Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa Chris Alden and Ward Anseeuw
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa Chris Alden and
Ward Anseeuw
© Chris Alden and Ward Anseeuw 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN-13: 978-0-230-23084-2
hardback
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Contents Acknowledgements
vi
Introduction
1
1 Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa
5
2 Sowing the Whirlwind – Zimbabwe and Southern Africa
38
3 Darkness at Noon – South Africa
75
4 A Distant Thunder – Namibia
120
5 Liberation and Compromise?
158
Fieldwork
180
Notes
185
Bibliography
216
Maps
234
Index
241
v
Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge, in the first instance, the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS), and in particular its research directors Philippe Guillaume, Aurelia Segatti-Wa Kabwe, and Sophie Didier, for their unstinting encouragement, for providing funding for the field work, and for supporting this initiative throughout. Garth le Pere of the Institute for Global Dialogue also deserves our thanks for providing targeted assistance at the initial phase of the project. Many assisted us in the research phase, including in Namibia, Ben Fuller and Deon van Zyl (National Economic Research and Policy Unit); in South Africa, Maxi Schoeman (University of Pretoria); and in Botswana, Michael Taylor (Ministry of Agriculture) and Kenneth Good (University of Botswana). Others, particularly Willem Odendaal, Karin Kleinbooi, and Renaud Lapeyre, helped out by providing relevant data and information. In London, Laurie Nathan gave sound and scholarly commentary on some chapters, while Deborah James, James Putzel, and Jo Beall took the trouble to listen to an early version of the project. We would also like to thank Alexandra Webster for her support in bringing this manuscript into its published form, and Erin O’Brien for reviewing this edition of the book. Finally, we also like to convey our gratitude to the many people we interviewed during this project, in particular those affected by land conflicts. In South Africa, many thanks go to the Landless People’s Movement, to The Rural Action Committee, to the farm workers’ organisations in Kwazulu Natal’s Vryheid region and to the Agri-SA’s members of the North West Province. Thanks also go to the different land protagonists, farming communities, as well as to urban and rural land dwellers in the Waterberg, Gobabis, and Ovamboland regions in Namibia and in the Kweneng Province in Botswana. It bears mentioning that none of these individuals or institutions is responsible for the findings and/or observations we make in this book.
vi
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Kinshasa
UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA Dodoma Dar es Salaam
Luanda MALAWI ANGOLA ZAMBIA Lusaka
Lilongwe MOZAMBIQUE
Harare MAURITIUS Port Louis Antananarivo
ZIMBABWE
NAMIBIA
Windhoek BOTSWANA Gaborone Pretoria
MADAGASCAR Maputo
Moabene SWAZILAND
Maseru
LESOTHO SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town Figure 1.1 Southern Africa
vii
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Introduction
On the eve of the crisis in Zimbabwe, one that was to inexorably pull its neighbours into a regional reconsideration of the politics of land, a workshop was held in November 1999 in Windhoek, Namibia. The delegates, all members of the regional non-governmental network Mwelekeo wa NGO or Mwengo, had come together to assess the regrettable inaction surrounding the land situation in their respective countries. In his opening remarks Uhuru Dempers pointed out that the liberation struggle in all the countries in Southern Africa had been inspired by the colonial dispossession of land. Despite this, he went on to say, land reform remained an area of struggle for all the countries. He hoped that the legacy of a common history and ongoing initiatives in the area of land reform and redistribution would inspire Southern African NGOs to review their local circumstances and collaborate in future on land policy across the region.1 Within three months of the meeting, the regional quietude that so disturbed participants had been expelled by events in Zimbabwe. A ‘fast track’ land reform programme characterised by violent occupation of white commercial farmland by purported ‘war veterans’, overturned the unequal distribution of agricultural holdings that had been a part of the country’s political economy for ninety years. NGO land activists in Namibia and South Africa, though disturbed by the violence that accompanied reform, generally welcomed developments in Zimbabwe as providing fresh impetus to their own local campaigns. Moreover, Robert Mugabe’s revival of anti-imperialist rhetoric, not heard since the era of liberation struggles, shook the complacency of elite accumulation and seemed to promise a return to the revolutionary politics of the past. It was only as the Zimbabwean situation lurched from political controversy to economic free fall that the certainties that were expressed at the workshop began to fracture into a variety of regional responses. 1
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
From a very different corner of the region, white commercial farmers living in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa watched events unfold in Zimbabwe with growing trepidation and public disquiet. From having once held a position of privilege under minority rule, these farming communities had endured uncertainties of the transition to a black government and had largely accommodated themselves to the new circumstances, even learning to prosper under a government dominated by their once implacable foes. Responding to the rising crescendo of racial rhetoric and violence in Zimbabwe over land, the white commercial farmers’ associations in all three ex-settler states issued an unprecedented joint statement in June 2000. Due to the political past of most of the southern Africa countries, land restitution and land redistribution are imperatives for political, social and economic stability … Unfortunately, the result of failure with land reform cannot be ring-fenced to the country concerned, but its effects will be felt in the region.2 The former liberation movements that governed Namibia and South Africa, caught off-guard by the farm occupations and electoral violence in Zimbabwe, struggled to come up with a response to the Zimbabwean crisis that did not compromise their established political interests in office. Recognising their own vulnerability on agrarian reform, which they had promoted as a key tenet in their liberation struggle but largely neglected once in power, and worried the land issue could inspire disgruntled trade unionists and opposition parties, these governments found themselves embracing contrary policies: simultaneously defending property rights enshrined in their constitutions, acknowledging the imperatives of land reform across the region, placating international opinion, all the while honouring the regional principle of solidarity in their interactions with Zimbabwe. Within Namibia and South Africa’s leading political parties, trade unions and local NGOs, divisions began to appear which pitted democracy and human rights advocates against those arguing for a more thoroughgoing commitment to land reform by the government. For traditional leaders and their communities, the rising land issue brought with it the possibility of relief from their dire political and economic circumstances. By way of contrast, neighbouring Botswana and Mozambique – seemingly immune to the pressures being experienced by the two ex-settler states – reacted more forthrightly to the Zimbabwean crisis with authorities in Gaborone
Introduction
3
openly criticising Mugabe while those in Maputo inviting white farmers to settle in their territory. And, from outside the region, the international community looked to the self-appointed beacon of democracy in the region, South Africa, to take a lead in criticising events in Zimbabwe and found to its surprise that it was only a tepid critical of the Zimbabwean government and its policies at best. What happened to Zimbabwe, the model for Namibia and South Africa land reform programmes and a shining example of democratically inspired reconciliation between black and white? How did the land issue and its reform, which had once seemed, if not resolved, certainly manageable with careful planning and sufficient goodwill, spill over into a bloodbath of racial epithets and political violence? What effect did it have on shaping the dimensions of the land question in neighbouring states and, at the same time, fomenting solidarity with the Zimbabwe regime across Southern Africa? And what accounts for the differing responses by other states in the region, namely, Botswana and Mozambique, with close economic ties to the neighbouring ex-settler states? This book is an attempt to understand the origins of a crisis which started in Zimbabwe and why it has had such a profound impact on land and democratic politics in the Southern African region. It provides a framework for understanding the volatility inherent in the politics of land and, with that, the political structure of post-independent states in the Southern African region. The intimate links between the established political economy of settler colonialism, transition to democracy and the concurrent fashioning of a liberal constitutional regime, all of which held tremendously important implications for attempts to embark on agrarian reform, are part of the reason that the Zimbabwean crisis impacted so fundamentally on regional politics. The power of narratives in Southern Africa – drawn from the settler state era, the liberation struggle itself and implicit in neoliberal policies pursued after independence – to shape preferences and perspectives among elites, social groups and the wider population is the other compelling source for the unexpected impact of the Zimbabwean crisis. In order to meet the demands of such a study, the authors have embraced a comparative methodology which takes as its unit of analysis the Southern African regional political economy and its three dominant former settler states. It uses primary and secondary sources culled from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia in order to understand the individual dynamics at work within each country as well as the crossborder engagement and effects these produced to weave together a comprehensive portrayal of the impact of the Zimbabwe crisis. As such,
4
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
the responses of ‘non-settler’ and ‘former settler’ states, for example, Mozambique and Botswana, were also analysed and serve as ‘controls’ regarding the formation and implementation of domestic policies on land and foreign policies in reaction to the Zimbabwean crisis. This assumption that a comparative approach rooted simultaneously in the particulars of each ex-settler state but framed within a broader regional context is the correct basis for interpreting the actions and reactions at both the highest levels of policy as well as the responses of individuals and communities at ground level has guided the research throughout. Adopting this approach has underscored the centrality of narratives as a crucial conceptual device for explaining the conduct of political actors in relation to societies and the constraints (albeit at times self-imposed) experienced by them in addressing the problems of land within the liberal-constitutional states which they inherited in the transition to democracy. Chapter 1 sets out the historical antecedents and theoretical framework of this study, focusing on the enduring role of the regional political economy, the effect of the transition to majority rule and the place of narrative in shaping the responses to the land debate. Chapter 2 examines the evolution of the Zimbabwean crisis in the 1990s, which was to be formative in reasserting the land issue and the shaping of the regional context of conflict over land. Chapter 3 looks at the South African position, which was characterised by diplomatic prevarication to the Zimbabwean crisis while ultimately reviewing and speeding up aspects of its own domestic land programme. Chapter 4 investigates the situation in Namibia, where quiescence on the land issue gave way to apparent Swapo party activism on land and support for Mugabe’s policies. Finally, the last chapter analyses the broader implications of the conflict over land for governance at the local and regional levels within Southern Africa as well as for the continent as a whole. It assesses the enduring power of the liberation narrative in a regional context, focusing on a comparison of the responses of ex-settler states with those of the non-settler states in Southern Africa, detailing Botswana’s developmentalist approach to the land issue and its overt criticism of Mugabe’s policies, and Mozambique’s support for the Zimbabwean government in the context of its own history as a settler state, its land reform policies and the ironic position of seeking white farmers to settle in the country. It concludes with a consideration of the impact of these forces in shaping prospects for democratic consolidation in the region.
1 Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa
Let missionaries and schoolmasters, the plough and the spade, go together, and agriculture will flourish; the avenues to legitimate commerce will be opened; confidence between man and man will be inspired; whilst civilization will advance as the natural effect, and Christianity operate as the proximate cause of this happy change. Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1840.1 The courts can do whatever they want, but no judicial decision will stand in our way … This country is our country and this land is our land … They think because they are white they have a divine right to our resources. Not here. The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans, Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. Robert Mugabe, 2000.2 The crisis in Zimbabwe has transformed a region that was once thought of as Africa’s emerging democratic bastion, where multiparty pluralism had transcended the politics of racial exclusion of the era of colonial settler states and new leaders had firmly committed themselves to market economies and reconciliation as avenues for prosperity and hope. The unexpected slide into state-sponsored anarchy has found echoes in the rise of local militancy on the land issue in neighbouring states, coupled with the apparent chorus of support for Robert Mugabe by fellow Southern Africa leaders. It has threatened to recast the region as a potential repository of instability and, as leaders tilted with their 5
6
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
constitutional restrictions on presidential terms, some would even say undemocratic practice. Unlike many (if not most) foreign policy issues in Southern Africa, the crisis in Zimbabwe resonates deeply with the domestic populations of neighbouring states, all of which have experienced dispossession of land in favour of white commercial farming interests sometime during their history. As such, governments of the region have had to tread with an unusual degree of care in managing this crisis, conscious of their domestic populations and the potential for opposition political parties to seek advantage from foreign policy positions assumed by the state. Certainly this prevailing scholarly analysis of the tepid response of Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries towards the crisis has given this interpretation considerable attention, and in fact it has served as a rationale for the ‘quiet diplomacy’ pursued by the South African government. However, this general interpretation of the regional response to the Zimbabwe crisis ignores significant anomalies in the conduct and policies pursued by SADC states. For example, despite support for ‘constructive engagement’ with Mugabe, the governments of Mozambique and Zambia have been quick to invite Zimbabwe’s white farmers to settle in their agricultural regions, providing considerable incentives (and willingly risking the ire of local peasant farmers) to secure their presence. The government of Namibia, while initially upholding the position of white commercial farming in its own country through adherence to constitutionalism (within the framework of ‘willing buyer, willing seller’), has moved towards adopting an increasingly radical redistribution scheme in concert with its regional support for Mugabe’s programme. South Africa’s government has famously prevaricated, pursuing dialogue with Mugabe while (seemingly reluctantly) imposing penalties upon the regime at the Commonwealth, at the very same time that it has maintained a strictly legalistic approach to land restitution and resettlement seen initially in Namibia and pre-1998 Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean situation is regional in scope, striking a chord across Southern Africa precisely because it touches the region’s political actors, states and societies in some fundamental areas. For instance, it raises concerns around the issues of (1) historical land restitution, which speaks of the enduring economic injustices born of colonialism/ apartheid; (2) the limits of democratic constitutionalism, indicative of the failure to substantively address the enduring structural inequalities of the political economy of the independent state; (3) the erosion of human rights, which speaks of the abuses experienced both under
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 7
colonialism/apartheid and, in too many cases, under independent African leadership; and, (4) the role of regional solidarity, which is linked to the importance of cohesion in the anti-colonial/anti-apartheid struggle. In short, the formative nationalism of independent states in Southern Africa is inextricably intertwined with notions of identity and citizenship (who is ‘African’), the sources of legitimacy of post-colonial regimes and the conflict between neoliberalism/bureaucratic autonomy and the imperatives of neopatrimonialism in constructing state (and regional) policy, all of which are under intense scrutiny with the advent of the Zimbabwean crisis. The contradictory character of responses by Southern African governments, political oppositions and civil society to the Zimbabwean crisis reflects the contingent nature of these elements and the accompanying challenges to the liberation era ethos that has dominated regional politics. At its core, the Southern African state system is itself divided between those states for whom a sustained armed struggle contributed to achieving independence, itself partly inspired by the bipolar ideological struggle (as well as receiving logistic and diplomatic support), and those states which achieved independence through negotiated settlement or colonial transfer. The nature of that struggle was uniquely regional in scope and involved – though not without dispute between regimes and movements – significant support from independent neighbouring states. Leaders co-ordinated policy through the ‘frontline states’ consultative meetings and, in the course of this dialogue, developed a host of regional norms that have informed the politics of subsystem since the 1960s including solidarity and legitimacy arising from their role in the liberation struggle.3 ‘Second generation’ governments, such as the trade unionist Fredrick Chiluba’s ousting of independence leader Kenneth Kaunda, who took office in Zambia in the wake of democratisation in that country, were viewed with suspicion by liberation regimes who have maintained a sense of ‘propriety of inheritance’ due to their struggle legacy. The crisis in Zimbabwe and the variegated responses to it by neighbouring states in terms of their domestic policies, bilateral relations with Harare and at the SADC level invites a number of key questions: • To what extent is regime legitimacy in Southern African states based upon liberation struggle? • How is nation-building, the defining task of the post-independence regime, linked to narratives of colonialism and liberation, identity and land?
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
• What is the impact of the crisis on the liberation era norms of solidarity at the regional level (SADC) of decision-making? • How have domestic influences, such as civil society and opposition political parties, influenced foreign policy – and especially as promoters of new post-liberation norms – towards regional issues in these states? The central thesis of this book is that the nature of the political regime is the key determinant for understanding decision-making on foundational issues (political economy, citizenship and institutional structures) for post-colonial Southern African states at the domestic and foreign policy level. It serves as the ideological font and source of domestic and regional legitimacy, shapes interaction and co-operation between governments and their respective societies and it situates the government in relation to the established regional norms of solidarity at the subsystem level. The political regime itself is profoundly shaped by three factors drawn from the past: (1) the inheritance of the political economy, in both its regional and local manifestations (including enduring inequalities between and within social groups as well as between urban and rural populations); (2) the inheritance of the transition, both as process and outcome, in the form of institutions and practices (based upon negotiation inherent in a rules-based pluralist system and entrenching the existing political economy in the new constitution); and (3) the inheritance of conflicting narratives of colonialism and liberation, identity and land (that frame the parameters of political debate within society). The disjuncture between the institutional outcomes of the transition to independence, which is constructed in the shadow of the prevailing regional political economy, and the ideational discourse that serves as a festering wound from the struggles of the recent past, is a reservoir of potential conflict within the new democracy. Furthermore, these legacies of the past exert deep influence over the primary task of the newly independent state – that is ‘nation building’ – and inadvertently stifle the emergence of the post-independence era, be it in the form of post-liberation institutions or new discourses rooted in alternative approaches to state, economy and society. This study places political regimes at the centre of analysis because they are crucial frameworks for authoritative action by virtue of their relationship to society and the state as well as their capacity to both arbitrate and legitimise conduct between various actors within and outside of society.4 Political regimes are considered to be both a set of actors with resources and strategies and, concurrently, political institutions composed by a set of norms and rules, either formal or informal.5 They establish the parameters
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 9
of participation and rules of competition in the political and economic system and in so doing exert influence over the nature of social relations. Through the instruments of the state, political regimes create a more generalised framework wherein the terms of the domestic political economy and its external manifestations are negotiated. In this way, political strategies that build upon prevailing societal narratives are mobilised by actors in pursuit of specific policy aims and their conduct is mediated by the transitional structures brought into being with independence. At the same time, this study goes beyond the definitional confines of Comparative Politics that gave rise to the category of ‘political regime’ in two distinctive ways. The first is that it introduces the idea of narrative discourse into the theoretical and empirical landscape as a way of capturing the societal dimensions that are both outside and penetrate the structures of sovereignty. Second, it utilises the notion of ‘regimes’ (as distinguished from ‘political regimes’) derived from institutional theory which extrapolates into transnational norms and rules, as an important tool for divining the role of regional dynamics embodied in informal and formal institutions. As will be seen below, both of these elements have specific purpose and analytical meaning in the context of the crisis confronting Southern Africa. This research builds consciously upon the seminal work of Bratton and van de Walle, whose publications on the comparative politics of democratisation in Africa provides a rich theoretical and informed empirical source for understanding the dynamics of democratic transitions.6 In their words: (T)he nature of the pre-existing regime shapes the dynamics and outcomes of political transitions. Our thesis is as follows: contemporary political changes are conditioned by mechanisms of rule embedded in the ancien regime. Authoritarian leaders in power for long periods of time establish rules about who may participate in public decisions and the amount of political competition allowed. Taken together, these rules constitute a political regime. [Political] regime type in turn influences both the likelihood that an opposition challenge will arise and the flexibility with which incumbents can respond. It also determines whether elites and masses can arrive at new rules of political interaction through negotiation, accommodation, and election, that is whether any transition will be democratic.7 In analysing comparative case studies of democratic transition across Africa, Bratton and van de Walle developed a typology of preexisting national political regimes that acknowledges the centrality of
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
neopatrimonialism in Africa (as opposed to bureaucratic-authoritarianism and its institutional manifestation, corporatism, in Latin America) as an organising principle for post-colonial states.8 Neopatrimonialism posits that political office is used to further personal advantage, including the building and substance of clientelist networks in society, rather than for the public good.9 The typology, which is fixed around the degree of competition and the political participation in a given polity, includes personal dictatorships, military oligarchies, plebiscitary one-party systems, competitive one-party systems, settler oligarchies and multiparty polyarchies. It is settler oligarchies, the prevalent form of ancien regime in Southern Africa, which is of particular interest to this study (though, as will be seen, the focus of our research is necessarily broader). Bratton and van de Walle declare that settler oligarchies are not neopatrimonial in character10 but, like their Latin American counterparts, are fundamentally corporatist entities. According to them, the political conflicts within settler oligarchies are basically structured along corporatist lines comprised in terms of race and class. Stalemate between the settlers and African population is followed by reluctant compromise in which political, military and economic agreements are reached along with the provision for minority protection.11 On this basis they make a bold assessment as to the relationship between them and the probability of successful democratic transitions and consolidation. Our model suggests, perhaps counter-intuitively, that within Africa the prospects for democracy are better in transitions from settler oligarchies than from all variants of neopatrimonial regimes. Recall that settler regimes established traditions of pluralistic politics, competitive elections, and loyal opposition but that their fatal flaw was the restriction of political participation to (that of) a racial elite. Transitions in these regimes is less a struggle over the right of political actors to hold diverse political beliefs than over the extension of the franchise to previously excluded sections of the population … One might even assert that settler oligarchies stand a better chance than most other African regimes of consolidating democratic institutions.12 Underlying this assertion is the belief that the dominant pattern of inclusive political participation and competition are both recognised and inculcated among the emergent political elite as well as the defeated settler oligarchy. These patterns are routinised through
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 11
institutions and practice, that is to say formalised through a constitution and recognised through norms and conduct, which transcend the change in political authority away from the settler oligarchy to the multiparty governance. The transition itself, being essentially one of extension of the franchise to formally excluded groups, is in effect parallel or contiguous to the process of consolidation. With the new parameters of political participation established and formalised through constitutional means, the rules of competition – following from Bratton and van de Walle – are basically uncontested by all groups. The task of nation-building therefore becomes primarily one focused on reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict. Issues of citizenship, economic distribution and even competing versions of history are all subsumed within the normal pattern of inclusive multiparty politics and, as such, are part of that ritualised process of bargaining. The problematic of consolidation that has preoccupied much of the recent work in transitology in effect falls away. Despite a compelling approach to the study of democratisation, Bratton and van de Walle – following in the tradition of the first generation of ‘transitologists’ (Schmitter, O’Donnell, Whitehead, Linz and Stepan) – have deliberately neglected some foundational aspects of transitions in devising their schema.13 With the emphasis on institutional transformation and electoral expressions of democracy, and little effort given to exploring some fundamental dimensions of economy, society or differentiating political actors as they impact upon transitions from authoritarianism, Bratton and van de Walle have provided a picture of African democratisation that is decidedly narrow. Rose and Mishler’s work on the comparative dimensions of political regimes and democratic consolidation emphasises the centrality of the predecessor regime on the capacity of new democracies to consolidate.14 Indeed, the scholarly consternation that has accompanied the rise of ‘illiberal democracies’ in the aftermath of transitions can be ascribed to international policymakers’ singular focus on institutional and electoral change as a measure of embedded democratic practice.15 Specifically, Bratton and van de Walle do not address the nature and impact of political economy upon democratisation and, though they do allow for pre-existing regimes to serve as the determining source for democratic success, they do not differentiate between varieties of transitions as a possible explanation of varieties of outcome. Finally, they do not recognise the role of ideas – narratives if you like – in shaping societal perceptions of democratisation and, in particular, its profound effect on the legitimacy of post-transitional institutional arrangements. The failure to recognise and incorporate these key elements into their
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
approach to transitions in Africa undermines the explanatory power of their methodology and renders it incapable of accounting for the problematic of consolidation. To be more specific, first and foremost, their account places no emphasis on the centrality of political economy as either a setting for conflict or a context of transition and its consolidation.16 Economic relations are at the core of conflicts over political office in settler oligarchies: the racially defined asymmetrical access to private and public finance, legalised discrimination in terms of land as well as restrictions on trade, employment and mobility are all factors which motivate and sustain opposition movements. In fact, the impulse of independent African governments, which have generally inherited political arrangements from the metropole that guaranteed European control of key sectors of the economy, has been to wrest this away from foreign hands through nationalisation and other strategies that served primarily to benefit the new African elite. Situating the conflict, the transitional arrangements and the post-transition settlement in terms of the political economy is crucial to understanding the persistence or rise of discontent within new democracies in the region. Concurrently, the recognition of the linkage between the national economies of Southern Africa and, in particular, their dependency upon a structural relationship forged during the colonial era underscores the proximity of national policy with local circumstances and regional policy. Secondly, there is nothing in their account, beyond the predictive commentary on consolidation, on how the actual process of transition in settler oligarchies affects the durability of the outcome. Even if the transition itself is synonymous with the onset of consolidation in settler oligarchies, which is what they seem to imply, then this would still argue for closer attention to the process itself. The dynamic of negotiation and the character of actors – elites drawn from settler regimes and liberation movements as well as political parties and bureaucracies – should nonetheless be of special concern to analysts of democratic change as it establishes both the formal and informal rules of the participation as well as the structural parameters of the country’s economic, military and political future. For example, as Terry Karl has pointed out, the transitional arrangements can give elites the sense that they have a ‘right’ to the country’s economic largesse on the basis of the transitional arrangements.17 The fact that the status of democratic institutions and actors alike are products of a bargained process whose very legitimacy is hostage to contingency and structural factors which may ultimately be denied by society, seems not to have been factored into their reading of these transitions.
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 13
Thirdly, there is nothing in their account of transitions in settler oligarchies on the ideational dimension of state-society relations. Postcolonial state constructs inherited physical and ideational boundaries that were overwritten atop, and woven into complex, societies that had suffered the shock of external intervention. Shared accounts of the colonial experience or collective memories of liberation intermingle with pre-colonial beliefs and all serve to both bind different communities together and, in certain instances, set them apart from one another. These narratives inscribe actors, institutions and events with meaning and, in the hands of charismatic leaders, can provide the basis for collective action. Changing discourses replenish and sustain the dominant narratives, accommodating themselves to changing circumstances and shaping perceptions and choices by elites and the public. Given that the seminal task of the post-transitional state is nation-building – the very consideration of which is centred upon issues of identity, citizenship, boundaries of territoriality and, ultimately, historical memory – it seems surprising that no serious consideration of narratives is incorporated into the study of transitions. It is no accident that the first contentious question that newly independent leaders have to deal with is how to relate the majority’s perception of oppression with the obvious intertwining of prevailing office, administration and national identity, itself infused with the symbolism of the old settler state.18 We believe that the merit of this study’s approach is to demonstrate that what is at stake in politics is often far removed from merely the maximisation of interests of a particular group or category of actor within an institutional structure that has been taken as predetermined. By considering the impact of ideas and taking into account the configuration of social relations, the institutional and cultural setting within which actors both inside formal state structures and outside it devise and implement strategies, we hope to provide insights into the Zimbabwean crisis and its impact that go beyond simplistic rationalistbased accounts or ones that indulge in individual or cultural specificities.19 As Pollet suggests, this approach implies a plurality of actors who structure the political debate in terms of their own representations, ideas, narratives and discourses around their particular standing and degree of access to material and institutional resources.20 To understand decision-making on land, it is therefore imperative to, in Muller’s words, ‘open the black box’ and identify actors who participate in policymaking, to analyse their strategies and grasp the sources of their ideas, concepts and subsequent behaviour as well as the structural constraints operating on them.
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
The Zimbabwean crisis has had a profound effect on the region precisely because it draws and impacts upon these three foundational elements: the enduring political economy, the contingent character of the transition process on outcomes and prevailing narratives within society. The regional political economy, which retained the form and much of the substance of the era of settler colonialism, continues to serve as a transmission belt for the circulation of ideas.21 In the hands of a charismatic leader, in this instance Robert Mugabe, the convergence of political economy and societal narrative has provided a mobilising strategy for political action against opposition force within Zimbabwe (as well as inspiring political entrepreneurs in neighbouring states), exposing the perilously thin commitment to democratic institutions and procedures produced during the transition across much of the region. The land issue has become the metaphor for the persistence of a political economy of settler colonialism – even if objectively the regime in power has benefited from its continuation through collaboration or otherwise – despite the promise of transformation that was to have come with independence. In questioning the status of the land, political elites and would-be elites are testing the bevy of formal institutions and informal procedures borne of the transition. More profoundly, they are challenging the legitimacy of the negotiated transition itself. To do so, they draw upon a ‘liberation’ narrative that resonates not only with the dispossessed or marginalised populations within their own countries but also with African (and diaspora) populations far removed geographically and heuristically from settler colonialism in Southern Africa that share this basic outlook. Against this position is the fragile democratic state, underpinned by economic relations drawn from the colonial past, if now overlain with black elite opportunism, and bolstered by practices and institutions legitimised by the negotiated transition to democracy. In this case, the land issue is cast as a metaphor for rational economic management, the sanctity of property rights and ultimately the constitution. While the original ‘settler’ narrative has been purged of its explicit racial overtones, the discourse of rationality of practice and the prevailing sense of privilege (the latter now cast in the language of minority rights) remains central to the defence of the status quo. Employing this new language reverberates for elements within the society to be sure – including governing elite, technocrats and business community, as well as civil society (not to mention the international donor community) – but insofar as it retains the imprint of the past (or can be painted as such) it will have difficulty in countering the ‘liberation’ narrative.
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 15
Thus the crisis in Zimbabwe cannot be understood without recognising its deeply regional context, one that transcends the boundaries of former colonial states at the same time as playing out both within these sovereign structures and at the regional setting. On the one hand, at the SADC level there is considerable rhetorical support for Mugabe’s position as articulating and implementing an anti-colonial and anti-imperial agenda shared by nearly all members drawn principally from the ‘liberation’ narrative.22 On the other hand, the fact is that the crisis has produced significantly different responses in SADC domestic policies, from the move to speed up land redistribution strategies within the ex-settler states of Namibia and South Africa, to the onset of land occupations in the latter, the modification to Botswana’s initially strong defence of property rights and Mozambique’s encouragement for displaced Zimbabwean farmers to settle in that country. The dissonance between regional and domestic responses to the crisis – and the fact that all states save Botswana and Mozambique have had to, albeit, reluctantly move closer to the rhetoric and some of the substance of the Zimbabwean position on land – is the product of this conjuncture between regional political economy, the impact of the various transitional arrangements away from colonialism and the enduring power of the ‘liberation’ narrative over all others as well as the weak legitimacy of democratic institutions produced through the transition.
Southern Africa’s regional political economy The making of the political economy of Southern Africa has been the subject of much scholarly work and it is not the intention of this study to pursue original research as such but rather to resituate the democratic transitions within the context of the concerns of political economy.23 Though varieties of experience characterised much of colonialism and especially European settlement across Southern Africa, nonetheless some basic patterns can be discerned which, running concurrent with the pre-colonial patterns of African settlement and exchange, formed the basis for the contemporary regional political economy. Most crucial during this period was the fixing of the South African economy as a hub of capital, technology and development for the region. At the same time, the rise of black opposition to colonialism, rooted in a critique of the inequalities arising from the prevailing economic system as much as question of the franchise, spawned growing resistance and conflict that eventually led to the collapse of minority rule.
16
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
British conquest of territory in Southern Africa, which came in the wake of the Portuguese and the Dutch incursions in the region in the previous centuries, began in earnest in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. The liberalist impulse of nineteenth-century England, which brought slavery to an end across the British Empire in 1832, was followed by the deliberate undermining of the indigenous social-economic way of life and forced resettlement of Africans into designated territorial ‘reserves’, opening up appropriated land to white settlement.24 Linked to this was the invention of separate tribal identities, corresponding to the administrative needs of the colonial governments as well as the product of interaction and observation by settlers.25 At the same time, colonial authorities established a web of legal restrictions on black land acquisition, migration and economic activity, especially in agriculture. Communal law as defined and propagated by the metropole empowered ‘traditional’ authorities to rule over land-related issues within the reserves, though this same power was selectively circumscribed by colonial authorities. White agricultural activities were given active government support (credit, subsidies, marketing boards and extension services) to bolster European settlement and enhance the market-orientation of production. White commercial agriculture was promoted as a means of both expanding the economy and anchoring the colonial state in the newly acquired territory. African farm labourers, who provided much of the backbone of work in rural areas especially at harvest time, occupied an ambiguous position being physically outside of the communal areas and, in effect, being forced to rely upon paternalism in lieu of substantive legal protection. Those Africans in the reserves, who were statutorily forbidden or extremely limited in their access to land, served as important sources of rural and urban labour and markets for white producers. Furthermore, despite the often crowded and increasingly infertile land found in the reserves, these territories were seen as a form of social security for Africans by colonial governments unwilling to offer equivalent wages (and later services) already provided to whites. The discovery of gold in the Transvaal in 1873 was to lay the basis for industrialisation of the South African economy and, with that, the development of a regional rail and road network from the Witwatersrand. Rapid urbanisation, the growth of secondary production facilitates, relative prosperity – albeit echoing racial divisions within society – and the establishment of Johannesburg as a financial centre all contributed to securing an enduring position of South Africa as the economic apex of the region.26 In the area of agriculture, the impact of South African policies aimed at promoting white commercial farming over that of nascent black
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 17
peasant producers, such as the creation of marketing boards in 1937, had a profound effect upon agrarian activities in neighbouring states. Subsidies, price controls and market regulation placed South Africa’s white farmers in a privileged position within the region and effectively set the regional standard for lower cost goods and higher incomes as well as better wages for labourers.27 The gradual economic disenfranchisement of the South African black peasantry also shaped the policies and status of black farmers in Southern and Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, South West Africa and the surrounding territories.28 Nyasaland, for example, became a labour reserve for Southern Rhodesia and South African mining and agricultural interests. Even Portuguese-controlled Mozambique felt the pull of South Africa’s economy, with black Mozambicans legally and illegally migrating to work for relatively better wages across the border on the sugar plantations of Natal.29 From the broader perspective, this regional political economy as a ‘mode of accumulation’ was given differing legal expression by the metropole in London (Portuguese colonialism differed in significant ways, see Chapter Five) in the form of what Mahmood Mamdani calls a ‘mode of domination’. Mamdani’s work points out the duality of colonial structures which provided a racially based franchise that formed the basis for political competition in those areas legally recognised as ‘white’ while fostering authoritarian structures based on a dubious interpretation of ‘traditional authority’ in the ‘native’ or tribal areas.30 The invention of the notion of customary law, which followed in step from the same administrative imperatives that created ‘tribes’, underpinned late colonialism’s attempt to continue coercive practices in the undemocratic setting of the tribal reserves. Britain was the first to marshal authoritarian possibilities in indigenous culture. It was the first to realise that the key to an alien power achieving a hegemonic domination was a cultural project: one harnessing the moral, historical and community impetus behind local custom to a larger colonial project. There were three distinctive features about the customary as colonial project came to define it. First, the customary was considered synonymous with the tribal; each tribe was defined as a cultural group with its own customary law. Second, the world of the customary came to be all-encompassing; more so than in any other colonial experience, it came to include a customary access to land. Third, custom was defined and enforced by customary Native Authorities in the local state – backed up by the armed might of the central state.31 In the Southern African context, one not only had the patchwork of ‘native’ reserves within settler states, such as Pondoland and Zululand
18
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
in South Africa and Ovamboland, Tribal Trust Territories in Rhodesia and Hereroland in South West Africa, but through the regional network of Crown colonies and trust territories of Bechuanaland, Swaziland, Lesotho and others it was in effect replicating this system on a larger scale.32 Even Mozambique, though formally outside of the British system, was nonetheless brought in through labour migration agreements with South Africa that included remittance payments paid directly to Lourenco Marques in gold fixed at a favourable rate.33 Common to all of these countries, however, was the progressive linking of their economic activities and well-being to the South African capital. At the same time, white settler communities in the region – following the impulse of Afrikaners in the early nineteenth century who established the two Boer Republics – agitated for self-government and created racially exclusive democracies. An ‘iron triangle’, linking governing parties such as the National Party and the Rhodesian Front with white rural constituencies and underpinned by a steady stream of state support for commercial agriculture, became the key source of political power. It was in fact these white rural communities, dependent upon government for everything from credit and social services to legislated privilege and physical security, that defined the nature of identity and delineated the parameters of the relationship between white and black within the independent territory. Liberalism, albeit within the limited context of racial politics, played a role (as did radicalism) in challenging the status quo in South Africa and Rhodesia and reflected, respectively, the metropolitanism of urban middle class whites as well as local paternalism or its imported variety.34 The ‘mode of dominance’ was refined to its extreme in the South African Bantustan system with its bid for international recognition of its sovereign independence from the 1970s till the collapse of apartheid. The withdrawal of Britain from its imperial outposts in Africa in the mid-twentieth century left in its wake a regional economy with settler states of South Africa (including South West Africa) and to a lesser extent Rhodesia as the economic hub and the trust territories as labour reserves, undeveloped captive markets and anachronistic remnants of traditional political authorities.35 Portuguese Mozambique, weakly administered and lacking in development capital, had long since been drawn into the British settler orbit, with the southern provinces of Gaza and Inhambane serving as labour reserves for the mining sector on the Witwatersrand and investments sites for South African capital while the central provinces of Manica and Sofala provided Rhodesia and the copper belt with labourers for agriculture and mining.36 Such was the pull
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 19
of the settler state economies that even Malawi and Tanzania provided a steady stream of labourers to the mines, farms and industries in South Africa and Rhodesia through the 1960s (and in the case of Hastings Banda’s Malawi, beyond).37 Another seminal aspect of the making of the regional political economy was, in response to European colonialism and strategies of dominance, the formation of strategies of resistance among the African elites and population.38 Domestic civil rights campaign, primarily urban based and drawn from the educated black elite, sought to promote African interests through protest and petition with colonial authorities.39 Government persecution of nationalists, leading to imprisonment and exile, had the effect of transforming domestic protest movements into liberation movements that shifted the emphasis towards armed struggle and mass mobilisation. Central to the mass mobilisation strategy was the elevation of the ‘land issue’ as a potent symbol of dispossession under colonialism and one around which all Africans could rally. Liberation movements were acutely conscious of the conservative nature of traditional authorities and, while in some cases willing to use them, all held out plans for the post-independence era to embark upon radical transformation of the countryside, including nationalisation of the land and resettlement of blacks onto historically own lands but in the form of socialist production (communes, collective agriculture and state farms).40 Centralised command structures of Marxist-Leninism, coupled with the exigencies of military campaigns, reinforced a tightly hierarchical structure on liberation movements that generally stifled dissent and valued conformity. In those independence struggles that were primarily rural based, such as in Rhodesia, South West Africa and Mozambique, local grievances tended to crowd out all but the most general features of the nationalists’ programme.41 And while competing organisations and personalities were a feature of liberation movement politics, best illustrated in the case of the division between Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) and the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (Zapu) and their respective ethnic sources of support, the pull of solidarity across regional movements was considerable. As in the case of economic relations, the context and effects of conflict and resistance were not confined to the settler alone but actively involved neighbouring states. In the first instance, ad hoc diplomatic and logistical assistance was provided to exiled opposition figures in Zambia and Tanzania that served to publicise their cause.42 African alarm at the early successes of South Africa’s ‘dialogue policy’ in establishing links with the Francophone states gave rise to
20
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
the formalised co-operation between the Front Line States, a move which coincided with the increasing militarisation of conflict between opposition forces and settler oligarchies.43 At the same time, settler states themselves engaged in forms of co-operation, albeit reluctantly and often through the prisms of deeply felt suspicions, that ranged from intelligence sharing and joint police action to sanctions-breaking activities.44 More significantly, the South African capital used to support key infrastructure projects like the Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique, which sought to tie Pretoria’s fortunes more closely to the increasingly precarious Portuguese presence there. Not all opposition to colonialism in Southern Africa resulted in armed struggle. In the case of Botswana, the British government’s desire manifested by the early 1960s to rid itself of colonial possessions was stayed by a debate with apartheid South Africa, which saw Bechuanaland (Botswana), Lesotho and Swaziland as historically part of a ‘greater South Africa’ (a position which, in the aftermath of Pretoria’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth was actively resisted by London).45 The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), with its base of support lodged firmly within Batswana traditional authority structures, became the country’s leading political party and presided over a period of sustained economic development and democratic practice (see Chapter Five). Within the settler oligarchies, black opposition which defined itself as nationalist and anti-communist had, albeit selectively and at different times, an opportunity to organise against white rule. Furthermore, as the era of majority rule became inevitable, ‘acceptable’ black opposition figures such as Bishop Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe were encouraged by white governments to play a prominent role. In South West Africa (Namibia), there remained a political space for a domestic representative of the liberation movement South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), even while the South African military was actively seeking to destroy its parent organisation in Ovamboland and southern Angola. In the case of South Africa, while the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had been banned and driven into exile, by the 1980s an ambiguously ‘reformist’ leader, P. W. Botha, had allowed political space for a dissident mass movement to emerge, the United Democratic Front, which challenged the apartheid government through peaceful means. Liberal white opposition parties such as the Progressive Federalist Party under Helen Suzman provided another means of introducing black South African concerns into the realm of national public debate. In contrast, in colonial Mozambique the persecution of African students and workers organisations resulted in the formation of the
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 21
Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) which operated out of Tanzania and drew its support from the Macua people in the North and from Chinese and Soviet sources. The space for political activism under the fascist regime in Lisbon throughout colonialism remained minimal even for white settlers and virtually non-existent for black Mozambicans. Following the collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1974–5, the pace of regional change quickened and, with that, the nature of conflict, resistance and reaction. While South Africa initially pursued policies of accommodation with black governments in Mozambique and Angola, coupled with forcing Ian Smith’s government into a negotiated compromise with the Zimbabwean liberation movements that resulted in democratic elections in April 1980, this approach was subsumed within an aggressive destabilisation strategy towards the region. Counter-revolutionary forces drawn from dissident elements from within independent African states were funded and supported by Pretoria – alongside direct South African Defence Force (SADF) military intervention in Angola, South West Africa and Mozambique as well as domestic support for anti-ANC forces like the Inkatha movement – setting in motion a new spiral of violence and destruction aimed principally at breaking the links between liberation movements and independent governments. Initial successes, most significantly given expression in the form of the non-aggression pact between South Africa and Mozambique in 1984, were offset by persistent African resistance and were bolstered by international action. The ensuing stalemate between South Africa, its counter-revolutionary proxies and African governments and their supporters, finally gave way in 1988 to the commencement of negotiations between Pretoria and its opponents that paved the way for transitions to democracy across Southern Africa.46 The result of this process of conflict, resistance and reaction was to shape African politics in the region into a mould that, for the elites of the liberation movements, inculcated a sense of the utility of violence as a strategy for achieving aims and the necessity of solidarity and secrecy as a mode of operation. For the African population, the overlay between local interests and national concerns was rarely closer than during the armed struggle when the issue of land restitution was, at least rhetorically, the key pillar in the drive to win independence. The symbolism of the ‘liberation zones’ where the future independent state was seductively displayed to sympathetic international journalists, including communal agricultural production under the benevolent guidance of the liberation movement, served to reaffirm this relationship.47 These various strands were ultimately to take the shape of historical memory and conflicting
22
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
narratives of the past which, in the context of the land issue, were to give meaning to contemporary events (see below). Of course there were exceptions to this approach, with Botswana being a primary example and South Africa’s United Democratic Front (UDF) being another, both of which serve to highlight further the impact of the nature of the transition from authoritarianism as crucial to sustainable democratic outcomes.
