Eighty per cent of the 4000 white farmers were expropriated; most of them stayed in Zimbabwe. Redistribution revolutionised property-holding, adding more than a hundred thousand small owners to the base of the property pyramid. In social and economic – if not political – terms, this was a democratic revolution. But there was a heavy price to pay.
The first casualty was the rule of law, already tenuous by 1986. When international donors pressured the regime in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 2000 by suspending aid and loans – a boycott favoured by the MDC and the unions – the government simply fixed the result in its favour. In the violence that followed, more than a hundred people died, including six white farmers and 11 black farm labourers. Some of the violence was government-sponsored and most of it state-sanctioned. The judiciary was reshaped, local institutions in rural areas narrowly politicised, and laws were passed which granted local agencies the powers necessary to crush opponents of land reform. Denouncing his adversaries in the trade unions and NGOs as servants of the old white ruling class, Mugabe authorised the militias and state security agencies to hound down opposition, as repression and reform went hand in hand. In 2003, the leading independent newspaper, the Daily News, was shut down. While jubilant government supporters applauded the sweep of the revolution in agrarian areas, the opposition denounced the repression that accompanied it. Land reform had been ruthless, but in 2004, the violence began to abate. There was noticeably less violence surrounding the parliamentary elections of 2005.
In retrospect, it is striking how little turmoil accompanied this massive social change. The explanation lies in the participation of key rural figures in ad hoc but officially sanctioned land committees. When first introduced in 1996, these committees had mixed fortunes, some not functioning at all, others becoming instruments of this or that group of squatters. But a radical change occurred in 2000, when the committees were expanded to include centrally appointed security officials, ruling party representatives and local government personnel, as well as local veterans and traditional leaders. Charged with implementing fast-track land reform, these committees sidelined the old local administrative structures. They also had a national impact, since they reported to similarly constituted provincial committees, which in turn reported to the Ministry of Local Government. It was the infusion of veterans that gave the new semi-bureaucratic committees the edge over their wholly bureaucratic counterparts. Local committees usually comprised between 15 and 30 members. The veterans formed ‘base camps’ represented by ‘committees of seven’ which took the lead in identifying land for acquisition as well as finding prospective beneficiaries (mostly from veterans’ waiting lists and rosters in former ‘communal areas’). They also judged disputes, punished petty criminals and allocated farm equipment, seeds and so on. In a word, the committees co-ordinated everything, thus constituting new centres of power.
The second casualty of the reform was farm labourers. There were about 300,000 in all, around half of them part-time. Fast-track reform resulted in a massive displacement of these workers, who were traditionally drawn from migrant labour. Nearly a fifth came from neighbouring states and were regarded with suspicion by peasants in communal areas; even if they’d been born locally, they were often seen as foreigners and denied citizenship rights. Migrants and women (many employed as casual labour) were the weakest links in the rural mobilisation for land reform. Many were thought to have been encouraged by landowners to vote against the government’s constitutional proposals, and the anti-land-reform lobby certainly tried to organise farm workers, ostensibly to protect their jobs, but really to protect the white ownership of farms. When the workers rallied by the MDC, civil society activists and white farmers clashed with veteran-led occupiers, they came off badly. Occupiers held meetings to explain to workers what was at stake and eventually came themselves to distinguish between white farms, not only on the basis of size, proximity to communal areas, and the amount of unused land, but also on the basis of the farmer’s attitudes, particularly on race and towards his workers, and whether he had participated in the counter-insurgency during the independence struggle.
Some of the 150,000 full-time farm workers threw in their lot with the occupiers, though usually not on the farms where they had been employed. About 90,000 kept their jobs on sugar and tea estates, and on new or already established tobacco and horticulture farms. About 8000 were granted land, but most were denied it on the grounds that they or their elders had come from foreign countries, though some were given citizenship. Many went from steady employment to contract or casual work; many others were forced to supplement their meagre incomes through fishing, petty trading, theft and prostitution.
The best publicised casualties of the land reform movement were the urban poor who hoped to benefit from extending land invasions to urban areas. The veterans spearheaded occupations of urban residential land in 2000-1. Housing co-operatives and other associations followed their lead and set up ‘illegal’ residential or business sites. But the state feared that it would lose control over towns to the MDC if the land reform movement was allowed to spread and met these occupations with stiff repression, including Operation Restore Order/ Murambatsvina, a surprise military-style intervention in 2005 in which tens of thousands of families were evicted. Not surprisingly, those who opposed land reform in rural areas were the strongest critics of government efforts to stifle occupations in urban areas.
The final casualty was food production: Zimbabwe, once a food surplus country, is today deficient in both foreign exchange and food. In 2002-3, half the population depended on food aid: this was a drought year and the figures improved in 2004-5. The UN now estimates that nearly half the country’s 13.3 million inhabitants will once again be dependent on food aid in 2009, after another drought year. A million of these are poor, urban residents who can’t afford imported food. The rest are peasants, most of them hit by drought. Climate change is clearly a factor here, its role most obvious in marginal land: the communal areas worked by millions of small farmers. A 2002 World Food Programme study noted that there had been three droughts in Zimbabwe since 1982 and that the 2002 drought, which also affected several neighbouring countries in Southern Africa, was the worst in 20 years. The WFP estimated that 12.8 million people in the region would require assistance as a result of that drought and that in Zimbabwe alone, overall production would decline by 25 per cent, with cereal production down 57 per cent and maize, the staple in the diet of ordinary Zimbabweans, down by a devastating two-thirds.
To separate out the effect of drought and that of reform – and thus to understand how land reform has hit production – one needs first to distinguish between three groups of agricultural producer: local white farmers, who were the target of the land reform; peasants with farms in communal areas; and foreign corporations, whose large farms (except for small tracts of unused land) remain intact. Harry Oppenheimer, for example, lost most of his private land, but his firm, Anglo American, kept its sugar estates, which it then sold to Tongaat Hulett, a South African firm with 15,000 hectares in Zimbabwe. In a nutshell, white commercial farmers focused on export crops, whereas communal farmers were the major source of food security. The production of tobacco, hitherto the main source of foreign exchange, is concentrated in large-scale commercial farms; it has seen the most severe decline, almost entirely as a result of land reform. Maize and cotton are peasant crops and have not really been directly affected by land reform, but have suffered badly from prolonged drought – maize production was down by 90 per cent between 2000 and 2003. In contrast, the production of crops – sugar, tea, coffee – grown mainly by the large corporate plantations has remained steady.
Besides drought and reform, there is a third cause of declining production: the targeted donor boycott. Zimbabwe has been the target of Western sanctions twice in the last 50 years: once after UDI in 1965 (very ‘soft’ sanctions, which did not stop the country becoming the second most industrialised in sub-Saharan Africa by the mid-1970s) and again after Zimbabwe’s entry into the Congo war in August 1998. Zimbabwe’s involvement in the war was not well received in the West. Participants in the donor conference for Zimbabwe that year were decidedly lukewarm about committing funds. Britain announced a review of arms sales to Zimbabwe and, after the conference, again disclaimed any responsibility for funding land reform. The following year the IMF suspended lending to Zimbabwe, while the US and the UK decided to fund the labour movement, led by the ZCTU, first to oppose constitutional change and then to launch the MDC as a full-fledged opposition party. Its enemies have claimed that, by the late 1990s, the ZCTU was dependent on foreign sources for two-thirds of its income. Once ‘fast-track’ land reform began in 2000, the Western donor community shut the door on Zimbabwe.
The sanctions regime, led by the US and Britain, was elaborate, tested during the first Iraq war and then against Iran. In 2001 Jesse Helms, previously a supporter of UDI, sponsored the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery bill (another sponsor was Hillary Clinton) and it became law in December that year. Part of the act was a formal injunction on US officials in international financial institutions to ‘oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe’. In autumn 2001 the IMF had declared Zimbabwe ‘ineligible to use the general resources of the IMF’ and removed it from the list of countries that could borrow from its Poverty and Growth Facility. In 2002, it issued a formal declaration of non-co-operation with Zimbabwe and suspended all technical assistance. The US legislation also authorised Bush to fund ‘an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe’ and to allocate six million dollars for ‘democracy and governance programmes’. This was fighting talk, Cold War vintage. The normative language of sanctions focuses less on the issues that prompted them in the first place – Zimbabwe’s intervention in the Congo war and the introduction of fast-track reform – than on the need for ‘good governance’. In citing the absence of this as a reason for its imposition of sanctions in 2002, the EU violated Article 98 of the Cotonou Agreement, which requires that disputes between African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the EU be resolved by the joint EU-ACP Council of Ministers.
Clearly, the old paradigm of sanctions – isolation – has given way to a more interventionist model, which combines punishment of the regime with subsidies for the opposition. So-called ‘smart’ sanctions are intended to target the government and its key supporters. In 2002, the US, Britain and the EU began freezing the assets of state officials and imposing travel bans. Only four days after the EU imposed sanctions, the US expanded the list of targeted individuals to include prominent businessmen and even church leaders, such as the pro-regime Anglican bishop, Nolbert Kunonga.
Nonetheless, sanctions mainly affect the lives of ordinary people. Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, wrote recently that the country’s foreign exchange reserves had declined from $830 million, representing three months’ import cover in 1996, to less than one month’s cover by 2006. Total foreign payments arrears increased from $109 million at the end of 1999 to $2.5 billion at the end of 2006. Foreign direct investment had shrunk from $444.3 million in 1998 to $50 million in 2006. Donor support, even to sectors vital to popular welfare, such as health and education, was at an all-time low. Danish support for the health sector, $29.7 million in 2000, was suspended. Swedish support for education was also suspended. The US issued travel warnings, blocked food aid during the heyday of land reform and opposed Zimbabwe’s application to the Global Fund to Fight Aids – the country has the fourth highest infection rate in the world. Though it was renewed in 2005, the Zimbabwe grant is meagre. Agriculture has been affected too: scale matters, but no one disputes that subsidies are vital for agriculture to be sustainable, and sanctions have made it more difficult to put a proper credit regime in place.
Despite the EU’s imposition of sanctions in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 2002, Mugabe polled 56.2 per cent of the vote against Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC’s 42 per cent. There were widespread allegations of Zanu-PF violence and last-minute gerrymandering, with polling stations in urban areas – Tsvangirai’s electoral base – closing early and extra stations being set up in rural areas, where Mugabe’s support was assured. Nonetheless, it was clear that support for Zanu-PF was higher than in the pre-fast-track elections of 2000. Bush and Blair refused to recognise the outcome, but Namibia, Nigeria and the South African observer team, which had monitored the elections, concluded that the result was legitimate. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Africans could do little in the face of mounting Western pressure, from Britain especially: a three-member panel of Commonwealth countries – Australia, Nigeria and South Africa – was convened to consider the question of Zimbabwe. There were reports of intense pressure from Tony Blair on Thabo Mbeki. The panel suspended Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth for a year. Zimbabwe withdrew from the organisation.
The experience of land reform in Zimbabwe has set alarm bells ringing in South Africa and all the former settler colonies where land shortage is still an issue. In South Africa especially, the upheaval and bitterness felt in Zimbabwe seems to suggest that the ‘Malaysian path’ to peaceful redistribution and development is not inevitable. An anxious South Africa and less powerful members of the Southern Africa Development Community tend to feel that sanctions, along with other destabilising policies pursued by the West against Zimbabwe, have only made matters worse. SADC states have long tried to reconcile the need to resist Western influence with the fact that they serve as a bridge between Africa and the wealthy Western economies, but South Africa’s non-confrontational policy vis-à-vis Mugabe – which Mbeki pursued despite mounting criticism from the ANC and the unions in South Africa – along with its provision of fuel and electricity to its northern neighbour, set it at odds with Western governments. South Africa and the SADC states describe their approach as one of ‘non- interference’, ‘stabilisation’ and ‘quiet diplomacy’, but the West sees it as a deliberate effort to undermine sanctions, and critics in South Africa – most recently Mandela – found the Mbeki line much too conciliatory.
In 2007, SADC called for an end to sanctions against Zimbabwe and international support for a post-land-reform recovery programme, but earlier this year Western countries brought their influence to bear on key SADC members – Botswana and Zambia – to split the organisation. Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, went so far as to announce publicly that he would not recognise the results of the 2008 elections. The pressure on SADC came not only from Western countries, but from trade-union movements in the region, in particular Cosatu of South Africa, which has strong links with the ZCTU. Here is another striking aspect of the current Zimbabwe crisis: it is not just Western and pro- Western governments that have joined the sanctions regime, but many activists and intellectuals, for the most part progressives, have aligned themselves with distant or long-standing enemies in an effort to dislodge an authoritarian government clinging to power on the basis of historic grievances about the colonial theft of land. Symbolic of this was the refusal by Cosatu-affiliated unions to unload a cargo of Chinese arms destined for Zimbabwe when the An Yue Jiang sailed into Durban in April.
The arguments, which are not new, turn on questions of nationalism and democracy, pitting champions of national sovereignty and state nationalism against advocates of civil society and internationalism. One group accuses the other of authoritarianism and self-righteous intolerance; it replies that its critics are wallowing in donor largesse. Nationalists speak of a historical racism that has merely migrated from government to civil society with the end of colonial rule, while civil society activists speak of an ‘exhausted’ nationalism, determined to feed on old injustices. This fierce disagreement is symptomatic of the deep divide between urban and rural Zimbabwe. Nationalists have been able to withstand civil society-based opposition, reinforced by Western sanctions, because they are supported by large numbers of peasants. The tussle between these groups has even greater poignancy in former settler colonies than it had a generation earlier in former colonies north of the Limpopo, for the simple reason that the central legacy of settler colonialism – the land question – remained unresolved and explosive after independence. Southern African leaders have tried, with some success, to put out the fires in Zimbabwe before they spread beyond its borders. It is worth noting that the agreement between Zanu-PF and the MDC signed in September and brokered by Mbeki accepts land redistribution as irreversible and registers disagreement only over how it was carried out; it also holds Britain responsible for compensating white farmers. In the wake of Mbeki’s resignation as president of South Africa it is vital that this agreement remains in place. Few doubt that this is the hour of reckoning for former settler colonies. The increasing number of land invasions in KwaZulu Natal, and the violence that has accompanied them, indicate that the clock is ticking.
Bibliographical Note
Moyo, Sam & Paris Yeros (2005b), ‘Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Towards the National Democratic Revolution’, in Reclaiming the Land, edited by Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, London: Zed Books; Moyo, Sam and Paris Yeros (2007), ‘The Radicalised State: Zimbabwe’s Interrupted Revolution’, Review of African Political Economy, 111; Moyo, Sam & Paris Yeros (forthcoming), ‘After Zimbabwe: State, Nation and Region in Africa’, in S. Moyo, P. Yeros & J. Vadell (eds.), The National Question Today: The Crisis of Sovereignty in Africa, Asia and Latin America; Chambati, W. and S. Moyo, Fast Track Land Reform and the Political Economy of Farm Workers in Zimbabwe, Harare: AIAS Monograph Series, forthcoming For a critical point of view, see, Lloyd Sachikonye, “The Land is the Economy: Revisiting the Land Question,” African Security Review 14(3), 2005; and, Raftopoulos, Brian & Ian Phimister (2004), ‘Zimbabwe Now: The Political Economy of Crisis and Coercion’, Historical Materialism, 12: 4; Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge - Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice, Merlin Press, 2002; Henry Bernstein, ‘Land reform in Southern Africa in World Historical Perspective,’ ROAPE 96, 2003
On the non-Zimbabwean debate on the land reform, see, http://www.lalr.org.za/news/a-new-start-for-zimbabwe-by-ian-scoones.html (accessed on 27 September, 2008); IRIN, “Small Scale Farming Seen As the Only Alternative to Food Insecurity,” 22 September 2008. For a contrary point of view, see, Henry Bernstein, ‘Land reform in Southern Africa in World Historical Perspective,’ Review of African Political Economy 96, 2003
On war veterans, see, Sadomba, W (2006) War veterans and the land occupation movement in Zimbabwe, forthcoming, Harare;
On climate change and the impact of drought, see, C.H. Matarira, J.M. Makadho, F.C. Mwamuka, "Zimbabwe: Climate Change Impacts on Maize Production and Adaptive Measures for the Agricultural Sector," Interim Report on Climate Change Country Studies, 1995, www.gcrio.org
On sanctions, see, Gregory Elich, ‘Zimbabwe Under Siege,’ Swans Commentary Zimbabwe Under Seige, http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich004.html; Dr. Gideon Gono: How sanctions are ruining Zimbabwe, opinion piece, African Business, 2007.
