Uchena Report on Land: Losing State Capital for Political Expediency, Hedonism

By Takura Zhangazha*

The Commission of Inquiry into the Matter of the Sale of State Land in and Around Urban Areas Since 2005 headed by Justice Uchena recently submitted its full report and recommendations to President Mnangagwa. What was made publicly available was the executive summary of the report. 

In it, there were astounding but very expected findings. Some of them that were/are also being brazenly lived out.  They include the unlawful change of land use of agricultural farms adjacent to major cities, the lack of infrastructure for subsequent physical settlements on the same land, the prejudicing of the state of at least US$ 3 billion or the lack of interactive regulatory responsibility by at least two ministries and local government authorities.  Just to mention a few. 

The executive summary is scant on names of actual perpetrators but hints at land barons, housing cooperatives and political party operatives. 

What is most clear however is that fifteen years after the fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) began (in 2000) it has dramatically changed in its preferred import.  Whereas initially intended as a massive nationalization or re-possession of agricultural land for, again agricultural livelihood use by a black majority, it has morphed into a largely urban focused land (capital) utilisation reform exercise.  Across cities, peri-urban areas and even what has always been designated as growth points. 

It is reflective of not only of the urban aspirations of a lot of Zimbabweans. That is to want land for urban use. But also and tragically so, haphazard profiteering from the FTLRP by those that have been in charge of the country and local government since the latter's inception. 

The forgoing point is perhaps the most significant.  The Uchena commission report boldly states that the state was directly prejudiced of at least "USD 2 977 072 819 [two billion nine hundred and seventy seven million eight hundred and 19 thousand united states dollars]"  as it relates to 'intrinsic value.' 

This is no small change but may still not be reflective of the actual amountlost to the state.  

The key issue is that state capital was directly turned, without full legal and financial accountability, either in terms of following legal procedures or paying relevant taxes, into private capital. 

The FTLRP, it would appear, moved from being ‘revolutionary’ as regularly pronounced by proponents of a ‘third Chimurenga’.  Instead it became a smash and grab political feast on state capital.  As led by not only land barons, the politically powerful and housing cooperatives.  All within the other context of the fact that this originally state owned capital is still disputed in relation to ownership and control by the former white commercial farmers and global capital. 

So it’s a catch 22 situation.  The Uchena Commission exposes what is a Zimbabwean version of ‘enclosure’ of what the 3^rd Chimurenga had nationalized. To its re-privatisation for adjacent to urban areas rural agricultural land for direct individual private profit. 

This then leads us to the reality that by the time Uchena submits his report to the presidency, there are thousands of families that are now living and eking out some sort of livelihoods on the same land.  The heads of these families through various agents and means settled there because they were legally able to.  Or in the most political of the cases, they found opportunity to do so.  And as alluded to earlier, this is a direct result of aspirations to the urban or being irban by Zimbabweans.

The FTLRP may have been an enabler of a resurgence of a massive rural-urban migration based not only of the fact that the rural political economy had been immediately negatively affected.  But also the fact that opportunities to live closer and permanently to the ‘bright lights’ were availed by political parties, land barons and housing cooperatives.  Even those in the Diaspora took advantage for the same and have even acquired housing 'cooperatives' from as far away as Canada even though the likelihood of their permanent return for the same is next to none. 

Uchena however makes recommendations that ask central government to regularize existent residential use of acquired land, pursue criminal and civil charges against land barons, housing cooperatives and political actors who did not regularize their acquired land or duped desperate home seekers.  Uchena also recommends greater efficiency between relevant ministries and the expansion of water facilities in all urban areas as well as a cessation on new residential stand allocation across the country.

While it remains the prerogative of central government to decide what to do with these recommendations, we can only say that we know it has been complicit in creating the problems outlined as having occurred since 2015.  We also know that the Uchena reports points to the political expediency of the FTLRP.  Political actors created new urban spaces to gain electoral leverage and in tandem distribute patronage that also directly economically profiteered from.  Like having your cake and eating it too. 

What is however also subtly hinted at in the Uchena report is the inevitability of urbanization.  All via a vehicle they refer to as a proposed special purpose vehicle to be run by the Office of the President and Cabinet. 