Transitions in Southern Africa The nature of the transitional arrangements deeply affected the content and outlook of post-independence governments in ways that went beyond the transitologist assumptions about the parameters of political participation and rules of competition. Recall that Bratton and van de Walle tell us that in settler oligarchies the question of participation was self-evident – the extension of the franchise – as the mode of pluralist political competition and its institutional manifestations were already in place. In fact, closer examination of the transitions in Southern Africa reveal that the negotiating process itself performed an important function in the legitimisation of parties and individual leaders as political actors in the new dispensation. Concurrently, this process of negotiation sought to socialise political actors to pluralist practices of bargaining and compromise that are believed to mirror the post-electoral environment. Finally, the institutional manifestations of decisions reached during the negotiations on key matters such as the future shape of the economy, the structure of political dispensation and the role of the military represent concrete expressions of commitment to uphold these institutions and their underlying norms. Specifically, political parties and individual leaders drawn from the settler government and the opposition were selected to participate in the transition process with the support of the international community. The importance of the latter in conferring legitimacy upon parties that, in the settler case, have been associated with upholding racist policies through legal and military means or, in the opposition case, engaged in military campaigns that violated norms on human rights cannot be underestimated. Parties and individuals were also marginalised in the course of negotiations, setting the stage for the ‘spoiler’ phenomena.48 Concurrently, the socialisation of actors assumes that the process introduces or reinforces a range of values – anti-militarism, market economies and respect for pluralist practices – that transplant existing outlooks. Ideas are separated from parties for example, non-market-oriented economic
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 23
policies such as nationalisation or the maintenance of minority privileges are discredited and their proponents isolated. Support for institutions created in the wake of negotiations was assumed by international observers, perhaps because they could do little else to ensure compliance, to be secure and even internalised by the parties to agreements. However, the nature of the transition as an elite affair deeply compromised the degree of their socialisation to internationally accepted practices and their commitment to pluralist institutions. Setting aside for the moment cynical instrumentalism by participants in the negotiations, which is surely a factor to consider as well, the separation of individuals and parties from the underlying ideas that gave them their status within their communities is likely to be limited or temporary at best. Society will seek to reassert its claim over the political elites through the process of preference formation and articulation (and rejection) of given issues. The character of society, in the sense of political culture and pre-existing social norms, also plays a role in fostering compliance with the rules emerging from new institutions.49 International legitimacy, while a factor, will not have the same degree of influence over local actors as it does during the transition. Furthermore, the bargaining process experienced in the period up to and during the transition may not in fact teach the inefficacy of military means in achieving political ends – certainly the actions of SWAPO and the SADF in Namibia in the build up to UN-sponsored elections speak to this perspective. Indeed, far from dissuading leaders the transition process may actually underscore the importance of military means to the achievement of political ambitions and, in the aftermath of democratic vote, the need to strengthen government control over security forces. The limited capacity or will of the international community to intervene in support of the very principles of non-violent change was readily noted by local actors and shaped tactical approaches to elections (for example, the unwillingness of the British government to challenge electoral violations in Zimbabwe in 1980 or that of the UN in Angola in 1991). Lastly, the fact that there was no serious dispute of expected outcome in some transitions in Southern Africa – South Africa and Namibia in particular – can give an impression of commitment of the new leadership and its followers to the institutions of pluralism that disguises its very shallowness. A basic political regime type emerged out of the transitions from settler oligarchies in Southern Africa – liberal–constitutional – that reflected the characteristics of the transition from colonialism to independence and the government that came to power in its aftermath.50 The ‘liberal-constitutional regime’ came to power through a negotiated
24
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
transition to power with the metropole in which the colonial authorities hand over political control but secure their (or their local constituent) economic interests through the promulgation of a constitution that enshrines property and human rights. The historical compromise that ushered in the transition was one that brought ‘moderates’ from the liberation movement and settler or colonial forces together. A key feature of the compromise was for representatives of the majority to bargain away black peasant interests in favour of white commercial concerns in the area of land. The foreign policy orientation of liberal–constitutional regimes was a temperate form of solidarity politics in the regional and international settings, reflecting their material reliance on market capitalism and Western investment as well as the values integral to the institutions of the transition. Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa conform to this model. Embedded within a regional political economy based on settlerdominated agriculture and limited industry reliant upon black labour, the newly independent states of Southern Africa were immediately faced with the question of confronting or conforming to the historic compromise that brought them into power. In this case, the nature of the transition exercised a determining influence over how the new governments broached this contentious subject. The shift from non-state actor outside of reach of political power to taking hold of the levers of governance was accompanied with key revisions of liberation-era objectives by the liberation movements. Land restitution, once both a formative issue for the anti-colonial struggle and a platform position for the negotiations of transfer of power, was sidelined in the cases of the liberal–constitutional regimes in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Urbanised black elites, who made up the bulk of the leadership of the liberation movements, shifted the focus of political activism from the ousting of colonialism to development policy that – in too many cases – overlapped with strategies of accumulation which benefited themselves or their social networks. While accommodation between the new proponents of political power and those who held economic power was achieved through the transition, for the rural-based peasantry the promised restitution of the land remained an unrealised objective. How newly ensconced black elites managed the gap between the exigencies of the liberal–constitutional regime and its respective institutionalised compromises and the expectations raised during the liberation era formed the principal challenge of the first years in office. Against a backdrop of political transition, narratives and regional norms were to play a critical role in legitimising new governments in the fact of
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 25
the retention of settler-era institutions and economic ties. For example, while the Front Line States (FLS) leaders’ refusal to recognise Ian Smith’s surrogate Rhodesia–Zimbabwe government in 1978–9 assured that the international community did not legitimate this ‘internal solution’ to the dilemmas of the settler state, by the same token, Mozambique’s active promotion of a negotiated end to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was instrumental in forcing a reluctant Mugabe to accept the Lancaster House agreement that ushered in the considerable concessions that formed the country’s transition to a liberal–constitutional regime. And, over time, as the foundations of liberal–constitutional regimes came under increasing pressure arising initially from economic sources, societal narratives and regional norms re-emerged from the past to provide a ready ‘subaltern’ account of events.
Narratives in post-colonial Southern Africa Narratives are understood to be broad renderings of events that contain and convey meaning as well as having specific political context for communities in the form of discourses.51 Discourses are ‘not simply ideas, but are also the actions, thoughts and practices that make that idea “a reality” by structuring and delineating reality and thereby making it knowable’.52 As they are tied to policy manifestations of narrative, discourses play a role as what Jobert and Muller call the ‘référentiel’, that is to say the construction of images, ideas, values and norms – in short a world view – that occurs when participants engage in policymaking.53 Narrative is an important interpretative device to this study precisely because it is an acknowledgement of deep historical process and subjectivity as integral to social and institutional formations, something that rationalist accounts actively seek to diminish or even aspire to deny. The place of narrative is especially relevant in the context of weakly legitimated states as countervailing societally based sources of authenticity and authority. It introduces alternative accounts of history and communities’ relationship to the state or state-practice that can challenge the prevailing official narrative.54 Furthermore, in societies for whom ‘sovereignty’ and ‘nationhood’ remain the domain of recent experience, the use of narratives explains the saliency of ideas, memories and social custom that cut across the boundaries of the state, resonating with communities beyond the sovereign divide.55 Notably, changes in dominant narratives (and subsequently discourses/ ‘référentiels’ and norms) neither exclude the possibility of conflict nor that of accommodation. On the contrary, narratives imply a framework
26
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
within which competition rather than consensus is the primary mode of action. Moreover, the acceptance of a dominant narrative does not signify the end of all conflict but confrontations over resources or power positions work themselves out within the framework of this prevailing narrative. Echoes of previous discourses and countervailing narratives all contribute to the possibility of the introduction of local variations in the particular norm hierarchy that is eventually adopted as policy within an existing political regime. Thus in integrating these approaches, that is subsuming discussions of ideas and norms within a framework of narratives and discourses/‘référentiels, the study will be able to more readily analyse the relationship between ideas, their historical origins and their relationship to policymaking in the Southern African setting. The interplay between the emergence of a regional system founded and sustained by settler communities within the shadow of European colonialism and the cycles of conflict, resistance and reaction which gave rise to an African opposition that had as its key objective state control and took the form of campaigns for political rights and in some cases a liberation movement, produced two dominant racially tinged narratives that were set against each other and shaped the politics of post-independent societies. The first is a settler narrative rooted in the founding myths of colonialism but reshaped to conform to the new circumstances of post-independence. The second, a liberation narrative, claims its legitimacy in its historical opposition to colonialism with special emphasis on the peasantry, which was also recast in the aftermath of independence. A third, a neoliberal narrative emerged out of the transition and reflected the growing consensus on the nature of the state and its relationship to the market, something that held profound implications for society. Each of these conflicting narratives became influential sources of policy and political action in the post-colonial period and became central to the local and regional responses to the Zimbabwean crisis as it played out. The settler narrative and the loss of the state Founding myths of all settler states were rooted in explorers, pioneers and missionaries whose conquest of an alien people and their land inspired an essentialist ideology of difference.56 From the period of imperial resurgence in the mid-1860s onward, the impulse for European territorial expansion was cast in terms of European rationalism against African irrationality, Christianity against paganism, material progress against torpor and backwardness.57 Transplanting England, Germany or
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 27
Portugal, reflected as much in the names, layout and aspirations of the new territories (‘Nova Lisboa’ in the central highlands of Angola, Nyanga region as Scottish highlands in Southern Rhodesia, the pitched roofs of Bavarian buildings in the deserts of South West Africa), became a central feature of colonial experience and signified the triumph of European civilisation over African barbarism. Indeed, the very denial of place was the supreme act of colonialism, the assertion of all that was rational against all that was the ‘other’ (and, ironically of course, a supremely irrational act). Kenya’s white settler leader, Lord Delamere, reflected this when he declared: ‘I started to grow wheat in East Africa to prove that though I lived on the equator I was not in any equatorial country.’58 During the colonial period, land expropriation and settlement as well as economic support (subsidies, marketing boards and even management of labour relations) and the provisions for security were all provided by the state. As noted above, this concern with white settlement in agricultural regions was viewed by all metropole governments as a fundamental issue of territorial viability with economic, political and security implications. White-dominated states of South Africa, South West Africa and Rhodesia were all governed by political parties that had as their mandate and backbone of support white farming communities.59 Furthermore, the forms of representative government – albeit within the obvious framework of a franchise limited by statutory race – were deliberately skewed in favour of rural areas to reinforce that symbiotic relationship. While the white settler in colonial Mozambique and Angola lacked representation (except nominally in the waning years of Portuguese colonialism), white settlement was nonetheless seen as vital to securing the economic and political integrity of the territory. In fact, while Western Europe became increasingly urbanised in the aftermath of the First World War, the governments in London and Lisbon continued to promote agricultural livelihoods for its white immigrants in its colonies. The immigration policy in Rhodesia from the 1950s onwards and the Limpopo valley colonato scheme of the 1960s in Mozambique were but two examples of this.60 This link between state formation, white settlement and commercial agriculture formed an ‘iron triangle’ which became the basis for state stability and remained the cardinal point for defining identity and nationalism in these states. A new myth emerged during the era of African independence struggles; one that informed settler interpretations of liberation movements was that of the Mau Mau in Kenya and the transfer of power in the Belgian Congo. The imagery of rape and pillage aimed at Europeans as conveyed through the local media and influential novels like Robert Ruark’s
28
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
Something of Value became a metaphor for the impending destruction facing whites.61 Against this re-assertion of African barbarity and Soviet duplicity were the citizen armies of white settlers, in conjunction with loyal black soldiers, defending not only their ‘way of life’ but also civilisation itself.62 Thus as the wars of liberation moved slowly across the region, the psychology of white farming communities transformed from that of ‘pioneer columns’ to ‘bastions of civilisation’. Arming the rural (and urban) whites, securitising their lives (radio Agrinet), the indoctrination of practice and ideology (rural protection strategies and anti-communism) all shaped and strengthened the sense of solidarity that bound these communities together. While the tradition of self-help existed among farming communities, nevertheless, reliance upon the government to provide the resources and moral leadership remained a given. A measure of the strength of the link between the settler state and the white farming community was the fact that it was enough to maintain a sense of territorial nationalism that kept these communities from identifying across political boundaries. These attitudes were reflected in the ambivalent response of South Africa to Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and the Portuguese colonies, as well as Rhodesia’s lack of security co-operation with Lisbon. This ambivalence translated astonishingly into only limited co-operation against a common liberation struggle and ultimately saw government’s actively undermining the position of their supposed ‘confreres’ in the narrower interests of state survival.63 This difference was reflected, for example, in the debate within the National Party of South Africa as to how the state should handle the influx of Portuguese refugees from Mozambique in the mid-1970s, who were viewed as racially inferior to the Afrikaners.64 With the onset of black majority-based (or claimed) governments, white farming communities, though still recognised as citizens through a variety of tests imposed by the new government (surrendering of foreign passports, etc.), became ‘de-territorialised’, and the ‘iron triangle’ was recast. The state, which under the previous dispensation had nurtured nationalism based upon the pioneer myth, broke the ‘covenant’. In those situations where the new government provided financial support for commercial agriculture, however, the bond had to be reforged but in this case it was economic paternalism between the new black political elite and the remaining white commercial community that replaced electoral support which had originally underpinned their relations under the previous white minority government. This may have allowed the seeds of a new nationalism to sprout but it was an uncertain thing, and one whose shallowness was evident. Uncertain about
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 29
identity and citizenship, dependent upon political calculus of black elites and fearful of having themselves removed from the land, many whites retreated into a laager of the mind.65 In the course of being destated, the white farming communities found new rationales for their position within independent majority-ruled states. Three discourses inform the white settler narrative in independent Africa: a discourse of loss, a discourse of fear and a discourse of privilege. • A discourse of loss: stabbed in the back by local politicians and international community (especially the West) that did not understand their importance. In this way the victimisers was transformed into victims. • A discourse of fear: the new majority black government was seen as heir to the white settlers’ founding myth of liberation – the Belgian Congo and Mau Mau – violence, disorder, economic collapse, arbitrary rule. Where this did not occur (as in most cases), each measure undertaken by a black government was nonetheless interpreted as a sign of the impending slide into chaos. • A discourse of privilege: white settlers have earned their right to state protection and privilege through capacity to produce economic goods for society and elite, in this case the source of their privilege was no longer racial as such but economic criteria. Having embraced minority protection through invocation of a universalistic human rights discourse, white communities felt themselves to be absolved from history especially with regard to the sources of privilege (dispossession of land) but still situated themselves as an outpost of civilisation and rationality. The significance of the settler narrative to this study is twofold. First, it continues to inform the attitudes and policies adopted by white commercial farming communities in the ex-settler states in the form of their reaction to the challenges posed by agrarian reform. In particular, the key institutional manifestations, agricultural unions and opposition political parties play a seminal role – sometimes unwittingly – as a counterfoil to land activists, government officialdom, politicians and more broadly the liberation narrative. Second, the settler narrative remains important due to its role in structuring the inherited institutions and practices of the transition. Though modified under the twin forces of the transition and the assumption of power by the liberation movements, nonetheless the shape of politics retains significant material and even symbolic features drawn from the colonial past. Key examples of
30
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
this are the retention of security legislation, formalised relationships with traditional authorities and arms manufacturing and defence capacity explicitly devised by the settler states as instruments aimed against the independence struggle. For many black elites, the coveted status of political authority remains wrapped in traditions and privileges of office that were originally formulated by colonial era practices. The liberation narrative and the dilemmas of independence The loss of land to the colonial state and in particular to white settlement is a constant theme in the oral history, poetry and literature of Africans of the region. In African nationalist writer Sol Plaatje’s classic 1930 novel, Mhudi, the defeated king of the Matabele warns the Bechuana, who had allied themselves with the Afrikaners, of the fate to come: Where is Chaka’s dynasty now? Extinguished by the very Boers who poisoned my wives and are pursuing us today. The Bechuana are fools to think that these unnatural Kiwas (white men) will return their so-called friendship with honest friendship. Together they are laughing at my misery. Let them rejoice; they need all the laughter they can have today for when their deliverers begin to dose them with the same bitter medicine they prepared for me; when the Kiwas rob them of their cattle, their children and their lands, they will weep their eyes out of their sockets.66 Dispossession of land was followed by displacement, the attack on traditional society through missionary work and civilian authorities and all the accompanying indignities of submission to an alien culture. African nationalist movements (as opposed to those initial responses to the imposition of colonialism) emerged from the point of the introduction of laws dispossessing Africans from land ownership. The link between land and independence, even if clouded in sentimentality of loss, thus remained firm. These powerful images served as the mainstay for anticolonial movements as they sought to challenge the right of white settler regimes to govern African peoples and territories. For liberation movements in particular, which had been denied legal political activity by colonial authorities, the African experience was integrated within a broader anti-imperialist discourse that came into prominence in the period following World War II. Tied to the armed struggle and the accompanying modalities of exile, the outlook of liberation movements was increasingly (and deliberately) configured to suit the exigencies of international solidarity politics. Whether learnt
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 31
by rote in Odessa or Dar es Salaam, anti-imperialism nonetheless struck a chord with African leaders and followers alike through its analytical clarity (or some would say simplicity) in capturing the dynamics of exploitation experienced under colonialism. Gaining the state was the fulfilment of decades of discontent, if not outright rebellion, within African societies. However, though the black liberation movements successfully mobilised support from peasantry and urban masses around land question and civil rights respectively, the fact of achieving and ruling underscored the modernist, anti-peasant outlook of much of the incoming leadership. As it transpired, the determination to replace the white government with a black elite was firmer than the desire to transform the socio-economic conditions of the bulk of the African population. Paradoxically, far from removing the traditional authorities – with the singular exception of the ideologically driven regimes in Mozambique and Angola (measures that incurred great cost in terms of fuelling political opposition) – majority rule governments in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa accommodated themselves to these authoritarian structures in a bid to retain control over rural support. Land restitution, once so important to liberation movements, was effectively abandoned in favour of elite transfers of resources and new ties of dependency with remaining white commercial interests. The locus of political power shifted away from the ‘iron triangle’ of the settler state era to one in which the urban environment was seen as the heartbeat of the nation with the people in rural areas serving as reservoirs of political support to be drawn upon as dictated by need. The perpetration of this liberation narrative thus is a crucial dimension of the transition from liberation movement to political party in government, linking the past with the present. The decolonisation process itself is in many cases indivisible from the founding myths of the African nation state and, in Southern Africa especially, the dominant narrative is one of achieving power through violence, albeit morally sanctioned through its anti-racist discourse and claiming popular participation.67 Liberation myths became key instruments for inculcating in the population the legitimacy of the government of the day and, at the same time, the danger of opposition. These myths, retold in the contemporary context, provided a timeless narrative of loss, revenge and redemption that painted the liberation movements as guardians of independence and exposed the mask of oppression behind the expediency of anti-government positions. Blending the claustrophobic politics of exile with the authoritarian impulse of traditional rural society, these myths enshrined the party of liberation
32
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
with an unassailable moral claim to the state.68 It serves as a wellspring of residual support to draw upon as the temporal distance from the anti-colonial struggle increases and the concomitant shortcomings of independence to provide the expected bounty for the population are made manifest. In this situation, the ambiguous position of white settler communities (or indeed, other recognised minorities), whether they are significantly reduced in numbers or not and retaining a relatively privileged status in the society, acts as a potent symbol of the living past. For a black elite in power that has assumed many of the trappings of the white settlers since independence, the temptation to invoke the liberation discourse is perhaps too great to avoid. Indeed, the expediency of doing so disallows one of the key features of ‘nation building’: what Renan has called the necessity of forgetting, that is the papering over the conflicts of the past which were in fact a seminal part of the formative process of creating the state.69 Rural communities, being embedded within the ‘traditionalist’ political structures that are sustained through clientelism, are readily responsive to the leadership’s articulation of the present in terms of the past. The problematic of the urbanised population, increasingly outside of traditional authority structures, is resolved more through direct appeals to their material needs. In this fashion, black elite accumulation fostered through control of the state is shielded behind a mask of (apparent) continuing white culpability and nefarious designs against African aspirations. The liberation narrative is informed by three discourses, one of solidarity, one of national identity and one of symbolic restitution. • A discourse of solidarity: the liberation movement is the only rightful and legitimate heir to the colonial state by virtue of the struggle, and people owe their loyalty to it. Anything less risks a return to the colonial and imperial era. • A discourse of national identity: in the guise of nation-building, the relationship between minorities and ‘authentic’ citizens is constantly redefined. Also, liberal parties (that is, those which argued for a reform of colonialism or setter rule before independence) or nonliberation movement parties are de-legitimised, irrespective of their opposition to settler state. • A discourse of symbolic restitution: (statues, street, city names) these symbolic acts replace genuine restitution and allow for a variety of elite accumulation strategies (sometimes taking the form of affirmative action or policies of ‘Africanisation’).
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 33
The significance of the liberation narrative to this study is that it serves as both a source of legitimacy and policy action for ex-liberation movements in power and, ironically, as a countervailing source of meaning within post-settler states. The mythology of the armed struggle may confer legitimacy on post-settler governments but, the liberation narrative also carries with it the seeds of disenchantment as it points to the failings of liberation parties to realise the fundamental aims which inspired the independence movement in the first place. Of these, of course, the most glaring is the deferred promise of agrarian reform. For aspirant political actors, opportunistic politicians and disenchanted elites alike, the liberation narrative provides a readymade source of legitimacy for anti-government positions and policies built around the notion of an inheritance unfulfilled. The neoliberalist narrative and the making of the new African state Neoliberalism is a narrative predicated upon rationalist assumptions about the nature of the international system as state-centric and motivated by rational calculations of self-interest. Its impetus can be found in the neoclassical ‘revolution’ in the United States and Britain that called for a restructuring of the relationship between states and markets in line with broader trends in the global political economy.70 The implications of these beliefs for sovereignty have been profound, if not initially recognised. Neoliberal prescriptions deny the state a significant role in macroeconomic management, be they in the area of fiscal policy or public spending. Concurrently, through the application of ‘good governance’ criterion, neoliberalism narrows the political sphere of action by the state to the fulfilment of facets of electoral democracy. The challenge to the modernist conflation of nationalism and the territorial state posed by neoliberalism, coupled with the gradual delinking of the classic prerogatives of sovereignty such as non-intervention in domestic affairs fundamentally altered the basic terms of post-colonial politics. As the model and archetype for the post-colonial state in Africa, the very incompleteness of the modernist project in both its political and economic manifestations has made the imposition of this new approach deeply disturbing for African leaders and communities alike. Nation building strategies aimed at constructing national identities and fostering the development of local economies have been, in effect, all rendered suspect by neoliberalism and its incessant drive to achieve conformity of economic and political practice.
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
Neoliberalism’s relationship to Africa is especially pronounced. Ever since the onset of balance of payment crises in the early 1980s, the Western donors – as individuals but most evidently through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – have promoted radical restructuring of developing countries through the application of economic and, from the 1990s onwards, political conditionalities. The imposition of these neoliberal concerns by Western donors has been opportunistic in the sense that it is only in instances of sustained crisis that post-colonial states have accepted drastic intervention in their domestic affairs. In Southern Africa, structural adjustment programmes were introduced in Zambia and Mozambique, both states suffered from severe economic dislocation due to poor economic management, changing international economic conditions as well as the debilitating effects of civil war. The imposition of a structural adjustment programme in Zimbabwe in 1992 and the self-imposition of one in South Africa after 1994, the region’s two largest economies, had a profound effect on the post-colonial states established in the wake of transitions from white settler oligarchies (see below). Underlying the neoliberal programme is a commitment to establishing a new African state based on market principles and democratic practices. The neoliberalist narrative is informed by three discourses, one of self-interest, one of market efficiency and one of sovereignty. • A discourse of self-interest: neoliberalism holds that individuals and their respective political communities (e.g., states) behave in a rational fashion, motivated at the core by self-interest, which can foster strategies of conflict and co-operation in pursuit of this overarching aim. Knowledge of actors’ motivations can be readily discerned through applying this rubric to an analysis of individual and state action. • A discourse of market efficiency: neoliberalism holds that the market is the most efficient instrument to manage the equitable distribution of goods and services in society. The role of the state is therefore primarily that of enforcing market-based regulations and where it goes beyond that, it introduces irrationality (or distortions) on best practice. • A discourse of sovereignty: neoliberalism holds that sovereign states are equal in standing and convey equivalent rights and responsibilities upon its citizens. Being essentially ahistorical, it does not recognise for example institutionalised racism, structural obstacles posed by the political economy, perceptual and other manifestations of the past as impediments to fulfilling the criteria of liberal-constitutional statehood.
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 35
Following Muller, the relationship between neoliberalist narrative and the settler and liberation narratives – the latter two reflecting and shaping post-colonial societies in Southern Africa – is one of conflict and accommodation. During the era of white settler rule, neoliberalism offered a trenchant critique of the irrationalities inherent in statutory racial exclusion of the black majority in the economy (a position that found favour among the liberation movement).71 With the coming of independence and the trend towards black majority governments pursuing clientelist practices through such policies as the expansion of public sector, neoliberalism has been at the forefront of criticism, again based upon the distorting effects that this has on the economy (a position that has found favour with the remaining white settlers). This critique has been extended to issues of governance as Western donors have sought to deepen the commitment to democratic values in the political systems of Southern African states. Where open conflicts have ensued between these respective narratives, it is the ‘foreignness’ of neoliberalism and its parallel to historical interventions by Western powers that local actors have sought to emphasise in defence of the status quo. The paradox of utilising Western-derived notions on the sanctity of sovereignty (which conforms to neoliberal tenets), also a ‘foreign’ idea, to fend off interference is apparently not recognised by these same individuals. Anatomy of crisis in Southern Africa: Political regimes and responses to the land question Neoliberalism proved to be both the context and the catalyst for the crisis of the post-colonial state in Southern Africa. It exposed the contradictions inherent in the post-colonial state, from the prevailing economic inequalities inherited from the colonial period to the complacency and even predatory conduct that accompanied the installation of a black elite in government. While the trigger of the crisis in Zimbabwe may have been challenges posed by neoliberalism to the post-colonial state, the conflict as played out in the region itself came to be centred on the issue of land. The unresolved position of land ownership, encoded through the transitional constitutions which preserved property rights of white commercial farmers that, in so doing, froze the dire economic circumstances faced by the black peasantry, provided a potent and lingering source of discontent within the post-colonial state. For black-led governments, faced by the economic dislocation and social unrest that accompanied structural adjustment programmes, the land issue presented an admittedly volatile but potentially important means of regaining electoral support. At the same time, the public
36
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
airing of the long-buried land question in independent states tapped into societally grounded narratives that inspired political entrepreneurs and inadvertently began to bring pressure to bear on these same governments. This was particularly the case with Zimbabwe, which led the way within the region in using the land issue as a counter to the challenges posed by neoliberalism. Concurrently, and here Zimbabwe again was at the regional forefront, the crisis inspired by neoliberalism provided a rationale by political opportunist to review and reinterpret the key features of the post-colonial state established by the transition from settler oligarchy. Competing narratives, whether liberation and settler or neoliberal, were crucial in defining the boundaries of the conflict in response to the imposition and adverse effects of neoliberalism in Southern Africa. Land took (and takes) on a variety of meanings – spiritual, social and economic – which reflect the conflicting historical narratives that have been at play in the region. The two regionally grounded narratives converged and conflicted over the issue of land and were used as signposts by political actors as they sought to bolster the case for overturning or preserving the post-independence status quo in their respective states. Neoliberalism, drawn from outside the historical experiences of the region, introduced a new perspective on land that was predominantly economic in character and set itself apart from local narratives that emphasised land’s status as a symbolic asset. While the white commercial farming sector in Southern Africa accommodated itself to neoliberalism, giving support to the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach to land, black politicians – against a background of growing domestic economic hardship – responded to this reconfiguration of land through a reassertion of the anti-imperial discourse of the liberation struggle, which they gave policy expression to as a call for ‘expropriation’. The purpose of this book, therefore, will be to investigate the origins of the crisis in post-settler states in Southern Africa and the impact that this crisis has had on the conduct of domestic and foreign policy among three ex-settler oligarchies. Framing the analysis will be the role of the liberal–constitutional regime which will serve as the touchstone for analysis of decision making, domestic and regional influences and the relationship between government and society in relation to the narratives which themselves are regional in scope. The case studies to be examined are Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia. They all share the following characteristics: common historical legacy of colonial appropriation of peasant land for white settler commercial use; profound economic linkages, drawn from the colonial era but continuing to the
Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 37
present day, with one another; all are themselves product of a contentious armed liberation struggle and a negotiated transition to a liberal constitutional regime; and all members of SADC and had participated in its predecessor, the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, again under the auspices of the liberation movement. The book also examines the responses of ‘non-settler’ and ‘former settler’ states, for example, Mozambique and Botswana, which can serve as ‘controls’ on the influence of narratives over the formation and implementation of domestic policies on land and foreign policies in reaction to the Zimbabwean crisis. More generally, an understanding and analysis of political regimes and narratives to these challenges facing the ex-settler states illuminates the nature of international politics at the regional level of SADC and the transformative possibility of the introduction of post-liberation norms. It is suggestive that the constraints on the liberal constitution regimes in Southern Africa extend beyond the classic critiques of typical neopatrimonial/clientelist approaches identified by scholars as the source of political decision making in African states. Thus, this book will provide insight into challenge and limitations of changing policy norms of the regional interstate system inherent in the introduction of new regional institutions and methodologies of interaction seen in Nepad and the African Union.
