HomeOld_PostsBill Gates, land reform or revolution in Southern Africa? — Part One

Bill Gates, land reform or revolution in Southern Africa? — Part One

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BELOW are comments which focus on statements about land ownership and use made by Winston Churchill, Herbert Chitepo and Bill Gates.
And they are worth citing at length for us to appreciate the magnitude and significance of the Land Reform Programme carried out by Zimbabwe and the challenges it continues to face in the Southern African context!
Very early in his political career, Winston Churchill made the following observation:
“It is quite true that land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies — it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.
“It is quite true that unearned increments in land are not the only form of undeserved profit which individuals are able to secure; but it is the principal form of unearned increments which is derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but which are positively detrimental to the general public.
“Land, which is a necessity of human existence, which is the original source of all wealth, which is strictly limited in extent, which is fixed in geographical position — and I say, differs from all other forms of property in these primary and fundamental conditions.”
Although Churchill hailed from an upper middle-class family, he could see, as he prepared for public life, some of the social-cum-economic imbalances which held back general progress in Britain.
One of these was ownership of land all over Britain by a few, those from upper classes who did so at the expense of the rest!
He became a social reformer and a liberal of sorts, a position no doubt that was in conflict with his family background, but critical if he was to be regarded seriously by the general public as someone fit for public office.
He tried hard to work with the Liberal Party of the day in order to transform the ownership pattern of land in Britain to no avail.
The landlords labelled him a traitor of his class.
In the end all he could do was to raise more taxes for the state from land based rents charged on landlords.
One can argue that the age-old inequitable ownership of land in Britain which Churchill and others hopelessly failed to reform had already spread like a cancer all over the world as an integral part of the expansion of the British empire.
In Africa, this cancer mutated into a malignant and virulent form in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and trustee territories like Namibia.
Virulent in that the class dimension which historically determined who owned how much land and where in Britain found expression along white and black race lines.
The whites became landlords and owned most of the land and the best of it according to soil types and rain distribution patterns.
The blacks owned next to nothing.
This racist approach to land allocation transformed overnight millions of Africans into unwanted squatters in the land of their birth.
In fact the so-called homelands in South Africa and Namibia where blacks could live, but not own land individually became squatter camps; the same applied to Zimbabwe where maruzevha became reservations from which cheap labour could be easily obtained for the whiteman’s mines, factories and farms.
All over Southern Africa the whiteman became a god and greedy one at that and all blacks his worshippers!
White supremacy became a religion, buttressed by all types of constitutions and laws one could think of.
In brief, white hegemony became part of a god-ordained imperial order, a commonsensical reality, but one ultimately based on wholesale expropriation of land which belonged to blacks in the first place!
Land ownership became a race based monopoly, and the same monopoly continues to this day in its undiluted form in both South Africa and Namibia
This is the bleak background which Herbert Chitepo, then chairman of ZANU, attempted to explain in his speech to his Australian hosts in 1974 when he said:
“I think everybody who knows about revolution knows that revolution has been about land everywhere in the world.
“It is about land because land is the thing on which you live.
“You build your house on it; you get your food from it.
“Life is sustained on the land, and without it you are really facing death.”
As demonstrated by Churchill’s failure and many others before and after him who were for transformation of land ownership in Britain, monopoly on land ownership is not something that can be brought about through ordinary reform processes; it involves massive losses of income, painful loss of power and prestige by those predatory social classes and races already enjoying these by virtue of their ownership of land.
No fundamental land reform in the world has ever taken place in the interest of the majority without use of violence in one form or other either before or during the reform itself.
It is almost impossible to implement a land revolution through courtship of and sweet-talking to predatory classes as the likes of Churchill believed!
This is the dilemma South Africa and Namibia face today!
Herbert Chitepo came to realise this unpalatable truth on the basis of his understanding of world history.
Hence for Zimbabwe the struggle for liberation became the struggle for land ownership and vice versa!
The French revolution of 1789, the Russian revolution of 1917 and the Chinese one of 1949 — all these and many others involved violence in one way or other! Why?
Because they involved a fundamental restructuring of land ownership and use by various social classes who had been marginalised and exploited by feudal landlords and warlords for ages.
In light of the above one wonders whether Bill Gates is fully aware of the implications involved when he argues in his review of Studwell’s book that:
“Rapid agricultural development requires redistributing land more equitably among the farming population.
“To date, I haven’t focused on the land ownership piece as I have on the role of better seeds, fertilisers and farming practices.
“This book made me want to learn more about the land ownership picture in countries where our foundation funds work.”
The fact that the richest man in the world is acknowledging that ownership of land by the majority of farmers is a key issue and also acknowledging the central role of the state in supporting agriculture finance-wise is precisely what Zimbabwe has been trying to do all along and getting punished for it by the Western world.
However, the question remains: Does Bill Gates understand fully that if any equitable distribution of land were to take place in Southern Africa, it would amount to a land revolution as has happened in Zimbabwe?
The reason why Zimbabwe’s land revolution remains imperilled by Western-machinations led by the USA is because such a revolution is a threat to Western interests in South Africa and Namibia and many other Western interests in Africa!

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