The major risk of this is to fall into a narrative of the inevitability of urbanization in Zimbabwe or Africa.  My considered personal view is that we need to resist this false narrative.  The urban may have bright lights but it may not be as humanely progressive as is touted.  We may need to look at how we can improve the rural, to try and modernize it and make it more self-sufficient beyond subsistence agriculture.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)  

No Longer in Envy of the Global North

By Takura Zhangazha*

Growing up, we were always taught to admire the global north.  In fact to aspire to it.  There was even a comedy on Zimbabwean television that we loved to watch.  Its’s theme song had lyrics that said something like ‘I wanna be an American’.  In school European history was always made to be slightly more exciting. I am pretty sure a lot of us in Zimbabwe, if we studied history in high school know of the Sarajevo incident that precipitated the First World War.  We were never taught that Africans also fought in the war but we knew the name Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.  

Add to this, the expansion of satellite television and African American rap music or rhythm and blues, we would be all set for desiring the global north as the definitive version of life’s success.  Never mind the fact for example that Tupac Shakur was railing against the establishment in his own country of birth. 

By the time we got to university our aspiration was (probably still is) to know the most profound thinkers of the European enlightenment era (John Locke, anyone?)  or the latest developments around Einstein’s theory of relativity. 

Coming full circle to adulthood or assumptions of self-sufficiency, we would still be green with envy about the lives of those that live in New York, London, Paris or Edinburgh. We even aspired to eat fish and chips as a signal of personal arrival at success.  And also why inevitably your Chicken Inn easily persuaded us to ‘luv dat chicken’. 

But the issue that most concerns me is how we fell in love with the politics of the global north.  I, to my great regret, once had a Time Magazine cover of Tony Blair stuck up on my wall at university.  Right there alongside bigger posters of Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko.  

Our naïve assumption was that politics would always be better in the global north.  In fact we considered it more progressive and envied it.  We would think the world of Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac and the partisan purveyors of the political brands such as CNN, Time magazine and the like. 

Even when the invasion of Iraq occurred few of us thought to call it out for what it was, a war fought under false pretense with devastating consequences.  I remember a friend who watched the invasion of Baghdad with the equivalent glee of seeing a Rambo movie.  Always expecting the victory of the west over the east. 

By the time we get Obama as the likeable image of politics in the global north, we were in over our heads.  We had already formed opposition political parties made in the image of the politics of the global north, all with the intention of anticipating ‘acceptability’ and ‘recognition’. Not that we were without cause, but it was always easier to have it affirmed by those that we envied. 

Correctly we had also accepted the universality of human rights and the freedom of movement of all human peoples. 

A lot of things have happened since then.  The liberalism of the global north began to wane.  Particularly after the global financial crisis of 2008 (incidentally in Zimbabwe we still don’t think that directly affected our economy.) The emergence of nationalism's and to the east of state capitalism, left us increasingly high and dry where it came to our initial assumptions of global solidarity or even belonging.  The people of the global north demonstrated our worst fears by electing leaders that lean to the right and reflect a newly strident (and possibly racist) nationalism.  

With the election of Trump and more recently Boris Johnson in the UK, we now know that contrary to our feel good assumptions, the majority of people in those countries and probably in the majority of European states, still want to remain exceptional.  They still want to be different from our preferred assumptions of ‘equality’.  And these are not the people that we were all along seeing on CNN or the BBC.  These are the very real people of the global north.  They evidently do not like immigrants, they also do not like being similar to everyone else.  And this is a hard truth to swallow for us in the global south who had been taught to hold those societies in awe. 

We had all along preferred the elitist version of societies in the global north, where it would have been unfathomable for a man who referred to Muslim women as ‘letter boxes’ to become a prime minister.  In this, we were wrong but have not been wronged.  We have just misjudged those societies and misunderstood what is meant by a global universality of human values.  There is them and then there is the rest of us. 

I will end with an anecdote.  I have a Zimbabwean friend based in the Diaspora.  The UK to be exact.  I asked him to vote Labour in that country’s recent election.  He was startled.  He retorted that he would not vote for a party whose leader looked like a homeless person.  He works in the social services field.  He however wanted acceptance as being truly British.  And argued as such.