2 Sowing the Whirlwind: Zimbabwe and Southern Africa
Where political independence became an end in itself and lost its socio-economic goals, the successors to colonial governments became unwitting watchdogs of colonial interests. Robert Mugabe, 19801 Zanu-PF has no political philosophy beyond the desire to stay in power by hook or by crook. Jonathan Moyo, 19952 Zimbabwe, upheld as a model of racial reconciliation with a liberal constitution based on market principles, was in many respects the linchpin of the post-colonial order in Southern Africa. Though its record on governance and agrarian reform had become somewhat tarnished by the early 1990s, nonetheless Zimbabwe’s status as the first settler state in the region to embrace liberal constitutionalism provided the inspiration for the structuring of political settlements between white settlers and liberation movements in subsequent years in Namibia and South Africa. Underlying this perception of success were, however, serious structural problems in key areas of the economy including those inherited from the past such as unequal land distribution and they were further exacerbated by the post-colonial state’s continued failure to implement agrarian reform or address rural poverty. Moreover, under Robert Mugabe’s leadership, corruption by Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) had become endemic and gave rise to popular urban-based political opposition as well as a host of court challenges aimed at the governing party. The imposition of a debilitating structural reform programme, coupled with open discontent within the 38
Sowing the Whirlwind 39
population, sowed the conditions for a revival of the land issue by a government increasingly desperate to hold on to power. This chapter will examine the contribution of the political economy of settler colonialism and the transitional arrangements to majority rule in shaping the post-colonial state in Zimbabwe. The power of liberation era narratives, largely dormant after independence, was reasserted in the wake of economic hardships and political challenges to the government. Land, the thread which tied the historical past injustices of colonialism with the contemporary politics of independent Zimbabwe, became the central metaphor of politics as the country descended into economic chaos and despotism.
The political economy of colonial Rhodesia The dispossession of land by British settlers began in June 1890, with the launching of Cecil Rhodes’s expeditionary force across the Limpopo River. Inspired by geostrategic calculations as much as avarice, Rhodes had financed a column of 700 self-styled pioneers to invade the area north of the Transvaal Republic and bring the territory into the orbit of British interests. Befitting the reluctant imperialism of the Salisbury government, the British South Africa Company’s expedition did not initially win official support in London (though significant political interests did support the Company’s Royal Charter and encouraged Rhodes’s adventurism).3 The leaders of the Pioneer Column, Dr Leander Jameson and Frederick Selous, found the land dominated by Ndebele peoples in the south, a vestige of the Mfecane which had shaken up so much of the region in the early part of the nineteenth century, and a much larger Shona-speaking people in the central and northern areas up to the Zambezi river. While the hope of mineral wealth on the scale of the Witwatersrand proved to be elusive (though some years later gold, platinum and other minerals were discovered), the abundance of fertile, if arid, land provided the basis for commercial agriculture for the trickle of European and Afrikaner settlers. Britain assumed formal responsibility for Southern Rhodesia in 1895, as the territory came to be known (Northern Rhodesia being territory in what is today Zambia), while the British South Africa Company continued to exercise effective control over the colony. Conflicts with local Ndebele and Shona chiefs were not slow in coming, though accommodation with some chiefs proved to be more easily arranged, and the outbreak of sporadic violence began in Matabeleland in May 1896.4 Called the ‘first Chimurenga’, the revolt was initially against the imposition of a ‘hut tax’ though it grew into a wider campaign of resistance to white occupation and was only countered by the British South Africa Company’s Police at a cost of eight thousand
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
lives.5 While ‘pacification’ was not complete until a year later, London set itself up as protector of the interests of indigenous population from the outset, a position – though supportive of European dominance – that eventually brought it into conflict with settler interests. The British authorities promulgated an Order of the Privy Council in 1899 which obliged the Company to create economically viable Native Reserves across the territory for Africans displaced by conflict and white occupation. The pattern of difference between a paternalist government in London and an assertive white settler community were already set in motion, a situation that was replicated in various forms throughout the next six decades and influenced the settler’s rejection of incorporating into the Union of South Africa a British-sponsored referendum favouring self-government held in 1922. In the first years of the colony, commercial farming quickly attained a position as the backbone of the economy, though not without a series of missteps and even disasters as incoming settlers attempted to find suitable crops for export. The British South Africa Company initially allocated tracts of 2500 hectares to settlers on a freehold basis with the commitment to develop the land, with an eye to supplying the needs of the mining sector as a priority. Blacks were allocated land under the auspices of the Crown, theoretically to accommodate their traditional subsistence activities, thus setting in motion a two-tiered racial system of land ownership between white freehold and black communal lands. Competition with black farmers from the outset spurred successive complaints by white farmers, such that from 1908 onwards the British South African Company began to introduce explicit policies supporting white agriculture. By 1920, there were over 2000 white commercial farmers on 15 million hectares producing mostly maize and tobacco for export as well as cattle and dairy farming for the domestic market.6 Direct subsidies from Salisbury played an important part in sustaining the livelihood of these farmers including extension services, credit facilities for purchases and improvements through exclusive access to the Land Bank, the development of infrastructure in white farming areas, from roads and railroads to government abattoirs and cold storage facilities. So did the intervention of government officials to stave off competition from black farmers through a number of measures, the most significant being the creation of the Maize Council Act (1931) and the Maize Council Amendment Act (1934) which forced black farmers to sell their output below production costs. This had the added benefit of addressing the chronic labour shortages on white commercial farms by transforming newly impoverished cultivators into itinerant labourers. Against
Sowing the Whirlwind 41
the backdrop of growing population pressures in the Native Reserves, the Rhodesian parliament passed the Land Apportionment Act in 1930 which formalised the segregation of land into 50 per cent for white settlement, 21 per cent as Native Reserves, 8 per cent as Native Purchase Areas and the rest for forestry and national parks. Forced removals of the hundreds of thousand of blacks found to be residing on land in white areas continued, with 67,000 being displaced between 1935 and 1955. The end of the Second World War brought a surge of white immigration to Rhodesia and, those who elected to take up agriculture were offered leasehold land by the Rhodesian government. By1965 the white population had grown to 250,000 and there were approximately 6400 white commercial farmers on 40 per cent of the land.7 By way of contrast, the growing African population of over one million was consigned to Natives Reserves scattered across the country where communal agriculture dominated and was practiced under conditions dogged by poor environmental conditions, the absence of infrastructure or modern inputs.8 A further number were either under contract in urban areas, the mines or farming, or still occupying land which was formally allocated to the whites. By 1930, the Rhodesian officials, in the wake of the Land Apportionment Act, formally recognised the role of traditional authorities as key instruments in maintaining in Salisbury’s control over rural areas through acts of parliament. Two decades later, under the influence of the modernising spirit that swept the final days of the British Empire, the passage of the Native Land Husbandry Act (1951) heralded the introduction of a highly invasive change in policy towards the Native Reserves. Officials in the Native Affairs Department sought to reform traditional communal agriculture through the prescription of farming practices, minimising environmental pressure in the reserves through mandatory reduction of livestock, regulation of who could farm and to transfer authority to allocate and manage land away from traditional leader to individuals and designated communities.9 This had a broader purpose, in that it hoped to oblige blacks to take up work in the booming mining sectors, industry or agriculture, and leave behind individual farmers on viable plots of land.10 The uproar of traditional leaders, seconded by communities suddenly forced to adjust to an alien regime, inspired widespread protest and eventually violence. This approach was quietly abandoned in 1962 but not, according to Thompson, before: rural opposition and unrest threatened state control of the countryside, creating a state of ungovernability
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
in many reserves that compounded the (Rhodesian) state’s efforts to contain nationalist organisation and township protest.11 As in other settler colonies, African political and economic rights were systematically denied or undermined by the white authorities in Salisbury through racist legislation such as the Masters and Servants Act, pass laws restricting freedom of movement and job reservations on a racial basis. Missionary-educated Africans, utilising petition, law and eventually protest, were initially at the forefront of civil rights campaigns aimed at ameliorating the worst features of colonial rule in Rhodesia. Trade unions worked to improve their constituency’s plight and, from the late 1940s onwards, increasingly sought common cause with other civil rights activists and advocates of independence. The Southern Rhodesian African National Congress (not to be confused with a similar organisation in South Africa) set up in 1957, was banned with the imposition of state of emergency in February 1959 and the arrest of its leadership a year later brought about scenes of unrest in urban areas. Its successor, the National Democratic Party, attempted to broaden the domestic civil rights campaign by petitioning Britain, most notably through a constitutional conference held in London, before it too was banned. In 1962, one of the civil rights leaders, Joshua Nkomo, formed the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) with a more explicitly radical orientation and, in the wake of violent protest and sabotage, this party was also declared illegal and banned by colonial officials.12 An increasingly concerned British government urged reform upon the settler colony but was met with resistance from the majority of whites, for whom any steps at liberalisation were tantamount to capitulation to black rule. Township protest and rural unrest (the latter the product of failed Native Husbandry Land Act) were met with extended powers for the colonial security forces and, as the deepening of the linkage between urban and rural protest become a real possibility, the settler community began to debate a way out of their conundrum. Moreover, the Central African Federation, a loose affiliation of Southern and Northern Rhodesia as well as Nyasaland established in 1953 as a kind of bulwark against majority rule, much to the consternation of many whites seemed to be heading towards that very thing.13 The changing attitude of British officials, who by 1960 had firmly committed themselves to withdrawal from their colonial possessions in Africa, sparked hope among the black population and fear among the whites. In this atmosphere of growing tension, the overwhelming
Sowing the Whirlwind 43
re-election of the Rhodesian Front in April 1965, an amalgamation of commercial farming interests with white workers led by Ian Smith, instigated an abrupt end to talk of independence with majority rule. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) issued by Smith on 11 November 1965 set the stage for confrontation and civil war. Talk of Britain responding more strongly to the rebellious colony was dismissed by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson as unacceptable, given that white Rhodesians were ‘kith and kin’. Thereafter international action was consigned to condemnation, led by the British government, and resulted in the imposition of diplomatic and trade sanctions by Britain, the Commonwealth and, in 1966, the United Nations.14 UN sanctions were extended and made mandatory in 1968 while the Smith regime severed all formal ties with London in 1970 and declared itself to be a republic, in the vain hopes of gaining some form of international recognition. Though reluctant to provide Salisbury with formal recognition, South Africa and colonial Portugal’s willingness to allow Rhodesian goods to transit through their territories rendered sanctions largely ineffective during this period. Indeed, economic sanctions provided the impetus for inward investment, coupled with that of South African finance, to foster growth in local industry and infrastructure development on a scale not seen since the boom period of the Central African Federation.15 While tobacco farming and mineral exploitation drove Rhodesia’s growth and translated into unparalleled prosperity for the white community in the first decade of UDI, the economic position of blacks remained essentially unchanged or even deteriorated in certain sectors.16 Under the Smith regime, the promulgation of the Land Tenure Act in 1969 redrew the boundaries of racial segregation in land ownership and consolidated the country’s 33 million hectares with 46.9 per cent into white hands on a freehold basis (where blacks no longer had property rights), 4.5 per cent individual tenure for blacks and 48.6 per cent on a communal basis in the ‘Tribal Trust Areas’ (formerly Native Reserves).17 In these communal areas, traditional leaders were restored to their status as key interlocutors between white government and the rural black population and their powers to allocate land to followers formally acknowledged. The Land Tenure Act, which effectively imposed a Rhodesian form of separate development under the rubric of a policy of ‘provincialism’, was only amended in 1977 as part of the internal settlement which marked the declining fortunes of the Smith regime (see below), to allow for black ownership in selected white areas. In a belated effort to broaden its support, the Muzorewa government
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
proposed a redistribution of four million hectares of white-owned land to blacks in 1978. The UDI pushed the liberation movements into action. A guerrilla war, called the ‘second Chimurenga’, began in April 1966 and was initially driven by ill-prepared liberation fighters based in Zambia. Equipped and trained with African and, eventually, Soviet support, Zapu’s successive attempts to infiltrate Rhodesia from its northern border had been easily thwarted by the Rhodesian armed forces. Reverend Ndabagningi Sithole and Herbert Chipote (both of whom had complained about Nkomo’s conduct), split from Zapu and founded the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) in 1963. The new organisation, according to Bhebe, sought to distinguish itself from Zapu and other previous parties by intensifying the use of violence against the enemy. But clashes with Zapu absorbed most of its energies at the beginning.18 Basing itself on the Chinese model of revolutionary warfare, Zanu drew its internal support primarily from the Shona people while receiving financial assistance and training from Tanzania and China. Military setbacks fuelled personal rivalries within the liberation movements and contributed to further splits along ethnic lines. Chipote’s assassination in March 1975 paved the way for another ex-Zapu member, Robert Mugabe, to assume control of the liberation movement.19 Mugabe, an intellectual who had suffered eleven years imprisonment by Salisbury, soon exerted his disciplining influence over the organisation alongside that of its military commander, Josiah Tongogara. Zanu’s military wing, the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (Zanla) was based in Tanzania and, until 1973, had to use a tortuous routing through Zambia and Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo)-controlled portions of Mozambique to reach Rhodesian territory. Land was a key rallying cry used by both nationalist organisations aimed at mobilising the peasantry in support of the liberation struggle, though appeals to the nationalist cause were not always as effective as expected in the early days and coercion had to be used at times.20 In spite of their efforts, by 1971 the failure of liberation movements to make much impact on the UDI government either through its military or diplomatic campaigns brought about a change in the strategy. As mentioned above, training and new tactics based on Frelimo experiences and the opening of more Zanla bases in independent
Sowing the Whirlwind 45
Mozambique, stepped up guerrilla infiltration into the Manicaland region. The fostering of ties with local communities through ‘pungwes’ (clandestine meetings) and the creation of ‘peoples committees (‘hurndwende’) demonstrated the growing support for the armed struggle among the peasantry. Spirit mediums played an important role in mobilising peasant support for guerrillas and, as the guerrilla presence became a more permanent fixture, villagers increasingly took the initiative to co-opt party structures being imposed on them by Zanu.21 One individual in the local chief’s court explained: [P]eople had noticed that it was important to take charge of their own affairs and to organise themselves in such a way that they had their own trusted people to control their lives. This was because at the beginning so many people were killed by the comrades [Zanu guerrillas] on flimsy grounds and because they were reported to the comrades as traitors by their enemies … We really saved so many lives … the freedom fighters respected our court and only took action on our recommendation.22 The convergence of Zanu cell structures with local Shona traditional structures extended to the modification of traditional songs to include explicit anti-colonial messages and the invocation of ancestor worship in support of the struggle.23 Interestingly, during the liberation struggle, Zanu actively discouraged land occupations of abandoned farms by the rural population. For example, though 1,122 white farms were abandoned in Manicaland between 1973 and 1979, not one of them was occupied. According to Chitiyo, this was both a product of wariness that they would face Rhodesian reprisals, the role of spirit mediums in rejecting such practices, but also because Zanla forces had forcibly told peasants that land occupations were to occur only after liberation.24 Zapu’s military wing (or Zipra), though less effective in creating ‘liberated zones’ within Rhodesia itself, nonetheless kept up the pressure through cross border raids from the north. Pressure by the Front Line States caused the two feuding liberation movements to formally enter into an alliance, but the formation of the Patriotic Front could not disguise the widening gap between Zanu-PF and Zapu-PF and the ethnic character of their divisions.25 A beleaguered Rhodesian government engaged in a series of ‘hot pursuit’ raids in surrounding territories but found that, in the wake of large-scale guerrilla infiltration and compliance of the population, it no longer had the means to combat the liberation movements on all fronts. Protected
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
villages, modelled on the Malaya and Vietnam counter-insurgency programmes, were employed to cut the guerrillas’ links with the rural population but failed to stem the rising tide of support in the countryside. The creation of the Mozambican National Resistance (later renamed for its Portuguese acronym, Renamo) from the remnants of Portugal’s colonial army and rejectionist Portuguese settlers was another response by Salisbury designed to bring pressure to bear on the Mozambican government (see Chapter 5). Nevertheless, it was clear to most Rhodesians that the growing costs of the civil war were fast making a negotiated settlement the only possible solution. White emigration had reached alarming proportions, with 80,000 having left the country between 1973 and 1979, and resulting in huge tracts of farmland being effectively abandoned and a sharp decline in agricultural output. Moreover, the economy, once resilient, was finally facing the real impact of sanctions with the closure of Mozambique’s Beira port to Rhodesian goods and capital flight estimated at R$40 million.26 The loss of white labour to the Rhodesian military as rotations of duty increased to combat growing insurgency, not to mention the rise in casualties, had a delirious effect on productivity and settler community morale.27 And, finally, the decision of the South African prime minister, John Vorster, to put pressure on Smith to negotiate an end to the civil war – a product of his desire to win favour with moderate African governments and the West – shut down the only alternative source of support for the rebel colony.28
The transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe The negotiation of a transition to majority rule in Rhodesia was a process that was played out simultaneously in the capitals of Europe and the battlefields of Southern Africa. Zambia’s president, Kenneth Kaunda, in conjunction with American secretary of state, Henry Kissinger and South Africa’s John Vorster, invited the leaders of the liberation movements to meet with Smith at Victoria Falls in August 1975. Following from this were talks in Geneva which collapsed without progress as the Rhodesian government came to realise that the West was implacably supportive of eventual majority rule. In September 1977, an AngloAmerican plan for Rhodesia’s transition to majority rule was unveiled which called for a ceasefire, elections and the integration of military forces. Bolstering this was to be a ‘Zimbabwe Development Fund’ of a billion dollars or more, first mooted by Kissinger, that would address the land reform question as well as the socio-economic concerns of the independent state.29
Sowing the Whirlwind 47
Against the background of impending compromise on majority rule that would usher in the liberation movements, the Smith regime desperately attempted to engineer an ‘internal solution’ that would win accolades, if not outright recognition, from key partners like South Africa and possibly the West. In March 1978 the outlawed territory was renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and, after its first multi-racial election the following month (which excluded liberation affiliated candidates but included liberation notables like James Chikerema and Ndabaningi Sithole), the leader of the United African National Council, Bishop Abel Muzorewa was elected prime minister. Presaging the Lancaster House agreements, whites were reserved a quarter of all seats in parliament (as well as retaining control over the security forces and judiciary). Racial discrimination was outlawed in most areas and, as noted above, land was opened up to black ownership. Despite Rhodesian expectations, international condemnation of the internal solution spearheaded by the Commonwealth and African states in August that same year, as well as the hostile reaction by the liberation movements drove Smith back to the negotiation table, this time inspired with the hope that a new conservative government in London would prove to be more sympathetic to preserving its interests. The Rhodesian government duly bowed to international pressure and unbanned Zanu and Zapu in May 1978 in preparation for the final negotiations towards a settlement. Talks sponsored by the newly elected government of Margaret Thatcher began in London on 10 September 1979. Tough negotiations at Lancaster House, where the parties met involving over forty plenary sessions, were held under the chairmanship of the British foreign secretary, Lord Carrington. The enmity between Smith and especially Mugabe was palatable, with the latter unwilling to meet face-to-face with their opponents until quite late in the process. For its own part, the British government came to the negotiations with a firm sense of their preferred outcome, namely, the promulgation of a liberal constitution that predicated on universal suffrage and a parliamentary system, tied to a Bill of Rights that guaranteed individual freedoms and property rights, as well as some form of statutory representation for whites.30 When addressing political representation the Rhodesians were thus encouraged by the British position to hold out for constitutional guarantees of privileged political participation along the lines of the arrangements made under the Muzorewa government. Nkomo, who himself had joined in secret talks with Salisbury in the build up to the internal solution the previous year, proved to be much more accommodating to white concerns than Mugabe whose party, Zanu, would have preferred
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to win independence through an outright military victory. Periodically in the talks, Lord Carrington used the threat of British recognition of the internal solution as a means of persuading the liberation parties to accept the compromises entailed in the negotiations, a position backed by the Front Line States.31 The final arrangement hammered out in London was only agreed to by Zanu delegates under considerable pressure from Mozambique’s leader Samora Machel, whose country, as the host for Zimbabwe National Liberation Army camps, had borne the brunt of the costs of Rhodesian incursions and the application of sanctions against it. After the question of the shape of the political settlement, the other main issue debated in the talks was that of land reform and property rights. Post-independence Kenya, with its minority white settler population, was seen to be a suitable model for land reform and British authorities used this as the basis for their mediation.32 A Declaration of Rights addressed the matter of property rights by specifying the limited circumstances under which government could confiscate land for resettlement, primarily in cases of under-utilisation (though defence, public safety and health as well as town planning were allowed), and guaranteeing ‘prompt payment of adequate compensation’ as well as the right for compensation to be determined by the courts.33 Article 16 further stipulated that such compensation was to be paid at the highest market price five years prior to purchase and, at the request of the owner, could be paid in foreign currency.34 In addition, Lord Carrington spoke of British plans to provide financial resources and technical assistance to support land reform within the framework of a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach in line with its means. Though the Zimbabwe Development Fund was not explicitly included in the final document, it was discussed and was assumed to be a feature of the compromise reached at Lancaster House by the leaders of the liberation movements. Indeed, some have suggested that the liberation movements inflated expectations of financial assistance among their followers as a way to play down the painful concessions they had had to make on the land issue.35 The Lancaster House agreement was signed in December 1979 and detailed the conditions under which the conflict would come to an end and when national elections towards a new independent government were to be held. Firstly, UDI was rescinded and Britain resumed formal control over the territory. A general ceasefire, cantonment of all military forces and their demobilisation would follow to be verified by a Commonwealth task force. Campaigning by all parties for national elections was to be held which were, in accordance with the agreement,
Sowing the Whirlwind 49
to be free of intimidation. Finally, the provisions gave significant assurances to the white community, including a seven year guarantee of twenty seats (well out of proportion to their population) in parliament, enshrined the sanctity of property rights and made the constitution inviolable for ten years. For Zanu in particular, the final outcome at Lancaster House forced upon it some bitter compromises, such as the hopes of restructuring the economy along socialist lines (including wholesale land redistribution) and, for Mugabe, the possibility of establishing a one party state. Moreover, the liberation movements found it distasteful to have to bow to Western pressure and accept the continuation of racially exclusive practices such as separate voting rolls. For the Smith coterie, the transitional arrangements effectively traded away racially based political power – albeit attenuated through the ‘sunset clause’ on parliamentary representation – for economic security underpinned by individual and property rights based upon the liberal constitution. Western guarantees for the transitional constitution, coupled with promises of financial assistance for land reform and investment, mollified all but the doomsayers and harshest racists in their ranks.36 On this basis, Britain temporarily resumed sovereignty in December 1979 with Lord Christopher Soames appointed as Governor-General and international sanctions being lifted that same month. Despite this situation (or perhaps because of it), the country’s first democratic elections suffered from violent intimidation of opposition candidates, principally carried out by Zanu-PF cadres operating in Mashonaland and some of the peri-urban areas, as well as the threat of a white military coup and return to war. The attempt by Peter Wall, the Rhodesian military commander, to convince the Thatcher government to withdraw its support for the elections on the eve of the poll was ignored by London. The election was held on 27–9 February in 1980, and, although Western and South African observers had convinced themselves that Muzorewa or Nkomo would win, Mugabe swept to victory. Zanu won 58 of 80 black seats (63 per cent of vote), Zapu secured 20 seats (all in Matabeleland) and Smith’s newly named Republican Front took all 20 white seats. Robert Mugabe, against conventional expectation, took office in an independent Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980 on a platform of national reconciliation. The bitter wounds of a civil war that had cost 20,000 lives notwithstanding, Mugabe declared: If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend with the same national interest, loyalty, rights and duties
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Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
as myself. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you.37
Independence, nation-building and agrarian reform, 1980–9 The theme of reconciliation and development marked the first two years of independence in Zimbabwe. Rivals from Zapu’s Joshua Nkomo to white officials under the Smith regime were given significant positions in the Mugabe government, with the retention of Peter Wall as chief of the Zimbabwean defence forces emblematic of this spirit. The integration of white Rhodesian officers (many of whom, like their confreres in the civil service, chose to be pensioned off rather than serve under a black government) with the guerrilla forces of Zanla and Zipra proved to be less problematic than the task of bringing the two liberation armies together (see below). Two years later, the culpability of white officers in supporting a covert South African Defence Force (SADF) raid that destroyed the Zimbabwean air force, was to sour the extraordinary relationship, and the president fired Wall. Despite this and other racially inspired incidents,38 the remaining 100,000 whites in independent Zimbabwe came to realise that, their fears notwithstanding, they were in fact prospering alongside the new black elite. Part of the reason for this prosperity was that Mugabe’s government had inherited an economy that, despite sanctions, war and abiding inequalities, was reasonably sound. Mining provided the core of export earnings, making a 20 per cent contribution to GDP and employing 5 per cent of the labour force while commercial agriculture, which contributed 18.6 per cent to GDP and constituted 19 per cent of exports, employed 27 per cent of the country’s labour.39 Manufacturing, having expanded during UDI, continued to benefit from government protection though labour legislation introduced to protect workers effectively constrained businesses from expansion or introducing technological innovations. While the dearth of investment meant that securing new capital ought to have been a priority of the new government, the residual concern that foreign MNCs – especially South African ones – would exercise inordinate influence over the economy caused it to restrict the repatriation of profits. Parastatals stayed in public hands (now managed by blacks) while, in the absence of new sources of capital or black entrepreneurs, existing private enterprises and financial services remained dominated by whites. Moreover, their cohesion as interest groups within the framework of what Brett characterises as essentially a corporatist
Sowing the Whirlwind 51
economy was strengthened and produced a sense of autonomy that, at times, put them at odds with the ruling party’s concerns.40 To meet the expectations of the liberated black population, the government launched its ‘Growth with Equity’ development programme in 1981, which oversaw a threefold increase in public spending aimed at addressing the deficiencies in education and other social services. Near-universal access to primary schooling and the delivery of health care to urban and rural black populations denied during the colonial period became a reality. In order to fund this, the public debt grew from 32.5 per cent of GDP in 1979 to 44.6 per cent by 1989 and, with government spending eating up domestic capital, local banks found themselves borrowing from the international market to fund government-induced deficits.41 And while the economy expanded at or above 4 per cent consistently for the first ten years of independence, employment creation during this period remained quite low, casting a shadow on the government’s achievements in education as school leavers found it difficult to acquire gainful employment. Government planners envisaged a corporatist relationship with the unionised workers who had played a part in support of the liberation struggle through strike action and related activities. The Ministry of Labour encouraged the formation of an amalgamated trade union movement – the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) – and, through state-sanctioned appointments and funding support, attempted to bring it under effective control. In fact, a pattern of passive trade union acquiescence to government’s increasingly blatant attempts to curb its independence finally had resulted in the deliberate distancing of ZCTU interests from that of the government by a host of new leaders by the late 1980s.42 While these initiatives brought improvements in the standard of living of black Zimbabweans, the capacity of the new government to rapidly address the festering structural inequalities between whites and blacks was inhibited by the enormous financial costs that it would entail and the concomitant reliance upon Western sources for that finance, its own ideological predilections against foreign investment as well as the restrictions placed on state action by the Lancaster House constitution. Coupled with this was the dampening of enthusiasm on the part of Zanu-PF elite for agrarian reform which, as it became gradually clear to authorities in power, was both fraught with complexity and costs due in part to constitutional limitations as well as threatening an important source of state revenue.43 Spontaneous land occupations in parts of Manicaland and Matabeleland provoked prevarication by government
52
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa
officials worried about the effect of ‘squatters’ on export earnings and, in some cases, eviction.44 Indeed, the new government’s main preoccupations were grappling with the administrative responsibilities of rule, coupled with Mugabe’s political imperatives such as stamping out the dissident campaign in Matabeleland (see below) as well as international solidarity action through the formation of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC) against apartheid in South Africa. The Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development (MLRRD) launched the Land Reform and Resettlement programme in 1980, putting together a three-tiered scheme for resettlement aimed initially at returning exiles or Zimbabweans displaced by the war. The bulk of black farmers were to be resettled on small individual holdings averaging five hectares (Model A); a second category on larger communal farms involved a mix of co-operatively managed systems with provisions for private ownership of housing and livestock (Model B); and a third category focused on large commercial farms managed either co-operatively or under the auspices of the Agriculture and Rural Development Authorities, encircled by small holdings which would provide labour (Model C).45 At first, the government plan envisaged resettling 18,000 black families within three years on the 1.2 million hectares that had been abandoned during and immediately after the war by white farmers. By 1982, under growing political pressure, the government introduced a parallel programme, the Accelerated Resettlement process which raised the number of black families to be resettled to 162,000 on 10 million hectares.46 According to one study, the British government viewed these rapidly climbing targets as unrealistic, as did some Zimbabwean officials who expressed concern at the lack of strategic planning, the arbitrariness of the 162,000 figure and the government’s capacity to resettle so many successfully.47 An official at the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development admitted: We were totally mortified by the 162,000 figure. Neither land nor the money was available for the goal.48 As it transpired, the Accelerated Resettlement programme placed prospective black farmers on abandoned land without little to no infrastructure. An accompanying wave of squatters tended to bring about
Sowing the Whirlwind 53
a further division of holdings into a patchwork of non-economically viable plots, undermining the already precarious existence.49 Even in the case of the more gradualist programmes, the Model A and B approaches were deemed to be largely a failure (in the latter case due to lack of technical and management skills on part of incoming settlers), while Model C farms were successful but not widely replicated by the Ministry.50 Although land reform was gradually shunted backstage by the government in Harare (the new name for the capital), there was nonetheless some movement in that area before 1985. The British government did, in keeping with promises made at Lancaster House, provide $47 million grant towards land resettlement in 1980 as well as sponsor a postconflict reconstruction and development conference in 1981 which raised £630 million towards the costs of land reform. Further funds were made available by London on a matching basis to offset half of the costs of land purchases that proved to be too bureaucratically onerous to administer by Zimbabwean officials.51 Significantly, though the Lancaster House agreement itself did not recognise the freehold rights proclaimed in the dying days of the Muzorewa regime, Mugabe himself decided to keep them intact. This was apparently due to the fact that he viewed the proponents of land reform with suspicion – echoing the Zanu-PF’s ambivalent position towards ‘liberated zones’ during the civil war – and sought stability in the immediate period after independence rather than redistribution.52 Within a year of independence celebrations, however, simmering tensions between Zanu and Zapu aggravated by the 1980 election loss had spilled over into violence. Dissident Zapu guerrillas, said to number several thousand, attacked white farmers and disrupted government programmes in rural Matabeleland. The fact that white farmers were under assault, with more being killed by Zapu dissidents during the first years of independence than in the entire period of the liberation war, threatened the fragile stability of independent Zimbabwe and contributed to the harsh government response (and to the absence of white criticism of government atrocities). By January 1981 with the announcement of the discovery of an arms cache on Zapu-owned property, the government had the necessary pretext for launching military action in Matabeleland. The Fifth Brigade, a North Korean-trained unit composed exclusively of Zanu loyalists, roamed at will through the province, employing terror tactics and engaging in mass murder to quell the rebellion. By the time the military had been withdrawn in 1987 somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 Ndebele had been killed and Zapu’s leader, Nkomo, had been forced to resign from the government and ignobly flee the country.
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The first post-independence election campaign was held in 1985 against the backdrop of the Matabeleland campaign. Zanu-PF gained support, winning 63 seats while Zapu retained control of only 15 seats and the Republic Front lost 5 of the 20 seats allotted to whites to a splinter organisation. The harassment of opposition parties by the governing Zanu-PF and its followers, which was to become a standard feature of future election campaigns, brought about acts of violence that marred the democratic process.53 At the same time, discussion of the issues during the election was muted with limited debate on the government’s unrealised commitment to land reform being most notable. The passage of the Land Acquisition Act in 1985, which introduced the legal requirement that farm owners putting property up for sale or lease first acquire a ‘certificate of no present interest’ from the Ministry, seemed to signal a change in policy towards land. However, the successful use of the courts by white farmers to contest this process as well as the apparent ease of getting a certificate for those with government connections contributed to making land reform a matter of secondary concern for the ruling party. Responding to the shortcomings and failures of the first five years of land policy, the MLRRD introduced a more rigorous screening of target beneficiaries including the need to possess a Master Farmers certificate to qualify for the programme.54 A fourth type, Model D farms based in communal grazing areas, was added in 1985 as well. Despite these changes, performance on resettled farms was judged to have only marginally improved.55 The problems of obtaining capital resources necessary for upkeep and improvement of the land was not adequately accounted for, especially in the absence of collateral in the form of title deeds to the land. Furthermore, the overall costs of the government’s purchase of land represented less than half of the MLRRD’s expenditures on agrarian reform at this point and complaints of inflated prices for farm acquisitions began to emerge as agricultural land started to recover its value. The rest of Ministry expenditure on land was absorbed by programmes which were designed to transform resettled blacks into commercial farmers. Though 40,000 families had been resettled by 1985, only 8000 more received land in the next five years despite the fact that the government had acquired 3.8 million hectares at that stage.56 This contradictory approach to land by Zanu reflected an impulse to utilise the rhetoric of radical reform while increasingly redistributing farms to party apparatchiks and regime favourites rather than landless peasants. For Stromm, this was a sign that though ‘the government continued to give political statements of intent by
Sowing the Whirlwind 55
announcing agricultural revisions such as the Land Acquisition Act (1985) … in reality the whites were co-opting government into their mainstream, rather than vice versa.’57 In the meantime, in the Communal Areas (formerly the Tribal Trust Lands) the black population had increased from 3.9 million in 1982 to 5.1 million in 1988, and with that came more pressure for land.58 Conditions in many respects improved, from greater access to health and education to the lifting of restrictions on black agricultural activities, bringing about a surge in commercial production by communal farmers. During the drought of 1982–4, government surpluses in maize were used to alleviate the prospect of widespread famine in the rural areas. Traditional leaders, whose authority one might have expected to be challenged by prescriptions of scientific socialism as they had been by the Frelimo government in neighbouring Mozambique in its earliest days (see Chapter 5), were in fact allowed to retain some of their powers acquired under the Smith regime, perhaps a legacy of the support provided during the armed struggle. Nonetheless, national legislation was enacted which curbed their formal authority and, until the onset of political crises in the mid-1990s, this trend of political marginalisation in favour of the District Councils was to continue.59 Nation-building, which had started as on the basis of broad reconciliation between black and white as well as the feuding liberation movements, devolved into a quest for single party hegemony. Given the ethnic overlay of Zimbabwean party politics, this drive meant in effect the dominance of Shona – or in particular subclans like the Zezuru to which Mugabe belonged – over Ndebele and other minorities. This impulse on the part of the governing party was reflected in the rewriting of national history such that Nkomo and Zapu’s contribution to the liberation struggle was downplayed or even ignored altogether. The establishment of a national memorial and military cemetery (Heroes Acre) in Harare, in which Zimbabweans deemed important to the liberation struggle were honoured by the government, became another bellwether of narrowly constructed nationalism as Zanu-PF figures were acknowledged and Zapu figures only selectively.60 White radicals, whose dissenting voices at home and in exile had played an influential role beyond their numbers, were also scripted out of these official accounts.61 Presaging the transformations to come, at its party congress in August 1984, Zanu-PF declared itself to be a Marxist-Leninist party with a socialist state as its goal. In 1987, as the statutory limit on reserved parliamentary seats for whites came to an end, the parliament acted to remove this clause of the constitution and replace it with the
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appointment of MPs to the twenty seats at presidential discretion. By December that same year an agreement was reached to merge the two liberation parties, an event that finally transpired in April 1988. Slowly it seemed, the momentum towards one-party rule in Zimbabwe was gathering under Mugabe’s guidance. On the broader canvas of Southern Africa where conflict between the white minority governments and black liberation forces were ongoing, Zimbabwe was taken by the international community to be a successful model for managing the complexities of democratising settler states. It was seen to have applicable lessons for ‘rehabilitating’ liberation movements bent on socialist redistributive programme through the promulgation of a liberal constitution guaranteeing universal franchise tied to individual and property rights. This perception was to influence the transitional arrangements for the other settler states in the region, Namibia and South Africa, which by the end of the 1980s were themselves on the cusp of transformation. Ironically, this came at the very point when Mugabe’s government had begun to contemplate the dismantling of the remaining provisions of the Lancaster House constitution that stood in the way of one-party rule.
