By Takura Zhangazha*
There is
what should be a relatively urgent and revived “national interest” debate about
land tenure/ ownership in rural, peri-urban and also former agricultural farms
in Zimbabwe. This is based on the recent central government's official policy announcing and effecting the eviction of
what it considers illegal settlers on land that was allegedly distributed by village
headmen with or without the approval of chiefs and rural district
councils. This also includes urban
councils who have also been accused of allegedly distributing land in either
wetlands or former urban farms for insidious profit or political patronage.
In all of
these there is reference to a common denominator called a ‘land baron’. This term did not exist in ordinary
Zimbabwean political parlance before the official Fast Track Land Reform
Programme (FTLRP) in 2000. It also took
its time to take effect in our local lingo until perhaps 2010.
It doesn’t
quite have an official definition but would be generally assumed to mean that a
‘land baron’ after the FTLRP is someone with either access to political patronage
within the ruling party, access to financial capital to lease or purchase state
land, can or is selling and partitioning original land acquired for different
uses. As acquired from the state or former white commercial farmers who were
either forced off the land or sold it for a pittance at the height of the FTLRP.
Which in some cases relates to urban residential
land use even if it is in a rural or peri-urban setting. Hence emergent cases of forced evictions on the
outskirts of Harare, Bulawayo, Masvingo, Chipinge, Mutare, Gweru and Gutu.
The key element
to bear in mind is that the centre of all these newfound evictions is based on
central government proclaiming illegality of settlements after the FTLRP. Not
just as a political, historical, and liberation struggle based radical
nationalist policy. But as one that
relates to the political economy of land and belonging in contemporary Zimbabwe.
This is a
somewhat complicated argument to make.
The meaning of land and land ownership (especially as capital) appears to
have shifted from its historical connotations that related to historical identity
and arguments about dispossession.
What has
been happening since the FTLRP began and was assumedly completed is that ‘land’
has become a ‘business’. In a holistic
sense. Particularly land acquired with
or without government approval after 2000 to present.
If you go
to any major city or emergent town, land ownership is key to urban
development. Add to this either emergent
agricultural mechanization programmes as led by government and related agricultural
and mining entrepreneurship, you may come to conclude that ‘land’ in Zimbabwe
is now essentially viewed as short and long term “capital”. In a post-colonial and newer economic
neo-liberal sense.
Whereas
before the FTLRP we decried white monopoly capital ownership of land, now we
have a replacement but highly politicized system of ownership of the same. Admittedly it has a sense of “black empowerment’
but one that is complicated by assumptions of mimicry of its predecessor. And
again because it is mainly based on a system of capitalist accumulation, it
appears to be leading toward a system of displacement coupled with an asymmetric
control of the majority poor and their urbanized material desires. Even if they are in rural areas.
That’s why
when we are witnessing destruction of houses or evictions of comrades who have
lived in certain areas for the last twenty years and are now being forcibly
evicted for allegedly legal reasons we have to re-ask the ideological meaning
of the initial FTLRP.
It would
appear on the face of it that while benefitting and fulfilling a liberation
struggle expectation it is now more complicated for our political economy. This is because the ‘open for business’
policy of government has now meant that land ownership and in particular as ‘capital’
cannot be open sesame or simply related to the liberation struggle values and
objectives.
The
courting of mining, agricultural and ‘private city investors’ means that those
that were initial beneficiaries of the FTLRP face greater insecurity of tenure
on the land that they had initially assumed they ‘deserved’. Historically or by
way of political or economic patronage.
Especially
where and when it concerns the ‘infrastructure development’ thrust of the
current government. Even if they are war
veterans or ruling party supporters or just ordinary people that really needed
a place to call ‘home’. Hence the continually unfished story of Chiadzwa in
Manicaland or Lupane as examples.
I will end
with an anecdotal conversation I once had with my brother about the future of
our rural homes in Bikita, Masvingo when we were much younger. The issue was whether it would be preferable
to ‘urbanise’ Bikita or modernize it while retaining the communal system of
land tenure. We sort of agreed on modernization
while retaining traditional values and ethos of what we knew was essentially a ‘reserve
area’ as the Rhodesian government deliberately designated it. Our ancestors had
been displaced from the Save Valley, Chipinge and Chimanimani. Others were eventually forcibly displaced further
to Gokwe.
In that
University conversation, we argued and agreed in part that privatizing communal
rural land was never going to be a good idea.
Based on the experiences of what we had read about Nigeria and Kenya after
their independence and what had happened with attempts at giving title for what
was originally communally owned land.
Even if it had been originally been designated by British and/or settler
state governments.
In any
event, as Zimbabweans must debate the full and realistic political economic
meaning of what was the FTLRP. It took
away what was once private capital and nationalized it. Many celebrated this. It is however now in a state of flux wherein
the state/government is approaching it in a hybrid private/public format and
outsourcing it as domestic capital for mines, carbon credits and eventual
trickle down agricultural investments.
What is
increasingly self-evident is that we still do not have an organic sense of what
the land we took must be used for except where and when it is part of mimicry
of what we overcame/ overthrew and assume to be land use success.
*Takura
Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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