Yesterday's Sunday Times (London) reported that at that time 50 families moved in north of Harare. The movement has been spreading.
An unnamed western diplomatic source in Harare who is quoted as speaking idiomatic middle class English, attributes this to the machinations of local officials of ZANU. He (presumably he) presumes that it is a "kind of blackmail" ahead of a conference next month to try to resolve the land issue.
The ST reports that 12 million acres are owned by 4000 white farms. An article reprinted earlier this month in the Morning Star, originally published in People's Weekly World, of the CPUSA, adds that this amounts to about 45% of the land, the better sort. The rest of the land, mainly of poor quality, is occupied by 8 million blacks.
The anti-colonial war did not end with the defeat of the white Rhodesian forces but a stalemate. The constitutional settlement with inbuilt guarantees against it being rewritten without the consent of the whites, protected the settlers. Even with the abolition of the white-only seats in parliament, Zanu is supposed to implement its policy of distributing land to the landless poor only if it pays full compensation.
In November last year Mugabe announced a decision to seize a list of 1,570 white farms, which had originally been seized without paying any compensation over a century ago.
This was belittled in the British press as a negotiating ploy.
The unattributable, but easily identifiable, quote in the Sunday Times, points out that the British Government has already paid £48 million and it is unreasonable for it to pay the full cost of reappropriation as demanded by Mugabe.
The white Commercial Farmers Union has offered to sell 300 farms, but with the help of western governments argues that their farms are the highest earners of foreign exchange for Zimbabwe, and employ 100 thousand workers, (who presumably have no desire to have their own land).
The European Union, the IMF, and the World Bank appear to have a well-prepared position that they will only support a compromise if there is a well organised land resettlement programme, no doubt with them defining how to judge "well-organised".
All this is belittled as maneouvring ahead of a conference in September on the issue to be addressed by Mugabe.
Meanwhile as reported in SouthScan, the Zimbabwe currency has just fallen 20%. An economist for the National Chamber of Commerce predicted a wave of bankruptcies. The government has given the police sweeping powers to curb demonstrations and Mugabe has warned the unions 'not to seek confrontation'.
The outright banning of strikes and demonstrations has been lifted just ahead of the arrival of an IMF delegation (always in favour of civil rights) which is due to review payments of $176 million in budget support following Mugabe's backtracking on economic liberalisation.
The assistant director of the IMF's Africa department, Michael Nowak, ominously mixing praise with reproof, said that the goveernment had kept well within its target on the budget deficit and that inflation was expected to fall sharply in the coming months but he expressed concern over the slow pace of privatisation of state-owned assets, an inadequate reduction in the civil service, government price controls, and its stance on the possible confiscation of white-owned farms ....
While Zimbabwe probably needs good entrepreneur skills to be competitive in the global economy, land remains a vital question and not just a symbolic reminder of its incomplete revolution.
The footwork in these manouvrings shows how neo-liberalism is protecting the old colonial order, and it is hard to see how Zanu can win without backing popular movements that may bring its own power down. That would be fine if there was something to replace Zanu.
It is invidious to give advice from the imperialist country, but more options are better than fewer. I would suggest that some of the ideas on land reform that I have ventilated on these lists could be part of reshaping the debate.
Supposing the Zimbabwean government abolished private ownership of land, thereby winning the political headlines for reversing the principle of the colonial plunder. But did not immediately appropriate the farmers whose land entitlement could be kept as leasehold. Then a rent on the freehold at a low rate could provide a sum of money, spread painlessly across the 4000 white farms, to fund the purchasing and resettlement of a rolling number of them. Preferably on well-organised cooperative lines. Such a financial package could be swept up within IMF negotiations, a fraction of which could be set against the loss of competitivity in international trading of the white farmers.
I do not say this to prescribe, but to illustrate the possibility of some structural reforms. Obviously there are many details which I cannot guess and are probably better known to other members of this list.
But the movement to occupy the land in Zimbabwe is a just, democratic, movement, and we should not only recognise its existence but try to think whether it is necessarily doomed to failure, as at present it probably largely is.
Chris Burford
London.