On the debate among progressive intellectuals in Zimbabwe, see, Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, ‘The Zimbabwe Question and the Two Lefts.’ Forthcoming in Historical Materialism, vol. 14, no. 4, 2007
Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology, Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University. He is from Uganda.
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Lessons of Zimbabwe
Mahmood Mamdani
It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into hyperinflation and poverty. The seizure of white-owned farms by his black supporters has been depicted as a form of thuggery, and as a cause of the country’s declining production, as if these lands were doomed by black ownership. Sanctions have been imposed, and opposition groups funded with the explicit aim of unseating him.
There is no denying Mugabe’s authoritarianism, or his willingness to tolerate and even encourage the violent behaviour of his supporters. His policies have helped lay waste the country’s economy, though sanctions have played no small part, while his refusal to share power with the country’s growing opposition movement, much of it based in the trade unions, has led to a bitter impasse. This view of Zimbabwe’s crisis can be found everywhere, from the Economist and the Financial Times to the Guardian and the New Statesman, but it gives us little sense of how Mugabe has managed to survive. For he has ruled not only by coercion but by consent, and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa. In any case, the preoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the socio-historical issues involved.
Many have compared Mugabe to Idi Amin and the land expropriation in Zimbabwe to the Asian expulsion in Uganda. The comparison isn’t entirely off the mark. I was one of the 70,000 people of South Asian descent booted out by Idi Amin in 1972; I returned to Uganda in 1979. My abiding recollection of my first few months back is that no one I met opposed Amin’s expulsion of ‘Asians’. Most merely said: ‘It was bad the way he did it.’ The same is likely to be said of the land transfers in Zimbabwe.
What distinguishes Mugabe and Amin from other authoritarian rulers is not their demagoguery but the fact that they projected themselves as champions of mass justice and successfully rallied those to whom justice had been denied by the colonial system. Not surprisingly, the justice dispensed by these demagogues mirrored the racialised injustice of the colonial system. In 1979 I began to realise that whatever they made of Amin’s brutality, the Ugandan people experienced the Asian expulsion of 1972 – and not the formal handover in 1962 – as the dawn of true independence. The people of Zimbabwe are likely to remember 2000-3 as the end of the settler colonial era. Any assessment of contemporary Zimbabwe needs to begin with this sobering fact.
Though widespread grievance over the theft of land – a process begun in 1889 and completed in the 1950s – fuelled the guerrilla struggle against the regime of Ian Smith, whose Rhodesian Front opposed black majority rule, the matter was never properly addressed when Britain came back into the picture to effect a constitutional transition to independence under majority rule. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, but the social realities of the newly independent state remained embedded in an earlier historical period: some six thousand white farmers owned 15.5 million hectares of prime land, 39 per cent of the land in the country, while about 4.5 million farmers (a million households) in ‘communal areas’ were left to subsist on 16.4 million hectares of the most arid land, to which they’d been removed or confined by a century of colonial rule. In the middle were 8500 small-scale black farmers on about 1.4 million hectares of land.
This was not a sustainable arrangement in a country whose independence had been secured at the end of a long armed struggle supported by a land-hungry population. But the agreement that Britain drafted at Lancaster House in 1979 – and that the settlers eagerly backed – didn’t seem to take into account the kind of transition that would be necessary to secure a stable social order. Two of its provisions, one economic and the other political, reflected this short-termism: one called for land transfers on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ basis, with the British funding the scheme; the other reserved 20 per cent of seats in the House of Assembly for whites – 3 per cent of the population – giving the settler community an effective veto over any amendment to the Lancaster House terms. This was qualified majority rule at best. Both provisions had a time limit: 1990 for land transfers based on the market principle, and 1987 for the settler minority to set limits on majority rule. The deal sustained illusions among the settlers that what they had failed to achieve by UDI – Smith’s 1965 declaration of independence from the UK – and force of arms, they could now achieve through support from a government of ‘kith and kin’ (as Smith called it) in Britain. In reality, however, the agreement drew a line under settler privilege.
The inadequacy of the Lancaster House provisions for the decolonisation of land ensured that it remained the focus of politics in independent Zimbabwe. The course of land relations and land reform in Zimbabwe has over the years been meticulously documented by Sam Moyo, a professor who directs the African Institute of Agrarian Studies in Harare. Transfers during the first decade of independence were so minimal that they increased rather than appeased land hunger. The new regime in Harare, installed in 1980 and led by Mugabe and his party, Zanu, called for the purchase of eight million hectares to resettle 162,000 land-poor farming households from communal areas. But the ban on compulsory purchase drove up land prices and encouraged white farmers to sell only the worst land. As the decade drew to a close, only 58,000 families had been resettled on three million hectares of land. No more than 19 per cent of the land acquired between 1980 and 1992 was of prime agricultural value.
As the 1980s wore on, land transfers actually declined, dropping from 430,000 hectares per annum during the first half of the decade to 75,000 hectares during the second. The greater land hunger became, the more often invasions were mounted; in response, Mugabe created local ‘squatter control’ units in 1985, and they were soon evicting squatters in droves. At this point Zimbabwean law still defined a squatter in racial terms, as ‘an African whose house happens to be situated in an area which has been declared European or is set apart for some other reason’. By 1990, 40 per cent of the rural population was said to be landless or affected by the landlessness of dependent relations.
When the Lancaster House Agreement’s rules on land transfer expired in 1990, the pressure to take direct action was intensified by two very different developments: an IMF Structural Adjustment Programme and recurrent drought. Peasant production, which had been a meagre 8 per cent of marketed output at independence in 1980, and had shot up to 45 per cent by 1985, declined as a result of the programme. Trade-union analysts pointed out that employment growth also fell from 2.4 per cent in the late 1980s to 1.55 per cent in the period 1991-97. The percentage of households living in poverty throughout the country increased by 14 per cent in five years. There was now widespread squatting on all types of land, from communal areas to state land, commercial farms (mainly growing tobacco), resettlement areas and urban sites.
The demand for land reform came from two powerful groups at extreme ends of the social spectrum yet both firmly in Mugabe’s camp: the veterans of the liberation war and the small but growing number of indigenous businesses, hitherto the main beneficiaries of independence under majority rule. At the end of the liberation war in 1980, 20,000 guerrillas had been incorporated into the national army and other state organisations, and the rest – about 45,000 – had had to fend for themselves. They found it difficult to survive without land or a job, which is why land occupations began in the countryside soon after independence.
Mugabe and the Zanu leaders tended at first to dismiss complaints from veterans as expressions of resentment on the part of the rival liberation movement, Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu, which had been marginalised in 1980. But after Zanu and Zapu signed a unity accord in 1987, former fighters from both groups became involved in land agitation. Their most significant joint initiative was to form a welfare organisation, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) in 1988, which called for pensions to be paid and land redistributed. It soon gained a large membership drawn from most sections of Zimbabwean society and from the two ethnic groups – the Shona majority and the Ndebele – which had defined Zanu and Zapu respectively. Its members, about 200,000 of them, came from a variety of classes, employed and unemployed, urban and rural, with positions in different branches of the state and party and the private sector. Although their strength lay in the countryside, the war vets formed the only alliance that was both independent of Mugabe and Zanu-PF, and could claim to have national support, giving them a decisive advantage over the better organised but urban-based trade-union federation in the power struggle that would shortly tear the country apart.
War vets were among the first targets of Structural Adjustment, when its effects began to be felt in 1991. Entire departments and ministries that had been heavily staffed by ex-combatants were disbanded and the stage set for a series of high-profile confrontations between veterans and government. Mugabe accused the vets of being ‘armchair critics’ at the inaugural conference of the ZNLWVA in April 1992; they went on to organise street demonstrations, lock top government and party officials in their offices, interrupt Mugabe’s Heroes’ Day speech in 1997, intervene in court sessions and besiege the State House.
After the Lancaster House Agreement had expired, the government tried to occupy the middle ground by shifting from the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ formula with a new law, the Land Acquisition Act of 1992, which gave the state powers of compulsory purchase, though landowners retained the right to challenge the price set and to receive prompt compensation. By the late 1990s, market-led land transfers had dwindled to a trickle. So had British contributions to the fund set up to pay landowners, with a mere £44 million paid out between 1980 and 1992, much less than anticipated at Lancaster House. When New Labour took over in 1997, Clare Short, the minister for international development, claimed that since neither she nor her colleagues came from the landed class in Britain – ‘my own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers,’ she wrote to the Zimbabwean minister of agriculture and land – they could not be held responsible for what Britain had done in colonial Rhodesia.
This effective default coincided with a rise inside Zimbabwe of demands for compulsory acquisition. Veterans led land occupations at Svosve and Goromonzi in 1997, clashing with Mugabe and Zanu-PF. They were joined by local chiefs and party leaders, peasants and spirit mediums (who had played a key role in the liberation war against Ian Smith). The next year, a wave of co-ordinated land occupations swept across the country, with veterans receiving critical support from the Indigenous Business Development Centre (IBDC), an affirmative action lobby set up in 1988 by members of the new black bourgeoisie. From now on, two very different elements huddled under the war vets’ banner: the landless victims of settler colonialism and the elite beneficiaries of the end of settler rule.
It was largely for his own purposes, but also as a response to pressure from squatters, occupiers and their local leaders, as well as from sections of the new black elite, that in 1999 Mugabe decided to revise the constitution drafted at Lancaster House. Two major changes were envisaged: one would allow him to stay in power for two more terms and would ensure immunity from prosecution for political and military leaders accused of committing crimes while in office; the other would empower the government to seize land from white farmers without compensation, which was held to be the responsibility of Britain. The proposals were put to a referendum in February 2000 and defeated: 45.3 per cent of voters were in favour. But only a little more than 20 per cent of the electorate had cast a vote. The urban centres of Harare and Bulawayo were three to one against adoption; voting in the countryside was marked by large-scale abstentions. Post-colonial Zimbabwe had reached a turning point.
Very early on, the colonial bureaucracy had translated the ethnic mosaic of the country into an administrative map in such a way as to allow minimum co-operation and maximum competition between different ethnic groups and areas, ensuring among other things that labour for mining, manufacture and service was not recruited from areas where peasants were needed on large farms or plantations. These areas, as it happened, were mainly Shona and so, unsurprisingly, when the trade-union movement developed in Rhodesia, its leaders were mostly Ndebele, and had few links with the Shona leadership of the peasant-based liberation movement (Mugabe belongs to the Shona majority). I remember listening to the minister of labour in Harare in 1981 complain that workers had failed to support the nationalist movement. When I suggested that it might be useful to turn the proposition around and ask why the nationalist movement had failed to organise support among workers, there was silence.
The Shona-Ndebele divide so conspicuous in the two guerrilla movements produced great tension after independence between the mainly Shona government and the mainly Ndebele labour movement, with Mugabe’s ferocious repression in Ndebele areas in 1986 remaining the bloodiest phase in post-independence Zimbabwean history. The slaughter in Matabeleland was followed by a ‘reconciliation’ that paved the way for a unity government in 1987, but Zanu-PF leaders thereafter suspected all protest – from whatever source – of concealing an Ndebele agenda.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, formed in 1981 with the blessing of the government, had by the end of the decade distanced itself from its Zanu patrons, purged internal corruption and elected an independent leadership. In the 1990s it spearheaded the national agitation against Structural Adjustment and the one-party state that acquiesced in it. Yet its organisation in the countryside was confined to workers on commercial farms. The ZCTU had at first been an umbrella body for private sector unions. The spectacular growth of ZCTU, publicly its organisation of public sector workers, has been written about by two Zimbabwean social historians, Brian Raftapolous and Ian Phimister. After independence, workers in the rapidly Africanised public sector had retained close links to the government. But this began to change when the Structural Adjustment Programme led to public sector job losses and many African workers – especially veterans – were dismissed. When government workers came out on strike in 1996, the ZCTU was able to establish a base in the public sector. A general strike in 1997 and mass stay-aways the following year set the trade unions against the government. Civil servants – including teachers and health workers – who had declared allegiance to the ruling party and the state now began to affiliate to the ZCTU. In 1998, it organised a National Constituent Assembly, with the participation of civic, NGO and church groups.
By the time Mugabe put forward amendments to the Lancaster House constitution, an impressive alliance of forces – not only trade unions, churches, civic and NGO groups, but white farmers and Western governments – was arrayed for battle. The Movement for Democratic Change was formed a few months before the 2000 referendum, to campaign for a ‘no’ vote. The coalition was diverse, containing, on the one hand, public sector workers trying to roll back the tide of Structural Adjustment; on the other, uncompromising free-marketeers such as Eddie Cross, the MDC secretary of economic affairs and a senior figure in the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, who was intent on privatising almost everything, including education.
The veterans reacted to the defeat of the constitutional proposals by launching land occupations in Masvingo province. This prompted a split in the ruling party. With Mugabe out of the country, the acting president, Joseph Msika, told the police to torch the new squatter shacks. This was consistent with Zanu-PF policy: in the early days, Mugabe had been praised as a ‘conciliator’ by the international community for ensuring the security and property of those whites who remained in Zimbabwe, and evicting black squatters. Two decades later the position had changed: the support of the whites was no longer so important to Mugabe, and he was under enormous pressure from the veterans. With much to gain from casting his lot in with the rural insurgency, he returned from his trip and announced that there would be no government evictions. As land occupations spread to every province – 800 farms were occupied at the height of the protests – the split in the government and party hierarchy deepened. Inevitable tension between the executive and the judiciary undermined the rule of law; the executive sacked a number of judges, replacing them with others more sympathetic to land reform, and enacted pro-squatter legislation.
‘Fast-track’ land reform was now underway. The types of land that would be acquired compulsorily were specified by the government: unused or underutilised land, land owned by absentees or people with several farms; land above a certain area (determined by region) and land contiguous with communal areas. The white owners of around 2900 commercial farms listed for compulsory acquisition and redistribution were given 90 days to move out. Government directives specified that ‘owners of farms marked for redistribution will be compensated for improvements made on the land, but not for the land itself, as this land was stolen from the original owners in the colonial era.’
