On Fri, 5 May 2000, Chris Burford wrote:
> How strong is the union organization of the workers on the white
> farms? Is their consciousness really working class or are they indeed
> heavily influenced by the white colonial owners?
I'm certainly unqualified to say, on several counts. But here is another article from the South African Weekly Guardian that has some interesting things to say about worker/farmer/squatter relations.
Michael
Three years ago it was a success story. So what went wrong in Zimbabwe? Gary Younge on how Mugabe's failure to tackle the land issue brought the country to the brink of anarchy
Bitter harvest
Last month's first-round World Cup qualifying match between Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic was a peculiarly symbolic affair. Zimbabwe went 2-0 up against the run of play when a reckless tackle in the 37th minute earned CAR midfielder Potasse Taraine a red card. Scarcely had the referee reached into his top pocket than the CAR captain, Azo Alain, was upon him, felling him with a running punch and chasing him round the pitch. A full-scale punch-up ensued that brought not only officials but riot police on to the pitch, complete with batons, dogs and tear gas. It took 15 minutes to restore order, and Zimbabwe went on to win the second-leg match 3-1. In politics, as in football, it is impossible to predict what will happen next in Zimbabwe. The situation is volatile, those who are supposed to provide leadership are acting irresponsibly, and those who are supposed to maintain order are unable or unwilling to do so.
One moment the president, Robert Mugabe, is declaring a truce between "war veterans" and farmers, and the supreme court has found the leader of the so-called war veterans, Chenjari "Hitler" Hunzvi, guilty of contempt. The next, white farmers have fled their homesteads, two women have been raped and the political opposition has been branded lackeys of foreign interests.
The situation does not so much vary from day to day as spin off in myriad contradictory directions within the same day. Take the morning that started with reports that a white farmer near Bulawayo had been injured. A couple of hours later, after the farmer had been confirmed dead, Mugabe was on television delivering his independence day speech. He spoke of reconciliation, and described white deaths as "regrettable". Soon after, he had branded white Zimbabweans "enemies of the state" and blamed them for bringing the attacks on themselves.
One step forward, two steps back; political progress followed by pernicious pogroms. Inflation and unemployment are up; foreign reserves, fuel supplies and political trust are down.
Zimbabwe wasn't always like this. When Mugabe took over in 1980 he was the toast of the liberal world. He did not have the stature of Nelson Mandela - who does? - but he had democratic legitimacy and vowed to work towards reconciliation in the interests of the many rather than the few. As recently as three years ago the country was regarded as one of Africa's success stories. Economic growth, at 8%, was strong, and investment was pouring in.
"Our economic outlook is the brightest and strongest it has been for 15 years, even 20 years," Isaac Takawira, the managing director of Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe, said in early 1997. "Our clients are dusting off projects that have been on the shelf for years. Businesses are making expansion plans. With good cooperation between government and the private sector we should enjoy a stable macroeconomic situation and sustainable growth."
Although Amnesty International had severe criticisms of the country's proposed constitutional reform - which was rejected by the voters in February - it concluded that "the draft constitution represents major human rights improvements compared to the present constitution".
But even as the world has praised Mugabe it has expressed concern over the cronyism and despotism that have become endemic through his 20 years in power. During the 80s he cemented his rule through a murderous campaign against the Ndebele in general and his former liberation allies, the Zimbabwe African People's Union, in particular. He only abandoned his commitment to one-party rule, under considerable duress, about five years ago. His portrait still hangs everywhere, from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant to the car hire offices. Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town, once described Mugabe as "almost a caricature of all the things people think black African leaders do".
The financial world has been disdainful of his economic performance partly because it has concentrated on the interests of the poor. Much of spending has gone to education - at 92% Zimbabwe has one of the highest rates of literacy in Africa - health and infrastructure. But his claims that the democratically decided priorities of his government were being overruled by economic imperialism have been undermined by his tendency to line the pockets of the political elite and to use inflationary pay rises to buy off discontent among civil servants. If that were not enough, his senseless military adventure in the Congo is costing money that his country simply does not have.
If Mugabe had left government in 1995, says Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he would have gone with his reputation intact, but "the past five years have been a disaster".
Ironically, the one area in which Mugabe gains most sympathy in this part of the world is land reform. The first law passed by South Africa's African National Congress in 1994 was to permit people who had been evicted from their land during apartheid to reclaim their property, and a recent survey showed that a slim majority of South Africans believe Zimbabwe's squatters were right to seize land. Since Zimbabwe was liberated from white minority rule the question of land redistribution has been simmering.