Neoliberalism, land reform and the constitution, 1990–9 As the Zimbabwean government entered its second decade in office, the determination of the president to remove the final obstacles to one-party rule in the Lancaster House constitution was abandoned in the wake of the surprising showing of ex-Zanu-PF stalwart Edgar Tekere’s campaign in the 1990 presidential elections.62 This sign that he was both out of step within his own party and with the thrust of international events, suggested to some within Zimbabawe that Mugabe was a relic of the revolutionary past and would soon be put to pasture. However, as was to be demonstrated by subsequent events, both his critics and supporters underestimated Mugabe’s strategic resilience and personal determination to hold onto power. The other major problem facing Zimbabwe was that the economy began to show clear indications that it was grinding to a halt. Having posted annual 4 per cent growth for the first decade, the prospects of Zimbabwe maintaining that pace were dimming and, coupled with the failure to create jobs and uncompetitive manufacturing industries, the socio-economic costs seemed set to rise. It was for this reason that, according to Brett, by 1990 the government, industry and agriculture (the latter two still dominated by white interests) had come to
Sowing the Whirlwind 57
the conclusion that the slowing pace of the Zimbabwean economy would only be improved through substantial structural liberalisation.63 Driving this shift, foremost, was evidence that the high costs of borrowing fuelled by persistently high government fiscal deficits used to fund the public service and parastatals, as well as to restrict labour laws, price and foreign currency controls, were impacting negatively on investment, the introduction of new technologies and other efficiencies.64 The government therefore turned to the IMF for advice in devising a structural adjustment plan that would achieve these ambitions through relinquishing government’s role in pricing policies and foreign exchange provisions as well as commitments to cut social spending and public service costs (including salaries). Within two years’ of its implementation, the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESCAP) had contributed to a contraction of the economy by 8 per cent, unemployment had increased to over 50 per cent, followed by double-digit inflation and a collapse in social services.65 Inflation did eventually drop from 27 per cent in 1993 to 18 per cent in 1997, below the anticipated gains, and overall government spending was reduced significantly. On the positive side of the ledger, GDP rose to 7.3 per cent by 1996, though per capita income continued to slide from US$645 in 1995 to US$437 in 1999. The onset of a severe drought in 1992 also contributed to falling incomes in rural areas and, in the context of the lifting of price controls on maize and other products, imposed additional hardship. At the same time, Harare’s failure to meet agreed budgetary targets – a product of ad hoc spending and nontransparent practices by the government (see below) – caused the IMF to suspend its support for the ESCAP in 1994, sending a shudder through the now-weakened economy. In spite of its uneven record in Zimbabwe, by 1998 IMF officials felt able to declare that structural adjustment had been a success and henceforth the country could look forward to a substantially improved economic performance.66 Throughout this period, the status of agrarian reform was subject to a mix of government legislation and programming, as well as fiery electoral rhetoric, against the background of rising economic hardship for the bulk of the population. Most importantly, with the expiration of the Lancaster House constitutional constraints, a more overtly activist approach to the land question could in theory be pursued. Starting in 1990, the parliament passed legislation, including the Constitutional Amendment No. 11 in 1990, a redrafted Land Acquisition Act in 1992 and the Constitutional Amendment No. 12 in 1993, whose main thrust was to give it the legal means to expropriate land from the commercial
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farming sector that was being fully utilised and without automatic recourse to market-based financial compensation.67 The New National Land Policy reflected the government’s contemporary shift towards neoliberalism in its emphasis on the need to conduct agrarian reform so as to produce a black commercial farming sector. It proposed that 6.5 million hectares of the existing 11 million hectares tilled by white commercial farmers be redistributed to 220,000 black households, the majority of whom would be ‘capable farmers’. A land tax was also mooted as a means of discouraging speculation. The New National Land Policy was followed by the Rukuni Commission which recommended placing communal land tenure on the basis of individual tenure (echoing the Rhodesian Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA) scheme of the past) and reforming the role of traditional authorities in areas like land allocation, but these measures were rejected by a government cognizant of the political costs such a move could entail.68 Private initiative such as the Farmer Development Trust launched in 1994 complemented the government delivery of agricultural extension services to Model A communal farmers with those provided by established white commercial farmers. In the 1995 parliamentary elections and 1996 presidential elections, the land issue was primarily employed as a means of mobilising an increasingly disenchanted electorate to support Zanu-PF on polling day and, invariably, was put back on the shelf once the governing party was securely back in office. However, the slow pace of land acquisition by the government and growing evidence of Zanu-PF elites profiting from the process, all served to further fuel discontent within Zimbabwean society.69 Land pressures in the Communal Areas in particular, where population densities had increased by over 50 per cent since independence, and who remained a key constituency for Zanu-PF, resulted in sporadic land occupations that kept the political issue alive after the 1996 presidential elections. Most ominously for the leadership of Zanu-PF, even war veterans increasingly voiced complaints about the shortcomings of a decade and a half of liberation and linked these with bitterness to the land issue. One veteran declared, There were so many things that I expected to see after liberating Zimbabwe. But they have not been fulfilled. Basically Zimbabwe is still a capitalist society, and despite the fact that we are having a so-called peoples’ government, the situation is becoming worse and worse for the ordinary person than it was even before Independence … For all this I would blame mostly the people who are pulling the strings of power.70
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Another veteran said, (A)fter independence people were expecting to be shifted from the mountains to better land. The land question – it’s intact, for the past ten years. The land is still in the hands of the minority.71 Public sector workers such as nurses and teachers bore much of the initial brunt of rollback in salaries and accompanying price rises imposed by the ESCAP and there was a concomitant rise in trade union activism and strikes. By 1997, growing dissent among public sector workers was joined by veterans of the liberation struggle angry at the disclosure that their pensions held by the War Victims Compensation Fund had been looted by state officials. Having been promised land as well as pensions at independence, the angry war veterans engaged in a series of demonstrations that culminated in a humiliating public stand off with the President in his office in August. Shaken by protests that clearly had the tacit support of the Zimbabwean military, Mugabe reopened the neglected land issue and publicly proposed restitution through expropriation as a solution to the country’s economic ailments.72 At the same time, Mugabe authorised payouts and new pension commitments to the war veterans (all of which flew in the face of ESCAP commitments to reduce public spending). The government, in the throes of economic restructuring, turned to the international community – and the ex-colonial power, Britain, in particular – to fund this unexpected expenditure. Drawing upon the rhetoric of the liberation struggle, Mugabe declared, We are going to take the land and we are not going to pay for the soil. This is our set policy. Our land was never bought and there is no way we could buy back the land. However, if Britain wants compensation, they should give us money and we will pass it on to their children.73 Britain’s unwillingness to provide financial resources for land reform, and the currency crisis that ensued, caused the government to respond by listing 1,471 primarily white-owned commercial farms for state acquisition in November 1997, raising the stakes among donors and commercial farmers alike. Government sabre rattling on the issue inspired the convening of an international donor conference in Harare in September 1998 that seemed to offer a credible route to resolving Zimbabwe’s land disparities. The Zimbabwean government presented its Phase II Land Reform and
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Resettlement Programme, a plan to resettle 150,000 households drawn primarily from the Communal Areas on 5 million hectares at a cost of US$1.9 million. However, donor concern over Harare’s military intervention into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) launched the previous month, rumoured to cost the state US$1 million a day, questioned their support for the government plan. By way of compromise, an ‘inception phase’ was agreed to, with funding pledged by foreign donors to purchase 118 listed farms, but Zanu-PF resistance to donors’ insistence on transparency ultimately scuttled the deal.. After the failure of the 1998 UNDP conference on land to reach an agreement between the donors, international financial institutions and the Zimbabwean government, the position of the government moved towards a more overtly aggressive position on land. Hostile words by government officials about racist white farmers, the subsequent occupation of 20 farms in November 1998 with evidence of state complicity was met by court action and condemnation by the mostly white Commercial Farmers Union. Within a few months the costs to the Zimbabwean economy of sustaining DRC campaign had become apparent and, following the disclosure of irregularities in national accounting designed to underplay these costs, brought about another suspension of IMF loans. Moreover, rumours of discontent within military ranks over the DRC intervention reported by the independent media in early 1999 underscored the widespread alienation of the population from its elected leadership. Finally, the publicising of the names of the putative ‘capable farmers’ by ex-Zanu-PF MP, Margaret Dongo, which revealed that 272 governmentpurchased farms had gone to party elites and 400,000 hectares had been leased to favoured businessmen, government officials and security personnel, merely confirmed widely held rumours.74 In the wake of continued economic hardship, opposition political forces began to coalesce and in September 1999 Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the ZCTU, and some white business interests came together to form a new party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Inspired into action by growing dissatisfaction with government corruption and slipping living standards exacerbated by the imposition of ESCAP, the leader of the ZCTU led a further series of strikes against the proposed sacking of 20,000 civil servants in late 1999. Fresh from these successful mobilisations, a broad-based coalition of NGOs, church groups, the labour movement and commercial interests joined together to establish the National Constitutional Assembly with the purpose of ensuring that any post-Lancaster House constitution promoted by the government would reflect democratic values, retain property
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rights and limit executive powers and presidential terms in office. Its constituency was drawn, ironically, from the urban-based beneficiaries of the post-independence expansion in education and social services. The prominence of a few white Zimbabweans in the MDC, as well as the financial support that it received from white commercial interests, suggested to some government officials that the relative political quiescence of the remaining settler community had come to an end and that it was actively testing Zanu-PF capacity to hold onto power. With the surprise defeat of the government’s referendum on the proposed constitution in February 2000,75 it became clear to Zanu-PF officials that the opposition was gaining in support in the country and most especially in the urban municipalities. War veterans, led by Chenjerai Hunzi (nicknamed ‘Hitler’), were joined by many others whose credentials as authentic ex-liberation fighters were clearly questionable by their young age alone, took the lead in illegally occupying white commercial farms starting in February 2000.76 The collusion of the police, local district councillors, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and use of government vehicles for transport, the preponderance of farms of known MDC supporters, as well as financial incentives from government or Zanu-PF sources for squatters, ensured that the wave of occupations continued with a regularity that belied their supposed ‘spontaneity’.77 At the same time, there was evidence some occupations did indeed start without direct government involvement and Zanu-PF was quick to take advantage of these events.78 For example, the occupation of state-owned land by the Chitsa people in the Gonarezhou national park seemed to have been an opportunistic move outside of government orchestration.79 In those instances where occupations were met with resistance, the ensuing violence was to lead to the death of two dozen white farmers and many more of their black workers over the next twelve months. The independent media railed against the breach of law, as did local human rights groups, while the Commercial Farmers Union rushed to block or reverse land occupations through the courts. The Supreme Court ruled in March 2000 that the occupations were illegal and ordered the government to take action against the squatters. The ability of the government to halt the process was itself called into question when the Minister of Home Affairs Dumiso Dabengwa tried to reverse the ‘land grab’ and found his directives contravened by local security forces. Throughout, Mugabe’s persistent public declarations of support for the land invasions, couched in the language of anti-imperialism and aimed at a domestic and international audience, inspired supporters and infuriated his opponents.
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In April 2000, the Zimbabwean parliament passed new legislation that was to set the country irrevocably on the ‘fast track’ land reform. The programme, which one prominent international NGO characterised as having been worked out ‘on the back of an envelope’, stated that a total of 10 million hectares of white-owned commercial farmland would be transferred to black hands by December 2001.80 Two categories of beneficiaries were envisaged: A1 model, which would consist of 220,000 small-scale black farmers from the Communal Areas who would be given plots of approximately 25 hectares, and A2 model, which would consist of 54,000 black commercial farmers who would be given farms averaging 100,000 hectares.81 Significantly, provisions for inputs, training, extension services and other key features of a rapid redistribution scheme – as well as questions as to the selection of beneficiaries and legal title and debt obligations to be carried over to new occupants – were left vague or unaddressed. The response of the Commercial Farmers Union to the ‘fast track’ reforms was to turn to the courts as well as seek to influence international public opinion, and most especially that of the powerful donor states. In spite of their efforts, between February and June 2000, 400 commercials farms were occupied by hundreds of squatters. As land invasions continued into July 2000, bringing the number of farms under occupation to 1,600, the white-dominated advocacy organisation became increasingly divided as to how it should approach the crisis. Many farmers felt that, as they had purchased their land after independence and they had official certificates of ‘no public interest’, the best approach to ‘fast track’ reform was to utilise the courts and connections with the ruling party. Others, belatedly recognising the danger to their livelihood, advocated more radical steps and in July 2000 offered up 600 white-owned commercial farms for resettlement. By March 2001 this offer had been extended to one-third of all white-owned commercial farmland for resettlement in 100,000 hectare lots by 20,000 black farmers.82 In any case, the government demonstrated no interest in the proposals. A year later on the eve of the presidential elections, a splinter group broke away from the Commercial Farmers Union and formed Justice for Agriculture to combat what it felt was the organisation’s failed appeasement policy. In the meantime, the results of the June 2000 parliamentary elections in which the MDC, despite intimidation and the death of over thirty of its supporters, won 57 seats to Zanu-PF’s 62 seats, confirmed the government’s worst fears. Thereafter, the pace of land invasions increased and Mugabe began to take aim at the independent judiciary
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that had been an obstacle to realising the ambitions to ‘accelerated’ land redistribution. The presidential elections of 2002 were fought through mobilisation of Zanu-PF activists, and the electoral process itself was subject to manipulation in order to assure a positive result for the government. Opportunistic politicians, like the former government critic Jonathan Moyo, joined Mugabe in using the land issue to mobilise the simmering rural discontent – accentuated by economic privations – and, concurrently, stifle opposition voices by invoking the language of liberation. The campaign to take back the land from the remaining whites was recast as the ‘third Chimurenga’.83 This call to mobilise resonated with the bastion of government support in the communal areas, repositories of traditional authority which had played a key role during the liberation struggle and were most affected by land shortages. The MDC, painted by Zanu-PF as a front for colonial recidivism and imperialist interests, struggled to win support from rural Zimbabweans as well as gain recognition from neighbouring states. Mugabe and the liberation narrative A fundamental misreading of Robert Mugabe by international and regional observers, not to mention some Zimbabwean insiders themselves, resulted in an inability to correctly analyse his conduct and motivations in the course of the unfolding crisis. Taking their cue from the historic compromise at Lancaster House in 1979, which ushered in a democratic constitution and the subsequent accommodation with established commercial interests, analysts have tended to characterise Mugabe’s actions in office as essentially pragmatic and in concert with the pursuit of self-enrichment by African leaders found in other postindependence settings. The deliberate de-emphasis of the once volatile land issue, which was accompanied by the acquisition of eight per cent of the country’s commercial farmland in the hands of party and bureaucratic elites, seemed to be a further signal that Mugabe was not serious about land reform and redistribution. Overlooked in this analysis was the brutal suppression of dissent in Matabeleland in the early 1980s and his intolerance of potential political rivals, be they his erstwhile Patriotic Front ‘ally’ and Vice President, Joshua Nkomo, or possible successors within Zanu-PF itself. Even with the abrogation of the tenyear clause prohibiting changes to the constitution and the subsequent efforts by his government to formally establish a one-party state – a move thwarted by the election of ex-Zanu-PF dissenters to parliament and changing international circumstances – as well as the reintroduction of land as a campaign issue in the 1990 elections, analysts
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persisted in seeing the Zimbabwean leader as opportunist rather than an ideologue enamoured of power. Three events in particular converged towards the end of the decade which shaped and ultimately galvanised Mugabe’s sustained militant response to the crisis: the role of the constitution in circumscribing action on the land issue, the question of Mugabe’s leadership and legacy and the founding of an opposition party with significant domestic support. The government’s assault on the constitution and its institutions was rooted less in a commitment to addressing the land question and more in a frustration with the limits on action placed upon it across all areas. Indeed, the re-emergence of land as a defining question in Zimbabwean politics is itself instructive as it underscored the centrality of the constitution as a bulwark against Zanu-PF excesses. This brinkmanship was initially designed to force the hand of the international community but it failed on two accounts: the staunch unwillingness of donor countries – Britain in particular – to finance land reform without the above-mentioned safeguards and the obdurate position adopted by the domestic judiciary that ruled against the government’s challenges to property rights and due process. With the constitution itself increasingly seen by the government to be an obstacle in the way of addressing the land issue, Zanu-PF officials began to actively engage in a campaign of harassment and intimidation of the judiciary, the independent media and elements of civil society as well. The question of leadership is deeply intertwined with Mugabe’s sense of his own survival and legacy. His growing personal isolation from the party rank and file, already a feature of Mugabe’s autocratic approach to governance from the earliest days of independence, has increased over the years. In this way, the venal conduct of his extended family – from his second wife Grace to his nephew Leo Mugabe – which has been involved in numerous dubious business deals involving government contracting and has been noted for their ostentatious lifestyles, all contributed to a sense of distance between ruler and ruled. Coupled with this was the seemingly endless parade of corruption charges against senior members of the Zimbabwe government and the wilful blocking of court-mandated action against perpetrators through the use of presidential pardons and ‘creative’ legislation passed by the Zanu-PF majority. It is nonetheless important to recognise that Mugabe has an acute sense of history and, however buried beneath tactics driven the requirements of personal and regime survival, this remains a guide to his conduct and, ultimately, actions. The turning point for Mugabe,
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moving him out of his condition of relative torpor, was the looting of the War Victims Compensation Fund by senior party officials which was exposed by a judicial inquiry. Profoundly shaken by the inaction of his security forces in quelling demonstrations by war veterans, Mugabe belatedly recognised his own political vulnerability and at the same time the potential of war veterans as a movement outside of party interests open to his control as well as the saliency of the land issue as a way of re-establishing his authority within the party and securing his position in history. In response to these multiple challenges to his position, Mugabe drew upon his revolutionary past for inspiration. The liberation narrative, resplendent with ideas and imagery of discourses on solidarity and the dangers of imperialism, provided a rich source to communicate directly with disaffected elements within the elite and the population as a whole. In retrospect, the approach he adopted towards reclaiming the support of the population – whether by deliberate design or not – owes much to that pursued by the aging Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Sidelined by the Communist party in the aftermath of the disastrous ‘Great Leap Forward’, the embittered leader mobilised the youth and the army in a virulent campaign against his own government and party under the putative claim of returning to the ideological purity of the liberation period. In Mugabe’s case, he has utilised the metaphor of the ‘third Chimurenga’ as a way of rekindling the ideological fervour of the liberation era among the disaffected elements of society. In so doing, he has sought to frame the parameters of political choice between Zanu-PF and any form of opposition to his rule in terms which paints all his opponents (and any ‘wavering’ friends at home and abroad) as supporters of colonialism and racism. The land question, which remained a festering sore for Zanu-PF’s key rural constituency, provided Mugabe with an issue around which he could mobilise support, while the war veterans became a new personalised instrument for asserting authority and striking terror among his opponents. To this end he established a youth militia, under the guise of vocational training centres, to serve as ‘shock troops’ for the regime. These elements formed the core of Mugabe’s militant response to the disputes over his authority from February 2000 onwards. Moreover, what became increasingly evident to Zanu-PF strategists like the newly appointed Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was that a counter-weight was needed to the opposition party’s perspective, which echoed that of the Western critique, on events in the country. The message, when it was first presented, was oriented towards condemning neoliberalism in its various forms; however, this
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position had only limited saliency for the domestic audience until it was reworked to conform to a more commonly recognised feature of international intervention, namely, imperialism. In the words of the government mouthpiece The Herald: In order to safeguard the interests of their kith and kin in the country, the British and Scandinavian countries rallied behind the formation of the opposition MDC. Their intention was to install a puppet government willing to bend to their colonial designs and adventures … However, soon … the British started showing their real colours by advocating sanctions against Zimbabwe for alleged human rights abuses. But realising the hideous intentions of the British, countries in the Southern African Development Community and the African Union supported Zimbabwe by saying that land was at the core of the problems of the country … It is not surprising to note that Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa have all refused to succumb to bullying tactics by Britain because they are all aware of its hidden agenda to topple the present Zimbabwean government … So it is clear that the victory by Zanu-PF in the just ended presidential poll was indeed a victory against imperialism.84 Inculcated to the effects of British imperialism from the liberation ‘pungwes’ to independent school curriculum and government media (and for those old enough to remember, its impact upon their very lives) and witness to the continuing disparities that colonialism created in independent Zimbabwe, the choice of invoking imperialism was a potent symbol.85 This was especially the case for the rural population still residing in the Communal Areas for whom the unchanged configuration of land ownership represented a constant reminder of the rewards of white supremacy and concurrently the failure of Zanu-PF to make good on liberation promises. Crucially, as government analysts assessed the voting patterns of the referendum, it was the rural areas where Zanu-PF retained the greatest strength. Mobilising strategy was to rely upon the traditional authorities, which could use their position and influence to secure bloc votes for the government. The passage of the Traditional Leader Act in 1998, which restored some powers – at least on paper –stripped by the government in previous years to traditional leaders was a product of the recognition that, since the weak showing of Zanu-PF in the presidential elections three years before, the government needed to find new areas of support.86 In this, Harare actively sought to
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bolster the status of chiefs – like the Rhodesian government before it – reversing the trend towards individual tenure and providing increased state benefits to win their support (though their standing as enforcers of the Communal Lands Act of 1982 allowed for an ambivalence regarding their relationship to the state’s District Councils). Moreover, as seen below, the imperialist discourse proved to be a powerful tool in winning allies among African (and other Southern states) leaders as well as an instrument for sowing doubt in civil society. Unfortunately, the manner in which Mugabe handled relations with Britain (and the West generally) revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the changing politics in the former colonial metropole. Mugabe seemed to believe that, like Zimbabwe, ethnicity was the ultimate source of political mobilisation as witnessed by the ‘kith and kin’ posture of both Tory and Labour governments during the liberation struggle. His government’s calibrated escalation of threats and then violence against the white farming community, which were combined by offers of reconciliation, was aimed at winning concessions from Britain and the international community. As the Zimbabwean government was to discover, the pull of ethnicity and legacy of colonial guilt had only limited currency in the contemporary period.
The internationalisation of the Zimbabwean crisis The Zimbabwean land issue, once contained within the framework of domestic politics, became increasingly regionalised and internationalised after 1998. To a great extent, this was due to the importance of Zimbabwe as a model for agrarian reform in other ex-settler states and the recognition that their shared history conferred a common perspective on deeply rooted issues like land. The implications of the land occupations and the accompanying violence, as well as the government challenges to judicial interpretation of the country’s constitution, for democracy in Southern African states was only glimpsed by a few at this stage. Initially, the ex-settler states of South Africa and Namibia acted with a curious mix of equivocation, fear and support for the Zimbabwean government’s actions. This was despite the expectations of the international community and sectors of civil society within these states for whom the transition to democracy was emblematic of a break with the authoritarian past. South African president Thabo Mbeki articulated a policy of ‘quiet diplomacy’ which sought to privately encourage Mugabe on the path to reform while publicly proclaiming support for his actions. South Africa’s trade and investment interests in Zimbabwe were still
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substantial and the imposition of economic sanctions would impose high costs on South African businesses in the country while there was serious concern that a destabilised Zimbabwe would ignite refugee flows and greater economic chaos across the region.87 Namibia, whose direct ties with the Zimbabwean economy were far fewer, nonetheless was linked through its close monetary and trade links to South Africa. Its president, Sam Nujoma, had a close personal relationship with Mugabe and this contributed to Namibia’s support for Zimbabwean intervention in the DRC in 1998. Perhaps most worrisome about the Zimbabwean situation from the perspective of the African National Congress (ANC) and Swapo leadership, however, was the composition of the MDC – led by black trade unionists and white agricultural interests – which mirrored in broad terms (potentially) discontented factions within South Africa and Namibia’s own political landscape; indeed, there was a visceral reaction within ANC and Swapo circles against legitimising the MDC over the interests of a fellow liberation movement. During the earliest phase of the crisis, Mbeki embarked on the first in a series of visits to Harare to discuss forthcoming parliamentary elections in June. Despite assurances to the South African president, invasions of white-owned farms by self-proclaimed ‘war veterans’ continued with the vocal support of Zimbabwean authorities. By way of contrast, Nujoma was consistently supportive of Mugabe’s analysis of the origins of the crisis – colonial legacies and neoimperialism – and the measures adopted by Zanu-PF to combat these factors. His most notable articulation of this was his vitriolic attack on the British government in front of world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. Mugabe himself instigated, to thundering applause, the most memorable attack on Blair at that gathering: We are not Europeans. We have not asked for an inch of Europe, any square inch of that territory. So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe.88 Mbeki’s failure to adopt the anti-imperialist rhetoric in public settings, in contrast to Nujoma and other African leaders from the region, was accompanied by the numerous efforts to mediate and forge compromises that met with no discernible success. For example, in the buildup to Zimbabwe’s presidential elections of March 2002, South African officials sought to devise a compromise that would stave off further government-inspired electoral violence and resolve the land question in regional and international settings.
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At the SADC level, despite differences behind the scenes, regional solidarity marked the collective response to the Zimbabwean crisis in its initial phase. This position began to change at the August 2001 SADC summit in Blantyre which expressed concern at the effect it was having on the region, and the SADC Task Team which criticised Mugabe in October 2001 on failure to reinstate law and order. Concurrently, SADC leaders sought to punish Mugabe by denying him expected senior positions within the organisation. At a press conference in November 2001, Mbeki acknowledged that the violence occurring in the build-up to the Zimbabwean presidential elections would affect more than just perceptions, noting, ‘If you have elections which are not seen as legitimate by the people, you will have a situation that will be worse than the present one.’89 The response of the Zimbabwean media to this most circumspect of public criticisms was devastatingly personal. What is even worse and a bit sickening is how President Mbeki is reported to be in the same bed with the same architects of apartheid … President Mbeki’s alleged utterances neatly dovetail into Britain’s grand plan for a global coalition against Zimbabwe.90 By January 2002, two months before the presidential elections, five SADC leaders convened an eight-hour face-to-face extraordinary meeting with the Zimbabwean president at which time they sought specific assurances that his government would abide by democratic practice.91 Mugabe was widely reported to have placated his SADC critics with promises of respect for human rights at election times.92 At the same time, the Zimbabwean president began to speak openly at SADC summits of mobilising the black population of neighbouring states to launch their own land occupations of white-owned commercial farms, raising the spectacle of economic and political strife across the region. The rapturous receptions Mugabe and other top Zanu-PF officials received at gatherings around the region, including South Africa and Namibia, underscored his growing popularity with African audiences.93 As much of the Zimbabwean crisis came to revolve around heated electoral contests between the government and opposition, the importance of these events was raised to being emblematic of Mugabe’s systematic violation of accepted democratic norms as well as the regional perception of bias against his government.94 The SADC election monitoring teams (both the regional body and individual states), in contrast with Western and some non-Western international observers, found Zimbabwe’s presidential elections to be ‘free and fair’. An exception was
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the SADC Parliamentary Forum electoral monitoring team, whose stark critique of the systematic intimidation and violence against MDC candidates and supporters, the manipulation of voters’ roles, police bias as well as other violations of standard electoral practice, stood out.95 Southern African governments, with some notable exceptions like Botswana (see Chapter 5), were relatively supportive of their fellow leader in Harare despite the considerable cost in terms of lost commercial activity and refugee flows. In part, this was a legacy of the solidarity politics of the liberation era but it also reflected the fragile compromises between liberation movements and settler communities that ushered in democracy in Southern Africa. And, although South Africa’s policy of constructive engagement had become widely discredited at home and abroad as ineffectual, it remained the touchstone of Pretoria’s approach towards its neighbour. Guiding Mbeki’s efforts was an overarching concern to open a new dialogue with the Group of Eight (G8) in support of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), which sought to reinvigorate continental institutions and promote a development strategy grounded in democracy and market economics. As British government and NGOs pointed out, Nepad ambitions were being jeopardised by the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe. Initially, the international community, naïve and self-confident, assumed that the logic of their position on land was not only selfevident but it would be sufficient to galvanise support within the region against Mugabe. The new Labour Party government in London, which saw itself as a progressive party with no substantive ties to Tory policies of the past, obliged by inflaming the debate in a frequently cited statement to the Zimbabwean government written by Clare Short, the Minister for International Development. I should make clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers. We do however recognise the very real issues you face over land reform. We believe that land reform could be an important component of a Zimbabwean programme designed to eliminate poverty. We would be prepared to support a poverty eradication strategy but not on any other basis.96 Western governments pinned their faith on the South African government as an African state capable, by virtue of its recent experience of
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negotiated settlement and support for neoliberalism, of taking the lead in organising opposition to the violations of democratic practice and rule of law in Zimbabwe. When it became clear that neither South Africa, nor other SADC states would provide the expected leadership or even vocal criticism of events in Zimbabwe, the European Union took action itself. Sanctions were imposed in February 2002 following the expulsion of the leader of the EU’s electoral observer team and entailed travel and financial restrictions on senior Zanu-PF members while the United States introduced the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which imposed many of the same penalties on Zanu-PF elites.
The presidential elections of 2002 and beyond On 21 December 2000, Mugabe declared that the ‘fast track’ land reform programme had achieved its aims and was at an end. Nonetheless, the wave of land occupations continued virtually unabated through the presidential elections of 2002 and beyond that into the next year. War veterans, youth militias and families from the Communal Areas all converged on commercial farms and drove their inhabitants away. Government officials characterised the systemic violations of property ownership and the accompanying violence as the implementation of a ‘fast track’ approach to land reform. Within a few months, however, many of the new occupants had begun to drift back to the city, often leaving behind unplanted fields, culled and unvaccinated livestock as well as damaged infrastructure.97 Others carried on with subsistence agriculture in what had until recently been a commercially viable farm, while reports began to filter out that a substantial number of properties were in the hands of senior Zanu-PF elites. In the build up to the presidential elections in March 2002, the main political battleground shifted from the rural areas to that of the judiciary and independent media. A month after the Supreme Court ruling that ‘fast track’ land reform was illegal in November 2000 on procedural grounds and had ordered the removal of the squatters, Zanu-PF mobs attacked courts and issued death threats to judges. Courts had also been used after the June 2000 parliamentary elections by MDC to overturn constituency elections where the Zanu-PF fraud had been suspected. A trumped up treason charge against Tsvangirai, apparently aimed at stopping him from running for president, eventually folded through lack of evidence but not before he was beaten and jailed. The Law and Order (Maintenance) Act, used by the Rhodesian government to ban political meetings by independence activists and kept by the Mugabe
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government, was replaced with harsher legislation in January 2002. With over a quarter of a million farm workers threatening to tip the balance against Zanu-PF in rural areas, the governing party passed the Citizenship Act which made second and third generation immigrants to Zimbabwe ineligible to vote.98 Expatriate Zimbabweans were also denied the opportunity to cast their ballot. A former military commander took over the running of the Electoral Commission and numerous irregularities were recorded by the MDC, local monitors and independent observers in advance of the March poll. Overall, over twenty MDC supporters were murdered during the campaign itself, though the two-day polling event itself went off reasonably peacefully. The actual tally gave Mugabe 1.6 million votes (56 per cent) and Tsvangirai 1.2 million votes (42 per cent) though the MDC, in conjunction with independent electoral observers, launched appeals on the basis of irregular procedures, fraudulent counting and ballot stuffing. The international reaction to the presidential elections and the atmosphere of violence and intimidation that preceded them was divided. The electoral observers from regional states in Southern Africa declared the poll to be ‘free and fair’, though the SADC parliamentary electoral observers broke away from this position saying ‘The climate of insecurity obtaining in Zimbabwe since the 2000 parliamentary elections was such that the electoral process could not be said to adequately comply with the Norms and Standards of Elections in the SADC region’.99 So too did the Commonwealth Observer Mission, led by Nigerian general Abjulsalami Abubakar, which stated that ‘the conditions in Zimbabwe did not adequately allow for a free expression of will by the electors’ and advocated an ‘appropriate Commonwealth response’.100 The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in London in the aftermath of the Zimbabwean election voted for a year’s suspension. A reluctant Mbeki joined Nigerian president Olusen Obasanjo and Australia’s John Howard in forming the ‘Troika’ of states who were to review and report on the Zimbabwean government’s progress in meeting the Commonwealth’s expressed concerns in the coming year. At the Commonwealth summit held in Abuja, Mugabe’s anger at the unwillingness to rescind its suspension and, concurrently the failure of South African-led attempts to organise a removal of its head, Don MacKinnon, finally caused the Zimbabwean president to withdraw the country permanently from the organisation in December 2003. By 2004, with an estimated four hundred farms left in the hands of whites and reportedly several hundred of their families residing in the cities, the land issue itself had largely receded into the background of the Zimbabwean crisis. In its stead was a naked contest for political
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power, played out both within Zanu-PF and its opponents, the MDC. In the winter of 2005, acting in advance of parliamentary elections, a security operation code named ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ designed to rid Harare’s outlying areas of MDC supporters was launched. It led to the bulldozing of houses and informal settlements, which left an estimated 18,000 people without shelter. The subsequent governmentclaimed victory was widely condemned by the Western countries for its overt violence and intimidation of the MDC but was endorsed by South Africa and the African Union. The MDC itself split into two factions, one wing associated with Tsvangirai and a smaller group headed by Arthur Mutambara, over a decision not to participate in the newly formed Senate. During this period, the economic hardships facing the country continued to escalate, with life expectancy falling from 60 years in 1990 to 37 years in 2006. The economy itself steadily lost ground, shrinking at a rate of over 10 per cent per year from 2002 onwards, unemployment estimated at 80 per cent and its currency experiencing hyperinflation to the point where the Reserve Bank had to issue a new Z$100 trillion note in January 2009. Starvation and hunger directly affecting at least 3 million people stalked the country. Remarkably, despite these terribly adverse conditions facing much of the country, the ability of Mugabe’s government to mobilise support both within Zimbabwe and, most importantly, in the rest of Africa remained intact. Within Zimbabwe, the strategic use of dwindling resources and party loyalties, alongside direct intimidation and fear, continued to deliver support from traditional leaders and from among the rural communities. At the same time, by continuing to decry British and American interference in Zimbabwean affairs, Mugabe ensured that South Africa and to a large extent SADC itself treated his government’s trespasses of democracy and economic problem with kid gloves. The application of sanctions in the IMF, a largely meaningless act in light of Zimbabwe’s inability to meet its interest payments, coupled with targeted sanctions against top Zanu-PF officials and their families by Washington, Brussels and their allies, provided the necessary ‘proof’ of Western complicity in conspiracy to overturn the liberation. However, patience within governing circles in Pretoria had begun to thin, especially after Harare kicked out a Cosatu delegation in 2007 and tens of thousands of Zimbabwean refugees began to stream over the borders. South African efforts to mediate disputes in advance of the joint presidential and parliamentary elections resulted in the promulgation in Zimbabwe of a SADC commitment to new accountable standards in the 30 March 2008 contest. The result was a clear victory for the newly reunited MDC in parliament and (though disputed by a shocked
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Zanu-PF) victory for Morgan Tsvangirai. Predictably, the SADC mediation in late 2008 tilted towards Mugabe and forced Tsvagirai and his party to accept a secondary role as prime minister under Mugabe.
Conclusion Writing in 1981, Stoneman presciently said this about the newly independent Zimbabwean state: Rhodesia has bequeathed to Zimbabwe a highly attractive, if distorted, set of social and economic structures and available living standards, for those who have the opportunity and the desire to possess it. For the time being, many of these structures appear necessary to maintain the level of national production and to restore the country to muchneeded social and political stability. Once embraced, it nevertheless becomes much more difficult to modify or transform these structures. The danger is that the Zimbabwean leadership might be possessed by them, rather than adapting them to the needs of the people.101 However belated and self-serving, Robert Mugabe’s efforts to rectify this situation – a product of the political economy of colonialism and the structure of the transitional arrangement to majority rule – exposed in bold the contradictions of the liberal constitution regime which had served as the model for post-liberation governments. It underlined as well the intimate links between the presumptions of a right to power on the part of liberation movements in former settler states and, as domestic support began to fracture around the failure to meet the promises of independence, the willingness to resurrect old liberation narratives in the service of this aim. The black political elite in other ex-settler states in the region, Namibia and South Africa, facing broadly similar conditions – though, as will be made clear in the following chapters, some very particular and distinguishing differences – found themselves increasingly engaged in a struggle to reconcile their support for market economies with a commitment to social justice rooted in the politics and constituencies of the liberation era. The power of the Zimbabwean example, which fuelled the hopes and fears of land activists and commercial farmers alike in Namibia and South Africa, was to propel the politics of land to the forefront of regional concerns.