The closing date for ‘fast-track’ land acquisition – August 2002 – came and went, but occupations continued unimpeded until mid-2003, and on a diminished scale for a year or so after that. Chiefs fought for land for their constituents and for themselves, and so did their counterparts in the state bureaucracy and the private sector. In Matabeleland, a minority of pro-MDC chiefs were sceptical of land reform, but later submitted claims. The black elite made a brazen land grab in direct contravention of the ‘one person, one farm’ policy, provoking a hue and cry in society at large and within the ruling party; the government set up a presidential commission to determine the facts. Crucially, in 2005 the government passed an amendment declaring all agricultural land to be state land. Land was seized from nearly 4000 white farmers and redistributed: 72,000 large farmers received 2.19 million hectares and 127,000 smallholders received 4.23 million hectares.
What land reform has meant or may come to mean for Zimbabwe’s economy is still hotly disputed. Recently there have been signs that scholarly opinion is shifting. A study by Ian Scoones of Sussex University’s Institute of Development Studies – in collaboration with the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape – challenges some of the conventional wisdom in media and academic circles within and beyond Zimbabwe. The problem with this wisdom is that certain highly destructive aspects of reform – coercion; corruption and incompetence; cronyism in the redistribution of land; lack of funds and an absence of agricultural activity – have come to stand for the whole process. In particular, Scoones identifies five myths: that land reform has been a total failure; that its beneficiaries have been largely political cronies; that there is no new investment in the new settlements; that agriculture is in ruins; and that the rural economy has collapsed. Researchers at PLAAS have been quick to point out that over the past eight years small-scale farmers ‘have been particularly robust in weathering Zimbabwe’s political and economic turmoil, as well as drought’. Ben Cousins, the director of PLAAS and one of the most astute South African analysts of agrarian change – who had previously argued that the land reform would destroy agricultural production – now says that the future of Zimbabwe lies in providing small farmers with subsidies so that food security can be achieved. According to researchers at the African Institute for Agrarian Studies in Harare, new farms need to receive subsidised maize seed and fertiliser for a few seasons before achieving full production. Some might give up during this period, but not many – partly because the land tenure system doesn’t allow land sales; only land permits or leases can be acquired.
Zimbabwe has seen the greatest transfer of property in southern Africa since colonisation and it has all happened extremely rapidly. Eighty per cent of the 4000 white farmers were expropriated; most of them stayed in Zimbabwe. Redistribution revolutionised property-holding, adding more than a hundred thousand small owners to the base of the property pyramid. In social and economic – if not political – terms, this was a democratic revolution. But there was a heavy price to pay.
The first casualty was the rule of law, already tenuous by 1986. When international donors pressured the regime in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 2000 by suspending aid and loans – a boycott favoured by the MDC and the unions – the government simply fixed the result in its favour. In the violence that followed, more than a hundred people died, including six white farmers and 11 black farm labourers. Some of the violence was government-sponsored and most of it state-sanctioned. The judiciary was reshaped, local institutions in rural areas narrowly politicised, and laws were passed which granted local agencies the powers necessary to crush opponents of land reform. Denouncing his adversaries in the trade unions and NGOs as servants of the old white ruling class, Mugabe authorised the militias and state security agencies to hound down opposition, as repression and reform went hand in hand. In 2003, the leading independent newspaper, the Daily News, was shut down. While jubilant government supporters applauded the sweep of the revolution in agrarian areas, the opposition denounced the repression that accompanied it. Land reform had been ruthless, but in 2004, the violence began to abate. There was noticeably less violence surrounding the parliamentary elections of 2005.
In retrospect, it is striking how little turmoil accompanied this massive social change. The explanation lies in the participation of key rural figures in ad hoc but officially sanctioned land committees. When first introduced in 1996, these committees had mixed fortunes, some not functioning at all, others becoming instruments of this or that group of squatters. But a radical change occurred in 2000, when the committees were expanded to include centrally appointed security officials, ruling party representatives and local government personnel, as well as local veterans and traditional leaders. Charged with implementing fast-track land reform, these committees sidelined the old local administrative structures. They also had a national impact, since they reported to similarly constituted provincial committees, which in turn reported to the Ministry of Local Government. It was the infusion of veterans that gave the new semi-bureaucratic committees the edge over their wholly bureaucratic counterparts. Local committees usually comprised between 15 and 30 members. The veterans formed ‘base camps’ represented by ‘committees of seven’ which took the lead in identifying land for acquisition as well as finding prospective beneficiaries (mostly from veterans’ waiting lists and rosters in former ‘communal areas’). They also judged disputes, punished petty criminals and allocated farm equipment, seeds and so on. In a word, the committees co-ordinated everything, thus constituting new centres of power.
The second casualty of the reform was farm labourers. There were about 300,000 in all, around half of them part-time. Fast-track reform resulted in a massive displacement of these workers, who were traditionally drawn from migrant labour. Nearly a fifth came from neighbouring states and were regarded with suspicion by peasants in communal areas; even if they’d been born locally, they were often seen as foreigners and denied citizenship rights. Migrants and women (many employed as casual labour) were the weakest links in the rural mobilisation for land reform. Many were thought to have been encouraged by landowners to vote against the government’s constitutional proposals, and the anti-land-reform lobby certainly tried to organise farm workers, ostensibly to protect their jobs, but really to protect the white ownership of farms. When the workers rallied by the MDC, civil society activists and white farmers clashed with veteran-led occupiers, they came off badly. Occupiers held meetings to explain to workers what was at stake and eventually came themselves to distinguish between white farms, not only on the basis of size, proximity to communal areas, and the amount of unused land, but also on the basis of the farmer’s attitudes, particularly on race and towards his workers, and whether he had participated in the counter-insurgency during the independence struggle.
Some of the 150,000 full-time farm workers threw in their lot with the occupiers, though usually not on the farms where they had been employed. About 90,000 kept their jobs on sugar and tea estates, and on new or already established tobacco and horticulture farms. About 8000 were granted land, but most were denied it on the grounds that they or their elders had come from foreign countries, though some were given citizenship. Many went from steady employment to contract or casual work; many others were forced to supplement their meagre incomes through fishing, petty trading, theft and prostitution.
The best publicised casualties of the land reform movement were the urban poor who hoped to benefit from extending land invasions to urban areas. The veterans spearheaded occupations of urban residential land in 2000-1. Housing co-operatives and other associations followed their lead and set up ‘illegal’ residential or business sites. But the state feared that it would lose control over towns to the MDC if the land reform movement was allowed to spread and met these occupations with stiff repression, including Operation Restore Order/ Murambatsvina, a surprise military-style intervention in 2005 in which tens of thousands of families were evicted. Not surprisingly, those who opposed land reform in rural areas were the strongest critics of government efforts to stifle occupations in urban areas.
The final casualty was food production: Zimbabwe, once a food surplus country, is today deficient in both foreign exchange and food. In 2002-3, half the population depended on food aid: this was a drought year and the figures improved in 2004-5. The UN now estimates that nearly half the country’s 13.3 million inhabitants will once again be dependent on food aid in 2009, after another drought year. A million of these are poor, urban residents who can’t afford imported food. The rest are peasants, most of them hit by drought. Climate change is clearly a factor here, its role most obvious in marginal land: the communal areas worked by millions of small farmers. A 2002 World Food Programme study noted that there had been three droughts in Zimbabwe since 1982 and that the 2002 drought, which also affected several neighbouring countries in Southern Africa, was the worst in 20 years. The WFP estimated that 12.8 million people in the region would require assistance as a result of that drought and that in Zimbabwe alone, overall production would decline by 25 per cent, with cereal production down 57 per cent and maize, the staple in the diet of ordinary Zimbabweans, down by a devastating two-thirds.
To separate out the effect of drought and that of reform – and thus to understand how land reform has hit production – one needs first to distinguish between three groups of agricultural producer: local white farmers, who were the target of the land reform; peasants with farms in communal areas; and foreign corporations, whose large farms (except for small tracts of unused land) remain intact. Harry Oppenheimer, for example, lost most of his private land, but his firm, Anglo American, kept its sugar estates, which it then sold to Tongaat Hulett, a South African firm with 15,000 hectares in Zimbabwe. In a nutshell, white commercial farmers focused on export crops, whereas communal farmers were the major source of food security. The production of tobacco, hitherto the main source of foreign exchange, is concentrated in large-scale commercial farms; it has seen the most severe decline, almost entirely as a result of land reform. Maize and cotton are peasant crops and have not really been directly affected by land reform, but have suffered badly from prolonged drought – maize production was down by 90 per cent between 2000 and 2003. In contrast, the production of crops – sugar, tea, coffee – grown mainly by the large corporate plantations has remained steady.
Besides drought and reform, there is a third cause of declining production: the targeted donor boycott. Zimbabwe has been the target of Western sanctions twice in the last 50 years: once after UDI in 1965 (very ‘soft’ sanctions, which did not stop the country becoming the second most industrialised in sub-Saharan Africa by the mid-1970s) and again after Zimbabwe’s entry into the Congo war in August 1998. Zimbabwe’s involvement in the war was not well received in the West. Participants in the donor conference for Zimbabwe that year were decidedly lukewarm about committing funds. Britain announced a review of arms sales to Zimbabwe and, after the conference, again disclaimed any responsibility for funding land reform. The following year the IMF suspended lending to Zimbabwe, while the US and the UK decided to fund the labour movement, led by the ZCTU, first to oppose constitutional change and then to launch the MDC as a full-fledged opposition party. Its enemies have claimed that, by the late 1990s, the ZCTU was dependent on foreign sources for two-thirds of its income. Once ‘fast-track’ land reform began in 2000, the Western donor community shut the door on Zimbabwe.
The sanctions regime, led by the US and Britain, was elaborate, tested during the first Iraq war and then against Iran. In 2001 Jesse Helms, previously a supporter of UDI, sponsored the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery bill (another sponsor was Hillary Clinton) and it became law in December that year. Part of the act was a formal injunction on US officials in international financial institutions to ‘oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe’. In autumn 2001 the IMF had declared Zimbabwe ‘ineligible to use the general resources of the IMF’ and removed it from the list of countries that could borrow from its Poverty and Growth Facility. In 2002, it issued a formal declaration of non-co-operation with Zimbabwe and suspended all technical assistance. The US legislation also authorised Bush to fund ‘an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe’ and to allocate six million dollars for ‘democracy and governance programmes’. This was fighting talk, Cold War vintage. The normative language of sanctions focuses less on the issues that prompted them in the first place – Zimbabwe’s intervention in the Congo war and the introduction of fast-track reform – than on the need for ‘good governance’. In citing the absence of this as a reason for its imposition of sanctions in 2002, the EU violated Article 98 of the Cotonou Agreement, which requires that disputes between African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the EU be resolved by the joint EU-ACP Council of Ministers.
Clearly, the old paradigm of sanctions – isolation – has given way to a more interventionist model, which combines punishment of the regime with subsidies for the opposition. So-called ‘smart’ sanctions are intended to target the government and its key supporters. In 2002, the US, Britain and the EU began freezing the assets of state officials and imposing travel bans. Only four days after the EU imposed sanctions, the US expanded the list of targeted individuals to include prominent businessmen and even church leaders, such as the pro-regime Anglican bishop, Nolbert Kunonga.
Nonetheless, sanctions mainly affect the lives of ordinary people. Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, wrote recently that the country’s foreign exchange reserves had declined from $830 million, representing three months’ import cover in 1996, to less than one month’s cover by 2006. Total foreign payments arrears increased from $109 million at the end of 1999 to $2.5 billion at the end of 2006. Foreign direct investment had shrunk from $444.3 million in 1998 to $50 million in 2006. Donor support, even to sectors vital to popular welfare, such as health and education, was at an all-time low. Danish support for the health sector, $29.7 million in 2000, was suspended. Swedish support for education was also suspended. The US issued travel warnings, blocked food aid during the heyday of land reform and opposed Zimbabwe’s application to the Global Fund to Fight Aids – the country has the fourth highest infection rate in the world. Though it was renewed in 2005, the Zimbabwe grant is meagre. Agriculture has been affected too: scale matters, but no one disputes that subsidies are vital for agriculture to be sustainable, and sanctions have made it more difficult to put a proper credit regime in place.
Despite the EU’s imposition of sanctions in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 2002, Mugabe polled 56.2 per cent of the vote against Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC’s 42 per cent. There were widespread allegations of Zanu-PF violence and last-minute gerrymandering, with polling stations in urban areas – Tsvangirai’s electoral base – closing early and extra stations being set up in rural areas, where Mugabe’s support was assured. Nonetheless, it was clear that support for Zanu-PF was higher than in the pre-fast-track elections of 2000. Bush and Blair refused to recognise the outcome, but Namibia, Nigeria and the South African observer team, which had monitored the elections, concluded that the result was legitimate. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Africans could do little in the face of mounting Western pressure, from Britain especially: a three-member panel of Commonwealth countries – Australia, Nigeria and South Africa – was convened to consider the question of Zimbabwe. There were reports of intense pressure from Tony Blair on Thabo Mbeki. The panel suspended Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth for a year. Zimbabwe withdrew from the organisation.
The experience of land reform in Zimbabwe has set alarm bells ringing in South Africa and all the former settler colonies where land shortage is still an issue. In South Africa especially, the upheaval and bitterness felt in Zimbabwe seems to suggest that the ‘Malaysian path’ to peaceful redistribution and development is not inevitable. An anxious South Africa and less powerful members of the Southern Africa Development Community tend to feel that sanctions, along with other destabilising policies pursued by the West against Zimbabwe, have only made matters worse. SADC states have long tried to reconcile the need to resist Western influence with the fact that they serve as a bridge between Africa and the wealthy Western economies, but South Africa’s non-confrontational policy vis-à-vis Mugabe – which Mbeki pursued despite mounting criticism from the ANC and the unions in South Africa – along with its provision of fuel and electricity to its northern neighbour, set it at odds with Western governments. South Africa and the SADC states describe their approach as one of ‘non- interference’, ‘stabilisation’ and ‘quiet diplomacy’, but the West sees it as a deliberate effort to undermine sanctions, and critics in South Africa – most recently Mandela – found the Mbeki line much too conciliatory.
In 2007, SADC called for an end to sanctions against Zimbabwe and international support for a post-land-reform recovery programme, but earlier this year Western countries brought their influence to bear on key SADC members – Botswana and Zambia – to split the organisation. Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, went so far as to announce publicly that he would not recognise the results of the 2008 elections. The pressure on SADC came not only from Western countries, but from trade-union movements in the region, in particular Cosatu of South Africa, which has strong links with the ZCTU. Here is another striking aspect of the current Zimbabwe crisis: it is not just Western and pro- Western governments that have joined the sanctions regime, but many activists and intellectuals, for the most part progressives, have aligned themselves with distant or long-standing enemies in an effort to dislodge an authoritarian government clinging to power on the basis of historic grievances about the colonial theft of land. Symbolic of this was the refusal by Cosatu-affiliated unions to unload a cargo of Chinese arms destined for Zimbabwe when the An Yue Jiang sailed into Durban in April.