This has always been an essentially political issue, although race has never been far away. In a country where history has racialised politics and politicised race it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. Those who own the best land are white; those who want it are black. Whites stole the land from blacks for decades at gunpoint; now blacks want some of it back, and they are prepared to get it in the same way they lost it if they have to.
Contrary to what many white farmers would have you believe, Zimbabwe was not an oasis of racial harmony before Mugabe started to stoke tensions. The white-owned estates are the country's largest employer and pay the lowest wages. Maids earn more than farm labourers, and many white farmers treat their staff with racist contempt resonant of the bad old days of Rhodesia.
"The farmer here is not a good man," said Gladman T, a labourer near Ventersburg. "When he gets angry he throws things at us or lets the dogs on us. He got angry one day when the machinery broke and cut the electricity off to all our houses. He is like many whites. They only want to deal with blacks as workers. His attitude creates a bitterness among us. If there were to be trouble here with the war veterans I don't think any of his workers would help him."
But nor has it merely been a tale of bitter racial conflict. In the cities a black middle class is thriving and growing. In the countryside some white farmers have been slowly coming around to the idea that their black workers are staff rather than hired chattels. Black Zimbabweans want land reform not to spite whites but because they feel it is just and because that is what they fought for 20 years ago. Tales of them defending the farms where they work against squatters tell us more about their fear that the squatters will take the land for themselves and leave the labourers with nothing than it tells of any great love for their bosses.
While Mugabe has painted himself as the champion of the landless in recent months, it has been the landless who have been forcing him to act over the past few years. Almost two years ago squatters occupied white farms, motivated by frustration after years of waiting for the government to tackle the issue. At the time Mugabe imposed a two-week ban on demonstrations and strikes after a veterans' protest while African-American businessmen were here for an investment conference.
Nor is the death of white farmers anything new. Eighteen months ago an elderly farmer was killed and a white couple were assaulted. "Our hard-won peace and stability is threatened by our people's urgent need for fertile land," said the then minister of state, Joseph Msika. "I shudder to think what the future holds for us if we do not achieve an equitable distribution of our land." Welcome to the future. Msika has been promoted to vice-president, equitable distribution has not been achieved, and the nation is shuddering with the consequences.
At the Old Vic pub in Bulawayo the great and good of the ruling Zanu-PF party are knocking back the Mikuyu Pinot Noir, a popular Zimbabwean red wine. They are in town in Msika's honour. Those who checked into the adjacent Rainbow hotel paid in cash - huge wads of Zimbabwean dollars bearing testament to the 50% inflation for which their government is responsible. If there were ever an illustration of an effete ruling elite, it is this.
A few kilometres away, in the plush suburb of Hillside, big men are weeping at the funeral of the white farmer Martin Olds, who was murdered by squatters last month. Following Olds's death we learned that "he had the gentlest eyes you have ever seen". What we did not hear was that his objectionable manner made him deeply unpopular with black people in his district. During the liberation war he served in the Grey Scouts, a mountain reconnaissance team that fought determinedly to preserve minority rule. He had been in trouble with the police in the past for shooting at poachers; he had promised that squatters would receive the same treatment.
>From the pulpit Rev Paul Andrianatos pulls no punches. Voting for Zanu-PF
"would be a vote for the devil", he says, before going on to compare
Mugabe to Hitler. This is a besieged, privileged and panicked minority at
prayer. Mugabe is not the devil any more than Olds was an angel. That
doesn't mean the former deserves to rule any more than the latter deserved
to die. What is going on is not a black and white issue. It is about
politics, fuelled by history and propelled by self-interest.
The reason Mugabe wavers between reconciliation and revenge is that there is disquiet among many in Zanu-PF - including Msika, who ordered the occupations to stop last month - that he is going about land reform in the wrong way. But their concern is electoral rather than moral.
An election is due this month - although it is not likely to be held until July, and the party's defeat in the referendum has shown it is no longer invincible. It has come to consider itself not only the natural party of government but the only party of government. In the past, opposition has either been hopelessly divided or crippled by ethnic associations that were unable to reconcile disparate forces. Now the MDC has emerged, bringing together everyone from the trade union movement to the white farmers, who want a change of government.
Zanu-PF has not delivered and is running out of wriggle room. It has no money left to buy off dissenters and there are few minorities left to persecute. Now it is desperate.
The Guardian Weekly 4-5-2000, page 24
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com