Central government, through the Mashonaland Central resident
Minister, Martin Dinha, has been evicting settlers on newly resettled farmland that is in the
Mazowe District. The latter district is now publicly known to be the home of
two major projects linked to the First Family.
Media reports have also indicated that the First Lady, Mrs. Grace Mugabe
has a vested interest in the establishment of a game park in the area where
families are being evicted.
Even more importantly, it is also known that the spirit medium
of our national heroine from the First Chimurenga, Mbuya Nehanda resided in the
same area before being forcibly relocated to Rushinga.
There are therefore a number of striking contradictions in
the actions of central government and their tragic result of homelessness of over 300 families in the Mazowe
District.
In claiming to have led a successful land reform or in its
more politicized term, Third Chimurenga, the three last Zanu Pf governments have
given the impression that they are on course to a people centered and
historically organic land revolution.
This would have included not only reversing the land tenure system
created by the infamous Land Apportionment Act of 1930 but also use the land as
much to reflect our knowledge of our history (the first and second Chimurenga’s
included).
So the acquisition of land would have been intended to not
only be the acquisition for the purposes of essentially copying the land
practices of the Rhodesian settler state. Either by way of repressive agricultural practices
informed by the colonial myth that the natives were destructive to the
environment (the lie of the land). Nor by way of arbitrary disenfranchisement
of a majority population in the name of ‘development’
and ‘modernisation’.
I raise these points particularly because what is occurring in
Mazowe unfortunately reflects the same colonial approach to both the land and
the poor that live on it.
The fact that central government has brazenly evicted
citizens of this country from land without either adequate preparation of
alternative land or at the beginning of the harvesting season is reflective of
the traditions of the settler state and not a democratic one that claims to have led a successful land
revolution.
So for example, when Resident Minister Dinha refers to the
spirit medium's relocation to Rushinga by saying
“I am sure she (Mary Kazunga) is now happily practising her traditional healing work back at her home in Rushinga,” he essentially reflects more the arrogance of a colonial native administrator
than one who serves a democratic and recently elected government .
Both by way of the lack of sensitivity to a national icon but also by
way of the typical forcible removal of people that would have been deemed to be
an influential leader, in similar habit to the colonial state.
Furthermore, the reported plans to establish a game park in
the same area reminds one of the numerous other ‘game reserves’ from which thousands
of black families were removed to make way for ‘wildlife’ and settler ‘tourism’. The central government’s priorities are
therefore somewhat out of sync with the interests of the intended beneficiaries
of land reform. Their wholesale eviction
defies the known government policy of CAMPFIRE where these now evicted families would have at least
been guaranteed of not only tenure but also becoming gradual
beneficiaries of the envisioned tourism.
Because the same said area is close to small
scale gold mines, the evictions can also be viewed as intended at displacement in
order to establish mining monopolies. Even
though Mazowe has a reputation for illegal mining, evicting families living in
the vicinity of the mines without public explanation and preparation is
undemocratic. It is also exposes the evident hypocrisy of the governments indigenization
and economic empowerment community share ownership programmes. This now evicted
community has not been offered that sort of opportunities either as standalone
or in the greater Chinamhora chieftaincy area.
In taking into account, once again, the specific eviction of
the spirit medium of Mbuya Nehanda from Mazowe, we cannot forget the historical
record that during the Second Chimurenga, she is said to have fought from the
same hills against mercenaries of the British South Africa Company. It is the
patent symbolism of her eviction today that makes the Third Chimurenga appear
ironic. The evictions thereby becomes not only a dismissal of the legend of one of most iconic images of our initial struggle for
liberation but also the geographical area in which one of the bravest battles
against colonialism was fought.
Finally, the tragic and arbitrary evictions of families from
parts of Mazowe district reflects that central government in pursuing its land
reform programme, has not embarked a departure from the actual land policies of
the settler colonial state. What these
evictions demonstrate is that our new land elite are more interested in
replacement land economics than a revolutionary understanding of land
redistribution.
Perhaps the spirit of Mbuya Nehanda will inform those in
power that land belongs to all the people of Zimbabwe, and not in order to
merely replace one elite race of landowners with another, but to ensure that
its distribution does not reflect more our repressive past than a democratic land ownership future. And God forbid that Mbuya Nehanda should have
to again say, ‘Mapfupa Angu Achamuka’.
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