The arguments, which are not new, turn on questions of nationalism and democracy, pitting champions of national sovereignty and state nationalism against advocates of civil society and internationalism. One group accuses the other of authoritarianism and self-righteous intolerance; it replies that its critics are wallowing in donor largesse. Nationalists speak of a historical racism that has merely migrated from government to civil society with the end of colonial rule, while civil society activists speak of an ‘exhausted’ nationalism, determined to feed on old injustices. This fierce disagreement is symptomatic of the deep divide between urban and rural Zimbabwe. Nationalists have been able to withstand civil society-based opposition, reinforced by Western sanctions, because they are supported by large numbers of peasants. The tussle between these groups has even greater poignancy in former settler colonies than it had a generation earlier in former colonies north of the Limpopo, for the simple reason that the central legacy of settler colonialism – the land question – remained unresolved and explosive after independence. Southern African leaders have tried, with some success, to put out the fires in Zimbabwe before they spread beyond its borders. It is worth noting that the agreement between Zanu-PF and the MDC signed in September and brokered by Mbeki accepts land redistribution as irreversible and registers disagreement only over how it was carried out; it also holds Britain responsible for compensating white farmers. In the wake of Mbeki’s resignation as president of South Africa it is vital that this agreement remains in place. Few doubt that this is the hour of reckoning for former settler colonies. The increasing number of land invasions in KwaZulu Natal, and the violence that has accompanied them, indicate that the clock is ticking.
Bibliographical Note
Moyo, Sam & Paris Yeros (2005b), ‘Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Towards the National Democratic Revolution’, in Reclaiming the Land, edited by Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, London: Zed Books; Moyo, Sam and Paris Yeros (2007), ‘The Radicalised State: Zimbabwe’s Interrupted Revolution’, Review of African Political Economy, 111; Moyo, Sam & Paris Yeros (forthcoming), ‘After Zimbabwe: State, Nation and Region in Africa’, in S. Moyo, P. Yeros & J. Vadell (eds.), The National Question Today: The Crisis of Sovereignty in Africa, Asia and Latin America; Chambati, W. and S. Moyo, Fast Track Land Reform and the Political Economy of Farm Workers in Zimbabwe, Harare: AIAS Monograph Series, forthcoming For a critical point of view, see, Lloyd Sachikonye, “The Land is the Economy: Revisiting the Land Question,” African Security Review 14(3), 2005; and, Raftopoulos, Brian & Ian Phimister (2004), ‘Zimbabwe Now: The Political Economy of Crisis and Coercion’, Historical Materialism, 12: 4; Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge - Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice, Merlin Press, 2002; Henry Bernstein, ‘Land reform in Southern Africa in World Historical Perspective,’ ROAPE 96, 2003
On the non-Zimbabwean debate on the land reform, see, http://www.lalr.org.za/news/a-new-start-for-zimbabwe-by-ian-scoones.html (accessed on 27 September, 2008); IRIN, “Small Scale Farming Seen As the Only Alternative to Food Insecurity,” 22 September 2008. For a contrary point of view, see, Henry Bernstein, ‘Land reform in Southern Africa in World Historical Perspective,’ Review of African Political Economy 96, 2003
On war veterans, see, Sadomba, W (2006) War veterans and the land occupation movement in Zimbabwe, forthcoming, Harare;
On climate change and the impact of drought, see, C.H. Matarira, J.M. Makadho, F.C. Mwamuka, "Zimbabwe: Climate Change Impacts on Maize Production and Adaptive Measures for the Agricultural Sector," Interim Report on Climate Change Country Studies, 1995, www.gcrio.org
On sanctions, see, Gregory Elich, ‘Zimbabwe Under Siege,’ Swans Commentary Zimbabwe Under Seige, http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich004.html; Dr. Gideon Gono: How sanctions are ruining Zimbabwe, opinion piece, African Business, 2007.
On the debate among progressive intellectuals in Zimbabwe, see, Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, ‘The Zimbabwe Question and the Two Lefts.’ Forthcoming in Historical Materialism, vol. 14, no. 4, 2007
Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology, Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University. He is from Uganda.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency · Iraq and Darfur
From the archive
Who removed Aristide?
Paul Farmer: The US in Haiti
Diary
August Kleinzahler: The Doomsday Boys
Diary
Anne Enright: Disliking the McCanns
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Chaos in Zimbabwe
Chaos in Zimbabwe
By Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 4th October 2008
Forwarded by Benny Leon
Today I went from one meeting to another using the main streets in Harare it was pure chaos. The City had no electricity, the traffic lights at all intersections were not working and the traffic was gridlocked. The Police were nowhere to be seen and even as we sat in the traffic a police car drove past, ramped the pavement and drove though the intersection paying no attention to what was going on around them.
At the Reserve Bank it was the same. They are printing money and creating money in other forms so fast that the inflation rate is no longer calculable. What we do know is that the RTGS rate - that is the rate at which foreign exchange is exchanged in the open market for money transferred by electronic means is moving by the hour. At the beginning of August it was 7 to 1 against the US dollar (after we dropped 10 zeros) and yesterday it was 2 000 000 to 1. Quite a change in 8 weeks! At this rate it will be no less than 10 million to one by next weekend.
Desperate people are queuing for days at the banks and other financial houses to try and get their money out of the system so that they can spend it before it literally melts to nothing. In Gweru last week the main street was almost closed by crowds at ATM-s and banks. In Harare literally thousands of people jam every cash outlet. The maximum withdrawal by an individual is $20 000 a day worth US$ 0,001 cents.
The Reserve Bank, faced with the escalating consequences of their own ineptitude are now printing money on plain local bond paper with no security features. The mafia are having a field day and so many counterfeit notes are circulating that people are refusing the new notes. Instead of adopting a carefully crafted plan to overcome these problems and to correct the fundamentals that are driving the system towards collapse, the Governor today simply closed down the RTGS system and I understand even the inter bank system; rendering the only alternative window for payments impassable.
It is illegal to trade in hard currency; you can go to jail for this if you try, it is illegal to change money on the street, you cannot charge a market price for what you sell unless you are willing to risk intervention or worse. Even today there were reports of the government taking action against retailers who were “over charging”. Business is unable to pay their staff in cash, they pay them by bank transfer and then watch as half their work force is absent all day standing in queues.
Non cash forms of payments are rampant: barter is common, the use of fuel coupons with a face value of about US$30 each is also common tender. The BBC carried a story this week of an auction in Harare where the bids were all expressed in coupons. Most firms are now being forced to sell their goods and services in hard currency, Rand or US dollars, even though it is illegal.
Businesses do not bank the money because the Reserve Bank keeps a close watch on any foreign exchange balances in the Banks and simply expropriates them. Crediting the owner of these accounts with local currency at a ridiculous rate of exchange and then using the flow of hard currency to support the life styles of the small elite that is still in charge. At these rates of exchange a luxury, top of the range car costs less than the price of a local cigarette.
Here we are, 4 weeks away from the start of the wet season and we have 2 per cent of our fertilizer requirements in stock. All other inputs are virtually unobtainable. The Reserve Bank is handing out expensive farm equipment to Zanu PF fat cats like sweets to a kindergarden, but they cannot provide fuel or seed or fertilizer or chemicals. It’s madness.
Remaining farmers, black and white, are being evicted from their farms by Zanu PF heavies such as a Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank and what is left of the once world class tobacco industry is facing extinction. Dairy farmers, pig farms and fruit estates are all facing illegal invasion and disruption of activity. The Police simply respond to appeals for help by saying that they cannot help because “it is political”.
Our retail chains are empty, many stores are closed, the wholesalers are no longer functional and industry is running at 10 per cent of capacity. Power supplies are down to about half of demand, fuel is in short supply and spare parts are unobtainable. All basic foods are virtually only available in the parallel market at very high prices. Although government schools have opened their doors and the children have gone to school, no teachers are at work. The universities will not open their doors this term - the final term before vital exams. Business cannot fix prices or salaries - their normal activities are simply frozen in their tracks.
In the midst of this chaos Mugabe went on a 10 day spree to New York to make a speech. The cost of a 20 minute opportunity to denigrate the leading nations in the world, the very people who have fed his population for 8 years, was the cost of taking a Boeing 767 to New York and back via Egypt. The 54 member delegation must have cost at least US$2 million in allowances and expenses while there.
Then on return he wastes another week with no action on the formation of a new government - now 3 weeks since the SADC facilitated deal with the MDC was signed. And remember we have not had a proper government since the 29th March - nearly 7 months. Since Parliament was convened several weeks ago, we have had no government at all. When confronted with the need to make a decision on the allocation of Ministerial portfolios, Zanu PF has been frozen in its tracks like a child confronted with a cobra. Simply not knowing what to do and beginning to realize for the first time that the end of the road is in sight for them.
Even though Thabo Mbeki is no longer the power broker he was after his removal from the Presidency in South Africa, they are terrified of his visit to sort out the impasse because they know that their arguments for a disproportionate share of Ministerial portfolios are not defensible. They cannot hold out for much longer and Mbeki is on his way.
By Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 4th October 2008
Forwarded by Benny Leon
Today I went from one meeting to another using the main streets in Harare it was pure chaos. The City had no electricity, the traffic lights at all intersections were not working and the traffic was gridlocked. The Police were nowhere to be seen and even as we sat in the traffic a police car drove past, ramped the pavement and drove though the intersection paying no attention to what was going on around them.
At the Reserve Bank it was the same. They are printing money and creating money in other forms so fast that the inflation rate is no longer calculable. What we do know is that the RTGS rate - that is the rate at which foreign exchange is exchanged in the open market for money transferred by electronic means is moving by the hour. At the beginning of August it was 7 to 1 against the US dollar (after we dropped 10 zeros) and yesterday it was 2 000 000 to 1. Quite a change in 8 weeks! At this rate it will be no less than 10 million to one by next weekend.
Desperate people are queuing for days at the banks and other financial houses to try and get their money out of the system so that they can spend it before it literally melts to nothing. In Gweru last week the main street was almost closed by crowds at ATM-s and banks. In Harare literally thousands of people jam every cash outlet. The maximum withdrawal by an individual is $20 000 a day worth US$ 0,001 cents.
The Reserve Bank, faced with the escalating consequences of their own ineptitude are now printing money on plain local bond paper with no security features. The mafia are having a field day and so many counterfeit notes are circulating that people are refusing the new notes. Instead of adopting a carefully crafted plan to overcome these problems and to correct the fundamentals that are driving the system towards collapse, the Governor today simply closed down the RTGS system and I understand even the inter bank system; rendering the only alternative window for payments impassable.
It is illegal to trade in hard currency; you can go to jail for this if you try, it is illegal to change money on the street, you cannot charge a market price for what you sell unless you are willing to risk intervention or worse. Even today there were reports of the government taking action against retailers who were “over charging”. Business is unable to pay their staff in cash, they pay them by bank transfer and then watch as half their work force is absent all day standing in queues.
Non cash forms of payments are rampant: barter is common, the use of fuel coupons with a face value of about US$30 each is also common tender. The BBC carried a story this week of an auction in Harare where the bids were all expressed in coupons. Most firms are now being forced to sell their goods and services in hard currency, Rand or US dollars, even though it is illegal.
Businesses do not bank the money because the Reserve Bank keeps a close watch on any foreign exchange balances in the Banks and simply expropriates them. Crediting the owner of these accounts with local currency at a ridiculous rate of exchange and then using the flow of hard currency to support the life styles of the small elite that is still in charge. At these rates of exchange a luxury, top of the range car costs less than the price of a local cigarette.
Here we are, 4 weeks away from the start of the wet season and we have 2 per cent of our fertilizer requirements in stock. All other inputs are virtually unobtainable. The Reserve Bank is handing out expensive farm equipment to Zanu PF fat cats like sweets to a kindergarden, but they cannot provide fuel or seed or fertilizer or chemicals. It’s madness.
Remaining farmers, black and white, are being evicted from their farms by Zanu PF heavies such as a Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank and what is left of the once world class tobacco industry is facing extinction. Dairy farmers, pig farms and fruit estates are all facing illegal invasion and disruption of activity. The Police simply respond to appeals for help by saying that they cannot help because “it is political”.
Our retail chains are empty, many stores are closed, the wholesalers are no longer functional and industry is running at 10 per cent of capacity. Power supplies are down to about half of demand, fuel is in short supply and spare parts are unobtainable. All basic foods are virtually only available in the parallel market at very high prices. Although government schools have opened their doors and the children have gone to school, no teachers are at work. The universities will not open their doors this term - the final term before vital exams. Business cannot fix prices or salaries - their normal activities are simply frozen in their tracks.
In the midst of this chaos Mugabe went on a 10 day spree to New York to make a speech. The cost of a 20 minute opportunity to denigrate the leading nations in the world, the very people who have fed his population for 8 years, was the cost of taking a Boeing 767 to New York and back via Egypt. The 54 member delegation must have cost at least US$2 million in allowances and expenses while there.
Then on return he wastes another week with no action on the formation of a new government - now 3 weeks since the SADC facilitated deal with the MDC was signed. And remember we have not had a proper government since the 29th March - nearly 7 months. Since Parliament was convened several weeks ago, we have had no government at all. When confronted with the need to make a decision on the allocation of Ministerial portfolios, Zanu PF has been frozen in its tracks like a child confronted with a cobra. Simply not knowing what to do and beginning to realize for the first time that the end of the road is in sight for them.
Even though Thabo Mbeki is no longer the power broker he was after his removal from the Presidency in South Africa, they are terrified of his visit to sort out the impasse because they know that their arguments for a disproportionate share of Ministerial portfolios are not defensible. They cannot hold out for much longer and Mbeki is on his way.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Final chapter under way for Jews of Zimbabwe
Source: Mail and Guardian - September 2008
Final chapter under way for Jews of Zimbabwe
Hylton Solomon remains a patriotic Zimbabwean, despite his experience of being jailed for “over-pricing” spaghetti in his Bulawayo grocery store. He also remains committed to helping keep Bulawayo’s 114-year-old Jewish community going, although today it is less than one-20th the size it was at its height.
Solomon is an exception. Most Zimbabwean Jews have left now, with barely 300 souls remaining from an estimated high of 7 500 in the mid-1960s. Once, there was a substantial Jewish presence not just in Harare and Bulawayo, but also in smaller rural towns such as KweKwe, Gwelo and Kadoma. None is to be found now outside the two main urban centres. One of the remaining duties of the Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies is to maintain the Jewish cemeteries in those far-off areas.
The median age of the community is over 70. That, as much as anything, explains why its members are still there. Until recently, Zimbabwe was home to the world’s oldest living Jew, Leizer Abrahamson. He passed away last year shortly after his 108th birthday, having lived more than three-quarters of his life in Bulawayo.
The situation in which Zimbabwe’s remaining Jews find themselves is reflective of the general economic and political meltdown of Zimbabwean society. For some, it means buying a kosher chicken for the Rosh Hashanah festival and then paying it off over the next six months. For others, it is about attending a “Jewish day school”, where fewer than 2% of the pupils are Jewish. It is a country where most remaining Jews still wish to continue living, but where they ask journalists who quote them not to do so by name. Once wealthy community members now queue up to receive rolls of toilet paper, tins of jam and other basic necessities donated by Jewish organisations in South Africa and elsewhere.
Of course, even at its height Zimbabwe Jewry numbered no more than 8 000 souls, a fraction of the country’s population. Still, by Diaspora standards it was a significant community, and its members were prominently represented in all echelons of the country’s political, civic and economic life. Even today, its remaining members cling with remarkable tenacity to those communal institutions that remain: two synagogues in Harare and one in Bulawayo, a Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies, a Jewish old-age home in Bulawayo and even its “Jewish” day school.
In 2003, the remaining members of Bulawayo’s Jewish community were shocked to learn that their synagogue had been destroyed in a freak blaze. For a community already reduced to a fraction of what it had been at its height and facing further decline, it was a cruel blow. The Japanese have a proverb for such perversely compounded misfortune: “When crying, stung by bee in the face.” Somehow, it all seemed symbolic of everything else that was going on.
