By Eunice Masunungure
THE agreement between the Government and representatives of former white commercial farmers signed end of July 2020 at State House in Harare, showing that the later will receive US$3,5 billion in compensation to improvements on land, is not a guarantee that the West, particularly the US, will lift sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe.
Pointers are that Washington wants Zimbabwe to return the land back to the former white commercial farmers, as well as pay compensation for loss of productivity for the past two decades.
Absurd!
The US refusal to remove sanctions despite re-engagement and engagement efforts by the new dispensation, speaks to the colonial legacy and a blatant regime change agenda.
Walter Rodney (1972), in his text How Europe Under-developed Africa, argues European development models were at the expense of poor African nations.
Colonialism simply brought Eurocentric indoctrination, unequal relations of power and exploitation of the ‘inferior’.
The West is unwilling to change that.
Munoda Mararike (2018), in an analysis titled Zimbabwe Economic Sanctions and Post-Colonial Hangover: A Critique of Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA)-2001 and 2018, argues:
“The economic sanctions are part of a strategic neo-colonial era in which former colonial powers continue clutching to vain glories of the past.
Yet that past is the present.
Zimbabwe is being punished for reclaiming land through land reform programmes of 2001 which helped to empower Zimbabweans.”
The post-independence land reform called the ‘Third Chimurenga,’ which started in 2001 was anchored on the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which resulted in new nation in 1980.
It sought to correct a flawed Constitution by the British, to ‘legitimise and regulate political systems of independence’ for the benefit of landless black majority of Zimbabwe.
“The objectives of the Land Reform Programme were rooted in reversing the Lancaster House Agreement that protected white commercial farmers from losing land.
The protectionist policy lasted for 10 years
whereupon the government was not allowed to change land tenure and ownership by constitutional means.” (Mararike 2018:29)
Read in-between the lines of US statement when the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces US sanctions regulations, added to the sanctions list on August Wednesday 5 2020 Kudakwashe Tagwirei, an adviser to President Mnangagwa and the energy company he operates, Sakunda Holdings Ltd.
“We support a stable and democratic Zimbabwe.
Our new sanctions against Kudakwashe Tagwirei and Sakunda Holdings …demonstrate to the government and people of Zimbabwe that the US will not tolerate public corruption or hesitate to take action to promote accountability.” (Secretary Pompeo (@ SecPompeo)
When US remarks regarding sanctions, there is a tendency to hide behind seeming care, lest it would be catastrophic for the African economies and population!
What the US demonises is blacks’ attempt to have fair distribution of land.
Another instance is that, six months ago, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hit out at South Africa’s land expropriation without compensation on his first visit to Africa as US State Secretary in February 2020.
He said the land reform is a disaster and free enterprise is the only path.
Said Pompeo: “Centralised planning hasn’t worked — look at the failed socialist experiments of years past in Zimbabwe, in Tanzania and right here in Ethiopia.
Even now, as we stand here today, South Africa is debating an amendment to permit the expropriation of private property without compensation.
That would be disastrous for that economy and most importantly for the South African people.
Socialist schemes haven’t economically liberated this continent’s poorest people.
But we all — everyone in this room — know the right way forward.
Basic strong rule of law, respect for property rights, regulation that encourages investment.
You need to get the basic laws right so that investors can come and invest their capital.”
Hiding behind this statement is the continued colonial intention to ‘annex African land’ as the historical statement of Cecil John Rhodes has it.
One other instance is that in 2018, after the neo-apartheid advocacy group AfriForum had lobbied in the US and other countries against land expropriation without compensation, US President Donald Trump tweeted to the fact that he had instructed Pompeo to investigate, ‘land and farm seizures’ and ‘killing of farmers’ in South Africa.
The fear of losing stake has made the US mobilise #TheWorldMustKnow campaign to come up with international pressure against the South African Government’s plans to implement their ideology of expropriation without compensation.
“Since the US is one of South Africa’s largest trading partners, the South African Government should seriously consider Pompeo’s warning and realise that ideologically- driven policies pose serious threats to the country’s economy…
“Zimbabwe and Venezuela are proof that everyone but the political elite suffers when property rights are violated,” AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel once said in a comment to Pompeo’s
statement.
Kriel praised it as:
“(E)normous boost for the civil rights organisation’s international campaign to mobilise international pressure against the South African Government’s plans to implement their ideology of expropriation without compensation.”
The US’ intention has always been to make sure that investors leave the country and make the South African economy ‘screams’ whenever the country contemplates land reforms, a similar bullying method that was used in Zimbabwe.
The investors do not leave the country on their own accord but the US has sought their help to make sure they put pressure on the South African Government to save investments.
The explanation is clear.
The West, led by the world bully US, is against legislation and constitutional constructs on the land question and has always made moves to protect their own businesspeople’s interests.
Therefore, addressing centuries old problem of land is not welcome to the West.
In South Africa, US has stifled the slightest moves by the Government to amend the Constitution to address the land question.
White companies in South Africa own large pieces of under-utilised land which have not been willfully given to communities whose land was taken away.
Even after the end of apartheid in 1994, about four percent of whites still hold 86 percent of all farmland.
The willing-buyer and willing-seller approach has not helped.
Yet the US seems to see that as rule of law.
It is not surprising that the US would want to engage Zimbabwe only after Zimbabwe returns land to the their kith and kin, former white farmers, who were dispossessed during the Land Reform Programme.
Therefore, it is uncertain whether re-engagement and engagement efforts by Zimbabwe will yield positive results, given that the US has already put untenable conditions on Zimbabwe, which it never did with Cuba.
The West, led by the world bully, the US, has never shied from its regime change agenda to depose not only ZANU PF from power but all former liberation movements in Southern Africa.