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The Struggle for Land in Zimbabwe (1890-2010)…2008/9 budget delayed until GNU formed

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In his budget delivery, acting Minister Chinamasa was open and pointed out that ‘rising inflation has seen our local currency fast losing its role as a medium of exchange and store of value writes Dr Felix Muchemwa in his book The Struggle for Land in Zimbabwe (1890-2010) that The Patriot is serialising.

AT the peak of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation in March 2008, Zimbabwe went for general and harmonised elections.
These were presidential, parliamentary and council elections.
None of the major parties commanded an outright majority vote to rule Zimbabwe, necessitating a June 27 run-off that was won by President Robert Mugabe.
A Government of National Unity was consequently formed under the recommendations of the AU and SADC, but not before a number of policy issues had to be agreed upon. Article 5 of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) dealt with the land issue, and the notable clauses were:
5.2. Noting that in addition to the primary objectives of the liberation struggle to win one-man-one-vote, democracy and justice, the land question, namely the need for the redistribution of land to the majority indigenous people of Zimbabwe, was at the core of the liberation struggle.
5.4. While differing on the methodology of land acquisition and land redistribution, the parties (MDC-T, MDC-M and ZANU PF) acknowledged that compulsory acquisition and redistribution of land has taken place under a land reform programme undertaken since 2000.
5. 5. Accepting the irreversibility of the said land acquisition and re-distribution.
5.6. Noting that … the primary obligation of compensating former landowners for land acquired rests on the former colonial power. (The Herald, September 18 2008, p.8)
What cannot be over-emphasised is Article 5.5 in which all the parties to the Government of National Unity (GNU) accepted ‘the irreversibility of the … land acquisition and redistribution’. (The Herald, September 18 2008, p.9)
By 2008, the economy was largely running on a cash basis because of a credit crunch, not only in Zimbabwe, but also internationally, and this had serious effects on the capacity of companies in Zimbabwe to restock quickly to produce regularly and keep utilisation up. (CZI Survey 2008, p.24, 34)
However, the biggest economic constraint in Zimbabwe was the foreign currency shortage which rose to 133 precent, among all other economic constraints put together, showing the clearest impact of financial sanctions imposed by ZDERA (2001) through multilateral financial institutions. (CZI Survey 2008, p.28)
It was also observed that the economy was silently dollarising in terms of prices, where, though payable in local currency, prices were pegged in foreign currency.
The South African rand and the US dollar were the most common foreign currencies on all markets. (CZI Survery 2008, p.34)
Dollarisation, within a rapidly devaluing Zim dollar economic environment, meant de-industrialisation and, therefore, urgent measures were required to curb hyperinflation which was current in Zimbabwe. (CZI survey 2008 p.34)
The budget for 2008/2009 was delayed and only delivered on Friday January 29 2009, before the GNU Cabinet was formed in February 2009.
ZANU PF acting Minister of Finance Cde Patrick Chinamasa delivered the budget amidst the worst hyperinflation ever recorded in the world since the post war depression of the 1930s. (Mahoso, Sunday Mail, April 26 to May 2 2009, p.9)
The hyperinflation meant constant acute shortages of consumer goods as well as services and poor agricultural harvests due to lack of agricultural inputs which translated to severe shortage of food.
There was also scarcity of water, resulting in poor sanitation leading to constant outbreaks of cholera and typhoid in most major cities.
In his budget delivery, acting Minister Chinamasa was candid and pointed out that “…rising inflation has seen our local currency fast losing its role as a medium of exchange and store of value. As a result, licenced and unlicenced traders have resorted to using hard currencies as a way of cushioning themselves from the impact of inflation … The current policy on import liberalisation and shift to transacting in hard currencies have, however, seen some improvement in supply of goods and services accompanied by stabilisation of those prices demanded in foreign currencies”. (Budget Speech, Chinamasa, Friday January 29 2009).
Minister Chinamasa then liberalised the economy and recommended that multiple currencies be approved for economic transactions in tandem with the Zim dollar wherever needed.
The approved currencies were the South African rand, the US dollar, the Botswana pula, the Euro, the pound sterling, among others. (Budget Speech, Chinamasa, Friday January 29 2009)
When the economy was dollarised and the Zim dollar virtually discarded, the hyperinflation was dealt with almost at a stroke to single digits within a matter of days rather than months. (Scoones et al, 2010: p.29)
The dollarisation also almost immediately improved the general availability of goods and services in the markets, and stabilised prices. (J. Moyo, Sunday Mail, Feburay 7-13 2010 p.7)
Furthermore, the recovery of the economy made most peasant families, resettled on new land ever since the year 2000, begin to realise their potential to grow crops on their farms and restore to normalcy Zimbabwe’s agro-industrial sector.
There is no doubt that dollarisation should have been adopted far much earlier to counter both hyperinflation and the financial sanctions imposed on the Zimbabwean economy.
ZDERA had deliberately been targeted against the Zim dollar so as to make it depreciate rapidly and cause hyperinflation and the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy.
This is why, despite all these progressive economic measures to stop the hyperinflation due to financial sanctions, and despite Africans coming together to form a GNU and solve problems confronting their country, most white settler-farmers continued their pre-GNU confrontational stance at various levels of Zimbabwe’s legal system.
They even appealed to courts in SA and to the SADC Tribunal. (The Herald, February 8 2010, p.4)
However, all these court appeals to reverse the land reform yielded nothing.

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