And always, when contemplating the Zimbabwe catastrophe, there is that nagging question at the back of my mind: Is this to be our destiny as well? And if so, where will my children be able to go? Accusations of unwarranted Afro-pessimism may have some substance, but they will not make those fears go away.
_________________________________________________________________________________
David Saks has worked for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) since April 1997, and is currently its associate director. Over the years, he has written extensively on aspects of South African history, Judaism and the Middle East for local and international newspapers and journals.
Final chapter under way for Jews of Zimbabwe
Hylton Solomon remains a patriotic Zimbabwean, despite his experience of being jailed for “over-pricing” spaghetti in his Bulawayo grocery store. He also remains committed to helping keep Bulawayo’s 114-year-old Jewish community going, although today it is less than one-20th the size it was at its height.
Solomon is an exception. Most Zimbabwean Jews have left now, with barely 300 souls remaining from an estimated high of 7 500 in the mid-1960s. Once, there was a substantial Jewish presence not just in Harare and Bulawayo, but also in smaller rural towns such as KweKwe, Gwelo and Kadoma. None is to be found now outside the two main urban centres. One of the remaining duties of the Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies is to maintain the Jewish cemeteries in those far-off areas.
The median age of the community is over 70. That, as much as anything, explains why its members are still there. Until recently, Zimbabwe was home to the world’s oldest living Jew, Leizer Abrahamson. He passed away last year shortly after his 108th birthday, having lived more than three-quarters of his life in Bulawayo.
The situation in which Zimbabwe’s remaining Jews find themselves is reflective of the general economic and political meltdown of Zimbabwean society. For some, it means buying a kosher chicken for the Rosh Hashanah festival and then paying it off over the next six months. For others, it is about attending a “Jewish day school”, where fewer than 2% of the pupils are Jewish. It is a country where most remaining Jews still wish to continue living, but where they ask journalists who quote them not to do so by name. Once wealthy community members now queue up to receive rolls of toilet paper, tins of jam and other basic necessities donated by Jewish organisations in South Africa and elsewhere.
Of course, even at its height Zimbabwe Jewry numbered no more than 8 000 souls, a fraction of the country’s population. Still, by Diaspora standards it was a significant community, and its members were prominently represented in all echelons of the country’s political, civic and economic life. Even today, its remaining members cling with remarkable tenacity to those communal institutions that remain: two synagogues in Harare and one in Bulawayo, a Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies, a Jewish old-age home in Bulawayo and even its “Jewish” day school.
In 2003, the remaining members of Bulawayo’s Jewish community were shocked to learn that their synagogue had been destroyed in a freak blaze. For a community already reduced to a fraction of what it had been at its height and facing further decline, it was a cruel blow. The Japanese have a proverb for such perversely compounded misfortune: “When crying, stung by bee in the face.” Somehow, it all seemed symbolic of everything else that was going on.
And always, when contemplating the Zimbabwe catastrophe, there is that nagging question at the back of my mind: Is this to be our destiny as well? And if so, where will my children be able to go? Accusations of unwarranted Afro-pessimism may have some substance, but they will not make those fears go away.
_________________________________________________________________________________
David Saks has worked for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) since April 1997, and is currently its associate director. Over the years, he has written extensively on aspects of South African history, Judaism and the Middle East for local and international newspapers and journals.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Letter to Jerusalem Post re Ndaba
Letter on the Ndaba by Marvyn Hatchuel to Jerusalem Post 03 August 2008
click on image to enlarge for easier reading...
click on image to enlarge for easier reading...
Monday, July 21, 2008
The land of Rolexes and handouts
| w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m |
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| Last update - 02:12 21/07/2008 The land of Rolexes and handoutsBy Cnaan Liphshiz For 27 years, Owen has worked as a free professional at a large company. Now, his pension of 61 million Zimbabwe dollars will only buy him six apples at the central market place of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, where he lives. He says that while the economy is ruined, Zimbabwe's 270 Jews enjoy better personal security than in South Africa. Owen, who requested his real name be withheld for safety reasons, was the only resident of Zimbabwe who 10 days ago attended a large reunion in Ra'anana for ex-Zimbabweans, organized by Telfed, the South African Zionist Federation Israel. "The whole idea in Zimbabwe is low profile. Don't raise your head. This is why I don't want my name mentioned," he said at the Ra'anana Bowling Club, where 300 Southern Africans turned out. Yet for Owen, moving to South Africa as many Zimbabwean Jews have done over the years, is not an option. "In Harare we can still walk and feel safe. We don't have South Africa's huge crime problem, we can go into town and all that," he explained. As for moving to Israel, Owen says that he will stay in Zimbabwe as long as his children receive a good education. "Also, I stay because it's my home - even with all the nonsense going on," he says in an apparent reference to the dictatorial rigging of elections and executions of dissidents by President Robert Mugabe. At 57, Owen's one of the youngest members of his dwindling community. "They're all old people, and they have no access to the decision makers," he added. Zimbabwe's Jews are too old to leave, Owen says, and outside funding is the only way for them to survive in a failed economy afflicted by the worst inflation rate witnessed anywhere in recent years. "You need at least a few trillion to manage," he says - the equivalent of a few hundred U.S. dollars. Owen relies on foreign currency to maintain a lifestyle which he calls "affluent." Whipping out from his pocket a slim iPhone cellular device, he browses through pictures of his spacious home in Zimbabwe - which he jokingly calls "the only country where people like me wear Rolex watches and get food handouts." |
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A Shtetl in Africa
A Shtetl in Africa
Jun. 12, 2008
David E. Kaplan , THE JERUSALEM POST
When Zimbabweans in Israel converge on July 11 at the Ra'anana Bowls Club for a reunion, they may well exceed the number of Jews remaining in their former country.
For those up on international news that should come as little surprise. Reminiscent of the worst days of the Weimar Republic, when basic commodities were priced in the millions of Deutschmarks, Zimbabwe under authoritarian President Robert Mugabe goes one better - even at a price tag with a trail of zeros, the desired chicken, loaf of bread or aspirin might not be available. Once the bread basket of Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) today is a basket case, unable to feed even its own people.
From a peak of some 7,500 Jews in the 1970s - comprising some 80 percent Ashkenazim - the country's community today numbers only about 200 souls, an eighth of whom are residents of Savyon Lodge, the retirement home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city.
Zimbabwe-born Dave Bloom, vice chairman of Telfed (an organization representing all Southern Africans in Israel), takes solace in the fact that over 700 former Zimbabweans live in Israel today, "representing some 10% of the size of the community at its zenith."
That many Zimbabweans made Israel their home is hardly surprising. From its humble beginning, the community was proudly Jewish and passionately Zionist. When Bulawayo's 100-year-old synagogue was engulfed in flames in 2004, the conflagration resonated as the end of an era.
In 1894, 21 Jewish traders and ex-soldiers from an expeditionary force sponsored by the British South Africa Company gathered in the tent of Messrs. Moss & Rosenblatt to form a congregation in Bulawayo, a sun-blistered town of tin and wooden shanties with roads that were little more than sand paths. On September 18 that same year, the community gathered in its new synagogue - no longer a tent, but a hut - to consider the establishment of a Zionist society. A lengthy discussion ensued as to whether the society should identify itself with Herzlian Zionism or with Hovevei Zion, the precursor to political Zionism. In other words, three years before the first Zionist Congress in Basel, a group of pioneering Jews, trying to eke out a living in the most primitive conditions in central Africa, were discussing the Jewish people's alternatives in their quest for a national homeland. Hardly having established a home for themselves, they were seeking a national home for their people.
EZER WEIZMANN visiting Salisbury (today Harare) with a guard-of-honor of members of the Jewish youth movements. Debbie Zabow, the first girl in Habonim uniform on the left, is today a resident of Kfar Saba.
Photo: Courtesy - http://www.zjc.org.il/
In 1919, Lord Edmund Allenby visited Rhodesia. As a World War I hero who only two years earlier had conquered Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks, he was welcomed by the local Zionist leadership. Asked what he thought lay ahead for a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people, he responded emphatically, "Hard work and increased immigration." History records that in the 1930s, the per capita financial contribution of Rhodesian Jewry to Palestine was the highest in the Diaspora. This was a tradition that continued into the 1970s.
Even before the embers of the Bulawayo Synagogue cooled in 2004, Bloom, who describes his erstwhile community as a "shtetl in Africa," believed it was time to "preserve the past before nothing was left or no one alive to tell the story." He started collecting material, which he posted on his Web site (http://www.zjc.org.il/).
Visiting the Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, he made copies of newspaper cuttings, minutes of meetings and photos. In a collection of documents recording interviews with early Jewish settlers in Rhodesia, he discovered the unpublished manuscript by the renowned South African historian Eric Rosenthal on "Rhodesian Jewry and its Story." From these writings we learn of an Englishman, Daniel Montague Kisch, the first Jew to feature in the history of Rhodesia. By 1860 he had become a prospector "and so joined the expedition of diggers, mainly Australian, on the wearisome trek to a golden will-o'-the-wisp on the Tati Fields." Kisch had a frontier way of dealing with issues. When Sir John Swinburne, a future MP, but then chairman of the London & Limpopo Company working on the Tati Concession, tried to assert his authority over Kisch, he received the latter's resignation in the form of a broken nose.
Like Kisch, Moss Cohen also came to Rhodesia from England, although because of his alleged Irish "associations" he was better known as Paddy Cohen. The area was a tribal kingdom and Cohen wrote in a diary entry how "King Lobengula took a fancy" to him and granted him a trading license, "the sole rights in all his territory."
"I gave him a horse for it," he added.
Later, when the issue of prospecting rights for gold arose, the king, Cohen wrote, "gave a promise that I should be the first to get one. He would not give it in writing, but I was satisfied with his (verbal) promise."
Things never quite worked out that way. Rosenthal recounts the trials and tribulations of this colorful Jewish personality who fell in and out of favor with all the major players of the time, a time period known as the "Scramble for Africa" - including King Lobengula; mining magnate Charles Dunell Rudd, Rhodesian pioneer Francis R. Thompson, better known as "Matabele," and imperial colossus Cecil John Rhodes - over who owned what rights.
Before its posting on Bloom's Web site, very few had seen Rosenthal's monumental work, commissioned by the Rhodesian Jewish Board of Deputies in 1949. Since its completion, it attracted little else than dust. "Very few even knew of its existence. Gems were coming out of the woodwork," Bloom told Metro. People all over the world were dusting off the past to reveal a treasure trove of Jewish history in central Africa, much of which is now available on his site.
Mindful of the tragedy that befell the shtetls of Eastern Europe, where the past itself was no less a victim than the people of history's toxic twists, Bloom, of Polish ancestry, was determined to pictorially document all the Jewish graves in Zimbabwe. "So far, we have posted on our Web site photographs of over 4,000 headstones… covering Harare (formally Salisbury), Bulawayo and all the smaller country towns." Former Zimbabweans from all over the world have been contributing to the site and, Bloom says, "we now have over 200 family biographies. These personal narratives present a colorful history not only of the families, but also of the country, illuminating how people arrived in what was then Rhodesia and why they came."
Each family has its own story. Marvyn Hatchuel's father came from Morocco. Hatchuel, who is organizing the July reunion, is a former president of CAZO - Central African Zionist Organization. "In 1904 my 20-year-old father was in Alexandria [Egypt] on business when he met a fellow Sephardic Jew, Behor Benatar, from Rhodesia, who had originally come from the Mediterranean island of Rhodes. He told my dad, 'You want to make money, come to Rhodesia. My brother and I run a concession store at Penhalonga, a gold mining town in eastern Rhodesia.'"
Wandering off, Hatchuel continued, his father found himself pounding the port area of Alexandria. A ship bound for east Africa grabbed his attention and on the spur of the moment he bought a ticket to Mozambique. Disembarking at Beira, Hatchuel had insufficient money to pay for any further passage. So the young Moroccan followed the railway track and walked the breadth of Mozambique until he crossed over into Rhodesia and completed the last stretch to Penhalonga. "I believe when Behor Benatar saw my father enter his store, he nearly collapsed. Anyway, he gave him a job. At night and under candlelight Dad would sit with a dictionary and a newspaper and in that way taught himself English," Hatchuel related.
When Hatchuel the elder had arrived in Penhalonga, he spoke to his employers in Ladino. When he left, he was fluent in English and six years later, in 1910, he opened - together with the Daniel brothers - one of the first general wholesale stores in Salisbury.
The community's Sephardim, who came mainly from Rhodes, "started arriving in the early 1890s," said Nick Alhadeff of Kfar Saba, who at one time or another held all the top positions in his former community - president of the Sephardic Congregation of Rhodesia, Chairman of the Board of Deputies and President of CAZO. Alhadeff's father left Rhodes for Rhodesia in 1931 over a split-up in the family's bank. "Rather than choose to become either the managing director of his uncle's bank or the breakaway one of the nephews, he opted instead to join his brothers in Rhodesia," Alhadeff explained. It was a fortunate choice. Those members of his family who did not leave Rhodes "ended up in Auschwitz."
The Sephardim were part of a unified Jewish community until 1931, "when all hell broke loose. It was over some difference in the conduct of the shul service," Alhadeff told Metro. "Jews! Who can remember the exact details, but soon thereafter, the Sephardim had their own shul." Time, however, is a great healer. "I, the son of a Sephardic Jew, became the first of my community to write the bar mitzva exam under Rabbi Konviser of the Ashkenazi shul. I became a member of both congregations, a sign of the changing times," he recalled.
Times were changing in more ways than one. In 1960 Harold Macmillan delivered his famous address in the South African parliament, in which he declared that "The winds of change are blowing through this continent," referring to the growth of the nationalist movements across Africa that were seeking independence from colonial powers. National aspirations were no less rooted in Africa's Jewish communities, as their youth movements as well as the adult leadership increasingly identified with the Jewish state. Fundraising for Israel and aliya became an integral part of local communal life.
It was an age when Jewish pride was riding high, reinforced by Israeli victories in war as well as subsequent daring air raids on Entebbe and Iraq. The older generation was quite happy to regard their youth as future Israeli citizens.
Attending the upcoming reunion in Ra'anana will be many of those former members of the Habonim, Betar and Bnei Akiva youth movements who may have stood in honor guards for Menachem Begin, Ezer Weizmann, Moshe Dayan and Chaim Herzog, who all made a point of including Rhodesia in their visits to Southern Africa during the sixties and seventies. They were following in the legacy of their parents and grandparents, who would have welcomed such figures as Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Zeev Jabotinsky, Nachum Sokolow, Dr. Alexander Goldstein, Moshe Sharett and Dr. Abba Hillel.
"We may have been a small community, but we led by example," says Hatchuel. "Most of the CAZO heads made aliya - Mervyn Lasovsky, David Melmed, Eric Brod, Boris Cass (Honorary Life President) and Adolf Leon. And let us not forget the women's Zionist leadership."
Women like Rachel Baron, a vibrant speaker and founder of WIZO in Bulawayo, who became an international figure in the women's Zionist organization. Years later she would settle in the country for which she had worked so tirelessly, joining her two daughters, Beverly Kaplan and Merle Gutman, and their families. Kaplan was a founding member of Manof, a moshav founded by Southern Africans in the Lower Galilee. Gutman, founder and life president of ESRA (English Speakers Residents Association) has been the recipient of the President's Prize and the Prime Minister's Prize for Volunteerism.