3 Darkness at Noon: South Africa
The constitutional entrenchment of a strictly free market-based economy implied by the willing seller/ willing buyer formula could be used to challenge any attempts to address the inequalities imposed by apartheid, and would, as in Zimbabwe, impose severe limitations on land reform. Helena Dolny and Heinz Klug, 1992.1 The pace of (land) restitution has been negatively influenced by the ‘willing buyer/willing seller’ principle. Deputy President Phumzile Mlamabo-Ngucka, 2005.2 South Africa’s celebrated transformation from apartheid pariah to bastion of non-racial democracy has earned it an international reputation as a site of political plurality and market stability underwritten by a liberal constitution. And yet, with the most biased land distribution in the region, South Africa is arguably the country with the most pressing land question and in many ways the one which is most intractable. The African National Congress’ (ANC) wholesale embrace of neoliberalism, coupled with the considerable problems of political consolidation within the framework of the ‘grand compromise’ negotiated between itself and the National Party, preoccupied the new government in its initial term in office. The lack of attention given to land issues in the rural areas, however, did not manifest as a political challenge for the new government until the outbreak of violence in Zimbabwe. The fact that the economic gains of liberation had mainly benefited a black urban elite disguised 75
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the growing discontent among the growing ranks of unemployed and rural poor. The dilemma facing the post-apartheid government in South Africa, like that of independent Namibia, has been the unexpected surge of local publicity, organised protest and even land occupations across the country in the wake of the Zimbabwe crisis. All of these measures exposed to the public what the critics had been aware of for sometime: that the ANC’s established market-led approach to agrarian reform was, even under the best of circumstances, an inadequate instrument for attaining rapid redistribution of white-owned commercial agriculture land into the hands of the dispossessed black majority. Confronted by these heightened pressures, the ANC’s policy lassitude and bureaucratic disarray seemed to give way to a more forthright commitment to agrarian reform. At the same time, there were signs that the fundamental aims of land policy, which, in conformity to neoliberal precepts that guided South African policy since 1996, remained focused on the commercialisation of distributive measures in the agricultural sector. Moreover, the government’s impulse to use the land issue as an electoral device, even if it ran counter to ANC party doctrine, raised questions as to the depth of its commitment to substantive agrarian reform. Finally, for Thabo Mbeki in particular, whose promotion of a transformationist foreign policy in Africa was a key personal ambition, the situation in Zimbabwe raised unwanted questions as to South Africa’s own commitment to liberation era goals.
The political economy of South Africa South Africa’s history of European contact with the indigenous population, starting with the establishment of a refreshment station on Cape point in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company, is one of conquest, subjugation and expropriation.3 The gradual encroachment of the European settlement onto Khoisan land, coupled with the introduction of slaves from Batavia and miscegenation between whites and black, gave rise to a society structured along fault lines of race and power.4 The bulk of the Dutch settlers, seeking to escape the Company’s rule, adopted many of the pastoral practices of the black population to their paternalistic society, which typically included a bevy of mixed race (or ‘coloured’) servants living alongside white families.5 A pattern of conflict and accommodation between the Boers (or, later referred to as Afrikaners) and the peoples east of the Cape Colony came to characterise interaction throughout the eighteenth century as they competed over grazing for cattle and hunting rights.6
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With the assertion of British suzerainty over the Dutch possessions in the early nineteenth century, a new dynamic was introduced into the region. British colonial rule on the Cape reflected the growing liberalist tendencies of empire, a reaction in part to the loss of the American colonies, and sought to govern on the basis of a reformist credo. The anti-slavery movement in Westminster, spearheaded by William Wilberforce and other non-conformists, was a key influence during this period and resulted in a decision to end slavery throughout the empire in 1834.7 The resultant discontent among Afrikaners spurred a wave of migration to the east into the territorial domain of the Xhosa and beyond that, into Natal where the Basotho and Zulu peoples were dominant. Fierce African resistance among the Zulu, coupled with the arrival of British settlers to claim the area, ultimately drove these ‘voortrekkers’ further north where they established two independent Boer Republics outside of the reach or interests of foreign powers in the 1850s. These Boer societies were thus able to carry on their relatively self-sufficient pastoral-agricultural practices on dispossessed land based on a combination of aggressive military action and working alliances with neighbouring African peoples. Large family farms were established and unskilled farm labour was increasingly supplemented by local African peoples who lived on white-owned land (sometimes the very land they themselves had once controlled) as tenants. The discovery of significant deposits of gold in the Transvaal in 1886 coming on the heels of similar findings of diamonds in the Northern Cape, transformed the Boer republic from an economic backwater to a destination for foreign investment, speculation and migration. British capital, bolstered by a growing liberal-imperialist movement led by mining magnate Cecil Rhodes and the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, used aggressive diplomacy to set the stage for a British takeover of the Boer territories that resulted in a bloody conflict from 1899–1902.8 Following the end of the Anglo-Boer war, the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 and, with that, a series of seminal legislative acts that set the stage for the foundations of modern South African political economy and society. For its leaders like Jan Smuts and Alfred Milner, this was to serve as an important source of political reconciliation between the estranged white communities, while for the black population it entrenched systemic discrimination and economic hardship.9 Land ownership and the attendant concerns of agriculture formed one of the pillars of the new Union of South Africa. Building upon the conquests of the previous century, the parliament passed legislation, the Natives Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, which formalised racially designated ownership of land. These acts originally allotted 8 per cent
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(later to be extended to 13 per cent in 1936) of South Africa’s territory to blacks of African origin who represented at the time about three-fifths of the population.10 Land rights for the ‘coloured’ and Indian minorities were primarily governed by provincial legislation and ranged from partially restrictive in the Cape and Natal to wholly racist in the Orange Free State. This legislation limited the black population to a patchwork of tribal reserves, where land tenure was insecure and where farming practices were mainly communal. Furthermore, other measures – mainly labour relations regulations – restrained land tenancy or sharecropping possibilities for the non-white populations on land owned by white farmers. Individual ownership of farms within white areas and communal governed reserves therefore became impossible after 1913, with the exception of a few anomalous ‘black spots’ where private ownership continued. Ironically, much of the thrust of South African government action throughout this period was aimed at managing the ever-present tensions within officially designated white areas where farmers relied upon black tenant labour at the same time that it sought to reduce the presence of black tenants on white farms. This suffocation of the commercial farming activities of the black population was coupled with a policy which restricted the latter to the practice of agricultural activities in the tribal reserves (which later evolved into the ‘bantustans’ system).11 This situation was exacerbated during the apartheid years when the government pursued its policy of resettling ‘surplus’ blacks into the reserves, which further reduced any prospect of sound agricultural development in these increasingly overcrowded territories. Government-led expropriations and displacements of blacks in the name of separate development continued into the mid-1980s.12 Though these measures had as their overriding objective the acquisition of the land by the white population, at the same time they also aimed at eliminating nascent black commercial farmers and ‘retribalising’ rural life.13 The result was the subordination of the African population, which had become a simple production factor for the white industry and its migrant labour system from the tribal reserves. These spatial segregation measures have engendered extreme biases concerning land distribution to this day, resulting in, due to their combination with commercial farming limitations for black populations, important production and wealth inequalities between white and black farmers. At the same time, South Africa was embarking on a rapid industrialisation driven by the technological, capital and subsidiary industrial needs of the mining industry based in the Witwatersrand area. The expanding labour requirements of the mines could not keep up with the white
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trade union’s racially prescribed supply and attempts were made by industry to train black labour up from the ranks of the unskilled miners. This was despite the passage of the Native Labour Regulation Act (1911) which forbid black labourers to participate in trade union activities.14 The outcry, which culminated in a minor revolt by the white miners on the Witwatersrand in 1922, sealed the fate of black labour as one of that which would remain subordinate to white workers in pay and status for well over a generation.15 The Industrial Conciliation Act (1924) formalised racially defined wages, on the basis of providing ‘civilised wages’ for whites, while the Mines and Works Amendment (1926) placed a ‘colour bar’ on skilled professions. The notorious ‘Masters and Servants Act’, which gave white employers extraordinary rights over their black workers, governed relations in the home and small businesses. Finally, social legislation explicitly restricting contact between ‘Europeans’ and blacks was coupled with de facto segregation in many residential and business areas.16 This was despite the fact that Mohandas Gandhi and the Transvaal Indian Congress had won concessions such as the right to domicile from the Union government in 1914 after more than a decade of ardent protest and petitioning campaigns aimed at the India Office and Colonial Office in London.17 These gains, which arguably could have formed the basis for non-racially defined social legislation in the Union and which Smuts in particular seemed to resent, had been largely overturned by 1920. The rise of black resistance and Afrikaner nationalism Though black resistance to subjugation had been a feature of the colonial period, after the establishment of the Union in 1910 it was to assume a new character. The creation of the ANC in 1912 by a group of missionary-educated blacks was in reaction to the pending legislation appropriating three quarters of the land for whites only, and tried to ameliorate the worst features of colonialism through political activism. Though largely unable to stop the tide of white supremacist policies through its petitions and campaigns, the ANC nonetheless became an important political actor that attracted leading black politicians to its ranks. Concurrent to this was the rise of predominantly black trade unions like the International Commercial Union (ICU) which liaisoned with the ANC and was able to organise in both the urban and rural areas. A series of protests organised by the ICU in the eastern Cape in the late 1920s against land expropriation and onerous labour requirements for black tenants won widespread support.18 Internal weaknesses and racially inspired divisions within
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South Africa’s labour movement contributed to its demise by 1933. By the 1940s, the ANC youth league led by Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela began articulating a more strident form of political action in the face of the installation of the National Party’s ‘apartheid’ legislation. An alliance, called the Congress of Democrats, produced the seminal document of the liberation struggle, the Freedom Charter, which presented the aims of the anti-apartheid movement. On the land issue, it stated, ‘Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger.’ Robert Sobukwe, impatient with the ANC’s reformism and links to the South African Communist Party (SACP) as well as other white liberal organizations, broke away to found the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959. At the same time that black elites founded the ANC, Afrikaner nationalism, aimed at restoring Afrikaner power in the face of British hegemony, created the National Party in 1914. Composed of ministers, teachers and railway officials, the National Party was dedicated to promoting the interests of the Afrikaner and it was on this basis that D. F. Malan led a breakaway faction in 1934. By 1948, this ‘purified’ National Party had won power from Smuts, and Malan and his successor, Hendrik Verwoerd, lost no time in instituting their platform of ‘apartheid’ which involved national codification of segregation along strict racial lines. The promulgation of the Mixed Marriages Act (1949), the Population Registration Act (1950), the Group Areas Act (1950), the Separate Amenities Act (1953) and the Bantu Education Act (1953) followed in quick succession. With Verwoerd’s ascendancy to the premiership, the South African government began its notorious ‘bantustan’ policy, which involved the consolidation of tribal reserves into a series of nominally self-governing or independent states that involved more forced resettlement of blacks. And, underlying the entire system were ‘pass laws’ which regulated movement for blacks in the officially designated white areas of the country. The Sharpville massacre of March 1960, when police killed dozens of PAC supporters protesting the pass laws, introduced a new militancy into the black resistance.19 The ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto wi Sizwe (MK), received training and support from the SACP and embarked on a short-lived sabotage campaign in 1962. Though both the ANC and PAC sought to mobilise support by general appeals, it was the PAC, with its black nationalist outlook and its support base in Pondoland, that used the land issue to greater effect, at least in the initial phase of its armed struggle led by the shadowy ‘Poqo’.20 The reaction of
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the National Party government was immediate and harsh. Verwoerd declared that Afrikaners must ‘stand like walls of granite because the survival of the nation is at stake’ and went on to use emergency powers and drastic policing action to round up black nationalists.21 By 1964 the armed struggle was broken at home and a trickle of black and white exiles had fled abroad. Failed attempts by MK to launch infiltration missions followed and, in the wake of growing economic prosperity, it seemed that apartheid South Africa was secure. Revolution and the search for reform In spite of its successes in thwarting overt revolution, it was clear to leading Afrikaner politicians that the settler state had gained only a temporary reprieve. On the one hand, discontent and violence accompanied the forced removal of thousands of blacks from their homes and land across the country; on the other hand, the growing demands of the economy increased pressure to open up the skilled labour and consumer possibilities of the black majority. The urgency to find an internationally acceptable basis for political reform within South Africa increased with the collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1974 and, six years later, the advent of independence in Zimbabwe. Defence Minister P. W. Botha came to power in 1978 and sought to mobilise South African society to counter what he saw to be a communist-inspired ‘total onslaught’ against the country. Part of his programme was to support counterinsurgency groups in neighbouring countries which supported the South African liberation movements and embark on selective destabilisation campaigns, either through direct military strikes by the South African Defence Force (SADF) or through application of economic sanctions. Domestically, Botha followed classic counter-revolutionary strategy and introduced reforms to the apartheid system that he felt would address the social, economic and – to an extent – political concerns of the other population groups. In fact, as early as the late 1960s the search within ‘verligte’ circles of the National Party began for an acceptable formula for managing the changes to accommodate the aspirations of the ‘coloured’ and Indian minorities (black African aspirations were still held to be best managed through the ‘bantustan’ system). To this end, the Tricameral parliament was launched in 1983, which gave proportional representation along racial lines to whites, ‘coloureds’ and Indians (thus guaranteeing that whites retained political control) and met with limited support in the latter two communities. Mangosutho Buthelezi’s Zulu-dominated Inkatha movement, which subsequently was shown to have close ties to the South African security forces, was
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seen to be a potential partner in any prospective internal solution. Botha’s triumphalist visit to Europe in June 1984 signalled for him the success of reform apartheid; however, the outbreak of a new cycle of township-based violence in September the same year whose aim was to resist the introduction of new local authorities marked the demise of this reformist agenda. Led by the United Democratic Front (UDF), which openly professed sympathy with the ANC, the mass movement against apartheid was joined periodically by the newly formed black trade union Fosatu (later Cosatu) in organising great public gatherings against South African government actions.22 At the same time, MK operatives began to infiltrate the country with some success and the sporadic protests of the recent past became sustained acts of violent rebellion. Botha introduced a state of emergency in 1985 and brought in the SADF, alongside the police, to quell the uprising. Rising concern in the West, as well as liberal and business circles in South Africa, inspired the launching of an internationally supported negotiation team.23 The Commonwealth’s Eminent Persons Group (EPG) mission in 1986 hoped to lay the basis for face-to-face negotiations between Pretoria and the ANC that would avert further violence but its efforts were deliberately scuppered by the SADF raid against ANC offices in Botswana. With international sanctions being imposed against the apartheid state and Botha struggling to convince credible black leaders to participate in his increasingly inchoate ‘internal solution’, the pathway between violent revolution and cooptive reform looked difficult to trend. The transition to majority rule South Africa’s transition to majority rule, like that of conflict-torn settler states of Zimbabwe and Namibia, was lengthy, complicated and fraught with uncertainty. The stalemate that ensued after the failed EPG mission, produced a host of clandestine meetings between the ANC and the South African government as well as public gatherings with prominent Afrikaners and white businessmen.24 For an increasingly divided National Party elite, the debate had now shifted from how to win domestic and international support for political reform to apartheid without losing white dominance to finding an acceptable formula that protected property rights and group rights in areas such as education.25 For the ANC, feeling the effects of the dwindling of traditional sources of support in the wake of the thawing of the Cold War as well as a growing fear that it might be frozen out of a future settlement, it placed its hopes on achieving majority rule through negotiations.26 After lengthy
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discussions, the ANC produced the Harare Declaration in August 1989 which laid out its terms for a negotiated settlement: the establishment of a non-racial, unitary and democratic state based on the principle of universal franchise, a mixed economy, the protection of worker’s rights, a programme of land reform, state institutions committed to eliminating apartheid legacies and a non-aligned foreign policy.27 As the secret negotiations gave way to more public talks between the ANC and Pretoria, a surprising degree of common purpose was displayed by the liberation movement and the National Party with both evincing an ambivalence regarding the international community role in the final phase of the country’s political transition. Perhaps this was borne of the recognition that both parties were dependent to a greater degree than they wished on international support for achieving their desired political outcome. This attitude resulted in a unique ‘internal solution’ that, unlike those false starts in Zimbabwe and Namibia, involved all relevant local political actors in the negotiation of the particulars of the transitional constitution (see below). At the same time, the importance of playing the ‘international card’ during the transition and winning international legitimacy for the final shape of transitional political arrangements was always seen as a vital part of the process by both the National Party and the ANC. In the case of the National Party, this sense of ambivalence was rooted in a significant strand of outright hostility to an international community that had never fully, in their view, understood or appreciated the peculiar circumstances of Afrikaners as outposts of ‘Christian civilisation’ in a particularly hostile environment.28 This parochial perception was given deeper political meaning with the pressure experienced from Western governments, manifested in the British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech before the parliament in Cape Town in 1960, which eventually culminated in South Africa’s voluntary withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961. Verwoerd expressed the Afrikaner population’s staunch determination to pursue apartheid irrespective of international criticism. More than twenty years later, P. W. Botha, once junior minister in the Verwoerd cabinet, articulated similar sentiments when standing down the international outcry over South African military action in the wake of the EPG mission. However, by this time, opinion among the white population had begun to shift, reflecting in part demographic changes to an increasingly prosperous and worldly Afrikaner middle class who no longer felt the exclusive pull of narrow nationalism.29 This change was significant enough for F. W. de Klerk to use as a basis for negotiating an end to apartheid without
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losing the bulk of the National Party constituency (or at least amending those lost to the Afrikaner rightwing with voters from the more liberal English-speaking communities) as was demonstrated in the two-third majority given by the white electorate to a referendum on ending apartheid held on 17 March 1992. For the ANC and its followers, the international community was for the most part a lifeline for survival in the many decades of exile.30 International criticism of apartheid, either through international organisations like the UN and the Commonwealth or through bilateral relations of non-Western countries, was crucial to sustaining the liberation struggle. The armed struggle was always seen by senior figures in the ANC as a means to what would ultimately be a diplomatic end to apartheid. Even at the height of the township rebellion in the mid-1980s, the ANC retained its commitment to negotiations – though many of its followers on the ground may have felt otherwise – and produced public statements reflecting this outlook time and again.31 Moreover, financial support from the UN and Scandinavian countries in particular was vital to the maintenance of ANC representative offices in New York and, by 1989, 40 African countries, especially Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola, were sites of political refuge and, in some cases were military training camps for the military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. At the same time, initial hopes of a swift achievement of its objectives had to be tempered by the disappointment with the limited measures invoked by the international community after Sharpville and the Rivonia trials in the early 1960s or the student appraisals in the 1970s.32 Significantly, Thabo Mbeki, the ANC’s international officer, declared that the liberation movement wanted to avoid a situation like the Namibian situation, where principally the western powers got together and put together Resolution 435 and all its elements. (The ANC thought it important that) a negotiation position should be put forward, not by some western powers, but by the people of South Africa (and avoid) being locked into somebody else’s plan, somebody else’s thinking.33 F. W. de Klerk’s announcement before parliament on 2 February 1990 of the government’s decision to release Nelson Mandela and unban the ANC and PAC was a turning point. The changing international environment, in particular the breaching of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and concurrent collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe, had been key factors in the timing of his decision.34 Competitive
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diplomacy ensued between de Klerk and Mandela seeking to win international kudos, with the National Party initially gaining the upper hand.35 Concurrently, the eminent loss of financial support from its traditional sources in the Eastern Bloc and among the Scandinavian countries (the latter statutorily unable to provide funding to political parties) put pressure on the ANC negotiators to wind up a deal as quickly as possible. Western triumphantalism and the public exposure of the failings of socialist economies was deeply influential in shaping the ANC elite’s decision to abandon socialist tenets such as nationalisation of industry and collective agriculture. The price demanded by the leading industrial countries for disciplining the apartheid government and extending promises of material aid to the ANC was a commitment by the liberation movement to embrace free-market principles.36 Besides international pressure and the collapse of the Communist bloc and its underlying ideology, the adoption of a global neoliberal orientation could also be explained by the deteriorating condition of the South African economy. The decades of political conflicts, sanctions, economic boycotts and the high levels of borrowing had taken its toll. GDP growth, which in the 1960s had been second to Japan’s ‘miracle’ economy, stood at 0.2 per cent since the onset of financial sanctions in the mid-1980s while inflation had risen on average by 14.6 per cent per year over the same period. By the early 1990s, the South African government’s expenditure reached 30.6 per cent of GDP whereas tax revenue only amounted to 24.7 per cent of GDP. These factors put significant constraints on the prospects for a post-apartheid government’s development of economic policy.37 Moreover, such policy orientations corresponded well with the interests of a growing professional black middle class and business group that, since the political transition, were in a position to gain materially from the shift to neo-liberal economic policies. For these strata black and white - market-oriented policies offered opportunities such as the prospect of purchasing privatized state assets and gaining access to discounted shares in private companies. With its historical roots firmly in the emergent black middle class, the focus of ANC policy had nearly always been not on revolution but rectification of racially barriers to citizenship and economic activity.38 It is only with the Congress Alliance (grouping the Congress of Democrats, the ANC and members of the SACP) and the development of the Freedom Charter in the 1950s, that socialist policies started to take hold within the organisation.39 The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the opening of negotiations to
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end the apartheid reignited the divisions within the ANC and saw the conservatives – exemplified by a battle between the Mandela-Ramaphosa and the Tambo-Mbeki groups – taking office.40 The ANC, or at least the faction of it that took power, was never devoted to a socialist revolution nor especially committed to social democratic policies.41 The ‘talks about talks’ which formed the outline for a political settlement after 1990 gave way for formalised negotiations at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, Johannesburg in December 1991. The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) brought together the National Party, the ANC, Inkatha and a host of sixteen other smaller parties to hammer out the details of an interim constitution that would pave the way for democratic elections. Initially the National Party saw the forum as endorsing a power-sharing arrangement that would support minority (or group) rights in a federal political system while the ANC was expected to settle on an elected constituent assembly that would draft the new constitution for a unified majority rule state. Other parties, with the notable exception of Inkatha, were only secondary actors whose role was sublimated to the two main parties. In fact, as the complicated and sometimes fractious discussions dragged on, they were increasingly seen to be an elite exercise which was, in the words of one observer, ‘incomprehensible even for the most informed citizen’.42 In addition, the structure of the negotiating forum shaped the strategies of the main parties by providing extremist and parochial interests in the form of the homelands, rightwing or leftist advocates of a voice which tended to pull the National Party and the ANC moderates together.43 One by-product of this was the ANC’s attempt to counter the influence of Inkatha by encouraging, primarily in its own rural redoubt in the Transkei and eastern Cape, the formation of an ANC-affiliated traditional leaders group.44 The Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) went on to become forceful advocates of customary law in communal areas and former homelands in the post-1994 period (see below). Unlike the Namibian case, the South African negotiating process was protracted, though only in part, due to differences between the negotiating position taken by the two leading parties; rather it was the action of hardliners within both parties and the political climate of violence, in which over 3000 politically inspired deaths were recorded annually between 1990 and 1994, that provided the greatest obstacles to concluding the talks.45 Indeed, a comparison of the opening statements on their respective visions of the future constitution by the National Party and the ANC show little divergence on the basics of a liberal constitution which guaranteed private property, individual rights and universal
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franchise.46 The onset of political violence instigated by covert police forces (the ‘third force’), coupled with the rising tide of conflict between ANC and Inkatha forces especially in Natal, brought talks to a halt in May 1991. Evidence suggests that – as was the case in Namibia in 1989 – the South African government embarked on a two-track strategy of public negotiations alongside covert funding operations and a destabilisation campaign against ANC supporters.47 Subsequently, a failed attempt by ANC militants to overthrow a Bantustan government hammered home the delusions of leftist adventurism to the liberation movement while the police role in an Inkatha massacre of ANC supporters in Boipatong township brought in, much to the chagrin of the National Party, a formal role for the UN as observers, as well as explicit American condemnation of footing dragging on their part.48 The result of these two episodes was to bring all parties back to Kempton Park and, despite the murder of a key ANC leader, Chris Hani, in April by white extremists which threatened the country with outright civil war, the interim constitution was finally agreed upon in December 1993. Crucial to the deal was the fact that the National Party had abandoned ‘group rights’ in favour of an individual Bill of Rights while the ANC has agreed to a power-sharing arrangement of five years based on an interim constitution along with sunset clauses for the Afrikaner-dominated civil service.49 The elections, unlike other settler states, were to be organised by South Africans through the Independent Electoral Commission while it was agreed that the constitution would be drafted by a constituent assembly after the elections and voted upon by two-thirds majority. A last minute attempt to involve international negotiators by an ambivalent Buthelezi was summarily rejected by the two leading parties and Inkatha belatedly joined the elections held in April 1994. On the specific issue of land during the lengthy transition, the de Klerk government repealed the 1913 and 1936 land legislation (along with the Group Areas Act) in 1991 and, in response to criticism that took cognizance of the fact that the National Party had to win electoral support among black voters, passed the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act (1993), which created an advisory board on the reallocation of state land to disposed peoples.50 Its support for the codification of property rights into the future constitution was increasingly taken up by its negotiating partner, the ANC. As for the liberation movement, it brought together the ANC’s National Land Commission, the Nationalist Party, the World Bank, civil society organisations and representatives of organised white commercial agriculture, like the South African Agricultural Union, in 1992.51
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Notably, there was a near total dearth of peasant organisations on the list of invited participants to the ANC workshops. This situation was not amended, despite the opportunities presented by the subsuming of the National Land Commission into the Land and Agricultural Policy desk of the ANC’s Department of Economic Affairs. By 1993, a new think-tank, the Land and Agricultural Policy Centre (LAPC), had been established to undertake policy research on its behalf with the support of the international donor community. Its staff was technocratic in outlook and was primarily dependent on World Bank and other sources of foreign expertise, leaving little room for inputs from South African civil society movements, peasants’ organisations.52 The ANC’s evolving outlook on the land question during the transition period was presented in detail by the ANC’s future director of Land Bank, Helena Dolny in 1992. After denying the efficacy of the socialist agenda for collectivisation and state farms based on the experience of post-colonial Mozambique, which required a weighty bureaucracy open to corruption and inspiring capital flight, she advocated ‘demand-led reform governed by the principle of affirmative action and in recognition of the realities of a mixed economy, employ(ing) a strategy of market regulation to ensure that the category of intended beneficiaries of land reform are not excluded from future market forces’.53 While accepting the market approach and preservation of property rights as the mechanism for reform programmes, she warned that the constitutional entrenchment of a strictly free market-based economy implied by the willing seller/willing buyer formula could be used to challenge any attempts to address the inequalities imposed by apartheid, and would, as in Zimbabwe, impose severe limitations on land reform.54 Indeed, many of the criticisms that subsequently formed the basis of civil society attacks on the slow process of land reform were anticipated by Dolny. These include the recognition that it would be ‘excessively costly’ for the state to purchase land at market prices and that addressing the dilemmas posed by communal land tenureship and farm workers would require the introduction of a new body of South African common law.55 More generally, international observers noted the absence of concern for land issues among ANC stalwarts, something that was reflected in the modest attention given to it during the transitional period. Full democratic elections were held on 27–8 April 1994 amidst fears of disruptive political violence which in the end never seriously
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materialised. Mandela and the ANC won 252 seats (62 per cent of the vote), while de Klerk and the National Party secured 82 seats (20 per cent of the vote) and Buthelezi’s Inkatha gained 43 seats (10 per cent of the vote). Of the nine new provinces, seven went to the ANC while two were won by the National Party and Inkatha. Despite the widely hailed success of the transition, the ‘grand compromise’ which ushered in majoritarian democracy in South Africa was based on, as one observer noted, an elite compromise rooted in competing visions of society. For the NP, South Africa is composed of differences – a segmented society, needing power sharing, self-determination of groups and protection of minorities. The ANC took on faith a common society, where non-racialism should be the norm and majoritarianism the natural law of democracy …. For the ANC, the NP’s vision meant a compromise with the old order it was sworn to abolish; for the NP, the ANC’s (vision) meant (its own) exclusion from government.56 These fundamental differences were to sit uncomfortably together in a power-sharing government for the next two years. Indeed, the Government of National Unity (GNU) was itself increasingly seen by the ANC as an obstacle to winning support for its own policies among a majority constituency which expected substantive change in its lives.57 The withdrawal of the National Party from the GNU 1996, at the time of the passage of the new Constitution, spelt an end to the transitional arrangements though officially they were to continue until the 1999 elections.
Democracy and agrarian reform When Nelson Mandela took office as State President in May 1994, his government inherited an agricultural sector deeply divided along economic and social lines. On the one side of the divide was a wellresourced, highly mechanised commercial agriculture sector almost exclusively dominated by whites. Approximately 60,000 white farmers owned 87 million hectares of commercial farmland which contributed for 95 per cent of South-Africa’s total agricultural production and assured the country’s sufficiency in most of agricultural products.58 They employed between 750,000 and 1 million farm workers.59 Commercial agriculture’s contribution to the South African export markets was 5 per cent in value.60 On the other side, 14 million blacks eked out a living in the former Bantustans and reserves, occupying only 13 per cent
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of South Africa’s land, that is, 13 million hectares.61 The large majority of these people were engaged in one way or another in small-scale farming activities, mainly used for personal consumption, though this only represented 16 per cent of their food needs.62 According to the World Bank about 13 per cent of the farm household is engaged in commercial activities as part of their production, though only 0.2% of these households could effectively derive a living from it.63 Furthermore, the study was estimated that one-third of the black households in the rural areas had no access to land at all. Land reform was seminal to the formation of the ANC during its long road to power and featured prominently in its rhetoric during the liberation struggle. Indeed, as noted above, the founding document of the ANC’s fight against apartheid, the South African Freedom Charter, proclaimed that ‘The Land Shall be Shared Among Those Who Work It!’ and went on to say, that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; (…). Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger; (…).The state shall assist the tillers and help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil; (…). All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose.64 Reconciling the ideals contained within ANC statements on land made four decades ago with the complexities of South Africa’s contemporary agricultural setting, coupled with the high level of expectations raised among the black population (and fears, especially pronounced among the white farming sector, of ANC rule) formed the crux of the challenge for the new government. Moreover, as an organisation that had been in exile for many years, the ANC was aware that it needed to better understand the concerns of the South African population and communicate its own changing attitude towards key economic policies as well as deepen its political ties across the country and within the governing apparatus. To address all of these issues, the Mandela government undertook to re-legitimise apartheid-era governmental institutions which it now occupied (in conjunction with the National Party and Inkatha) and, concurrently, to develop policies which reflected the interests of its key constituency without unduly disrupting the economically important commercial farming sector.65
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Building upon the discussions on agrarian reform held during the transition period, the ANC government launched a broad-based consultative process which culminated with the publication of the White Paper on South African Land Policy in 1996. This process included convening a conference which brought together all the national and international protagonists concerning land where preliminary drafts related to land policy were developed. These drafts were formalised within the ‘Green Paper on South African Land Policy’. The latter was distributed widely and written observations were solicited from South African civil society and individual citizens. Moreover, approximately thirty workshops were organised with various communities and lobbies, often located in rural areas. This information then guided the Department of Land Affairs in its efforts to integrate the interests of each group or community to develop a set of laws and programmes.66 Notwithstanding the seemingly open and equity-oriented procedure, the process of consultation and land policy development was both shallow and short-lived. In part, this reflected the desire, especially as Deputy President Thabo Mbeki became more involved in the day-to-day running of executive affairs towards 1998, to exert greater control over the policy apparatus. As the ANC in government grew in confidence, especially with the passage of the new constitution and subsequent withdrawal of the National Party from power-sharing arrangements, the feeling grew that the period of open-ended consultation had come to an end. As Cousins points out: It seems clear that ‘participation’, although stressed in the rhetoric of the time, was in practice taken to mean ‘consultation’. Real decision making power was retained by the ruling party […]. In practice, there was an ‘inner circle’ of trusted groupings and individual, who participated most actively in debates on policy […], and an ‘outer circle’ of stakeholders whose views were solicited but whose actual contributions to policy thinking remained limited.67 This is illustrated by the minimal impact that the National Land Committee’s (NLC’s) ‘Land Reform Policy Proposals’ – which presented different ideas resulting from an extensive engagement with civil society as well as from proposals from NGOs with longstanding experience in the field of land and agriculture – had on the policymaking processes. By 1997, when most of the government ministries had developed their Green or White papers (and the legislative processes made room for implementation), the willingness of the government to listen to new
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ideas had weakened while, at the same time, civil society began to experience ‘workshop fatigue’.68 Furthermore, civil influence over the government’s agrarian policy waned even more due to the fact that many key NGO protagonists had been brought into government positions. The first phase of land reform and the focus on subsistence (1994–9) Initially, agrarian, but in particular land reform, policies were developed which, at least rhetorically, were linked to the government’s post-apartheid economic plan, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The RDP, promulgated in 1994 by the ANC, stated that land reform was necessary to redress the injustices from forced deportations and denied accesses to land. It aimed to find a solution to the overpopulation of certain rural areas of the former reserves and Bantustans and to promote access to residential and farm land.69 Furthermore, the land reform process was seen not only to be a decisive element of the ideological transition, it was also held to be one of the conditions of political, economical and social stabilisation of the country. The importance of this issue caused the ANC to commit itself to redistributing 30 per centof the land within five years of taking office. In order to meet this objective, several economic policies have been developed and implemented since the early years after the first democratic elections.70 For this ambitious post-apartheid reform programme to be successful, it had to provide blacks with access to land, agricultural inputs and, in particular, commercial agriculture in order to create a more equal spatial and sectoral configuration. The starting point therefore was the abolition of the direct subsidies having benefited white farmers during several decades, the suppression of all agricultural marketing support systems and the transformation of the strongly segregated public institutions related to farm development (i.e., co-operatives, financial services). At the same time, given the history of expropriation of land in South Africa, the level of protection and subsidies that benefited the white farmers and the poverty of the majority of the black population, the ANC-led government did agree that specific measures were necessary to develop the capacity to ease the spatial segregation inherited from apartheid. As the negotiated transition had enshrined property rights in the new constitution under the ‘property clause’, every form of expropriation was excluded. Land reform had to be endorsed in accordance with a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ principle and had to be achieved within the framework of a free market that was based upon the core criterion of economic efficiency and was racially colour-blind.71 The adoption of
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this market-led reform, according to the Department of Agriculture, underscored the necessity of the maintenance of the national productive capacities – in order to assure economic stability – without neglecting the imperative of more equity. Accordingly, within this framework, provision for state intervention was made in the Constitution and was embodied in a Government land reform programme: land restitution, land redistribution and land tenure reform.72 Land restitution, implemented on the basis of the promulgation of the ‘Restitution of Land Rights Act’, enabled people or communities which were dispossessed from their land after 19 June 1913 (date of the implementation of the first Natives Land Act) to claim restitution of their lands (or of the equivalent, i.e. other land or financial compensation). In March 1996, deadline of the depositions of the claims, 68,878 individual or grouped demands were deposited. Land redistribution aimed to help previously disadvantaged populations who lacked access to the two previous programmes with regard to the purchase of land. The people benefiting from this programme would be allocated subsidies supporting them to buy land at market prices. Different forms of land redistribution exist: individual or grouped (gathering of subsidies) resettlement, commonage principle (communal access to land, i.e. an entire community uses these subsidies to purchase land, which will then be added to the existing communal land occupied since 1913 or 1936). The Department of Land Affairs – the only Department engaged in this first phase since it focused exclusively on the land aspect – allocated ‘Settlement/Land Acquisition Grants (SLAG)’ of an amount of R15,000 per household.73 These grants were mainly allocated with the aim to purchase land, but they could also be used for agricultural investments (on communal land or on land acquired through the restitution programme) or even for housing projects.74 A number of households, grouped as a legal entity, gathering several SLAG, were then in a position to acquire a plot of land – with a communal property association or trust title deed75 – with the aim to settle or to develop for subsistence. Land tenure reform was the most complex component of the threetiered land reform process. It aimed to define and to institutionalise every existing mode of land tenure. This aimed at conferring precisely defined and more equal rights to the different land owners and occupiers. This programme was primarily concerned with communal land, but it focused also on other areas as well. One example involves farm workers who were self-employed on properties owned by others, mainly whites. Another aim of this programme was the management of stateowned land (i.e. 25,509,004 hectares, of which 13,332,577 hectares
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were found in the former reserves and Bantustans – the rest being mainly rented out or informally occupied). Concerning the land tenure reform, parliament promulgated several acts mainly to protect the land rights of labour tenants (Land Reform
Act 3, 1996) and those of occupants on private land (Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62, 1997) or people occupying land without formal documentary rights (Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31, 1996).76 From 1998 onwards, the main focus of government activity was on developing new laws aimed at improving the security of tenure in communal systems.77 This initiative proved to be highly contentious with key ANC stakeholders in the countryside, namely Contralesa, and provoked numerous protests from these traditional authorities. The key objective was to produce a charter of land rights that was to transfer property rights of the communal lands (which were still recognised as state property) to the actual residents themselves. In keeping with the ANC’s general disdain for traditional practices, this had the effect of reducing the scope for traditional leaders to use land matters as a key instrument of social, economic and political control in the rural areas. Recognising its controversial nature, the charter recommended the introduction of flexible intermediate rights between individual and traditional rights so that these could be attributed to individuals, to groups constituted as legal entities or to communities with democratically elected management committees. The hope was that this would go someway towards reconciling legal imperatives of the constitution with the normative concerns of traditional society. Nevertheless, due to potential conflicts with traditional authorities, this legislative proposal was postponed until after the second democratic elections in 1999. Establishing the legal framework for land and agrarian reform was an important achievement for the new government, especially given the constraints imposed on substantive transformation through transitional measures such as the ‘sunset clause’ for National Party appointed bureaucrats. The main thrust of this first phase of land reform policies, implemented by the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Derek Hanekom, had as its key objective the development of subsistence farming. This orientation accentuated the importance of the impact of land reform and of small-scale agricultural production on the social and economic development in rural areas. In this way, the government privileged food security and means of existence within a country where the inequality of resource distribution was extreme and where the links between black populations and commercial-oriented farming
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were historically broken up. The adoption of such ideas and objectives impacted on the type of programmes developed and implemented. The abandonment of Keynesian-oriented RDP for the neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy framework in 1996, which held out the promise of sustainable economic progress through the application of fiscal austerity measures and export-oriented growth, set the stage for a more general reorientation of government programming. This first phase of land and agrarian reform, with its emphasis on the most marginalised sectors of the rural community, was clearly out of step with the guiding ethos behind GEAR. Furthermore, it failed to address the broader developmental needs of encouraging investment into the rural areas as a means of improving livelihoods. With the formal acceptance of the new constitution in 1996, coupled with the ending of the power-sharing arrangements with the National Party and the upcoming election in 1999, the ground was laid for a rethinking of South Africa’s land reform policies that was to take it into its next phase. Neoliberalism and the second phase of land reform (1999–2004) Thabo Mbeki and the ANC won the 1999 elections with ease, instilling a sense of confidence in the government and its policies. With the National Party increasingly weakened and the other opposition parties scattered, the ANC was able to secure a strong majority of 66.35 per cent and raise its parliamentary seats to 266 (out of the 400). Mbeki, a technocrat by instinct, spoke for many of his supporters when he declared in his inauguration speech that the time had come to get down to the business of long-promised service delivery.78 The appointment of Thoko Didiza as Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs coincided an effort to bring agrarian reform in line with the government’s neoliberal GEAR policies. The result was that the focus of the first phase of land reform, the promotion of subsistence farming, was effectively shelved and the development of an emergent commercial farming sector became the overarching priority. This was reflected in the fact that land reform no longer aimed at transferring land to black household promoting self-sufficiency but had as its objective the creation of a structured small-scale commercial farming sector, to improve farm production, to revitalise the rural environment and to create employment opportunities. The impact of this change in government policy was especially felt in the land redistribution and land tenure reform programmes. Concerning land redistribution, the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme became the main policy instrument
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for the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs (2000). Notably, it did not replace the previous programmes implemented since 1994 but succeeded the SLAG that had focused on agricultural projects. After 1999, SLAG was limited to residential projects alone. The LRAD programme delivers grants to the previously disadvantaged with the aim to facilitate access to private farmland or to enhance (infrastructural) development on privately acquired lands. Even if a section concerns commonage projects, LRAD focuses mainly on the transfer of agricultural land to individuals or limited groups, planning to develop commercialoriented farming activities (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs 2000). To encourage the development of farming activities, beneficiaries have to invest proper funds into the project: contributions of R5000– R400,000 per person, entails to LRAD subsidies varying from R20,000 till R100,000 (according to a decreasing curve). The approbation of the subsidies is not only based on an equity principle, but on the viability of the project. Therefore, a better co-operation between the Department of Land Affairs and the Department of Agriculture has been predicted. The land tenure reform discussions – postponed because of their sensitivity during the second democratic elections – were relaunched by Didiza under the ‘Communal Land Rights Bill’ in 2001 at a national conference in Durban. A draft document was prepared and was published for public comment in August 2002. Criticised by land policy specialists and denounced by the defenders of traditional rights, it was only in April 2004 that a fourth draft was voted.79 The Communal Land Rights Act (CLRA) provided for transfer of title of communal land from the state to its currents occupants. Even though complex procedures for transfer remain – trying to protect community members and rights, including a rights inquiry, community meetings and adoption of community rules on tenure by a land administration committee (which includes the traditional leadership) – the finalisation of the Act was assumed to lead to entire privatisation of the communal lands. Registration of rights and titles would be transferred to individuals or to part of or entire communities converted into a ‘juristic person’ capable of owning land.
