IN March 2016, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa reportedly tabled a motion in Parliament seeking to set up a Lands Compensation Fund (LCF) to raise compensation for ousted former white colonial farmers.
Former white farmers would be compensated for immovable property, improvements, movable property taken over during land acquisition and any legal fees incurred.
According to the Ministry, to secure funds for LCF, new occupants of the former large-scale farms would pay rent as well as levies with ‘development partners’ and donations being other sources.
Initially, Government estimated that between US$2 billion and US$4 billion would suffice for compensation with some media reports indicating that US$30 billion was required.
The move to compensate white farmers is expected to help re-integrate the country into the international community.
Before the Land Reform Programme in 2000, only 4 000 white farmers owned the country’s prime land, but after its implementation, more than 400 000 black households now own land.
Rhodie Eddie Cross voiced his sentiments over the issue of compensation.
“Compensation at real market value is not only a legal obligation on the Government of Zimbabwe, it’s a moral obligation and the affected communities have the right to demand justice,” said Cross in a media article.
“What is tragic is that so few elsewhere in the world are in support of this community of investors in this blighted African country.
“Claims for compensation arise out of an exercise launched in June 2000 which has subsequently become known as the ‘Fast Track Land Reform Programme’.”
With hype being placed on the need to compensate white farmers, has much thought been given to how they acquired the land in the first place?
In his memoir Dreams from My Father: A story of Race and Inheritance, US president Barack Obama writes: “The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.”
September 12 1890 marked the entrance of the Pioneer Column into what they later termed Rhodesia.
On September 13 1890 the Union Jack was hoisted, with the whites ‘claiming’ the country as theirs.
The fate of the indigenes was now in their hands.
Speaking on the issue of land, former ZANU National Chairman, the late Herbert Chitepo, said:
“When they arrived at what is now called Salisbury on September 12 1890, they hoisted the Union Jack and set up an administration.
“Then they started parcelling out the land of Zimbabwe among themselves.
“Each one was given large tracts of land.
“Those who wanted more were allowed to buy it for as little as a shilling an acre.”
The rights of locals who had been occupying the land were infringed, Chitepo highlighted.
“With it, of course, went the people who were living on the land,” he said.
“So that, a man who had lived on a piece of land, cultivated, built his home and reared his cattle and goats and sheep on the same piece of land suddenly woke up to be told by a European who had come from afar: ‘No, you are a tenant now.”
No compensation was given to the locals.
Livestock belonging to indigenes was confisticated.
According to Rhodesian writer Peter Baxter, the end of the Matabele War marked the coming into existence of Rhodesia, an established British colony under company administration.
Leander Starr Jameson retained the role of administrator.
“Under the rules of conquest Jameson assumed the right to distribute the wealth of the amaNdebele nation,” writes Baxter.
“This in essence existed as land and livestock.
“Land was distributed to the ‘Honourable and Military’ in lavish quantities while the amaNdebele were given limited reserve space in rocky infertile lands.
“At the same time the ‘national herd’, many thousands of herd of cattle held in trust for the Nation by the monarchy, were seized as war booty and distributed with equal generosity to the settler volunteers and the new beneficiaries of the land.”
Locals not only lost their assets, but their dignity too, following the unfair displacement.
An article published in the 1935 Journal of Royal African Society said: “The European requires a certain standard of living, thus areas of good soil, fair average rainfall and the altitude and climate are suitable for Europeans.”
This statement was used by whites to justify the pushing out of blacks from their land.
Baxter’s narrative clearly shows locals were already practising agriculture before the coming of the whiteman.
Agricultural economist, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni writes that the Shangwe people of Gokwe were renowned tobacco growers during the pre-colonial era.
By the mid 1930s, tobacco production by blacks was banned with the golden leaf labelled a ‘white crop’.
The success of white farmers between 1940 and 1960 was largely because they used hybrid seed and fertilisers.
These were not made available to black farmers.
With fortune tilted in favour of whites, black farmers were labelled failures.
All they could do was provide cheap labour on white-owned commercial farms.
Even after independence, statistics prove that despite being disadvantaged, local small-holder farmers played a significant role in agriculture.
According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, small-holder farmers were the largest suppliers of maize and cotton to formal markets within five years of independence.
What the Land Reform Programme simply did was redress colonial imbalances.
Blacks were given back their land and right to engage in agricultural activities freely.
As Nigerian renowned writer Chinua Achebe said: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
The onus is on indigenes to state facts on the land issue to avoid unnecessary misconceptions.
The occupation of Zimbabwe led to the loss of African wealth without compensation.