"It was a wonderful childhood," Gutman told Metro. "Life revolved around the shul, the Jewish Guild Hall and Habonim." Like all one-time Zimbabweans, she laments what has befallen her former country. "It's so tragic, so cruel and so unnecessary. I feel no less for the country as a whole than what has befallen the Jewish community. It is horrific how a tyrant [Mugabe] can so wantonly destroy his own country and persecute his people and the world stands idly by. South Africa has not only failed its neighbor, but has been complicit in supporting this tyrant."
Reunion of ex-Rhodesians/Zimbabweans:
• Date: Friday, July 11 at 9:30 a.m. for brunch
• Venue: Ra'anana Lawn Bowls Club
• For further information, contact Marvyn Hatchuel at (09) 774-7181 or Dave Bloom at 054-465-0220.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Zimbabwe expats use reunion to plead cause of Jewish peers
Zimbabwe expats use reunion to plead cause of Jewish peers
Jul. 13, 2008
JOSH SCHEINERT , THE JERUSALEM POST
Jul. 13, 2008
JOSH SCHEINERT , THE JERUSALEM POST
A reunion of 281 Zimbabwean expatriates living in Israel was held in Ra'anana last week to raise funds and awareness as to the precariousness of the situation in their former country. Ironically, the number represented more Zimbabwean Jews than in all of Zimbabwe today.
Dave Bloom, vice chairman of Telfed, the South-African Zionist Federation that also represents Zimbabwe, and himself a native of then Rhodesia (Rhodesia changed its name to Zimbabwe in 1980 when Robert Mugabe became president), spoke to the crowd about a community in a "battle to maintain themselves in a country that's all but collapsed economically and politically."
He announced that $300
,000 had been raised through the Joint Distribution Committee, World Jewish Relief and Chai South Africa, but that more was needed. (see picture left - Bloom addressing audience)
The African Jewish Congress (AJC) in Johannesburg has been at the forefront of these efforts and coordinates sending supplies and provisions by truck over the border.
Funds raised have gone towards buying generators and community upkeep, but mostly they are going towards buying food and basic provisions, like medicine, that are becoming increasingly scarce in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. However, a community member noted the cost of kosher meat and the ability of getting a kosher butcher from South Africa has made it increasingly rare in the recent past.
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, the AJC's spiritual leader and coordinator of its Zimbabwe efforts, explained the biggest concern was to ensure that the members of the Jewish community, and the people that work for them in their homes, are taken care of "in a manner that is respectful and sustainable." Asked if he was confident the AJC could meet this concern amid the current period of turmoil and uncertainty, he answered, "Absolutely."
Silberhaft noted, however, that raising money is becoming the biggest obstacle. "The demands on us are increasing on a weekly basis," he said.
Paul Hammer, who left Zimbabwe five years ago with his four daughters, explained at the reunion that it was the inability to obtain that quality of life and services that the AJC is trying to maintain that proved the tipping point in persuading him to say goodbye to the land of his childhood.
His daughters were not getting the quality of education or health care he felt appropriate, and blamed the country's failing economy. "All the professionals fled from the hyperinflation," he noted.
Still in touch with a few Jewish friends who have remained behind, Hammer calls the situation in Zimbabwe today "a disaster." Bloom explained those hardest hit were individuals, Jewish or other, living on fixed incomes.
"They are trapped by the fact that their money has disappeared," he said.
"But we live in hope," said Hammer, trying to sound upbeat that the present hardships would pass one day and that individuals and families still in Zimbabwe, Jewish or not, would overcome the present catastrophe.
However, he, along with Bloom
said they did not feel the situation would change in the foreseeable future, economically or politically.
"I would be surprised if there would ever be any resuscitation of the community over there," said Bloom.
However, a community resident who plans to stay in Zimbabwe unless things become completely unbearable believes the backbone of a future community will be made up of mostly former Israelis who go to work temporarily in agriculture. "It won't be as when people lived their lives here," he said, "but there will be Jews."
Picture above shows youngsters at the reunion with Zimbabwe roots
L -R front row Josh Koff (from U.S) , Mia Hammar, Daniella Hammar L- R Middle RowNatalie Hammar, Taum Hammar, Janine Feldman (with son Danny) L-R Back Row Sharon Favish (with son Eitan)
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Zimbabwe Jews holding out
by Moira Schneider (JTA)
With Zimbabwe in the throes of an economic and political crisis, the country's tiny Jewish community is holding steady. Most say they don't want to leave.
CAPE TOWN (JTA) -- With Zimbabwe in the throes of an economic and political crisis, the country’s tiny Jewish community is holding steady.
The president of a synagogue in the city of Bulawayo says Zimbabwe’s approximately 320 Jews have been left largely unharmed by the violence surrounding last week's presidential election that drove opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai from the race.
Observers outside the country have called the vote, in which President Robert Mugabe was re-elected, a sham.
Hylton Solomon, the 52-year-old president of the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation, says the Jews of Zimbabwe have become accustomed to the grim situation in their country.
“Over the years, everybody has been so disappointed,” he told JTA. “It’s just another day. They just accept” it. “The Jews, certainly in Bulawayo, I don’t believe feel threatened, and I don’t think they ever have.”
Though they have been spared the violence, Zimbabwe's Jews have been hit hard by the economic crisis. The country has been beset by electricity, food, water and fuel shortages.
Jewish aid officials assisting the community say, however, that few Zimbabwe Jews intend to leave.
It's a community that has dwindled to 320 from a high of about 7,500 in the 1970s, when the country was called Rhodesia and ruled by a white minority.
The Jews are split between the capital of Harare and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city. Two Jewish day schools, one in each city, have mostly non-Jewish students. The Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues in Harare have combined their services, and there is one rabbi in the country, David Alima of Bulawayo.
Mervyn Smith, the president of the African Jewish Congress -- an initiative of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies to attend to the needs of far-flung Jewish communities in sub-Saharan Africa -- says he sensed a mood of resignation among Zimbabwe’s Jews on a recent visit.
“There isn’t a fear of physical danger, but there’s almost despair that the economy and the whole situation can ever right itself,” Smith said.
The country is suffering from skyrocketing inflation estimated at 20 to 30 percent per week. Last week, it took 40 billion Zimbabwe dollars to equal $1.
Many Jews have seen their savings totally eroded.
“People are depressed, but what is really having an impact on everyone is the collapse of the economy,” said one community member who asked to remain anonymous. “Our money is worthless.”
Most Zimbabwe Jews of Zimbabwe are elderly; just six Jewish children live in the country. Of the 110 Jews in Bulawayo, 26 live in Zimbabwe’s only Jewish old-age home, the Savyon Lodge.
The economic crisis has hit them particularly hard.
“Many were dependent on their savings and pensions; they thought that they could live with dignity and be independent to the end of their days,” said one community member. “That is not possible. Things are either unavailable or unaffordable.”
The executive director of the African Jewish Congress, Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, says he spends 90 percent of his time on issues relating to the Zimbabwean Jewish community.
“We provide everything from medication to rent to basic foodstuffs,” Silberhaft said. “Nothing is affordable, nothing is available. We send water purification tablets because the water is no longer safe to drink.
“The reality is that there’s almost nothing on the ground -- there’s no toilet paper, cotton, wool, medication,” he said.
Silberhaft visited Zimbabwe in late May and said the Jews in the country were prepared to carry on. At his monthly distribution of essentials, the rabbi said he “watched proud Jewish people that used to be in the category of ‘haves’ queuing for salt, toilet paper and jam.”
Silberhaft recently went to London to raise awareness of the crisis and raise money for the African Jewish Congress’ Zimbabwe fund.
Though a June 13 report in the London Jewish Chronicle said the Jewish Agency for Israel was planning a secret emergency airlift of the country’s remaining Jews, Silberhaft insists there are no such plans.
“I met with Zeev Bielski,” the agency’s chairman, “and there’s absolutely no evacuation plan whatsoever,” Silberhaft said. “What the Jewish Agency and we say is, if you want to leave, as long as there are commercial airlines, why wait for an evacuation? Leave now and we will take care of you.”
One community member said that despite constant calls for them to leave by panicked family members abroad, most Jews in Zimbabwe do not feel the need to run.
“As a community we carry on without any interference and celebrate all the festivals,” she said. “I don’t feel any urgency to leave.”
“The situation is dire, not unsafe,” said another Zimbabwe Jew who spoke to JTA on condition of anonymity. “No one that I know has been harmed in any way.”
She added, “I feel safer here than in Johannesburg.”
Many of Zimbabwe’s non-elderly Jews regularly commute to neighboring South Africa.
“The younger people like me have homes in South Africa,” said Solomon, the synagogue president. “I often question why I’m not more positive in making a plan to move, but I don’t know whether South Africa is the place to move to, quite honestly. I’m still making a bit of a living here and I have the best of both worlds.”
Solomon says he visits Cape Town every four to six weeks for about 10 days to see family and go to movies and restaurants.
“It’s just a bit of a bittersweet sort of life,” he said.
Last July, Solomon was jailed for a night for violating Zimbabwe’s price controls by overcharging on a box of spaghetti.
With everything that has happened, however, Solomon sounds a note of optimism.
“Something positive is going to come out of all this,” he said. “The economic situation just cannot carry on like this anymore.”
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Goodbye, Zimbabwe -The once-thriving Jewish community has all but disappeared
Source (Macleans)
Goodbye, Zimbabwe
The once-thriving Jewish community has all but disappeared
MICHAEL ROSS June 4, 2008 MICHAEL ROSS-->
"If Cape Town is the top deck of the Titanic for the Jews of southern Africa, then Zimbabwe is the boiler room below the waterline," my guide Malcolm observed during my last foray into Zimbabwe in 2001 as an agent of Mossad, the Israeli spy service. If that was so, then the boiler room is now empty.
Much attention has been paid to the plight of Zimbabwe's white and mostly Anglo farmers whose fields were seized under President Robert Mugabe's ill-conceived and disastrous land appropriation program. But the abject ruination the Mugabe regime has wrought on the small landlocked country has had other victims as well. As Zimbabwe's economy and quality of life have deteriorated, the number of Jews in a place once touted as the bread-basket of Africa and a showcase of interracial harmony and prosperity has been sinking, almost as fast as the fated ocean liner now resting on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.
It's been a painful road to ruin, given how the community once flourished. During the time of the ever-expanding British Empire of the 19th century, Jews traversed South Africa into northern tribal lands, eventually settling into prosperous communities in cities such as Harare, Bulawayo and Kadoma, all in what is now Zimbabwe. They were the backbone of the business sector, establishing and owning commercial ventures ranging from retail stores to import-export firms. But then came the violent and turbulent period of Mugabe's fight to convert white-minority-ruled Rhodesia into the modern African state of Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe's decline into an impoverished country that now has one of the lowest life expectancy rates and one of the worst HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, with some 3,500 people dying per week due to HIV/AIDS alone.
Zimbabwe's Jews, along with others, fled. From its peak of some 7,500 in the 1970s, the country's Jewish community today consists of some 200 souls, mostly in Harare but with a small core lingering in Bulawayo. The average age is over 70; some 25 of the eldest live in Bulawayo's Savyon Lodge, a Jewish geriatric centre that, remarkably, still serves kosher meals to its guests. Those that can still leave do, with most heading to families who have long departed for the less troubled former colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with others seeking sanctuary in South Africa and Israel.
The Jews that are left are not exactly made to feel welcome. The beautiful synagogue of Bulawayo was gutted by a fire in 2003, only to have the local press declare that Jews had been hoarding fuel and all sorts of treasures and foreign currency in the building. Unsurprisingly, the press made no mention of how some congregants risked death to retrieve the Torah scrolls from the burning synagogue. Mugabe, once a comrade of the late Yasser Arafat, has added fuel to the already burning flames of anti-Semitism by allowing Palestinian and Iranian diplomats in Zimbabwe to exert a most undiplomatic influence on members of the government. Tag on the random muggings, violence, and property crime in a country with an unemployment rate hovering at around 80 per cent, and what's left of the community feels very beleaguered.
Zimbabwean native Dave Bloom, 54, describes the current situation in stark terms. "There are a handful of younger members," he says, "but within five to 10 years the majority of the older community will have passed. I cannot envisage a resuscitation even if a change of power were to happen." Bloom now lives in Israel, where he has become a sort of self-appointed archivist — maintaining a detailed database complete with multimedia records, for future generations of Jews to whom Zimbabwe's community will be only a memory. "I'm trying to preserve as much of the story as possible, including pictures of every Jewish tombstone in Zimbabwe — a sort of virtual museum," says Bloom. He'll soon have very little work ahead of him.
Michael Ross's The Volunteer (McClelland & Stewart), about his years in the Mossad, recently appeared in paperback.
Goodbye, Zimbabwe
The once-thriving Jewish community has all but disappeared
MICHAEL ROSS June 4, 2008 MICHAEL ROSS-->
"If Cape Town is the top deck of the Titanic for the Jews of southern Africa, then Zimbabwe is the boiler room below the waterline," my guide Malcolm observed during my last foray into Zimbabwe in 2001 as an agent of Mossad, the Israeli spy service. If that was so, then the boiler room is now empty.
Much attention has been paid to the plight of Zimbabwe's white and mostly Anglo farmers whose fields were seized under President Robert Mugabe's ill-conceived and disastrous land appropriation program. But the abject ruination the Mugabe regime has wrought on the small landlocked country has had other victims as well. As Zimbabwe's economy and quality of life have deteriorated, the number of Jews in a place once touted as the bread-basket of Africa and a showcase of interracial harmony and prosperity has been sinking, almost as fast as the fated ocean liner now resting on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.
It's been a painful road to ruin, given how the community once flourished. During the time of the ever-expanding British Empire of the 19th century, Jews traversed South Africa into northern tribal lands, eventually settling into prosperous communities in cities such as Harare, Bulawayo and Kadoma, all in what is now Zimbabwe. They were the backbone of the business sector, establishing and owning commercial ventures ranging from retail stores to import-export firms. But then came the violent and turbulent period of Mugabe's fight to convert white-minority-ruled Rhodesia into the modern African state of Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe's decline into an impoverished country that now has one of the lowest life expectancy rates and one of the worst HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, with some 3,500 people dying per week due to HIV/AIDS alone.
Zimbabwe's Jews, along with others, fled. From its peak of some 7,500 in the 1970s, the country's Jewish community today consists of some 200 souls, mostly in Harare but with a small core lingering in Bulawayo. The average age is over 70; some 25 of the eldest live in Bulawayo's Savyon Lodge, a Jewish geriatric centre that, remarkably, still serves kosher meals to its guests. Those that can still leave do, with most heading to families who have long departed for the less troubled former colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with others seeking sanctuary in South Africa and Israel.
The Jews that are left are not exactly made to feel welcome. The beautiful synagogue of Bulawayo was gutted by a fire in 2003, only to have the local press declare that Jews had been hoarding fuel and all sorts of treasures and foreign currency in the building. Unsurprisingly, the press made no mention of how some congregants risked death to retrieve the Torah scrolls from the burning synagogue. Mugabe, once a comrade of the late Yasser Arafat, has added fuel to the already burning flames of anti-Semitism by allowing Palestinian and Iranian diplomats in Zimbabwe to exert a most undiplomatic influence on members of the government. Tag on the random muggings, violence, and property crime in a country with an unemployment rate hovering at around 80 per cent, and what's left of the community feels very beleaguered.