Politics and policymaking under Mbeki A number of factors were involved in the changing nature of policymaking on land issues, including Mbeki’s centralising approach to governance, internal changes within the key bureaucratic institutions and an increasingly contentious relationship with civil society. With regard
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to Mbeki, he has been described as a stiff, authoritarian intellectual, coming across as uncaring and distant, and supportive of the idea that embarking on reform through consultations with diverse stakeholders may lead to inertia. This has had an impact on policy formulation, according to his biographer, [During] Mbeki’s government … reforms have tended to be initiated from above, as with GEAR. Thus they are launched by surprise, independently of public opinion and without participation of organized political forces.80 This was particularly the case with the development of the pro-emergent commercial farmers programme LRAD and the CLRA. LRAD was entirely developed by economists from the University of Pretoria, financed by the World Bank, in co-operation with the Director General of the Department of Agriculture, Bongiwe Njobe (a former student of the very same University of Pretoria) without consultation with the Department of Land Affairs. The minister, Thoko Didiza – herself daughter of an emergent farmer and close to the black emergent farmer lobby National African Farmers Union (NAFU) – had sidelined officials with land reform experience and was instead preparing to implement the programme through former staff of the old Department of Agriculture, people with little experience of supporting new farmers schemes.81 Although these measures drew heavy criticism from NLC and the University of Western Cape’s Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), the programme was nonetheless implemented as policy without any debate or negotiation with either Parliament or civil society. More generally, the ANC amended its constitution in 1997 to increase control of the national executive over all structures and re-assert the principle of democratic centralism. South Africa is, since 1994 and, again more particularly since 1999, characterised by a strong power centralisation tendency dominated by the ANC. In 1999 the ANC gained just under, and in 2004 just above, two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, which makes it possible to change unilaterally the Constitution. It won control of all provinces and 60 per cent of the seats in the local government elections. The party list system according to proportional representation has allowed the ruling party to exercise strict control over its MPs and led to a weakening of parliament’s role and limited the space for free debate.82 Another factor was internal bureaucratic changes to the lead departments responsible for agrarian reform. As noted above, Derek Hanekom,
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supportive of pro-poor land and agricultural policies, maintaining good relationships with several NGO networks was not re-appointed to cabinet and Thoka Didiza took his place. Lodge writes, Well before the elections it was evident to insiders that the two politicians were in disagreement over policy. Hanekom had enjoyed a friendly relationship with the NLC, the NGO which represented the cause of the landless people and from which many of his senior managers were drawn, whereas Thoko Didiza … was closer to the black ‘emergent farmer’ lobby.83 Hanekom’s dismissal was also accompanied by a restructuring of the Department and related institutions, characterised by a total shuffle of their top ranks.84 Even though this was presented and interpreted as an affirmative-action measure, in ideological terms it reflected a broader shift of the government towards the Right. The removal, particularly, of those with a background in the pre-1994 NGO activist sector and of deputy-directors Stanley Nkosi and Sue Lund reflect the refutation of the priority given to poverty alleviation through addressing the needs of the poor, the landless and the subsistence farmers.85 Shortly afterwards, Helena Dolny, chief executive of the Land Bank, and Joe Slovo’s widow, were forced to resign from the Land Bank under allegations of racism, nepotism and corruption.86 Although, a commission of enquiry, led by lawyer Michael Katz, cleared Dolny of 11 of the bank’s 12 allegations, disciplinary action was taken against her.87 Even though the South African media were divided on this issue,88 the accusations against her showed in general strong evidence of being politically motivated. Finally, the development and passage of legislation on the CLRA without civil society involvement highlighted a more general trend under Mbeki administration of sidelining that sector. Central to this was the changing dynamics of funding for NGOs in South Africa, which had moved from international sources to a heavy reliance on government. Together with a shift to the National Lotteries Board as main disbursement agency, which the government has significant influence over (instead of existing and more experienced civil society grant-making agencies) and the development of minimum standards for good NGO practices, it was obvious that only registered NGOs, willing to service delivery on behalf of the State, would access funds.89 But government intervened also directly in NGO structures and decision-making. This was particularly the case with the NLC network, since some of their main
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figures helped set up the Landless People’s Movement. In July 2003, the Board of the NLC dismissed the NLC Director Zakes Hlatswayo, in what has been described by the NLC itself as a ‘witch-hunt’. The decision to remove Hlatswayo is seen by NLC’s major stakeholders as being motivated primarily by politics of containment. The board’s strategy, possibly under governmental pressure (through NLC’s network of affiliates), ‘has been to suppress and intimidate the NLC staff who are most vocal in their support for the Landless People’s Movemement (LPM) and its activities, such as the march during the WSSD’.90 By June 2005, the NLC had decided to close its national office and to restructure its network of affiliates. The result of this process was a marginalisation of the NGOs from policy formulation. For example, proposed legislation dealing with the communal land rights was initially planned soon after the 1994 elections, but was stalled and subject to endless redrafting. A final version of the Communal Land Right Bill (CLRB) was approved by Cabinet in October 2003 which included a new clause that was much more favourable to traditional leaders. The memorandum to the bill noted that over 50 consultative workshops had been held to discuss the matter; however, according to Cousins, only traditional leaders and their representative bodies were invited to participate and NGOs and community representatives were unaware of these gatherings.91 Furthermore, during community meetings and consultative session organised by civil society groups, disagreement with the proposed legislation was persistently voiced.92 Most of them were highly critical, arguing that the bill was deeply flawed and possibly even unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the legislation was rushed through parliament on the eve of the general elections of April 2004 and, it is important to note this, the ANC went on to defeat the Inkatha Freedom Party in its once-secure rural redoubt of KwaZulu-Natal. In the build up to these elections, conflicts between the royal house in KwaZulu-Natal and the Inkatha Freedom Party, linked to the weakness of the present local governments in rural areas, seemed to have led to behind-the-scene agreements between the ANC and traditional authorities. Cousins has suggested: The character of the portfolio committee hearings and subsequent passage of the CLRB through parliament confirmed the suspicion that a political decision to pass the Bill had been made at the highest levels of the ANC. Concerted opposition to the bill from the ANC’s partners in the Tripartite Alliance, COSATU and SACP, and from within the ANC itself (e.g. members
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of the Joint Monitoring Committee on the Status of Women) did not lead to a postponement of this clearly controversial piece of legislation.93
The limits of South Africa’s agrarian reform programme A decade and a half after the first democratic elections, the land reform process has still shown relatively little advancement, notwithstanding the renewed focus on emergent black farmers. Furthermore, efforts by the South African government to bring closure to some of the key pillars of the reform process, namely the land restitution programme, faced obstacles. Although the land restitution programme had moved very slowly in its initial phase, the process was speeded up following Mbeki’s instructions in 1999 calling for the finalisation of the land claims by the end of 2005. In 1999, only 3508 households had been given access to 112,919 hectares. This represented the realisation of only 41 restitution claims (i.e. 0.06 per cent of the 68,878 demands). Between 1999 and 2004, when Mbeki started his second term as President, 48,784 claims concerning 118,784 households were settled.94 Nevertheless, since 84 per cent of the restitutions were urban cases and since only onethird gave rise to effective land restitutions (the remaining two-thirds were settled through financial compensation95), only 810,292 hectares were restituted. Presently, according to the Department of Land Affairs, about 1.9 million hectares of land were restored or earmarked for restoration; only approximately 2500 claims would be outstanding.96 The land redistribution programme had not achieved the expected objectives either. The SLAG programme had redistributed 1,082,111 hectares to 109,457 households at the beginning of 2001. Since 2001, LRAD took over and 1,631 projects were settled, totalling 663,320 hectares which involved some 41,000 households.97 LRAD was able to increase its output mainly because it was not as burdened administratively (it was concerned with the subsidised purchase of self-identified individuals and available private land). However, despite a promising start, the process did slow down primarily due to funding problems at government level. Presently, a total of 2.2 million hectares of land are distributed under the redistribution programme.98 The land tenure programme was by far the slowest of the three approaches adopted by the government for agrarian reform due to the inherent complexity and the diversity of the existing forms of
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tenure as well as its political ramifications. In spite of the passage of several legislative acts, little has changed concerning the uncertainty of tenure for most of the black population. Regarding communal lands, though formally made law by parliament in 2004, the CLRA is yet to be implemented. It is presently being challenged by four local communities for unconstitutionality. Concerning labour tenant rights, several civil organisations note that the securing process of the farm workers’ rights through the Labour Tenants Act and the Extension of Security of Tenure Act had, on contrary, increased suspicion of the commercial farmers who feared losing (partly) their land. Although some 103,800 hectares of land were transferred under the tenure reform programme,99 it mainly resulted in the deterioration of employment relations, in an increase of illegal evictions and in the adoption of mechanisation techniques by commercial farmers (with a decreasing number of jobs being the result). In response, aiming at introducing a new system of provision of legal services to farm dwellers, a Land Rights Management Facility was introduced. Fifteen years after the first democratic elections, only 5 per cent of the 87 million hectares of farmland has been redistributed (all land transfers taken into account, including state land). The objective of redistributing 30 per cent of the land has been postponed till 2014. Nevertheless, at this pace, South Africa will not even redistribute 10 per cent of the land by that date.
The changing discourses on land Why has the ANC, which had committed itself publicly to pursue significant land reform, first as a liberation movement and then as a party in power, achieved so little in the last decade? The answer lies in the government’s relatively weak commitment to land issues, manifested in small budgets and low profile actions, as well as – outside of certain constituencies – the general public disinterest in the topic. With only 0.3 per cent of the national budget (R685 million available per year) devoted to land reform, far below the needs of achieving the stated aims of agrarian reform, it is obvious that the government has neither the capacity nor the will to accomplish the enormous task representing the alleviation of land inequalities.100 The administrative complexity poses another set of problems for the advocates of swift action on agrarian reform. Transactions within the framework of the land reform programmes take up to two years. These long bureaucratic cycles serve to limit the number of potential farmers able to benefit
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from the best opportunities.101 The lack of finances accorded to this process also speaks of the poor standing and negotiating ability of the Department of Land Affairs within the government bureaucracy. Despite a rhetorical position on land reform, since coming into power in 1994, the ANC has exhibited little interest in pursuing land and agrarian reform with vigour. Writing in 2002, veteran analyst Tom Lodge said, Politically, land reform has been assigned a low-priority status by successive (ANC) governments. ANC leaders suggest that this neglect accord with public perceptions, that while ‘the issue of land was important for local people’, the ‘central issue’ for most people is job creation.’102 That is certainly a major reason as to why the South African government spends so little means on agriculture and land reform. Job creation in the formal sector is seen as more important and pressing. Indeed, with almost 60 per cent of its population urbanised, South Africa is not a rural country (compared to Zimbabwe, where nearly 70 per cent still live in the countryside).103 Nevertheless, Anseeuw has shown that even though South Africa is an urban country, many of its inhabitants still maintain a close relationship to rural areas. For instance in the Northern Cape Province, where the agricultural sector counts for 22.8 per cent of the total GDP, 60 per cent of the mineworkers keep strong relationships with rural areas; 35 per cent are engaged in farming.104 Even though only few (13 per cent) see agriculture as a professional activity, the majority of those who were planning to pursue some form of agricultural activity (44 per cent of the targeted population) considered it as a means of providing food security, a way of saving and generating extra income when necessary. Underlying this classic peasant strategy of using land as a resource to serve, for instance, as an economic buffer in difficult times, such as unemployment or retirement, suggests that, despite urbanisation, land, rural relationships and agriculture remain important. These findings are all the more important since South Africa has been confronted by economic decline and growing income inequality since 1994. South Africa is Africa’s wealthiest country and remains the economic powerhouse of the region and the continent: its GDP is by far the highest in the continent; only Botswana has a higher per capita income than South Africa’s US$3,020. Among the main achievements, one should note that since 1994 inflation has stabilised and
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economic growth has been positive (between 1 and 3 per cent per year on average, 5 per cent in 2005). There have also been important investments for social and material infrastructures: housing, health services and education amounted on average respectively for 3, 11 and 20 per cent of the national budget. More than 1.1 million houses have been erected through the RDP programme between 1994 and 2003, accommodating 5 million of the estimated 12.5 million South Africans without proper housing; 8 million people – most of whom were inhabitants of former homelands – have since access to clean water and 1.75 million households have been connected to the national electricity grid, increasing the proportion of rural homes with electricity from 12 per cent to 42 per cent.105 A universal pension system and a childcare allowance (till the age of 14 since 2005) are in place. Free medical services are now available to all pregnant women and children under the age of seven. But despite these accomplishments, structural poverty and inequality has been worsening.106 The overall economic results remained below the objectives put forward by the government and growth was still lower than the mean demographic growth of 2.4 per cent per annum. The insufficiency of economic growth is all the more problematic in a country that has bet on economic growth as means of redistribution. The official unemployment rate has risen from 19.3 per cent in 1994 to 23.0 per cent in 2007 with a peak of 26.7 per cent in 2005,107 while the extended rate (which includes the people who are too discouraged to continue to seek actively for work) has increased respectively from 31.5 per cent to 48.7 per cent between 1994 and 2007.108 And while the government’s assumptions had been based on an expected increase of jobs in the manufacturing sector, in fact capital (rather than labour) intensive investments to improve competitiveness in the un- and semi skilled sector, such as the commercial farming and mining sectors, have been predominant. The result has been an increase of production in capital-intensive sectors, such as the chemical industry and services, with no discernible improvement in labour intensive sectors.109 With the focus on employment creation, labour legislation was not transformed effectively: social grants remain very low, contribution to pension funds are still not compulsory, minimum salaries are still not common in all sectors. On contrary, as one of the most controversial trends of post-apartheid South Africa, salaried sectors are characterised by increasing flexibility through out-sourcing and contract work.110 Temporary, if not informal, contracts decreased social advantages, and lower salaries are the main consequences.
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The exercise of a remunerated activity and the lack of social security still does not allow for a large part of the population to leave precarious situations. These negative trends in the private sector are combined with reductions of public expenses and public employment (although relatively stable since, it initially decreased by 5.2 per cent between 1994 and 2001).111 All of this has resulted in growing income inequality and increasing poverty for many black South Africans. The diminishing saliency of race-based inequalities is now being supplemented by growing intraracial inequalities. This situation has led Seeking and Nattrass to declare that ‘class divisions [which] are now more important than race’.112 Several research projects show that the upper class comprising only 12 per cent of the population earns 48 per cent of all income; the middle group comprising 48 per cent of the population earns 45 per cent of the income.113 An older UN study has shown that mean household revenues of the poorest decile have decreased with 19 per cent between 1995 and 2000, whereas the revenues of the richest decile have increased by 15 per cent. The emerging class structure consists of an increasing multiracial upper-class (corporate elites and managerial groups), a middle-class of mostly urban, employed workers and a growing marginalised group at the bottom.114 And, as South Africa’s ‘first (or formal) economy’ lacks the capacity to offer the mass of poor what they expected from the liberation process, more and more have come to rely on their rural networks and communal activities to secure their basic needs. These facts accentuate the dependence of South Africa’s poor on agriculture – as subsistence and social security activities115 – and thus on land.116
Discontent, demands and disorder: South African society responds The desire for land remains a persistent theme among South Africa’s rural poor and urbanised unemployed population. This has been the case with the urban-based who have no access to secure plots (or even semi-urban farmland), with those living on communal land expressing the lack of land for the number of people living on it but also with farm workers and labour tenants, who increasingly face eviction due to new labour and land laws (ironically) aimed at protecting their rights.117 For the long-term unemployed and those without formal employment, access to land is often a last alternative. The slow pace of settlement of restitution claims and
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the limited number of land redistribution projects raises concerns among this group: We want our land back. This was our land. But government is so slow. The entire process started now more than four years ago. Most of us do not have any other income. We really need this land.118 At the same time that black South Africans are experiencing discontent with the slow pace of agrarian reform, the rural white farming community has undergone significant trauma of a different sort due to rising violence and the withdrawal of government financial assistance and security. White farmers have watched with growing trepidation as the once staunch government commitment to the constitutionally negotiated support for the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach has come under public scrutiny. And, ever aware of white farmers in neighbouring countries (especially in the northern region), the spiral of violence and land invasions in Zimbabwe, along with the local media’s portrayal of these events, have produced intense fear and a sense of isolation. The shadow of the apartheid past, whether in the form of legal claims made against dispossession or the spectacle of white farmers being brought to court for their maltreatment of black tenants, remained ever present even while the patterns of land ownership began to slowly change under government policy. The result has been an increasingly vocal debate on land within South Africa society, one which has fuelled a variety of responses to the slow pace of agrarian reform that has raised its public profile as a political issue. For white farming communities, a dominant feature of the postapartheid environment has been the dramatic rise in rural violence especially (but not exclusively) against white farming community. Since the onset of democracy in 1994, more than 1,500 ‘farm killings’ – that is murders of white farmers and their families – have occurred.119 Except for 2002, the frequency of these events has been increasing on a yearly basis. The murder rate of farmers is about 274 per 100,000 – more than four times the national figure. While crime is reportedly decreasing in the urban areas, farm attacks continue to increase at an alarming rate. White rural communities, already experiencing difficulty adjusting to the withdrawal of generations of government financial support and solicitude, have been reeling from this barrage of physical violence within their midst. Though a government appointed task force, working in conjunction with the leading white agricultural organisations, AgriSA (an amalgamation of the old
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Transvaal Agricultural Union and other regional agricultural bodies), was unable to find evidence of a conspiracy in the individual crimes, nonetheless many in the white rural community remain convinced that there is an ANC-led conspiracy to drive them from the land.120 Moreover, even if the motives of these attacks are diverse, their importance as an indication of the breakdown of the social order in rural South Africa and the pressure for reassessing land issue is selfevident.121 Thus ironically, in parallel with the black population’s disquiet with the liberation party’s inaction on land reform, is a white settler discourse of liberation party’s neglect or even collusion with those involved in killing farmers. Feeding into these attitudes was the government’s decision in 2003 to officially disband the commando structure, once the heart of the white settler rural defence system during the apartheid years, which was greeted with deep foreboding by white farmers who saw this as a deliberate step aimed at further reducing their capacity to defend themselves against targeted violence.122 AgriSA’s Spokesperson Kiewiet Ferreira said a vacuum would be left in rural security, which is ‘extremely disappointing’, ‘unacceptable’ and ‘unilateral’, creating an ‘opportunity for criminal elements to destabilise rural areas, with accompanying negative effects for continued sustainable food production’.123 The role of the Zimbabwean crisis, which received significant media coverage in South Africa from its outset, has been integral to shaping local South African perceptions of their own land question. Zimbabwean political exiles and a steady flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees (whose numbers are now said to rank in the millions), as well as local opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance and Pan Africanist Congress, all weighed into the growing chorus of debate on South and Southern Africa’s land situation.124 The South African media have accorded a high profile to farm invasions and fast-track settlement in Zimbabwe. This is in response to widely expressed fears that ‘this could happen here too’; there has been an increase in government rhetoric around speeding up land reform. Nevertheless, media attention has also often focused – and probably emphasised even more – on the negative aspects of the Zimbabwean fast-track settlement: violent social conflict, disorder, famine, etc. Pretoria’s alarm was such that at the height of the first phase of Zimbabwean land invasions between February and June 2000, the state-owned broadcaster SABC provided a carefully managed counter imagery of South Africa’s orderly and (as presented) successful land reform process in its television news reports.125 According to an ANC member of Parliament, the SABC’s
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focus on the negative aspects of such a fast-track reform was in order to calm down the population. On purpose or not, the negative images of the situation in Zimbabwe since 2000, fashioned often mixed reactions: ‘Land reform has to go on, but not in this way. Their situation [of the Zimbabweans] worsened.’126 The heightened public profile of land after 2000 brought the relatively meagre results of the South African government’s agrarian reform programme into sharp focus and emboldened local land activists. Early July 2001, several thousands of people illegally occupied and started building shacks on vacant state land in Bredell, a peri-urban area near Johannesburg. On that occasion the opposition PAC attempted to use the event to raise its own profile, referring explicitly to the unresolved land question and called government to follow the Zimbabwean route.127 Severe government intervention through police and military forces was used to remove the thousands of homeless people within a couple of days.128 The fight had also amassed human rights activists and several NGOs. The same year, the LPM first emerged in the Mpumalamga Province in response to farm worker and labour tenants evictions from commercial farms.129 Since then, the LPM organised branches in several provinces with membership drawn from among residents of informal settlements around towns, dissatisfied land restitutions claimants, landhungry people from overcrowded formers ‘homelands’ and even some chiefs. Several farm invasions and marches have been organised by LPM in support of local struggles as well as in the context of international conferences, such as the World Conference on Racism130 and the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD).131 At the latter, the LPM had invited Mugabe to address a crowd to incite Zimbabwe style redistribution of assets and land. Mugabe’s speech won loud applause from several fractions of the audience, which made policy analyst David Steven conclude “Robert Mugabe – the hero of WSSD!” by stating that the president was the 47th head of state to speak at the WSSD, but was the first one to provoke any audible response.132 This event resulted in several LPM members and NLC representatives – 205 in total133 – being arrested for holding ‘illegal gatherings’ and also attracted the attention of South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency concerned about further organised farm invasions. Increasingly, Mugabe’s land reform policies and his anti-imperialist attacks against the West received public support within unexpected quarters in South Africa. On 13 March 2002, a huge crowd of students applauded Mugabe’s presidential success, even though fraud was evident, at the University of the Western Cape – Cape Town’s historically
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black university. On 27 April 2004, at the inauguration of President Thabo Mbeki’s second term, Zimbabwe’s president received a standing ovation by several thousands of people at the Union Buildings. The enthusiastic welcome for Mugabe attracted considerable media attention and could be seen as demonstrating the narrow constituency that the ANC in government had for its land programme as well as serving as a justification for Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ towards Zimbabwe.134 Nevertheless, even if these events show new trends that indicate the desire of some for a more radical land reform, most of the people were reluctant to act against the law or the state. As one restitution’s claimant – who had been waiting four years for his claim to be processed and was still awaiting finalisation pending approval by the white owners – emphasised, During apartheid, it was the white government who removed us and who took our land. The white farmers were given the land by their government. They didn’t take it themselves. It is thus our government’s task to resolve this problem, to buy the land and to restitute it to us. It is not our duty or right to do so ourselves.135 In fact, land invasions are not new and have been a long-standing feature of South African life.136 It was clear that the Bredell squatters, rather than being members of the rural poor or the intended beneficiaries of ‘land reform’, were in fact unemployed backyard tenants from nearby African townships who were no longer able to pay rent to their landlords. They were, according to James Deborah, not representing the critical mass representing a danger for the nation’s stability. And, despite its high media profile, the fact remains that most of the landless and rural poor still avoid participation with associations such as the LPM. Survey literature suggests that even though 54 per cent of black South Africans would support if the government were to implement more radical land reform measures (including expropriation), the majority of people interviewed are not in agreement with LPM’s actions and ideologies.137 With only 7000 members, the LPM is very much a nascent popular movement whose significance should not be overestimated. Consequently, many still have confidence in their government: ‘Our government is young, ten years is too early. We have confidence in them. Give them some more time. They will deliver. They have to deliver. They know we are waiting’.138 In this sense the ANC’s ‘nation-building project’ has proven to be successful: the poor were being kept on board by
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the party for whom they had cast their votes in South Africa’s landmark democratic elections n 1994. Indeed, at the last presidential elections in 2004, votes for the ANC reached 69.68 per cent (Independent Electoral Commission, 2004), more than the two-thirds necessary to change the constitution. Even critics like Marais acknowledge that the ANC in government has had some success in building the nation in such a way as to obscure the socio-economic fault lines and has thus achieved stability.139 South Africa’s political stability remains a key characteristic and the support for the ANC its most enduring feature. A lack of political alternatives – or at least those without a historical connection to the discredited parties (Democratic Alliance) or policies (PAC) of the past – has lead to the fact that even if the ANC is facing a growing credibility crisis due to a lack of delivery, it is still assured of certain victory in most areas of the country in the municipal elections.140 This has been the case in the latest Local Government elections in March 2006, where the ANC – although it was expected to suffer some backlashes as the pre-elections troubles showed – gathered more than 61 per cent of the total seats.141 But at the same time, the violent demonstrations and other manifestations of public discontent going along with the elections illustrate that there is a wellspring of discontent. A main reason has to do with the dynamics of South Africa’s internal politics. As Du Toit writes, What is coming to light is that we still have some unfinished business from the negotiations of 10 years ago. We do not have a national consensus on what the constitution stands for. We also do not have a national consensus on the meaning of transformation. We need to start talking again. Not to reinvent the constitutional wheel, but to renegotiate the meaning of the constitution, and to find a national consensus on the meaning of transformation. This is necessary before we will be able to deal with the land issue, and others.142 Politically, this frustration led to a blunt repudiation of the country’s leadership during the ANC conference of December 2007 in Polokwane, where the controversial candidate Jacob Zuma registered a landslide victory over Thabo Mbeki and became ANC’s new president. It conveyed a strong message: there is a growing disenchantment with the ‘New’ South Africa. Zuma is widely seen as crystallising the hopes of the many South Africans who feel that they have not
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been able to reap the benefits they expected since the end of the apartheid regime in 1994.
The politics of race and imperialism: The impact of the liberation narrative Mbeki’s curious equivocations on Zimbabwe, land reform at home and internationally have raised questions as to the sources and consistency in South African policymaking on these issues. In fact, they represent an attempt by the South African government to respond to opposing demands – from those strongly linked to confronting a liberal narrative from local, international capital and international organisations to a panAfrican socially oriented narrative from civil society and several African leaders. This gave way to a rising public discourse, led by Mbeki himself, on the role of race and the continuing negative consequences of colonialism on South Africa which ultimately paved the way for a policy review of a key tenet of agrarian reform, that is the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ principle. A first expression of this concerns the ‘re-racialisation’ of South African politics and its approach to the Zimbabwean issue. Under Mbeki’s presidency (whose ascension to power in 1999 was matched with the increasing political and economic problems in Zimbabwe), South African policy towards Zimbabwe was subject to (intentional) contradictions. In the initial stages, while Pretoria resisted domestic pressure to institute fast-track land reform at home, it did not criticise these same policies implemented by its neighbour: ‘We are not going to be combative with Zimbabwe … we will exercise responsibility.’143 On the contrary it is engaging in a ‘quiet diplomacy’ and even in a supportive and constructive engagement with Zimbabwe: ‘[Zimbabwe’s] elections have been credible and legitimate’;144 ‘President Mugabe and I will meet … to pursue the objectives of peace, stability, democracy and social progress for Zimbabwe, South Africa and the rest of the region.’145 Zimbabwe’s land seizures and farm invasions were characterised by Mbeki as a necessary form of redistribution: ‘Land redistribution is a problem caused by colonialism.’146 MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai became so exasperated at the South African strategy that he launched a bitterly worded attack on Mbeki and South African policy at the end of 2002. Tsvangirai accused Mbeki of being a ‘dishonest broker’ and South Africa of becoming ‘part of the Zimbabwean problem because its actions are worsening the crisis’.147 One reason for Mbeki to have taken up this seemingly contrary position of support for Mugabe and his policies, against those being
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perpetrated in South Africa, lies in the convergence between the politics of race and neoimperialism. As McKinley (2003) writes, for the majority of the white population and the predominantly white political opposition in Southern Africa, Mugabe’s land programme is viewed as a disingenuous and politically motivated attempt to maintain power at the expense of white Zimbabweans. The North is against Mugabe, the South is pro. This has been confirmed by the fact that the participants of the Summit of the Non-Alignment Movement held in Tanzania in 2003 gave unqualified political support to the Mugabe regime at virtually the same time that Australia, Britain and the United States were successfully pushing for the renewal and extension of ‘smart sanctions’ against Mugabe and his cronies. According to such an approach, the racial solidarity would be the driving force behind policy stances of African leaders, including Thabo Mbeki, towards the Zimbabwe crisis. This racial perspective is highly influential and reflects an omnipresent white-black opposition narrative among black South African elites. The ANC-led South African government would never support the only significant opposition party to Mugabe – being the MDC – as it represents and is seen as supporting white farmers’ interests.148 Supporting the MDC would be in contradiction with the solidarity principles of South Africa’s and Zimbabwe’s common liberation struggle against the white settler. Mugabe still represents for the South African political leaders, in particular the ones who were in exile, one of their main ‘comrades’, partner in South Africa’s liberation struggle. Gutto writes, His country was an important and strategic member of the frontline nations during the liberation struggles in South Africa. It was home to many in the external wing of the liberation movements – ANC, PAC and Azapo. It not only offered strategic logistical advantages to the political and military aspects of the struggle, it was also a victim of the military onslaught by the forces of apartheid regime, in the same way as Mozambique, Lesotho, Botswana and Zambia.149 Furthermore, rumours circulating in ANC circles that the MDC was mainly financed, along with support from international associations, by South Africa’s Democratic Alliance contributed to its staunch support for Zanu-PF as did the fear of local trade union activism inspired by the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Union’s role in the MDC. But Mbeki and the South African government have taken this position even further. First of all, as Dlamini-Zuma stated in February 2003, ‘we will never criticise Zimbabwe.’ As such, the South African government
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not only identified Zimbabwe’s 2002 presidential elections as legitimate, they never did condemn the Zanu-PF organised urban clearings during the so-called operation Murambatsvina soon after the disputed parliamentary elections on 31 March 2005, leading to more than 300,000 people being displaced in about 45 locations, with more than 23,000 people arrested and creating an open political oppression.150 Although cranking up emotions against the Mugabe regime nationally and elsewhere on the continent (particularly in South Africa where the poor southern neighbours where negatively affected by the influx of millions of Zimbabweans who were taking their jobs, were accepting lower wages, etc., inducing a wave of xenophobia151), Mbeki was the first to acknowledge Mugabe’s victory and lobbied other African leaders to recognise Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s head of state after the last runoff presidential elections on 27 June 2008.152 Furthermore, presenting South Africa as a liberal country, which itself is in a sorry state regarding land reform, while implementing sanctions against Zimbabwe’s regime, even if they are socalled smart sanctions, would be against South Africa’s moral principles. Mbeki himself repeatedly opposed punishment of Mugabe’s regime by the international bodies (such as the UN Human Rights Commission), which, as he stressed, would mainly affect the poorest. In March 2003 he even tried to have Zimbabwe readmitted to the Commonwealth, and at the Commonwealth gathering in Abuja in late 2003, he wanted Mugabe invited, and even attempted to punish the Commonwealth’s secretarygeneral, Don McKinnon, for not doing so, by trying to get the latter replaced.153 For Pretoria, Mugabe’s land policies represent a genuine, if at times misapplied, attempt to address what Mbeki calls ‘one of the enduring legacies of colonialism’, namely large-scale white ownership of land. Mbeki has increasingly pushed race to the forefront of the political debate in South Africa and has repeatedly clashed with Tony Leon, leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), on the issue. Presidential tirades accusing South African whites of failing to support democracy and that their continued racism was preventing the building of a new non-racial society. White South Africans have been, in his words, engaging in a Cold War because they are ‘unwilling to accept the end of white minority rule’.154 They say they are ‘in favour of change’ … They say they support the objective of building a democratic South Africa but view the popular support our movement enjoys as a threat to democracy. […] They say they support the creations of a non-racial society but are
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opposed to affirmative action and black economic empowerment, which they denounce as being nothing more than the perpetuation and entrenchment of ‘crony capitalism’. Notwithstanding that post-apartheid South Africa was declared to be a ‘rainbow nation’ and that the ANC’s Freedom Charter states that South Africa ‘belongs to all who live in it’, the matter of race is moving back to centre stage (if it had ever left). The question of citizenship and its intertwining with race has become increasingly common in contemporary South African discourses: for instance, the publication of the ANC’s national general council discussion document on the ‘National Question’ and the founding of a black intellectual society, the ‘Native Club’.155 If the Freedom Charter deals with the liberation of Africans in general and blacks in particular, the ANC discussion document argues above all that the ‘rainbow nation’ is a nebulous concept at best. The leader of the Democratic Alliance, whose membership has a large proportion of white South Africans, sees attempts to stifle criticism of government policy by ANC stalwarts like Molefi Sefularo who posed the question, ‘Are you truly African?’.156 According to the latter, the ANC, through ANC MP Molefi Sefularo,157 attempts to justify the party’s view by posing the question ‘are you truly an African?’ Directly related to the land question, is once again the Dolny saga. Entirely linked to the shift of policies towards GEAR and, concerning the agricultural sector, to LRAD, the Dolny saga was nonetheless seen by many to be proof of the racialist outlook of the government. The South African media were divided along clearly racial lines.158 This was confirmed by former Land Affairs Department sources who claimed that there had been concerted efforts to rid the department of the white – indeed leftist – wing. These observations are evidence that the racial divide debate is not that impoverished, but on the contrary is reviving because of Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform and Mugabe’s opposition towards whites’ occupation in Africa.