Its almost like how most of us would argue in favour free market economics in the Zimbabwean context. It is not that they would truly believe in such a neoliberal approach.  

They want to be recognized for sharing that opinion with the wealthy persons of the global north.  No more no less. We need to value ourselves better and to stop looking for the approving gaze of those in the global north. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

Being Educated but Unconscious to a Fault in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

My father probably hoped I would be a mathematical genius like him. My mother might have hoped the same but with an anticipation that I would encounter a religious calling to become a Catholic priest. Regrettably I did not meet either of my parents’ expectations. I never became a mathematical genius nor a Catholic priest.  But I did know at some point that in everything I was to eventually become, formal education was given as key.  As taught not only by my parents but also by the Zimbabwean government. 

And education also had a success hierarchy.  The most educated among us would eventually become medical doctors, engineers, lawyers (thanks to Herbert Chitepo) or priests.  The least educated would become bus drivers, security guards or God forbid what we derisively refer to as ‘garden boys’.  

And Robert Mugabe insisted on this hierarchy for a while. He also set up various state universities that demystified the acquisition of degrees and made it almost normal to have one.   

Until at some point the most educated became restive.  Those that were educated to blue collar levels decided that his stay in power was too iniquitous to their own aspirations and formed trade unions that challenged the very same hierarchy. 

In challenging it however the aspirations were the same.  That their children would via further education escape their own blue collar or peasant lives to being the nouveau rich in the leafier suburbs of Harare. 

And this is very ironic.  In being educated and struggling to get our children similarly or better educated we aspire for the same things, same lifestyles that those who would historically deny us already have. 

This is the bane of what I have previously referred to as the ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Program) generation of the 1990s.  We were taught that success, which was defined as driving a car, owning a television and living in affluent parts of capital cities comes through success in formal education.  Only for that education to be made redundant with economic liberalization where jobs became not only based on your actual education but also your willingness to take risks and forgo a diligent studious past. 

But we insist in believing that the type of education your child receives will make them cross the Rubicon  of success.  Or will ensure that they remain north of Samora Machel Avenue.  The truth of the matter is that we are leading our children down a false garden path.  If like me, you were privileged enough to go to a school like St Ignatious College, Chishawasha, there is no logical reason why you would not want your offspring, to go to the same.  Regrettably a lot of us who went to the same school believe that it would be beneath their aspirations for their children to go to the same schools they went to. 

Education then shifts from being a route to success to being an emblem of lifestyle success.  Almost as though we are watching how others perceive of our own personal success.  Never mind the children. 

But I must get back to my main point in this blog. 

As Zimbabweans we assume we are bright sparks because of our education system and our own personal education.  The truth of the matter is that while we may be formally smart we are organically dull. Our formal education regrettably does not always see the future.  It is too selfish, too self centered and too focused on immediate recognition.

This is what would explain our inability to think, even as educated as we would be told we are, collectively. Tell me, what intelligent, educated people even consider privatizing as natural a right as water?  Our mothers would have to defrock themselves in Bikita if that were to ever happen.  But it is being planned and for execution by the most educated of us.  PhD’s and all. 

The key issue is that we are at fault for assuming flaunting education certificates as the sine qua non of individual success. 

We have forgotten that you should never become educated in order to be a copycat.  Or to mimic others.  We should be educated to produce new knowledge.  Always.  Especially in our African contexts where the Global North thinks we are exceedingly dull. Or that we are not organic about our won knowledge production.  

If you were to walk in Harare and ask young comrades the exact role of Mbuya Nehanda in our African liberation struggles you are least likely to find any affirmation of her role.  Even as you read this blog, if you are Zimbabwean, you will probably google her name. 

We cannot assume that the more educated we are, the more organically conscious we are.  I know comrades who have gone to Bible school and become pastors but still exhibit a naivety that cannot be considered progressive.  Or comrades who think being called a comrade is Russian and therefore anti-American.  Educated as they are.  Yet we know, historically, we would never have triumphed in the liberation struggle without calling referring to each other as comrade. Or friend.

You see comrades, we are not as educated as we think. In Africa.  We suffer. We continue. But we know how to talk and act back.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com