Zimbabwean native Dave Bloom, 54, describes the current situation in stark terms. "There are a handful of younger members," he says, "but within five to 10 years the majority of the older community will have passed. I cannot envisage a resuscitation even if a change of power were to happen." Bloom now lives in Israel, where he has become a sort of self-appointed archivist — maintaining a detailed database complete with multimedia records, for future generations of Jews to whom Zimbabwe's community will be only a memory. "I'm trying to preserve as much of the story as possible, including pictures of every Jewish tombstone in Zimbabwe — a sort of virtual museum," says Bloom. He'll soon have very little work ahead of him.
Michael Ross's The Volunteer (McClelland & Stewart), about his years in the Mossad, recently appeared in paperback.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Goodbye, Zimbabwe The once-thriving Jewish community has all but disappeared
Goodbye, Zimbabwe
The once-thriving Jewish community has all but disappeared
MICHAEL ROSS | June 4, 2008 |
"If Cape Town is the top deck of the Titanic for the Jews of southern Africa, then Zimbabwe is the boiler room below the waterline," my guide Malcolm observed during my last foray into Zimbabwe in 2001 as an agent of Mossad, the Israeli spy service. If that was so, then the boiler room is now empty.
Much attention has been paid to the plight of Zimbabwe's white and mostly Anglo farmers whose fields were seized under President Robert Mugabe's ill-conceived and disastrous land appropriation program. But the abject ruination the Mugabe regime has wrought on the small landlocked country has had other victims as well. As Zimbabwe's economy and quality of life have deteriorated, the number of Jews in a place once touted as the bread-basket of Africa and a showcase of interracial harmony and prosperity has been sinking, almost as fast as the fated ocean liner now resting on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.
It's been a painful road to ruin, given how the community once flourished. During the time of the ever-expanding British Empire of the 19th century, Jews traversed South Africa into northern tribal lands, eventually settling into prosperous communities in cities such as Harare, Bulawayo and Kadoma, all in what is now Zimbabwe. They were the backbone of the business sector, establishing and owning commercial ventures ranging from retail stores to import-export firms. But then came the violent and turbulent period of Mugabe's fight to convert white-minority-ruled Rhodesia into the modern African state of Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe's decline into an impoverished country that now has one of the lowest life expectancy rates and one of the worst HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, with some 3,500 people dying per week due to HIV/AIDS alone.
Zimbabwe's Jews, along with others, fled. From its peak of some 7,500 in the 1970s, the country's Jewish community today consists of some 200 souls, mostly in Harare but with a small core lingering in Bulawayo. The average age is over 70; some 25 of the eldest live in Bulawayo's Savyon Lodge, a Jewish geriatric centre that, remarkably, still serves kosher meals to its guests. Those that can still leave do, with most heading to families who have long departed for the less troubled former colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with others seeking sanctuary in South Africa and Israel.
The Jews that are left are not exactly made to feel welcome. The beautiful synagogue of Bulawayo was gutted by a fire in 2003, only to have the local press declare that Jews had been hoarding fuel and all sorts of treasures and foreign currency in the building. Unsurprisingly, the press made no mention of how some congregants risked death to retrieve the Torah scrolls from the burning synagogue. Mugabe, once a comrade of the late Yasser Arafat, has added fuel to the already burning flames of anti-Semitism by allowing Palestinian and Iranian diplomats in Zimbabwe to exert a most undiplomatic influence on members of the government. Tag on the random muggings, violence, and property crime in a country with an unemployment rate hovering at around 80 per cent, and what's left of the community feels very beleaguered.
Zimbabwean native Dave Bloom, 54, describes the current situation in stark terms. "There are a handful of younger members," he says, "but within five to 10 years the majority of the older community will have passed. I cannot envisage a resuscitation even if a change of power were to happen." Bloom now lives in Israel, where he has become a sort of self-appointed archivist — maintaining a detailed database complete with multimedia records, for future generations of Jews to whom Zimbabwe's community will be only a memory. "I'm trying to preserve as much of the story as possible, including pictures of every Jewish tombstone in Zimbabwe — a sort of virtual museum," says Bloom. He'll soon have very little work ahead of him.
Michael Ross's The Volunteer (McClelland & Stewart), about his years in the Mossad, recently appeared in paperback.
Collection of recent articles on the Zim Jewish Community and general situation
African rabbi in Britain tells of crisis faced by Zimbabwe Jews
Jewish Chronicle -Jun 19, 2008
But following last week’s exclusive JC report on an emergency evacuation plan made by the Jewish Agency, the Zimbabwe Jews we contacted said that, despite the deteriorating situation, they feel secure and have no plan to leave.
Jewish Chronicle -
But following last week’s exclusive JC report on an emergency evacuation plan made by the Jewish Agency, the Zimbabwe Jews we contacted said that, despite the deteriorating situation, they feel secure and have no plan to leave.
Zimbabwe: 'Jews to Be Airlifted Out'
AllAfrica.com -Jun 13, 2008
He is reported as saying, "In terms of personal security, they feel protected. So I can understand why they are not in a rush to leave.
AllAfrica.com -
He is reported as saying, "In terms of personal security, they feel protected. So I can understand why they are not in a rush to leave.
Zimbabwe: Run-Off Pullout - Morgan Dancing to Master's Tune
AllAfrica.com -1 hour ago
It is meant to work for Zimbabwe today. The propaganda frightened the Germans and many thought they were defending themselves against the Jews and the Bolsheviks. The US held about 120 000 American citizens of Japanese descent on the basis of this same ...
AllAfrica.com -
It is meant to work for Zimbabwe today. The propaganda frightened the Germans and many thought they were defending themselves against the Jews and the Bolsheviks. The US held about 120 000 American citizens of Japanese descent on the basis of this same ...
'Zimbabwe Jews are safe'
Totally Jewish -Jun 19, 2008
Sources close to the Jewish Agency said: “The Jewish Agency is not planning to send aeroplanes to Zimbabwe to take out the Jews. Who says they want to leave anyway? Zimbabwe is a country where you can enter and leave at your own will.
Totally Jewish -
Sources close to the Jewish Agency said: “The Jewish Agency is not planning to send aeroplanes to Zimbabwe to take out the Jews. Who says they want to leave anyway? Zimbabwe is a country where you can enter and leave at your own will.
 Afrik.com |
Afrik.com -
On Thursday it was reported that an Israel group called Jewish Agency is one such formation that wants to rescue the remaining Jews from the violence. It is estimated that there are close to 400 Jewish community still resident in the southern African ...
A shtetl in Africa
Jerusalem Post -Jun 13, 2008
Once the bread basket of Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) today is a basket case, unable to feed even its own people. From a peak of some 7500 Jews in the 1970s - comprising some 80 percent Ashkenazim - the country's community today numbers only ...
Jerusalem Post -
Once the bread basket of Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) today is a basket case, unable to feed even its own people. From a peak of some 7500 Jews in the 1970s - comprising some 80 percent Ashkenazim - the country's community today numbers only ...
Thursday, June 19, 2008
ZIMBABWE ON THE PRECIPICE
CiPS (Centre for International Political Studies)
Centre for International Political
Studies
ZIMBABWE ON THE PRECIPICE
Presented by
HE Mr James McGee
Ambassador of the United States of America to Zimbabwe
at the
AFRICA DIALOGUE LECTURE SERIES
Centre for International Political Studies, University of Pretoria
19 June 2008
Thank you very much for inviting me to join you today. Thank you Dr. Solomon. It’s a pleasure to be here to talk with you about the dire situation in Zimbabwe.
At independence, Tanzanian leader, Julius Nyerere, told Zimbabwe’s new leader, Robert Mugabe, that he had inherited the jewel of Africa and urged him to protect it. Zimbabwe was to be the model for a new Africa. It was the region’s breadbasket. The economy’s potential was limitless. An effort was being made towards racial reconciliation.
Twenty-eight years later, as I flew down from Harare this morning, I left a country on the precipice. Zimbabwe today, is teetering on the edge of lawlessness and anarchy. It is a country on the brink of starvation. It has already fallen off the precipice of economic collapse and is sinking into a seemingly bottomless abyss. These problems are the direct result of a regime that cares more about clinging to power and the personal riches it brings than it does the welfare of its citizens. Sadly, as I stand here today, the prospects for a free and fair election that might bring change to Zimbabwe are limited. The government-directed campaign of violence and intimidation, coupled with planned electoral fraud make a free and fair election impossible. The only possible antidote is an immediate and large-scale commitment to independent electoral observation by SADC, the African Union and others.
Some observers are already present and I know that more are on the way. I welcome this development because I will be the first to admit that the influence of the United States can only go so far in Zimbabwe. The impact of Zimbabwe’s crisis will be felt the most by its neighbors, and they can do the most to solve it.
The most immediate threat facing many Zimbabweans is violence and lawlessness. The campaign of violence being conducted by the Mugabe regime is out of control and shows a callous disregard for local and international laws and the most basic standards of human rights. This once proud liberation movement is willing to beat and kill its own citizens. It is willing to violate the norms of civilized societies. It is willing to violate SADC’s protocols on elections. And, as I have experienced first hand, it is even willing to ignore the most basic protections for diplomats provided in the Vienna Convention. Corruption, greed and the need to maintain themselves in power have converted freedom fighters and liberators into lawless tyrants.
I have witnessed with my own eyes the victims of this violence, and any attempt to deny it or claim it is the result of opposition activity is simply a lie. To date over 3000 people have been hospitalized and over 60 killed. Over 30,000 have been displaced from their homes and villages. And those are only the confirmed cases we know about. I have received reports of a primary school principal dragged out of his office in broad daylight, never to be seen again, for no other reason than that he worked at a polling station that voted MDC in the March 29 elections. The elderly grandmother of the MDC’s spokesman was assaulted because of her grandson’s activities. Children are being dragged out every night and forced to chant ZANU-PF slogans and more. I don’t think it is inappropriate to call a regime willing to assault educators, the elderly and youth as lawless.
At an even more basic level, there is no Government of Zimbabwe. According to Zimbabwean law, the Parliament was dissolved before the March 29 elections. The newly elected Parliament has never been convened. We now have the situation of a regime claiming to be represented by “Ministers” who have not been appointed by any Parliament.
Some of them, such as so called Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa weren’t even re-elected and aren’t even members of Parliament.
An equally serious threat for many Zimbabweans is hunger and starvation. Once unknown in Zimbabwe they threaten many, including the elderly and children. Zimbabwe is not currently experiencing malnutrition on a large scale, but it soon may. Zimbabwe’s harvest, devastated by the government’s disastrous land policies, will once again reach record lows this year. Current estimates maintain that the harvest will only meet one-quarter of Zimbabwe’s food needs. In a normal year we do not see food insecurity start until sometime in August, but my experts tell me that we are likely to see serious food insecurity starting as soon as later this month. Compounding the lack of an adequate harvest is the Government of Zimbabwe’s disastrous, practically criminal, decision to suspend all operations by NGOs, including those providing humanitarian assistance.
In the best of circumstances, the U.S. and other major food donors would have a hard time helping to feed Zimbabweans. U.S food aid alone was $171 million dollars over the past year, with more needed this year. The Government of Zimbabwe’s decision to suspend NGO operations will prevent this critical assistance from reaching Zimbabwe’s most needy and potentially leaves up to four million people in danger of starving. Not to mention the orphans, HIV patients, elderly and other needy individuals having to make do without any help. Let me be clear, the Government of Zimbabwe’s actions are a direct assault on the people of Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s disastrous harvest is but one symptom of an economy that has already gone over the precipice. The numbers are truly staggering. Inflation is over two million percent according to reliable private estimates. In the past week alone the Zimbabwe dollar lost 56% of its value against the U.S. dollar. To give you some perspective on what that kind of inflation means, I have heard stories of people stranded downtown because the price of a commuter bus rose from 600 million Zimbabwean dollars to 800 million dollars between the
morning and afternoon commutes. Routine transactions now require so many zeroes that some accounting systems cannot handle them.
Unemployment is over 80%. Manufacturing levels have plummeted. Businesses close their doors literally every day. Even mining, one of Zimbabwe’s few remaining foreign currency earners is suffering as power cuts and lack of needed supplies cut into production. Zimbabwe’s once vibrant economy is practically non-existent at this point. Those hit hardest, of course, are the poor who make up the vast majority of Zimbabwe’s population.
Zimbabwe’s leadership is wont to blame the country’s economic problems on Western sanctions. First, the only real sanctions on Zimbabwe at present are targeted sanctions against regime leaders which prevent them from traveling to the U.S. and from doing business with U.S. firms. While the Government of Zimbabwe refers to the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) as a type of sanction, this is not the case. ZDERA prevents the U.S. from supporting international financial institution assistance, such as from the IMF or World Bank, to Zimbabwe. Even without ZDERA, international financial institutions would not lend to Zimbabwe because of its terribly mismanaged economy and its failure to pay back prior loans. Zimbabwe alone owes the World Bank over 600 million US dollars.
Secondly, it is interesting to note that after Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, general sanctions were imposed against Rhodesia. Nevertheless, at independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar was stronger than the U.S. dollar. The fact is that the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy and the hyperinflation that has rendered Zimbabwe’s currency worthless are due to economic mismanagement, including payouts to war veterans in 1997, Zimbabwe’s misadventure in the Congo in 1998, and land invasions that began in 2000 and turned the bread basket of southern Africa into a basket case. The government continues its economic mismanagement through excessive spending, the 24 hour-a-day printing of money, and maintenance of an artificial exchange rate that benefits
regime insiders. Zimbabwe will be able to emerge from the current economic abyss only when there is political reform and political will, which in turn make economic reform possible.
I wish I could stand here and say that the June 27 run-off offers the chance for political change and a brighter future. Unfortunately, the current climate makes free and fair elections impossible. MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai is hounded at every turn, making it impossible to campaign. Since his return to Zimbabwe, he has been detained by the police four times. His campaign vehicles have been confiscated. The Mugabe regime is providing no political space for him to campaign.
Tendai Biti, the secretary-general of the MDC was arrested upon his return to Zimbabwe from South Africa. His crimes? Announcing March 29 election results, based on official tally sheets posted outside polling stations, before the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced results. He also allegedly disseminated a document setting out MDC plans for governing Zimbabwe after the election—a document that Biti never disseminated and which was fabricated by ZANU-PF to create fear of the MDC on the part of its supporters. Biti now stands charged with treason.
The state controlled media also contributes to the poisonous atmosphere. They routinely broadcast and publish propaganda for the regime, refuse to accept paid advertising from the opposition and slander anyone associated with the MDC. Particularly disturbing, in the past few weeks the state media has begun to broadcast inflammatory material designed to promote violence against the opposition. Senior editors who opposed these policies have been fired and control of the media given to security officials.
Then there is the massive and widespread intimidation of the electorate. At first the campaign focused on areas that had traditionally voted for ZANU-PF, but voted for the MDC on March 29. The goal of the campaign was to intimidate people into voting for ZANU-PF, or simply into not voting at all. Those who voted for the MDC, or merely live in areas that voted for the MDC
are being targeted. Mugabe has made multiple public statements that a vote for the MDC is a vote for war, represents a betrayal of the country, and won’t be respected.
The campaign has now spread to include attacks on MDC officials and their families. Multiple MDC members-of-Parliament elect have been arrested or attacked since March 29. The Mugabe regime hopes to eliminate the ability of the MDC to campaign or govern, now and in the future.