South Africa’s ‘fast-track’ agrarian reform: Radicalism, reform or defusing the crisis? Against the background of Zimbabwean crisis and the local pressure which had built up in its wake, the South African government began to shift its rhetoric and, with that its policies. In January 2004, Mbeki signed legislation allowing the government to expropriate land without court approval, providing that landowners are fairly compensated and could
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contest the process in court. The Act required that the compensation and time and manner of payment for expropriations should be determined by agreement or by the Land Claims Court. At the same time, Mbeki announced that his government planned to redistribute 30 per cent of commercial farmland currently owned by white farmers to landless blacks by 2014. He also announced that all restitution claims would be finalised within the next three years. The immediate priority was then to conclude the legal settlement of all outstanding claims by March 2008. The minister had set up a task team, led by the Chief Land Claims Commissioner, to assist in further refining the existing implementation plan. Other task teams were put into practice at provincial level, including decentralised structures of the Department of land Affairs. Additional budget was allocated in order to finalise the programme: Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in his budget speech earlier that year indicated that an amount of R6 billion had been allocated to provinces to complete the land restitution process in the next three years. In addition, the government confirmed that it was considering classifying landowners in South Africa in terms of their race and nationality. The Beeld newspaper earlier published a report claiming that existing land legislation could be amended to allow information on race and nationality to be shown on owners’ title deeds. Although, the Government emphasised that this was being done purely to help it gauge the pace of land reform, Democratic Alliance land affairs spokesperson Maans Nel warned that such classification ‘risks becoming another form of institutionalized apartheid we have worked so hard to abolish’.159 Nevertheless, a Panel of Experts on Foreign Ownership of Land (PEFOL), directed by Shadrack Ghutto, was commissioned by the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs in August 2004 to investigate the development of policy on the regulation of ownership of land in South Africa by foreigners. The final report released in August 2007 stated (as was indicated in the preliminary report that was circulated for debate on 17 February 2006) that there would be no short-term moratorium on the sale of land to foreigners or expropriation of land belonging to non-citizens, but there would in future be regulations aimed at reducing speculative activity.160 Although the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs said that the impact of foreign ownership was mainly limited to the Atlantic seaboard in the Cape and areas abutting on game reserves in Limpopo, this initiative answered to a strong and growing public opinion and impression that more needs to be done, and be so done at a faster pace.161
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But the most important developments were the outcomes of the government-sponsored National Land Summit held in July 2005. The Land Summit was called for by the SACP in its 2004 ‘Red October’ campaign and was preceded by a series of provincial land summits which ostensibly prepared the ground. While the SACP occupied symbolically several municipal plots, the approximately 4,000 participants drawn from government and academia to international organisations and other sectors in South African civil society recommended that land reform be sped up. Even though there was intense disagreement on the best ‘model of land reform’, those who favoured the market-based approach or the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ model – including the World Bank, the state, some tribal leaders and commercial farmers – formed the minority.162 By the end of the Land Summit a wide range of resolutions called for by civil society organisations were adopted, including the rejection of the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ principle as the basis for land reform; the proactive acquisition of land using expropriation when necessary; and a moratorium on the eviction of farm dwellers. The Land Summit led the recently appointed Deputy President to reject publicly the market-based ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ policy as the basis on which redistribution must proceed. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka declared that [l]and reform in South Africa has been too slow and too structured. There needs to be a bit of ‘oomph’. That’s why we may need the skills of Zimbabwe to help us. On agrarian and land reform, South Africa should learn some lessons from Zimbabwe – how to do it fast.163 Following the Land Summit, the government announced that it would be seizing a white farmer’s land on 3 August 2005. South Africa was then planning, for the first time, to expropriate a white-owned farm and transfer the land to black owners, after the Land restitution Commission notified an expropriation notice would be served on a cattle and crop farm in the North West province.164 The Provincial Land Restitution Commissioner confirmed this and added on 27 September of that same year that five more farms were listed for expropriation, if landowners continued contesting the process after receiving the restitution notice.165 Since then a Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) and an Expropriation Bill have been approved by Cabinet in 2007. If PLAS allows local government to proactively acquire agricultural land, the Bill – repealing the Expropriation Act 63 of 1975 – provides for the expropriation of property both for public purposes and in the public interest (including for land reform).
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Within the media there were alarmist reports that ‘South Africa’s 50,000 white farmers are threatened with forced land expropriation after a government land summit called for a “fast-track” programme of redistribution’166 with some experts announcing that the latest declarations heralded a new, aggressive effort to start a moribund land redistribution programme. However, as Cousins points out, the expropriation threat appeared to be limited and these cases reflected a move by the government to resolve a long-simmering dispute, which did not – in opposition to the Zimbabwean expropriation cases – involve the overturning of or changes to the law.167 It signals, however, a more intensive effort to increase the rate at which white-held lands were transferred to blacks through a greater use of the existing mechanisms. The fact that the SACP and Cosatu – the largest trade union federation, both part of the tripartite alliance forming the government – are showing real interest in land and agrarian reform should renew pressure for fundamental changes in government policies and implemented measures. However, despite these concerns of Zimbabwean-style expropriations, a closer reading of events suggests that the Mbeki administration has taken a pragmatic approach to the land issue, seeking to address it in a substantive way as rapidly as possible while staying within the boundaries of constitution. This has been apparent from Mbeki’s interventions aimed at calming public opinion and rectifying his Deputy President’s statements after the Land Summit. The new Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana, under obvious pressure of the president, emphasised before parliament that the South African constitution respected property and that Zimbabwean-style expropriation is thus excluded.168 As such, no steps have been taken towards enacting the majority of the latest proposals in precise policy or law. Although a draft and very incomplete – as it did not define specific approaches, measures or instruments – expropriation policy was developed by the Department of Public Works in November 2007, neither PEFOL nor PLAS were subject to any developments. Analysts of the Right and the Left, while disputing some of the substance of the land issue, nonetheless agree on the commitment of the Mbeki government to the constitution. For instance, Lourie Bosman, the president of Agri-SA, believes that the government has no intention to amend the South African Constitution, as this would do untold damage to its international image. The latter is of extreme importance for Mbeki and his close collaborators, South Africa’s old and new elite. Speeding up land reform through amending the constitution would destroy South Africa’s continental initiatives, in particular the New Economic
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Partnership for African Development (Nepad). The government’s approach towards the Zimbabwe crisis reflects these imperatives: Mbeki’s objective, while trying to minimize the negative impacts of the Zimbabwean crisis, is securing the strategic interests of South African capital whilst simultaneously consolidating his government’s role as the main African arbiter of both a regional and continental capitalist political economy. The installation of a ‘new look’ ZANU-PF government that is more ‘acceptable’ to the international financial institutions and the core capitalist states in the North, will be a double success for Mbeki, further cementing South Africa’s position as sub-imperial power number one in the neighbourhood.169 Such a unilateral approach would hurt South Africa’s image as an accountable intermediary for foreign investment; it would also harm its legitimacy as the leading state on the continent regarding international political economy. For some critics of the Left, South Africa’s foreign policy towards Zimbabwe is the fulfilment of a hegemonic project driven by the combined and complementary class interests of South Africa’s emergent black and traditional (white) bourgeoisie (whether located in the public and/or private sectors). Avoiding a total decline of the Zimbabwean economy has made it possible to at least partly offset the negative consequences on the South African economy, the impact on national macroeconomic features,170 decreased export towards Zimbabwe171 and on the increased migration of Zimbabweans towards South Africa172 while theoretically opening up investment opportunities for the South African companies.173 The South African economic ‘rescue package’ mooted in 2000 and the ever-present possibility that Eskom, the South African power parastatal to whom Harare owed considerable sums, would be authorised to cut off electricity to Zimbabwe did not materialise. More recently the private discussions held in late 2005 between the South African Treasury and its Zimbabwean counterparts, the latter led by Gideon Gono, were a setting for explicit demands that South African financial assistance be made available on condition that a negotiated power-sharing arrangement with the opposition would commence.174 By this late stage, the willingness of South African officials to pressure erstwhile comrades in Harare, matched by public meetings with the opposition MDC leadership, underscored the exasperation felt by Mbeki at the Zimbabwean government’s intransigence. At the same time, with the domestic agrarian reform programme taking shape, Pretoria was beginning to exhibit greater confidence in its
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ability to manage land issues at home without suffering any additional spillover from its policy towards Zimbabwe.
Conclusion In the end, though the South African government has accorded a high profile to agrarian reform after 2000, land distribution and lately land expropriation have been the few effective moves to achieve these stated aims. The promotion of commercial farm settlement on private land through LRAD is still the main feature of South Africa’s land reform programme and even the widely publicised commercial farm that has been earmarked for expropriation is, as of today, still not in the hands of the black beneficiaries. It seems that these measures represent efforts to quell mounting criticism of land reform policies rather than indicating a fundamental shift in policy. On contrary, it seems that the government does still not see equal land distribution and land reform as main objectives, but rather utilises the latter to attain various goals. The latter are often strongly linked to self-empowerment: all major government achievements related to land were realised before a major election and were accomplished to gather the support of potential voters. As such, the signing of the legislation allowing the expropriation of land without court approval and the organisation of the Land Summit where the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ principle was rejected took place within weeks of national and local elections in 2004 and 2006. In addition, the controversial approval of the Communal Land Rights Act – once again before the presidential elections of 2004 – occurred against the backdrop of an agreement with Kwazulu-Natal’s traditional authorities. By voting in legislation that extends the power of traditional authorities, the ANC was able to outmanoeuvre the Inkatha Freedom Party and use their support to take control of the province. Lastly, the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS), the work related to Foreign Ownership of Land (PEFOL) and the Expropriation Bill, all launched since 2007, have not led towards any significant steps aiming at enacting them in policy, law or concrete measures. The real fundamentals, ethics and objectives behind the South African government’s land reform policies still bear questioning. Similar question marks exist around Zuma’s approach to South Africa’s land and agrarian reform. Considered to be closely associated with the ANC leftwing, the party’s new president and forerunner in South Africa’s presidential elections is seen as an active promoter of agricultural and land reform and projects millions of South Africa’s poorest to return
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to the rural areas. While directly criticising the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ model, ANC’s head of policy, Jeff Radebe, notes, Jacob Zuma is very passionate about rural development. He will champion this vision for sustainable livelihoods for our masses. (…). For Zuma’s ANC, food security is dignity.175 ANC rumours around his future plans emphasise the establishment of a super ministry in the presidency to engage in rural development, an increase of 400 per cent to the current total land reform budget and the redistribution in five years of the 10 per cent remaining land of the latest 15 per cent target.176 However, Zuma’s policy statements changed drastically when he visited the United States in October last year. On that occasion, Zuma focused on improving commercial ties between the two countries and on the opportunities available within South Africa for Western and particularly US investors. To the issue of some foreign investors being worried that Zuma will bow to pressure from his communist and trade union allies to steer South Africa away from former president Thabo Mbeki’s pro-business policies, Zuma assured that it would be ‘business as usual’. He continued by stressing, ‘So there should be no worry. The situation is going to continue normally. […] I have absolutely continued to say that I would change no policies if I became president.’177 As such, one critic noted, […] his visit was designed to calm the waters – and uncertainties relating to his presumptive State Presidency – rather than to make waves. In this regard he went to considerable lengths before his major Washington audience at the Council on Foreign Relations to indicate that there would be ‘no change’ of broad economic policy and political direction under his leadership.178 Once again, it seems that the land issue in South Africa is linked to pre-elective discourses and promises. The effective implementation of concrete measures reflecting an effective structural change remains uncertain.
4 A Distant Thunder: Namibia
Let us keep in mind that today is Zimbabwe and tomorrow could be Namibia. Press statement released by the Namibian National Farmers Union and Namibian NGO Forum, 24 May 2000 An announcement by Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab on 26 February 2004 that the Namibian government would begin to expropriate white farms triggered fears that Namibia may witness the kind of violence that accompanied Zimbabwe’s fast-track approach to land reform in 2000. After years of relative quiet, land reform re-emerged as a defining issue in Namibian politics. Despite more than a decade of independence and majority rule, nearly 200,000 black subsistence farmers and tenant labourers remain mired in poverty. Now radical elements both within and outside the ruling South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) are pointing to the continuing failure to redress the vastly disproportionate patterns of land ownership between black and white Namibians, and are pressuring the government to adopt Zimbabwean style ‘fast-track’ land reforms. This heightened government rhetoric has alarmed the country’s 4,200 white commercial farmers and, increasingly, international investors. Perhaps more so than other Southern African countries, the land question in Namibia is intimately linked to historical conflict between not only colonial forces but also among black Namibians themselves. It was this recognition of the potentially destabilising nature of land that played a part in the promulgation of the post-independence policy of national reconciliation. At the same time, however, the government’s commitment to land reform remained a key platform of its programme and as 120
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such it embarked on a policy of land purchase based upon the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ model and the subsequent resettlement of black families on that land. In addition, it established an agricultural credit bank that extended preferential loans to black commercial farmers starting out. The resettlement programme’s slow pace of institutionalisation and acquisition, disputes with the government over price and quality of land made available by white farmers, the emergence of populist voices calling for swifter action and, crucially, the crisis in Zimbabwe brought the issue back into the public eye. Where it was once barely a subject of vocal concern among politicians, by 1999 the land issue had become a source of division and disagreement between the government, the white farmers and a range of pressure groups as well as political opportunists. At the same time, some observers question the actual importance accorded to the land issue and whether its elevated status in the realm of public debate reflects primarily the media and donor interests or if it serves as a proxy for socio-economic concerns more generally.
The political economy of colonial Namibia The issue of land has been a key motif in Namibia’s modern history. A country where sparse rainfall increases as one moves northwards, Namibia’s harsh environment offers only limited opportunities for agriculture and the raising of pastoral livestock. Poor quality soils (‘sandveldt’) combine with annual rainfall of under 250mm in over 30 per cent of the country, while only 6 per cent in the Otavi highlands has the requisite soil (‘hardveldt’) and rainfall to make it suitable for mixed farming.1 In the far north, where rainfall is more variable and Okavango flood plain dominates, mixed agriculture has been practiced for generations. Marginal lands in the rest of Namibia can support livestock but cyclical drought places restrictions on commercial exploitation of cattle and sheep so that in some areas only small stock are raised. Historically, these adverse environmental conditions have impacted upon settlement patterns by peoples in the country and consequently shaped the political economy of colonialism and its aftermath. Against a backdrop of incursions from the Cape by successive waves of migrants from the San, Nama and ‘Basters’ driven from their lands in the south by European settlement and Bantu migration from the east, the German missionaries moved into the central highlands of Namibia in the mid-nineteenth century. Their engagement with the local peoples, particularly the Nama and Hereros, was marked by contradictory impulses ranging from introducing conventional conversion strategies,
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the pursuit of commercial activities (and even arms sales) and meddling in local politics. Indeed, to an extent they became factors in an ongoing struggle between the Nama, Damara, Herero and ‘Basters’ over land and cattle. The particulars of this period are best dealt with elsewhere but it was this formative interaction that set the stage for concerted external intervention in the late nineteenth century. Following the formalised division of the African continent at the Berlin Conference of 1884–5 (and confirmed again in 1890), German occupation of what was to become known as South West Africa began in earnest. The displacement of the Herero, Nama and Damara peoples from the areas under their suzerainty at that time was a process that involved conquest, treaties and economic relocation over a decade and a half.2 German settlers met with scattered resistance but were able to defeat challengers and in fairly rapid succession establish fortified towns, farms and the beginning of a national railway network. Driven to marginalised lands to the east and suffering further losses in the wake of the rinderpest outbreak, Herero leaders began to plan an uprising designed to oust the invaders. Their entreaties to the Nama, Damara and ‘Basters’ to join them in the rebellion were ignored and, consequently when they launched the campaign on 26 August 1904 they were acting alone.3 Initially, the Herero sought to spare German women and children, but these sensibilities were soon lost as the conflict slipped in an increasingly brutalising pattern of massacre and counter massacre. The arrival of Lt. General Lothar von Trotha marked a change in German strategy and the onset of a genocidal policy which, following the seminal defeat of the Herero at the battle of Waterberg in 1904, involved systematic rape, torture, execution and starvation that resulted in the death of an estimated 80,000 Herero.4 Pushed to the semi-arid region to the east of their former lands and having lost over half of their population, Herero society was seemingly poised to collapse altogether. A belated rebellion by the Nama in 1907 that resulted in 20,000 deaths (half the population) was crushed by the colonial forces and thereafter the Nama and Damara (as well as the San) were consigned to marginal lands in both the south and northern parts of the country. A settler economy developed in the former Herero, Damara and Nama hinterlands based primarily upon cattle ranching and limited agriculture through use of irrigation or borehole water. It was reliant upon cheap labour from the black population and depended upon either guaranteed market price and/or subsidies from government sources in order to cope with the arid conditions and uncertain weather patterns
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of the region. Farms of an enormous size were granted by the colonial government, reflecting both its relative abundance and the need for large grazing pastures to sustain cattle rearing. At the same time, the authorities in Berlin recognised that their security presence in the colony was limited and consequently imposed a territorial division on South West Africa which allotted the bulk of the central region to the settlers, territories for each statutory ethnic group in the surrounding areas and, crucially, consigned the northern half of the country as a ‘tribal reserve’ consisting of over 300,000 square kilometres of land. This had the effect of consigning the now majority Ovambo people to the northern central area of the country where summer rains fed ‘shonas’ (water pans) allowed for pastoral and agricultural livelihoods while the minority Himba, Caprivians and Kavango peoples had access to the relatively well-watered lands along, respectively, the Kunene and Kavango rivers.5 The inability of German authorities to bring the north under effective control caused them to pursue a policy of indirect rule through tribal structures while assuming direct control over the rest of the territory below, known as the ‘police zone’. The South African occupation in 1915 of South West Africa and the subsequent granting of the territory to Pretoria as a League of Nations mandate introduced a new and ultimately defining dimension to the situation. The South African administration of the territory had a profound effect on the emerging economy through its support of white settlement and promotion of an export orientation, its concurrent relegation of black Namibians to the status of unskilled labour for commercial agriculture and the mining industry and its eventual incorporation into the political structures of separate development, or apartheid. Resettlement of the Angola Boers, or ‘Dorsland trekkers’, in the 1920s coupled with immigration by South Africans to the territory continued to boost the fortunes of the white population at the expense of its black inhabitants. The South African government, which increasingly administered the territory as a ‘fifth province’, provided considerable financial inducements to commence farming and these were to play a critical role in establishing a network of white-owned commercial farms across the central region. By the end of the Second World War, nurtured on this constant diet of government subsidies and guaranteed prices through state-run marketing boards, white commercial agriculture had risen ‘from survival to moderate affluence’.6 Nonetheless, even as early as the 1930s, agronomists were warning the government that cattle rearing on commercial farms was having a deleterious effect upon the environment
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such that it would be unsustainable in the long run. The cycle of boom and bust, be it due to drought or price fluctuations and the accompanying pleas for government assistance, became a feature of commercial farming in the territory through much of its history. On the ‘tribal reserves’ in the ‘police zone’, the plight of the black population was increasingly dire. Subsistence agriculture and pastoral activities, coupled with population growth, put pressure on already marginalised land and led to instances of malnutrition and starvation in poor years. In fact, less than a fifth of the population in the ‘police zone’ actually resided on the reserves, preferring either working in the urban centres, on white commercial farms as tenants or serving as itinerant labourers.7 Farm workers living on white commercial farms were governed by the onerous ‘masters and servants’ law, which gave white employers proprietary rights of discipline and expulsion over their workers. Labour remittances became a necessity for many families barely able to feed themselves off of the land. An exception to aspects of this were found in Ovamboland (as well as Okavangoland and Caprivi) where better environmental conditions provided some scope for viable subsistence farming though population densities coupled with official exclusion from commerce to the south increasingly forced Ovambo males to partake in contract labour in the mining industry. Swanla, the labour recruitment bureau for the territory’s mining industry, was virtually the only commercial enterprise allowed to openly contract workers in the north.8 By 1970, 45 per cent of Ovambo men were engaged in short-term work, primarily in the mining sector.9 The decision by South Africa’s National Party, newly ensconced in office from 1948, to extend the apartheid system of institutionalised segregation and further regulations on labour migration to South West Africa introduced new restrictions to the already beleaguered existence of the black population. The creation of a commission to investigate the plight of blacks in the reserves accompanied this push from Pretoria to introduce ‘separate development’ on the South African model to the territory. The Odendaal Commission published its findings in 1964, calling for the establishment of a patchwork of eleven ‘homelands’ that would be given self-government and, eventually ‘independence’ (fulfilling the broader aim of consolidating white-controlled territory within the South African ambit). As part of its mandate, the report called for government distribution of farms for the dispossessed Nama, Damara and Herero peoples in areas that were closer to infrastructure and had greater potential for sustainable agriculture than existing designated land. In a few years, over 250 farms were identified and black
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Namibians were moved by the government to these areas.10 The absence of vital inputs and access to credit (as well as extension services), crucial features of success in the commercial sector, spelled disaster for the socalled Odendaal farms and resulted in persistent degradation of the land and gradual impoverishment of its inhabitants. In spite of these administrative shortcomings, the experiment was to become for many white authorities emblematic of black failure in agriculture. The political implications of the introduction of apartheid into the territory for black Namibians were threefold. First, it reinforced the boundaries of identity through the conference of restrictions and privileges in accordance with (dubious) racially defined criteria. For example while the Herero and Nama peoples were obliged to submit to periodic intervention by ‘native affairs’ officers, the ‘Basters’ in the territory of Rehoboth were given a greater degree of autonomy from government intrusion. This was given further force during the course of the military campaign of the 1970s and 1980s, when ethnically delineated units in the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the South West African Territorial Force (SWATF) numbering 30,000 were engaged in counterinsurgency actions in the north. Secondly, these statutorily defined ‘tribes’ were themselves divided between those living on the communal reserves, those engaged in migrant labour and those living as tenants on white-owned farms. The enforced exclusion of inhabitants in the northern reserves from commercial activity – other than offering up their labour through Swanla – contrasted with the integration of black families in the police zone into the patriarchal structures of whiteowned farms. These two elements, in turn, influenced the shape of political representation allowed black Namibians that, though subject to periodic interference by Pretoria, remained a form of tradition-based authoritarianism.11 The prerogatives of traditional leaders, whose role was codified through an interpretation of ‘customary law’, included the allocation of land and grazing rights, as well as rule on a host of other aspects of social life, making them crucial interlocutors between the central authorities and the black population. While apartheid South Africa sought in vain to win international approval for its incorporation of South West Africa, the voices of protest among blacks and whites both within and outside the territory began to coalesce into a movement for outright independence. Herero tribal leaders created the South West African National Union (Swanu) in 1958 while labour migrants founded the first movement, the Ovambo Peoples Organisation (OPO), in 1959. Though the latter soon transformed itself into the Swapo under the tutelage of Sam Nujoma,
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Andimba Ya Toivo and Theo-Ben Gurirab aimed at creating a unified nationalist movement, these two strands of anti-colonialism were to dominate Namibian politics into the independence period. Swapo, which sought to extend its reach beyond its Ovambo core of support, gradually took the mantle of Namibia’s (as the territory was called after 1968) leading liberation movement.12 In 1966, 37 Swapo members were imprisoned by the National Party, a measure that coincided with the party’s launching of a military campaign to oust South Africa. A central platform of its struggle was the call for ‘liberation of the land for the tillers’ and Swapo identified itself with the historical uprisings against colonialism and dispossession of 1904 and 1907 as well as the more recent oppression. By 1986, a more overtly radical programme of land redistribution and collectivisation was put forth by the liberation movement.13 Despite the increasingly radicalised tone of its rhetoric, Swapo retained a strong constituency within the Protestant churches that were to serve both as a bastion of local support throughout the liberation struggle and a source of influence in its aftermath.14 Trade unions and student groups were also sources of support for the liberation movement. The tension between Swapo’s internal and external wings, though often exaggerated by South African officials, nonetheless existed and was to later manifest itself in the post-independence period.15 Operating abroad as well as inside Namibia (where its movements were severely circumscribed), Swapo turned to the United Nations to press its case with the international community to recognise the illegality of South Africa’s occupation. The centrality of the United Nations to the fate of Namibia and its struggle for independence, like that of East Timor three decades later, exercised a defining influence over the shape of the transition and beyond. While the UN General Assembly had revoked South Africa’s mandate over the territory in 1966 in response to the International Court of Justice’s ruling in Pretoria’s favour that same year, the Western states issued a series of vetoes in the Security Council that provided tacit support for the South African position. However, in the aftermath of the collapse of Portuguese colonialism and the Soweto uprising, the Western states changed their outlook – something they signalled with the support of UN Security Council Resolution 385 (UN SCR 385) which called for the withdrawal of South Africa from the territory and UN-supervised elections – and sought to pursue a policy of constructive engagement (as it later came to be called) with Pretoria on the Namibia question. The Western ‘contact group’ (Canada, Great Britain, France, West Germany and the United States) was formed in the wake of passage of UN SCR 385, South Africa’s subsequent refusal to
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consider it and the prospect of having to face further Security Council resolutions on the issue. Significantly, the Western ‘contact group’ deliberately opened negotiations with South Africa, the Front Line States and Swapo while excluding the Soviet Union and its allies. The Cold War context meant that the Western ‘contact group’ was determined that independence would not result in the assumption of unconstrained power by a liberation movement, as had happened recently in Angola and Mozambique, which was a position shared by Pretoria. In the case of apartheid South Africa, following another ruling by the International Court of Justice in 1971 rejecting South Africa’s claim to sovereign incorporation of the territory, Prime Minister Johan Vorster aligned its approach to Namibia with its new foreign policy of ‘outward movement’, a conscious attempt to open relations with ‘moderate’ African governments as a bid to reduce Pretoria’s diplomatic isolation.16 While deeply suspicious of the international organisation as a whole, enlightened opinion within the South African government nonetheless recognised that it would inevitably be the setting for legitimising any settlement on the ‘Namibia question’.17 For its own part, Swapo, which had been designated as the sole representative of the Namibian people by the UN General Assembly in 1973, saw the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and bolstered by annual resolutions passed the General Assembly as the basis for decolonisation. The Western ‘contact group’ were able to use this as a means of developing consensus, in conjunction with the rise of a ‘verligte’ (enlightened) faction within the National Party, on the inevitability of independence. This convergence of opinion resulted in all parties, from the liberation movement to the South African government, accepting in principle UN Security Council Resolution 435 in 1978, which echoed UN SCR 385 in calling for the withdrawal of South Africa’s administration and military forces from Namibia and the establishment of free elections followed by independence.
The long transition to independence The acceptance in principle of UN SCR 435 became the basis for negotiation between Pretoria and the Western ‘contact group’ for the next ten years.18 In contrast to UN SCR 385, however, the new resolution called for joint UN-South African administration during the transition period, elections for a constituent assembly that would draw up a constitution, the withdrawal during the transition of Swapo’s representative status within the UN (which carried with it resources), agreement
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of a role for the South West African Police in maintaining security during the transition as well as the South African claim over the territorial enclave of Walvis Bay.19 Further negotiations taking place in 1982 between the Western ‘contact group’, the Front Line States and Swapo, produced the Constitutional Principles which set out the terms upon which the future democratic constitution were to be negotiated and ratified by two-thirds of an elected constituent assembly as well as the key commitments for the future polity: regular elections by secret ballot, an independent judiciary, human rights and guarantees for private property.20 All these measures reflected the growing accommodation of South Africa’s interests in reaching a solution to the Namibian issue against those of radical voices within Swapo. For the liberation movement, the reliance on the UN coupled with dependency upon the Front Line States, meant that Swapo was vulnerable to considerable pressures by its hosts. As one analyst notes, [t]he most important contribution of these Principles was probably their legitimising effect on the compromises reached by former opponents and the face-saving that this allowed. The international community had always been called upon by the South West Peoples Organisation and other liberation movements to bring about change in Namibia and to ensure independence. When this eventually happened and the Constitutional Principles were part of the deal, it was quite difficult to reject them as being too accommodating or ‘liberal’.21 The liberation movement’s isolation from the negotiation process was to grow in subsequent years as the United States, South Africa and the Soviet Union embarked on talks that linked the situation in Namibia with the Angolan civil war. For the South African government, the importance of the constituent assembly lay in the possibility of enhanced influence over the final shape of the post-colonial state as well as international commitments to ensure that a future government respected fundamental liberal values. And, while these values had themselves been systematically violated under apartheid, they were recognised by Pretoria to be crucial pillars in the maintenance of white settler and business interests in the country. By this time, however, South Africa’s position of reluctant acceptance of Namibian independence had been put under review by the new government of P. W. Botha in Pretoria. With the failure of the Zimbabwean transition to produce a ‘moderate’ leader through elections and the onset
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of Swapo incursions from independent Angola, the National Party began to reassess the nature of what it likened as the communist threat in the region.22 Deliberate delaying tactics in negotiations were seen to be a way to allow Pretoria to build up, through the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) process as well as further domestic socio-economic reforms aimed at fostering a moderate black constituency, a credible alternative to Swapo as well as defeat Swapo militarily and therefore damage its claim of having liberated the country. Direct and covert South African support for the DTA was a vital component in this process and carried on into the seminal elections of 1989.23 From 1981 onwards, the South African military embarked on an aggressive military campaign against Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia (Plan) forces in Angolan territory, brutal policing and a ‘hearts and minds’ programme supported by the SWATF and the South West African Police in the north. Martial law was declared and the precarious system of indirect rule itself came under assault as counter-insurgency units like ‘Koevoet’ (Crowbar) spread terror in local communities indiscriminately.24 Further complicating the landscape was the new American administration’s concerns regarding the presence of Cuban troops and Soviet support for the MPLA government in Luanda, a position which led Washington to join South Africa in covertly (and later overtly) assisting opposition Unita forces. Though never explicitly rescinding from acceptance of UN SCR 435, Botha was determined that any handover of power would not jeopardise the South African government’s fundamental economic and political interests.25 To this end, South African government used Namibia as a ‘proving ground’ for their reformist ambitions (later to be employed in South Africa) that combined military operations against Swapo and its supporters with socio-economic reforms as well as selected political liberalisation.26 The tacit support of many Nama, Damara and ‘Basters’ for the South African administration – partly borne of the compromised leadership recognised by the South African authorities through its patronage of tribalism (which mimicked its own ‘homeland’ system) – nonetheless also reflected their concerns of Ovambo dominance of Swapo. This situation provided much of the basis for the creation of a Pretoria-inspired ‘internal solution’ in the form of limited self-government launched in late 1978, which was led by the white-dominated faction DTA. The ethnic configuration of the DTA was constructed around the traditional leaders of the eleven tribal ‘homelands’ but, concurrently, hoped to draw support from a small but growing urbanised black Namibian middle class.27 In this manner, the ‘internal solution’ created an ethnically rooted
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politics built on patron-client relations that involved the channelling of government funds to tribal authorities and the accompanying second tier administrative structures in exchange for support for the DTA. Swapo leadership too, emboldened by the shifting regional balance of power and support from the MPLA government in Angola (as well as Soviet assistance), began to employ tactics and rhetoric that suggested it was intent on radical restructuring of the economy and society. After the collapse of Portuguese colonialism, Swapo’s military wing, Plan was able to operate from bases within Angola and drew its new recruits primarily from among the disaffected youth in the north. In 1976, Andreas Shipanga attempted to exploit dissatisfaction within Plan in his failed bid for control of Swapo. Two years later, the SADF surprise attack on the Kassinga base deep in Angola shook the confidence of the organisation and eventually led to a spiralling sequence of accusations, detention and murder by Plan officials. With the military high command dominated by the Kwanyama clan, the deaths in detention of an estimated one thousand soldiers who were outside of that particular Ovambo faction threatened Swapo’s very claims to nationalist unity.28 Unita’s growing operational capabilities as well as the SADF policy of forward defence denied Plan a presence in Caprivi and Kavango, and allowed it only limited incursions from southern Angola into Ovamboland. Indeed, by the mid-1980s the primary confrontations were between South African forces along with their Unita allies against the Angolan military and its Cuban allies, leaving Plan forces on the margins. Ultimately the economic cost of maintaining the South African position in Windhoek, coupled with the prospect of South African military defeat on the battlefield in Angola after 1987, brought about a breakthrough in the protracted negotiations between Pretoria, Havana and Luanda, with Washington and Moscow serving as mediators.29 A ceasefire agreement was signed in December 1988 that provided for a withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and the concurrent implementation of UN SCR 435 (as well as a commitment not to allow Namibia to be used as a base for ANC insurgency). UN peacekeeping operations were mobilised to monitor the process in both Angola and Namibia. One last act remained for the South African military in the territory, when they won UN authorisation to strike out against the illegal infiltration of Plan guerrillas just as the initial contingent of peacekeepers were arriving in the territory in April 1989.30 (Interestingly, this echoed the British authorisation of Rhodesian troops to pursue Zanu-PF forces in apparent violation of the terms of ceasefire during Zimbabwe’s transitional election of 1980.) Thereafter, UN Special Representative,
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Martii Ahtisaari, was able to gain co-operation from the various security forces and the SADF’s withdrawal and Plan’s assembly and disarmament went forward without serious incident. Despite protestations of neutrality, some South African officials used their status as co-administrators of the territory to bolster the fortunes of the DTA. In the build-up to the poll, intimidation instigated by DTA aligned officials, the South West African Police and ex-security force members against Swapo was rife, while outright clashes between Swapo and DTA followers resulted in a number of deaths. Land, ostensibly one of the central platforms of the liberation struggle, did not feature in the Swapo campaign though DTA officials warned that not only white-owned land but Herero and other minorities would also suffer from confiscation if Swapo was elected.31 Nujoma chose to focus his campaign on national reconciliation, aimed as much at assuring white community and business interests as recognising the movement’s vulnerability on the issues of atrocities against its own members.32 The November elections themselves went off peacefully with 710,000 Namibians (a 97 per cent turnout) voting across the country. As predicted, Swapo won the bulk of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, earning 57.3 per cent (41 seats) of the vote, while the DTA garnering 28.6 per cent (21 seats) and the remaining seats going to other parties.33 Voting patterns suggested that ethnicity played a significant part determining party affiliation, though its pull was muted by generational differences and economic disparities.34 The election result represented less than the two-thirds necessary for Swapo to draft and pass its own constitution without opposition compliance and, as such, was widely hailed as a sign that a two-party system was emerging in the once strifetorn colony. Negotiations over constitution began immediately after the elections and the first motion put forward by Swapo representatives to the Constituent Assembly was to unanimously confirm that the Constitutional Principles of 1982 would serve as the framework for the new constitution. Like the election campaign, land was hardly mentioned during the debates of the Constituent Assembly, reflecting the consensus that marked the acceptance of the Constitutional Principles.35 Behind close doors, this shared understanding on land resulted in frank discussions that confirmed the government’s commitment to the willing buyer, willing seller approach to the issue.36 Commentators observed at the time that the remarkable elite consensus seen at the Constituent Assembly was driven by a shared need of the once-authoritarian parties to enhance their democratic credentials as
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well as the desire of an increasingly cash-strapped Swapo (no longer statutorily able to receive UN support) to take up office as soon as possible.37 Even the complexities of the territory’s inherited Roman-Dutch law required Swapo to hire South African trained lawyers during the debates on the constitution, sharpening the basis for consensus. At the same time, the limits on independent action imposed by Namibia’s dependency of the territory on the South African economy became more apparent to Swapo during the transition. Swapo’s erstwhile ironclad commitment to socialise the economy and break definitively with South Africa was quietly shelved. Nujoma himself, speaking on the eve of the Brazzaville Agreement of 1988 to Soviet journalists, said, We must remember that our country remains an economic hostage of Pretoria and the transnational corporations. We are realists. It won’t be possible to break our existing economic ties at once or in the near future, whatever our attitude to them might be … Land won’t be nationalised. White farmers in independent Namibia will still be landowners. They have nothing to fear … Only uncultivated plots and the land of those who fled the country will be redeemed and transferred to the poorest peasantry.38 One result of this recognition was a Swapo commitment to maintain Namibia’s inclusion within the Southern African Customs Union, which bound its members (South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and now Namibia) to the South African currency and provided a crucial revenue stream for the government through its tariff structure. The overwhelming presence of South African business in key sectors of the economy, especially the principle export earners like mining (23 per cent of Namibia’s revenue in 1990) and its ties to commercial agriculture (9 per cent of export earnings), underscored the centrality of the relationship to economic health. Reliance upon South Africa for imports in virtually all areas, from basic foodstuffs and consumer goods to manufactured products and investment capital, further inhibited action that might jeopardise these links. Moreover, the need to secure development assistance and foreign investment from Western sources, the only alternative to South Africa, imposed similar constraints on Swapo. As a consequence the discussions of land reform and nationalisation of the mining sector, once prominent in liberation rhetoric, became increasingly subdued. Swapo’s economic advisor, Ben Amithila, confirmed the party’s position in November 1989 by stating, ‘We do not intend to interfere with land ownership as set out at present.’39
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The importance of the transitional device of the UN SCR 435 and the Constitution Principles of 1982 as well as the logic of Namibia’s dependence upon South Africa to the shape of the post-independence settlement cannot be underestimated. As one analyst observed, The emergence of a pluralist representative system (in Namibia) is itself a compromise among elites with competing appeals to some popular basis, rather than a result of those broadly based popular demands for government accountability that are necessary to sustain any kind of really representative system … But it is necessary to explore how sustainable that compromise is: whether the ethnic or the national unity tendencies (which make up the elite compromise) will ultimately be determinant. Also on the agenda is whether the compromise of a certain variety of pluralism may be partly at the expense of any significant transformation of an inherited socioeconomic system marked by racial and, increasingly, class polarization and by dependence on South Africa – themselves features that may affect the longer-run viability of the pluralist system.40 By February the following year, the constitution was officially adopted by the Constituent Assembly, a cabinet was announced and on 21 March 1990, and Sam Nujoma was sworn in as president of an independent Namibia.