All of this makes independent regional and international observers crucial. I am pleased to see that SADC and the Pan-African Parliament have already started to deploy observers to Zimbabwe. This effort needs to continue and expand to include African Union observers as well.
These regional efforts, and regional initiatives to push the parties towards a peaceful solution are critical. Zimbabwe’s neighbors have the most to lose if the crisis continues and have, far and away, the most influence. As vocal as I have been, and will continue to be, my influence and that of the United States can only go so far. The Mugabe regime has shown itself quite willing to ignore international condemnation of its heinous acts. It will find it much more difficult to ignore regional leaders and pressure.
We have already seen what regional action can do, with regards to the arms shipment turned away at ports throughout southern Africa. Most notable, this effort did not start out as a governmental action, but as a protest by dock workers in Durban. When the people and governments of this region stand together, opposing further violence in Zimbabwe, they can, and do, make a difference.
The centrality of regional actors is appropriate, given that the southern African region has the most at stake. Make no mistake, Zimbabwe’s ongoing crisis is a regional crisis. Its effects are being felt outside of Zimbabwe’s borders and will continue to grow more severe. Here in South Africa you are only too aware of the huge numbers of Zimbabweans fleeing their
country. No one really knows how many Zimbabweans have left, but estimates range up to several million or one-quarter of Zimbabwe’s population.
We have all seen the tragic consequences of the large numbers of Zimbabweans in South Africa. Former Mozambican First Lady Graca Machel recently warned of the impact of population migration in Mozambique. One only has to look at the Great Lakes region to see the devastating consequences of the mass migration of people fleeing political violence. More than a decade later the region is still unstable. None of Zimbabwe’s neighbors will be immune. However many Zimbabweans have already fled, even more could depart if the starvation, economic collapse and anarchy continue.
The impact of Zimbabwe’s troubles on the region goes beyond the millions who have fled. Zimbabwe was long known as the breadbasket of southern Africa. Given the global food crisis, the continuing disappearance of the Zimbabwean harvest is only magnified. People throughout southern Africa would benefit from increased Zimbabwean agriculture. In its absence food prices are higher and people suffer. The broader economic collapse of Zimbabwe is also felt throughout the region. Economic growth in the region is retarded by Zimbabwe’s implosion.
That is why I think it is important for me to be here today. All of you in this room have a stake in what happens in Zimbabwe. What is happening right now is catastrophic. A disastrous harvest, coupled with an outrageous suspension of NGOs by the Government of Zimbabwe, threatens millions. The economy has completely imploded and anarchy lurks in the Mugabe regime’s criminal campaign of violence against its own citizens. The upcoming run-off cannot provide a solution unless rapid and significant changes in the prevailing conditions occur. Zimbabwe is a country on the precipice.
However, it is not too late. I still think it is possible to bring Zimbabwe back from the precipice. A concerted international effort, led by key regional players, can change the future. If regional leaders decide to take forceful action that puts the interests of the people of Zimbabwe ahead
of any entrenched political hierarchies we can avoid the catastrophe I fear. A massive independent observation effort can slow the regime’s campaign of violence, while creating more free and fair conditions for the elections. A major donor effort can stave off the impending hunger. And a new government which sets responsible fiscal policies and is willing to work with the International Financial Institutions can start to bring Zimbabwe out of the economic abyss. It won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy, but we must start now, or it will be too late.
Thank you very much.
CiPS (Centre for International Political Studies)
University of Pretoria Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 2696 cips@postino.up.ac.za
Pretoria, 0002 Fax: +27 (0) 12 420 3527 www.cips.up.ac.za
South Africa
Centre for International Political
Studies
ZIMBABWE ON THE PRECIPICE
Presented by
HE Mr James McGee
Ambassador of the United States of America to Zimbabwe
at the
AFRICA DIALOGUE LECTURE SERIES
Centre for International Political Studies, University of Pretoria
19 June 2008
Thank you very much for inviting me to join you today. Thank you Dr. Solomon. It’s a pleasure to be here to talk with you about the dire situation in Zimbabwe.
At independence, Tanzanian leader, Julius Nyerere, told Zimbabwe’s new leader, Robert Mugabe, that he had inherited the jewel of Africa and urged him to protect it. Zimbabwe was to be the model for a new Africa. It was the region’s breadbasket. The economy’s potential was limitless. An effort was being made towards racial reconciliation.
Twenty-eight years later, as I flew down from Harare this morning, I left a country on the precipice. Zimbabwe today, is teetering on the edge of lawlessness and anarchy. It is a country on the brink of starvation. It has already fallen off the precipice of economic collapse and is sinking into a seemingly bottomless abyss. These problems are the direct result of a regime that cares more about clinging to power and the personal riches it brings than it does the welfare of its citizens. Sadly, as I stand here today, the prospects for a free and fair election that might bring change to Zimbabwe are limited. The government-directed campaign of violence and intimidation, coupled with planned electoral fraud make a free and fair election impossible. The only possible antidote is an immediate and large-scale commitment to independent electoral observation by SADC, the African Union and others.
Some observers are already present and I know that more are on the way. I welcome this development because I will be the first to admit that the influence of the United States can only go so far in Zimbabwe. The impact of Zimbabwe’s crisis will be felt the most by its neighbors, and they can do the most to solve it.
The most immediate threat facing many Zimbabweans is violence and lawlessness. The campaign of violence being conducted by the Mugabe regime is out of control and shows a callous disregard for local and international laws and the most basic standards of human rights. This once proud liberation movement is willing to beat and kill its own citizens. It is willing to violate the norms of civilized societies. It is willing to violate SADC’s protocols on elections. And, as I have experienced first hand, it is even willing to ignore the most basic protections for diplomats provided in the Vienna Convention. Corruption, greed and the need to maintain themselves in power have converted freedom fighters and liberators into lawless tyrants.
I have witnessed with my own eyes the victims of this violence, and any attempt to deny it or claim it is the result of opposition activity is simply a lie. To date over 3000 people have been hospitalized and over 60 killed. Over 30,000 have been displaced from their homes and villages. And those are only the confirmed cases we know about. I have received reports of a primary school principal dragged out of his office in broad daylight, never to be seen again, for no other reason than that he worked at a polling station that voted MDC in the March 29 elections. The elderly grandmother of the MDC’s spokesman was assaulted because of her grandson’s activities. Children are being dragged out every night and forced to chant ZANU-PF slogans and more. I don’t think it is inappropriate to call a regime willing to assault educators, the elderly and youth as lawless.
At an even more basic level, there is no Government of Zimbabwe. According to Zimbabwean law, the Parliament was dissolved before the March 29 elections. The newly elected Parliament has never been convened. We now have the situation of a regime claiming to be represented by “Ministers” who have not been appointed by any Parliament.
Some of them, such as so called Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa weren’t even re-elected and aren’t even members of Parliament.
An equally serious threat for many Zimbabweans is hunger and starvation. Once unknown in Zimbabwe they threaten many, including the elderly and children. Zimbabwe is not currently experiencing malnutrition on a large scale, but it soon may. Zimbabwe’s harvest, devastated by the government’s disastrous land policies, will once again reach record lows this year. Current estimates maintain that the harvest will only meet one-quarter of Zimbabwe’s food needs. In a normal year we do not see food insecurity start until sometime in August, but my experts tell me that we are likely to see serious food insecurity starting as soon as later this month. Compounding the lack of an adequate harvest is the Government of Zimbabwe’s disastrous, practically criminal, decision to suspend all operations by NGOs, including those providing humanitarian assistance.
In the best of circumstances, the U.S. and other major food donors would have a hard time helping to feed Zimbabweans. U.S food aid alone was $171 million dollars over the past year, with more needed this year. The Government of Zimbabwe’s decision to suspend NGO operations will prevent this critical assistance from reaching Zimbabwe’s most needy and potentially leaves up to four million people in danger of starving. Not to mention the orphans, HIV patients, elderly and other needy individuals having to make do without any help. Let me be clear, the Government of Zimbabwe’s actions are a direct assault on the people of Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s disastrous harvest is but one symptom of an economy that has already gone over the precipice. The numbers are truly staggering. Inflation is over two million percent according to reliable private estimates. In the past week alone the Zimbabwe dollar lost 56% of its value against the U.S. dollar. To give you some perspective on what that kind of inflation means, I have heard stories of people stranded downtown because the price of a commuter bus rose from 600 million Zimbabwean dollars to 800 million dollars between the
morning and afternoon commutes. Routine transactions now require so many zeroes that some accounting systems cannot handle them.
Unemployment is over 80%. Manufacturing levels have plummeted. Businesses close their doors literally every day. Even mining, one of Zimbabwe’s few remaining foreign currency earners is suffering as power cuts and lack of needed supplies cut into production. Zimbabwe’s once vibrant economy is practically non-existent at this point. Those hit hardest, of course, are the poor who make up the vast majority of Zimbabwe’s population.
Zimbabwe’s leadership is wont to blame the country’s economic problems on Western sanctions. First, the only real sanctions on Zimbabwe at present are targeted sanctions against regime leaders which prevent them from traveling to the U.S. and from doing business with U.S. firms. While the Government of Zimbabwe refers to the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) as a type of sanction, this is not the case. ZDERA prevents the U.S. from supporting international financial institution assistance, such as from the IMF or World Bank, to Zimbabwe. Even without ZDERA, international financial institutions would not lend to Zimbabwe because of its terribly mismanaged economy and its failure to pay back prior loans. Zimbabwe alone owes the World Bank over 600 million US dollars.
Secondly, it is interesting to note that after Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, general sanctions were imposed against Rhodesia. Nevertheless, at independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar was stronger than the U.S. dollar. The fact is that the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy and the hyperinflation that has rendered Zimbabwe’s currency worthless are due to economic mismanagement, including payouts to war veterans in 1997, Zimbabwe’s misadventure in the Congo in 1998, and land invasions that began in 2000 and turned the bread basket of southern Africa into a basket case. The government continues its economic mismanagement through excessive spending, the 24 hour-a-day printing of money, and maintenance of an artificial exchange rate that benefits
regime insiders. Zimbabwe will be able to emerge from the current economic abyss only when there is political reform and political will, which in turn make economic reform possible.
I wish I could stand here and say that the June 27 run-off offers the chance for political change and a brighter future. Unfortunately, the current climate makes free and fair elections impossible. MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai is hounded at every turn, making it impossible to campaign. Since his return to Zimbabwe, he has been detained by the police four times. His campaign vehicles have been confiscated. The Mugabe regime is providing no political space for him to campaign.
Tendai Biti, the secretary-general of the MDC was arrested upon his return to Zimbabwe from South Africa. His crimes? Announcing March 29 election results, based on official tally sheets posted outside polling stations, before the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced results. He also allegedly disseminated a document setting out MDC plans for governing Zimbabwe after the election—a document that Biti never disseminated and which was fabricated by ZANU-PF to create fear of the MDC on the part of its supporters. Biti now stands charged with treason.
The state controlled media also contributes to the poisonous atmosphere. They routinely broadcast and publish propaganda for the regime, refuse to accept paid advertising from the opposition and slander anyone associated with the MDC. Particularly disturbing, in the past few weeks the state media has begun to broadcast inflammatory material designed to promote violence against the opposition. Senior editors who opposed these policies have been fired and control of the media given to security officials.
Then there is the massive and widespread intimidation of the electorate. At first the campaign focused on areas that had traditionally voted for ZANU-PF, but voted for the MDC on March 29. The goal of the campaign was to intimidate people into voting for ZANU-PF, or simply into not voting at all. Those who voted for the MDC, or merely live in areas that voted for the MDC
are being targeted. Mugabe has made multiple public statements that a vote for the MDC is a vote for war, represents a betrayal of the country, and won’t be respected.
The campaign has now spread to include attacks on MDC officials and their families. Multiple MDC members-of-Parliament elect have been arrested or attacked since March 29. The Mugabe regime hopes to eliminate the ability of the MDC to campaign or govern, now and in the future.
All of this makes independent regional and international observers crucial. I am pleased to see that SADC and the Pan-African Parliament have already started to deploy observers to Zimbabwe. This effort needs to continue and expand to include African Union observers as well.
These regional efforts, and regional initiatives to push the parties towards a peaceful solution are critical. Zimbabwe’s neighbors have the most to lose if the crisis continues and have, far and away, the most influence. As vocal as I have been, and will continue to be, my influence and that of the United States can only go so far. The Mugabe regime has shown itself quite willing to ignore international condemnation of its heinous acts. It will find it much more difficult to ignore regional leaders and pressure.
We have already seen what regional action can do, with regards to the arms shipment turned away at ports throughout southern Africa. Most notable, this effort did not start out as a governmental action, but as a protest by dock workers in Durban. When the people and governments of this region stand together, opposing further violence in Zimbabwe, they can, and do, make a difference.
The centrality of regional actors is appropriate, given that the southern African region has the most at stake. Make no mistake, Zimbabwe’s ongoing crisis is a regional crisis. Its effects are being felt outside of Zimbabwe’s borders and will continue to grow more severe. Here in South Africa you are only too aware of the huge numbers of Zimbabweans fleeing their
country. No one really knows how many Zimbabweans have left, but estimates range up to several million or one-quarter of Zimbabwe’s population.
We have all seen the tragic consequences of the large numbers of Zimbabweans in South Africa. Former Mozambican First Lady Graca Machel recently warned of the impact of population migration in Mozambique. One only has to look at the Great Lakes region to see the devastating consequences of the mass migration of people fleeing political violence. More than a decade later the region is still unstable. None of Zimbabwe’s neighbors will be immune. However many Zimbabweans have already fled, even more could depart if the starvation, economic collapse and anarchy continue.
The impact of Zimbabwe’s troubles on the region goes beyond the millions who have fled. Zimbabwe was long known as the breadbasket of southern Africa. Given the global food crisis, the continuing disappearance of the Zimbabwean harvest is only magnified. People throughout southern Africa would benefit from increased Zimbabwean agriculture. In its absence food prices are higher and people suffer. The broader economic collapse of Zimbabwe is also felt throughout the region. Economic growth in the region is retarded by Zimbabwe’s implosion.
That is why I think it is important for me to be here today. All of you in this room have a stake in what happens in Zimbabwe. What is happening right now is catastrophic. A disastrous harvest, coupled with an outrageous suspension of NGOs by the Government of Zimbabwe, threatens millions. The economy has completely imploded and anarchy lurks in the Mugabe regime’s criminal campaign of violence against its own citizens. The upcoming run-off cannot provide a solution unless rapid and significant changes in the prevailing conditions occur. Zimbabwe is a country on the precipice.
However, it is not too late. I still think it is possible to bring Zimbabwe back from the precipice. A concerted international effort, led by key regional players, can change the future. If regional leaders decide to take forceful action that puts the interests of the people of Zimbabwe ahead
of any entrenched political hierarchies we can avoid the catastrophe I fear. A massive independent observation effort can slow the regime’s campaign of violence, while creating more free and fair conditions for the elections. A major donor effort can stave off the impending hunger. And a new government which sets responsible fiscal policies and is willing to work with the International Financial Institutions can start to bring Zimbabwe out of the economic abyss. It won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy, but we must start now, or it will be too late.
Thank you very much.
CiPS (Centre for International Political Studies)
University of Pretoria Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 2696 cips@postino.up.ac.za
Pretoria, 0002 Fax: +27 (0) 12 420 3527 www.cips.up.ac.za
South Africa
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