Independence and agrarian reform, 1990–9 In spite of Swapo’s silence on land during the transition, there was considerable expectation that the new government would need to move quickly to address this issue. At the time of independence, land ownership and usage patterns replicated the colonial past with statutory divisions between commercial and communal land, with white farmers and black farm workers working the commercial areas in the central and southern regions of the country and communal farming dominating the northern regions. Approximately 43 per cent of all agricultural land was in the hands of 4,200 white commercial farmers while 40 per cent was communal land and supported 140,000 black households (or an estimated 700,000 people).41 Black farm workers in residence on commercial farms, numbering approximately 36,000, occupied an uncertain position with regard to their status as tenants and accompanying rights.42 The impact of commercial agriculture on the economy differed, with commercial farming contributing 8.7 per cent to the country’s
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GDP while communal farming provided 3 per cent to GDP, though the former was now able to broaden its markets beyond South Africa.43 Agricultural exports, consisting primarily of commercially raised cattle sold to the European Union and South African markets, accounted for 9.1 per cent of total export earnings by Namibia and, as such, were significant to the economic well-being of the country. However, with independence new trends such as the illegal enclosure of land in the communal areas, coupled with returnees from exile and population growth, began to put new pressure on land.44 The importance of the land question to the Namibian government was signalled from the outset when parliament recommended the establishment of a special national conference on the subject. The National Land Conference held in Windhoek in 1991 was attended by five hundred delegates drawn from government, opposition parties, the media, foreign donors as well as civil society. It was at this setting that the president confirmed that the policy of national reconciliation would guide the government’s approach to agrarian reform.45 The result was a de-emphasis on the centrality of restitution based on past claims and a shift towards addressing the issue through recourse to market-based solutions. A technical committee was created to address the key points raised during the conference, specifically, the role of foreign ownership, the status of black labourers on commercial land and the conditions for expropriation of neglected or underutilised land. The Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation (MLRR) was formally designated as the administrative centre of the land question, a position which some would argue was to ultimately contribute to delays in addressing the issue. Part of the reason the government was able to adopt this approach to land was that Swapo’s support base was drawn from among the Ovambo people who themselves had not suffered expropriation under the colonial administration. The colonial expropriation of land took place in the south and central regions, which are predominantly arid and semiarid and only allow for limited dry land farming and livestock. Therefore, historically it was the Herero, Nama and Damara peoples of these regions who were subjected to systematic dislocation from their land, first by German and then by South African authorities. As noted earlier, they themselves also had a record of claims and counterclaims to the land based on a century of migration and interethnic conflict. White commercial farms – in fact, ‘farm’ is a bit of a misnomer as most of the land is used for cattle ranching or related activities – were established in these areas and benefited from considerable financial and infrastructural support to sustain their sometimes precarious existence.
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These farms remained costly enterprises, fully oriented to the export market and, even in the heyday of South African support, could do no more than create ‘an inflated colony of over-capitalised ranchers whose high levels of personal consumption absorb a disproportionate share of the income which their expensively efficient output generates’.46 An exception to this was the so-called maize triangle (GrootfonteinTsumeb-Otavi, also known as the Otavi highlands), a relatively wellwatered area primarily due to higher rainfall and irrigation investments stretching back to the colonial era. Approximately 500 white-owned commercial farms dominated in this region, though Herero and San communal areas set on inferior land abutted commercial farms to the southeast. To the north, the new government divided the tribal reserves into administrative regions and commenced upon a large-scale infrastructure development programme. Here, the bulk of the country’s population resided in what was the country’s best agricultural land with access to perennial water sources in the Kavango and Kunene rivers. Land was still farmed communally and while there had been some pressure in the period since independence to push the boundaries of cultivation activities outside of the communal areas, this was partly in response to the illegal fencing activities of commercially oriented black farmers based there. Barriers to market entry for black communal farmers in the north were primarily the poor local infrastructure (including access to abattoirs, refrigeration and markets) and the imposition of the veterinary ‘red line’ which separated the commercial cattle inoculated against diseases like foot-and-mouth in the south from those in the north (which effected access to the all-important European market). Meatco, the only major purchaser of livestock from the area of the ‘red line’, paid lower prices to communally raised cattle and thus reduced the income possibilities for black farmers based in there.47 In part this reflected the fact that the Oshikati abattoir, through state owned, is run by Meatco at a loss. The communal areas, the new designation for the tribal reserves, lost some of the key features of the governing system introduced under South African rule after 1990. Though customary law had been enshrined in the constitution, it was made subordinate to the constitution and subsequent legislation which reinforced the dependent status of traditional leaders. The tribal police force and courts were dismantled by the new government in Windhoek and the status of ‘authentic’ traditional authorities revisited as was the government payment scheme. Lacking their own financial support structure, traditional leaders were
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encouraged to play an advisory role in the newly formed Regional Councils and local authorities and their overall position was recognised through the creation of a national level Council of Traditional Leaders. The importance of these traditional leaders to the land question rested in their continuing role as a legitimised authority in rural Namibia.48 Therefore, despite this apparent enmity to traditional structures in the new legislation, Swapo, which owed its success as a liberation movement to support within much of Ovambo-speaking areas, saw for pragmatic political reasons the utility of maintaining the existing structures. Local Ovambo leaders and their constituencies consistently returned overwhelming majorities in the national elections and this core of political support, which represented over 60 per cent of Namibia’s population, provided what was in effect a traditionalist anchor to politics in the new democracy. The government’s reluctance to take up the formal questions of title and access to land, areas which traditional authorities exercised crucially de facto (if not always de jure) power over the people in their area, was largely related to this. Thus for the first decade of independence, issues such as rights to the land in the communal areas continued, irrespective of the constitution, to be mediated through a state-supported network of traditional leaders.49 At the same time, some unscrupulous chiefs sold land illegally or negotiated limited access to communal grazing and, while the practice was criticised by the government, little was done to address it in the first decade of independence. Differences between Namibia’s communal areas were rooted in environmental conditions, population density, local employment opportunities as well as access to political largesse. For example, households in the north depended on agriculture for only 20 per cent of their income while 44 per cent of households in the eastern communal areas (essentially the Herero and San peoples) relied on sales of livestock as the major income source.50 The government’s universal pension scheme, which provided N$134 per month as of May 1994 to recognised retirees (raised to N$300 by 2005), played an important part in maintaining families in the rural areas. The model for land reform in post-independence Namibia – ironically drawn from what was seen to be Zimbabwe’s apparent success at the time – was that of a market-based ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach. First, there was a commercial orientation, with the Agribank’s (heir to the Land Bank) Affirmative Action Loan scheme launched in 1992 and providing low-interest loans for the purchase of farmland and inputs by black commercial farmers. Second, the government used its statutory right of review and purchase of any commercial farmland
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brought on the market. The MLRR was responsible for surveying and assessing all commercial farmland, making decisions on purchase as well as resettling black families on newly acquired land. Expropriation of underutilised land with due compensation was accepted by all parties to the National Land Conference of 1991 and found its way into national legislation in subsequent years. Underpinning the government’s approach to land reform was to be a raft of legislation on commercial and communal land, coupled with the establishment of particular institutions created to address some of the key concerns of the land issue. As it turned out, little concrete progress was made in developing the legislative framework for land reform in the first years of independence. A notable exception was the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme, which provided loans at concessional rates to new farmers for twenty-five years and issue guarantees of up to 35 per cent of the purchase price. This support was deemed necessary to cover the difference between the market price of commercial land and its actual valuation as a productive asset.51 By 1995, the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act was passed by parliament which confirmed the right of the state to purchase land at market prices for redistribution (including the right of ‘first refusal’ and expropriation), initiated a process of surveying all commercial property for division into smallholder plots, established some of the institutional structure for the process (the Land Reform Advisory Commission and the Land Tribunal) and created the National Agricultural Credit Programme to provide credit aimed specifically at communal farmers.52 The Land Reform Advisory Commission’s task was, among others, to identify what would be the appropriate sized parcel of land that could support an ‘economic unit’. The Land Tribunal was charged with resolving disputes between buyers and sellers of commercial land. The key issue of who should be the beneficiaries remained clothed in generalities: Namibian citizens who do not own or otherwise have the use of agricultural land or adequate agricultural land, and foremost to those Namibians who have been socially, economically or educationally disadvantaged by past discriminatory laws and practices.53 Land purchases by the government of over N$70 million resulted in 567,000 ha of freehold farmland being made available for resettlement by 1999.54 The bulk of this was acquired after the passage of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act of 1995, underscoring the importance of the legal framework in guiding the process as well as
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the annual commitment of N$20 mn to purchasing land. Concurrently, the inclusion of specific goals for land reform within the first National Development Plan (1995/1996–9/2000), that is that 14,000 people to be resettled and 150,000 ha to be purchased by 2000, provided for the first time, specific targets for reform. The Land Reform Advisory Commission’s criteria of what constituted an economically viable smallholding, namely, no less than 1000 ha in the north and central regions and no less than 3000 ha in the south, were used as a guide. The largest purchases of land were drawn from four areas, the Hardap, Oshikoto, Omaheke and Otjozondjupa regions. The passage of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act of 1995 coincided with the recognition among commercial farmers that the era of automatic subsidies and generalised government support was coming to an end. Some whites sold farms – or parcels of land – to the government at market prices that were not particularly productive, others sought to sell their property and then emigrated abroad. Indeed, on this latter point it should be noted that in contrast to the independence period in Kenya and Zimbabwe – which saw a large section of the white farming community emigrate to what was then a white-ruled South African state – the bulk of Namibian whites tended to stay in the country at independence. For those involved in commercial farming, the cost of uprooting and starting anew was considerable and, like others that chose to stay on, when faced with South Africa’s political volatility, Namibia’s peaceful transition held more promise. The proliferation of game farms or other tourism-oriented uses of the land at the time reflected the commercial farmers’ search for a new means of earning a living in the absence of government support. Furthermore, the proposed introduction of a land tax by 2000 raised the cost of ownership of large tracts or multiple farms and ultimately encouraged the selling off of land. During this period, a number of white farmers used loopholes in the 1995 Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act to form close corporations that took ownership of their property and were exempt from the strictures of the law as writ.55 This action, coupled with the blatant sale of marginal land to the government for resettlement, was to fuel dissatisfaction and cynicism among ordinary Namibians and Swapo party officials alike towards the government’s market-based approach to land redistribution. Still, despite these harbingers of change, the white farmers as well as the government remained confident that the existing system of land reform would be sufficient to stave off pressure. Indeed, even international analysts were complacent as to the land issue, stating as late as 1998 that it wasn’t on
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the government ‘agenda’ for fear of its impact on commercial agriculture.56 The onset of Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform process and the ensuing crisis that eventually engulfed the region was to change all this.
The revival of the land question The issue of land moved back onto centre stage in Namibia through a combination of regional and domestic factors. Behind the renewed public debate on agrarian reform was a heightened awareness brought on by events in Zimbabwe, the role of NGO activists and media interest in land-related issues, all of which fed a growing disquiet within Swapo ranks as to the post-independence status quo. The result was that the consensus which had marked the approach adopted by government elites and commercial agricultural interests, and had been wrapped in the mantle of national reconciliation policy, came under increasing pressure. White farmers’ initially defensive response to criticism, fuelled in part by their lack of dependency upon the government with the withdrawal of subsidies, was answered by increasingly radical rhetoric from Swapo and contributed to the growing atmosphere of crisis. Concurrently, the emergence of a new generation of Namibians whose ties with the governing party were less secure, in conjunction with the prospective retirement of President Nujoma, inspired aspirants to Swapo leadership to seek out new sources of political mobilisation. Finally, Nujoma’s close personal relationship with Robert Mugabe, which has resulted in a number of public declarations of support for the Zimbabwean president, caused many observers to see Mugabe’s influence in the decision to accelerate land reform. Crisis abroad The impact of the crisis in Zimbabwe upon the public debate of Namibia’s own land question has been significant. While the details of the Zimbabwean crisis are best dealt with elsewhere (see Chapter 2), the rising tempo of international opprobrium aimed at the Zimbabwean government’s conduct towards ‘fast track’ land resettlement and elections, coupled with Western pressure placed upon regional actors to condemn the situation and its disruptive effects upon the economies of the region, drew neighbouring states like Namibia into the debate. Furthermore, the regionalisation of Southern African civil society, which actively sought to make comparisons between their respective local situations on a range of topics including land as well as co-ordinate strategy, contributed to the influence of the crisis upon Namibian actors.57
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The heightened profile given to land reform in Zimbabwe was instrumental in galvanising activists, Swapo militants and – though from a different perspective – the commercial farming sector in Namibia. Before 1999, Namibia’s civil society activists had been unsuccessful in putting land on the public agenda. The government’s determination that reconciliation would be the primary guide to intergroup relations, coupled with its policy of retaining the basic contours of a market economy while expanding the civil service to absorb Swapo cadres, meant that commercial agriculture was fundamentally left alone. International donor funding for land issues, reflecting their human rights and economic justice orientation, had provided the requisite resources to conduct research and convene workshops on land issues both inside Namibia and regionally. The exposure that Namibian NGOs received through these regional workshops, such as those conducted by Mwengo in South Africa, and funded visits to Zimbabwe helped shape the tone of their understanding of Namibia’s land question.58 For instance, having felt itself to be marginalised by the MLRR in the drafting of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Bill, the umbrella organisation for civil society, the Namibian Non-Governmental Organisations Forum (Nangof) organised a conference in September 1994 to discuss the shortcomings of the land reform process. The Namibian National Farmers Union (NNFU), a black commercial farmers organisation, held a conference in 1998 to highlight their concerns at the slow pace of land reform.59 This in turn was followed by a report released in October 1998 which examined the land question in Zimbabwe and South Africa and called for closer analysis of these cases as a guide for Namibia.60 Only a year later, as the Zimbabwean land invasions reached a peak, the NNFU and Nangof’s cautious position was to become more explicitly challenging to the government and commercial farming sector (see below). While civil society came increasingly to see the Namibian land issue in terms which echoed the Zimbabwean situation, the Namibian government was in the process of developing a closer relationship with its Zimbabwean counterparts. At the heart of the reaction of the Namibian government to the crisis in Zimbabwe has been the growing affinity between the leaders of the two states. Nujoma’s admiration for his fellow guerrilla leader increasingly manifested itself in a co-ordinated approach towards regional affairs. The first concrete expression of this was Nujoma’s sudden decision to commit troops, at the behest of Mugabe (in his capacity as head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Defence and Security), in defence of Laurent Kabila’s embattled regime in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in
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August 1998. Such was the ad hoc nature of the request, that Nujoma ordered the country’s military commander into the Congo despite the fact that the Namibian armed forces lacked the basic logistical requirements to conduct such an operation.61 This relationship was reinforced with the signing of a Defence Pact by Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola and the DRC in April 1999. Subsequent support from the other key SADC state which intervened in the Congo, Angola, in combating separatist dissent on the Caprivi strip (as well as tackling Unita’s lingering presence) in 1999 and 2000, contributed to an deepening of the partnership between SADC states with traditional concerns of state security opposed by South Africa and Botswana. This security and diplomatic co-operation on the Congo intervention, especially as it manifested itself in a deeply divided SADC, paved the way for a closer working relationship on other regional issues. And, as Zimbabwe’s own crisis grew in proportion, the Namibian president’s position of support for his beleaguered fellow leader assumed greater importance as the land issue became internationalised. Discontent at home By 1999, the period of relative quietude on the land issue was coming to an end. Behind this change within the domestic environment were a number of factors including dissatisfaction arising from the economy, publicity surrounding the farm workers’ dismissals, pressure in the communal areas as illegal enclosures continued to marginalise smaller producers and, finally, party politics within Swapo. Though the Namibian economy performed reasonably well in the aggregate during the first decade of independence, posting growth rates of 4.2 per cent between 1990 and 1996 and levelling off for the remaining four years, this situation disguised some serious structural problems within the economy that remained unaddressed.62 (In this context it is worth noting that a single season of drought knocked GDP from 8.2 per cent in 1992 to –1.9 in 1993.)63 Investment continued on a path of stasis, there was little development of economic activity beyond the traditional sources of primary production, with the capital-intensive diamond mining industry accounting for 40 per cent of GDP followed by fisheries, and the country’s seminal dependence on the South African economy remained unchallenged.64 Namibia’s GDP per capita remained static as well over the ten years at N$5,000 but more importantly these gross figures disguised the inequities in Namibian society. The UNDP’s Human Development Report 2000/2001 published figures that suggested that, in spite of a decade of independence, over 25 per cent of the Namibian population remained in poverty.65 Namibia’s classification
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as a middle-income country by international organisations disguised significant distributional differences within society, with 10 per cent of the population claiming 65 per cent of the national income and the remaining 90 per cent receiving only 35 per cent.66 Unemployment continued throughout this time to hover between 30 and 40 per cent and this was especially pronounced among the youth and rural population. Moreover, for Namibians living in the communal areas in the south-central parts of the country, a pattern of state neglect exacerbated their already difficult economic conditions. Finally, farm workers remained among the poorest group in the country, with over half of them living on commercial farms in conditions of poverty and far from basic social services. By way of contrast, the emergent black elite saw their incomes rise dramatically primarily through access to government or parastatal jobs.67 As Namibian law does not allow for an assessment of the racial or ethnic composition of social classes, it was only through inference and observation that one could assert that, along with the new black governing and business class, economic conditions remained the same for the bulk of the white population. The UNDP, using language group as a proxy for race, determined that the Human Development Index for ‘European language speakers’ (which included Afrikaans) was equivalent to that of Scandinavia while some sectors of Namibian society, such as Caprivian speakers, were at a level with other impoverished African countries.68 Dramatic improvements in education and access to health achieved through government efforts in the previous ten years masked the widening regional and urban-rural disparities. For example, in 1995 per capita income in Khomas region, where Windhoek is located, stood at N$11,359 while in rural Omaheke it was N$3,944.69 The convergence between white Namibians’ private ownership of land, at 43 per cent of the total land available and their high income, in contrast with the impoverished conditions for dwellers in communal areas, increasingly drew some observers to the conclusion that thoroughgoing land reform would resolve the question of poverty in the country. For instance, by the end of the first decade of independence, veteran analyst Wolfgang Werner declared that ‘the unequal distribution of land is widely regarded as the main cause of rural poverty and economic inequities (in Namibia)’.70 The slow pace of land reform in the period from independence up to 1995, which saw fewer than twenty commercial farms purchased by the MLRR, reflected – as was the case in independent Zimbabwe and postapartheid South Africa – in large part a former liberation movement
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grappling with the challenges of basic administration, from replacing the exodus of the white civil service to grappling with the reality of policy formulation and implementation. Under these immediate pressures, agrarian reform fell increasingly into the shadows and, combined with government lassitude in developing the necessary legislation to support the land reform process, gave the strong impression that Swapo’s commitment to the issue was lukewarm at best. However, with the government’s passage of the Agriculture (Commercial) Reform Act in 1995, a key pillar of the legal framework was put into place and, along with the annual allocation of N$20m over five years to the MLRR, the means needed to give greater effect to land reform policy was at last in place. An important factor in raising the profile of land as well as providing the information (or at least some of it) needed to critique the government’s position was the publication of a number of government reports, such as the National Development Plan (1995–2000) and ‘Vision 2030’. Coming at the time of an election, these reports provided heretofore difficult-to-get statistics on national policy on land reform. Even though some questioned the veracity of certain figures, they nonetheless provided ammunition to critics eager to find fault with the government’s slow pace on land redistribution. Furthermore, they obliged the government to commit itself to specific targets against which their conduct could be measured, though the controversy over the government’s statistics on land reform continued to be a source of obfuscation.71 Another source of renewed criticism of the government’s land policy was that of civil society. In September 1999, the NNFU, Nangof and the National Union of Namibian Workers organised a march on parliament to protest the slow pace of agrarian reform as well as their exclusion from consultation on proposed legislation on communal land rights.72 After a visit to Zimbabwe in April 2000, the NNFU and Nangof were able to call upon the Zimbabwean experience as a stark warning to the government and the white commercial farmers that land reform was imperative to stability in Namibia, declaring, ‘Let us keep in mind that today is Zimbabwe and tomorrow could be Namibia.’73 This was coupled with the activities of international donors and foundations which, alarmed by events in Zimbabwe, supported projects and NGOs in Namibia that looked more closely at the land issue. Though relatively isolated from Swapo circles through their past ties to the DTA, the attempts by traditional Herero tribal leaders to seek financial restitution from the German government for the 1904 massacres added to international perceptions of crisis. The approaching anniversary of the massacres was
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increasingly portrayed as a potential flashpoint for dissent and violence, a position which German donors were to take seriously.74 At the same time, the conduct of the white farming community brought the land issue into the forefront of national debate as well. The apparent intransigence of farmers to offer to sell suitable agricultural land to the government as well as inflating prices for that land in the process inspired public criticism by Swapo officials. For example, in 1997, the MLLR’s Deputy Secretary, John Mbango, complained that the ministry was unable to obtain enough land due to ‘inflated and unrealistic’ prices set by white farmers.75 The difficulties experienced in surveying and registering commercial farms, including (as mentioned above) the establishment of closed corporations by owners, was another area of concern for the MLRR. White farmers disputed the veracity of the valuation system, which was based on potential production but, among other things, did not take into account long-standing investments made in the land to boost productivity. Finally, the publicity surrounding the ousting (or ‘dumping’) of farm workers from white commercial farms in Omaheke and other parts of the country exposed the public to the dire conditions which faced many black Namibians employed in agriculture. Within Swapo ranks, discomfort and dismay at the growing domestic criticism over land resulted in a closer scrutiny of the actions of commercial farmers. For senior Swapo ministers, the sense that white farmers were exploiting the government’s policy of reconciliation became more pronounced. The rising cost of land offered up to the MLRR coupled with the difficulty in obtaining land suitable for agriculture was seen as obstructionist measures deliberately fostered by the commercial farmers to disrupt any land reform measure. Swapo MPs themselves, many of whom were able to use the Affirmative Action Loan scheme to obtain farms, found themselves unable to meet the interest payments on their loans when they came due.76 Paradoxically, the difficulties of farming in Namibia were brought home to the black leadership (most of whom opted for part-time farming), bringing them closer to a position of concern that reflected the outlook of established white commercial farmers.77 Moreover, black farmers were also found to be engaging in some of the same practices such as eviction of recalcitrant farm workers or failing to pay in full social security benefits that whites had been accused of committing.78 Political opportunism and idealism drove a new generation of activists such as Swapo-affiliated trade unionists like Risto Kapenda and Ponhele Ya France as well as Swapo cadres in the Youth League, to (in the words
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of the Prime Minister) ‘shout about grabbing land’.79 Ya France, brought in as a Swapo MP (see below) and participating in a parliamentary review committee on resettlement, was especially critical of the failure to provide sufficient financial resources, agricultural inputs and training for resettled farmers. Older voices like Nahas Angula, began to take up critical positions against established government policy on land as well. More broadly, constitutional issues regarding the presidency came to play a role, albeit in an indirect way, in raising the profile of the land issue as well. The 1994 elections returned a larger majority for Swapo, with 72.7 per cent (53 seats) at the expense of the DTA’s 20.4 per cent (15 seats).80 This placed the governing party in the position of being able to rewrite the constitution through the passage of amendments. In this context, the debate around Nujoma’s decision to seek a third term as president, in spite of the constitutional limitations barring such a move, became linked with the possibility of altering the legal status of property rights to enhance ‘fast track’ land reform. With an eye to the evolving Zimbabwean situation, where Mugabe had begun to use ZanuPF’s parliamentary majority to override constitutional restrictions on action, critics voiced concern that the historic compromise embodied in the transition and its constitution would be undermined by legislative fiat. Stoking the sense of crisis has been a series of contradictory statements by Namibia’s president, who issued strong warnings aimed at the white commercial sector and seemingly echoing the bellicose rhetoric of more radical politicians within Swapo and the trade union movement. In the end, Nujoma’s position as the only individual able to unite the increasingly fractious divisions within the party became a major factor in winning support among the rank and file for an additional term in office.
The revival of the national debate on land After boasting in its 1999 electoral campaign that the Swapo-controlled government had exceeded land resettlement targets in its ten years in office, it was forced to admit that its figures had been wildly exaggerated. This brought the spotlight onto the MLRR and a gradual awareness that it had chronically failed to even make full use of the funds allocated to it.81 In particular, the Ministry’s resettlement programme was seen to be badly mismanaged and subject to corruption to the point that it had contradictory information on the number of persons and farms involved in their programme as well as expenditure involved. Little or no technical assistance had been provided to resettled farms in
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the years since they had been established, allowing some to degenerate into communal farms.82 On the one hand, this lack of ministerial administrative capacity could be seen as a reflection of the relatively low interest that the land resettlement scheme held within the top echelon of the ruling party; on the other hand, some observers speculate that the better farms made available to the MLRR are likely to be purchased through the Affirmative Action Loan scheme for black commercial farmers instead of being turned over to the poor.83 The onset of another cycle of drought in 2001, which has resulted in 640,000 Namibians facing starvation (one-third of the total population of 1.8 mn) by 2004, placed additional pressure upon the government.84 The status of farm workers, said to number anywhere between 35,000 and 50,000, has received particularly close attention since 2002. Traditionally living a precarious existence at the behest of the white farmers, complicated by their uncertain tenure status on commercial farmland, the onset of new labour legislation in 2003 coincided with further evidence of ‘dumping’ of farm workers off the land. This treatment, although not as widespread as media reports suggested, was nonetheless a highly emotive issue and appeared to have influenced the selection of farms to be listed for expropriation.85 By 2001, only 97 commercial farms (totalling 568,821 hectares) had been acquired for resettlement and 1,964 black families resettled. The promulgation of the MLRR’s White Paper on Resettlement in October 2001, which outlined the nature of the commitment of the government towards families settled on newly acquired land, provided a blueprint for the resettlement process which itself had come under considerable criticism. The clear absence of technical or financial support for resettled black farms resulting in the deterioration of functioning commercial farms had been a hallmark of the programme in its first decade.86 Complicating matters was the fact that resettled farmers had no title to the land and, consequently, no ability to borrow money for needed agricultural inputs from banks. Indeed, resettled farmers in Omaheke indicated that they had not seen an agricultural extension officer or official of the MLRR in several years.87 Some had returned to the shanty towns of the urban areas or had leased the land out illegally. Furthermore, as opposition MP Linus Chata pointed out, the absence of clear criteria on who was selected to be resettled raised the spectacle of ‘cronyism and nepotism’ guiding the process.88 At the same time, by 2001 the Affirmative Action Loan scheme had loaned N$190m to 300 black commercial farmers to purchase and make improvements on their land. Against the MLRR’s abysmal record,
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the Agribank’s success in transferring viable commercial agriculture enterprises into the hands of the new black elite was seen by some analysts as a vindication of the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach.89 Yet this disguised some significant problems such as the difficulties experienced in paying off the loans as they came due (an estimated 199 out of 544 defaulted on their loans by 2004)90 as well as the original purpose of the two track approach, that was to provide poor Namibians with access to commercial farmland through government purchase and resettlement. In 2002, at the Swapo party congress, Nujoma signalled that land would be expropriated through an accelerated process if white commercial farmers did not work more closely with the government’s land reform programme especially in offering land for sale. Swapo called for the government’s annual allocation for purchase of commercial farmland to be increased from N$20 mn to N$100 mn (in the end, N$50 mn was allocated). The land tax, which was aimed at owners of more than one property and thereby to encourage sales, and the accompanying property valuation process was reaffirmed. Numerous public statements by Nujoma and other government officials castigating the commercial farming sectors, coupled with defensive responses by white farmers, marked the rising tempo of the debate on land in subsequent months.91 The establishment of a Permanent Technical Team in 2003 to conduct an audit of agrarian reform, including the existing resettlement programme, sought to put some hard statistics in the hands of decision makers. (The failure to make public the PTT’s findings, which were published as a report entitled ‘One Day We Will All Be Equal’ in 2004, suggests that the information gathered was sufficiently controversial from the government’s perspective that it preferred to keep it out of the spotlight).92 At the same time, the German government agreed to provide N$2 million towards developing an ‘action plan’ on agrarian reform.93 Finally, on 26 February 2004 Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab declared that ‘fast track’ land expropriation would be pursued actively by the government because the white commercial sector had failed to co-operative effectively with the land resettlement programme.94 He emphasised that the process would be ‘orderly’ and in accordance with the law. However, the following month the Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Hifikepunye Pohamba, seemed to imply that a more arbitrary approach was being considered when he declared, ‘If we identify an area (a commercial farm) as good for resettlement we will expropriate it.’95 Indeed, the Commercial Agricultural
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Amendment Act (2003) explicitly reinforced the government’s right to expropriation. In all, the government said that 9 million hectares was needed to settle 240,000 deprived Namibians at an estimated cost of over N$1 billion. With a target set of resettling them by 2010, it would appear the government had committed itself to purchasing over 150 farms a year. As the domestic crisis in Zimbabwe spilled over into SADC summitry and other regional gatherings such as the World Social Summit on Development, Nujoma’s position as a staunch public supporter of Mugabe grew in prominence. With the imposition of sanctions by the EU and the United States, as well as Zimbabwe’s suspension by the Commonwealth in the aftermath of the flawed presidential elections of March 2002, the Namibian president began to speak more forthrightly in terms which directly echoed Mugabe’s own analysis of the crisis. Observers suggested that the relationship between Namibia and Zimbabwe became formalised through a secret mutual defence agreement and, as evidence, pointed to the stationing of Zimbabwean military equipment in the country and joint statements by the two leaders resolving to defend their respective territories from ‘imperialist and colonialist’ military intervention.96 For some critics, most indicative of the closeness of relations was the secondment of Zimbabwean experts on ‘fast track’ land reform to the Namibian government to provide advice and support on the process.97 Despite growing debate both internally and across the region on agrarian reform, legislation on the other facet of the land issue – the status of communal land and on land tenure – remained stalled in parliament until 2002 when the Communal Land Reform Act was finally passed. It specifically outlined the rights of individuals and communities with respect to communal land and placed the management of this land under Communal Land Boards.98 This built upon the decisions which informed the passage of the Traditional Authorities Act in 1995, whereby the government sought to reinforce the subordination of traditional leaders to regional and local authorities juridically as well as through financial dependency.99 With its membership consisting of designated ‘stakeholders’ appointed by the government, these Communal Land Boards were charged with addressing issues such as transfer of rights, illegal fencing and unauthorised occupation which had contributed to the successive impoverishment of Namibians in the communal areas. Notably, the Communal Land Boards were modelled on Botswana’s successful Land Boards scheme which formalised intervention into an area claimed variously to be under the sole authority of traditional leaders
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as well as introducing the possibility of a co-ordinated development orientation to decision making. Moreover, the new legislation put into place the legal and institutional framework necessary to achieve the government’s longer term desire to harmonise commercial and communal land policy in line with the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development’s national plan for an expansion of development and resettlement into underutilised land north of the ‘red line’.100 A key feature of this is the Green Scheme, a multimillion dollar programme aimed at training small farmers in conjunction with improved irrigation in 27,000 hectares of Namibian territory as yet unutilised or underutilised and expected to provide fulltime employment for 10,000 and temporary employment for 37,000 persons.101 The response of the white commercial farmers to land reform since 1995 hovered between obstruction and co-operation. The National Agricultural Union (NAU), headed by Jan de Wet (a controversial figure who played a key role in administering the territory during the apartheid era), was initially critical of the government’s approach, seeing it as a threat to their members’ interests. This manifested itself in an unwillingness to co-operate with the national survey of commercial agriculture holdings, the inflation of land prices and offering of substandard farmland to the government for purchase, as well as the actions of members who sought to disguise ownership through recourse to establishment of closed corporations and other strategies. In fact, the NAU itself went so far as to organise a collection in 2002 for beleaguered white farmers in Zimbabwe, reflecting the seminal importance of racially designated identities for settler communities in the region in the post-independent era. This proved to be a turning point, bringing withering criticism on the white farming sector by the government who questioned the NAU’s patriotism and commitment to addressing the concerns of black Namibians.102 De Wet admitted that the farm occupations in Zimbabwe provided some stark lessons for Namibia’s white farmers: Mugabe had given the commercial white farmers ten years to position themselves, but when the election came, the vast majority of the commercial farmers joined the opposition. So, when Mugabe again won the elections, his sympathy for the white farmers was gone. Did the farmers (in Zimbabwe) regard themselves as a political or economic factor? In Namibia, the commercial farmers’ union decided to withdraw from politics. We want to avoid a Zimbabwean situation, destabilisation and increased poverty.103
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After 2002, the NAU sought to work increasingly closely with the black commercial farmers’ organisation, the Namibian National Farmers Union (NNFU), in developing a supportive approach to the land issue in conjunction with significant donor support. Technical assistance and mentoring schemes were introduced to improve the success rates of new black commercial farmers.104 Backed by foreign donor funds, NAU felt warily confident of the land reform process.105 Pressure from the farm workers union, which targeted specific farms involved in labour disputes, produced joint agreements with NAU members as often as it did further acrimony.106 The establishment of a white ‘rejectionist’ splinter organisation, the Namibia Farm Support Initiative (NFSI), in 2004 served to underscore how far the NAU has come in recognising the dangers to its interests posed by adopting a recalcitrant position on the land issue. Led by Sigi Eimbeck, the NFSI purported to represent the sentiments of some white farmers but it remained a minority organisation with no concrete means of reversing government policy. It cast the debate in economic terms, the classic position adopted by white farmers after independence: The (24 listed) farms Mr Pohamba wants to take are collectively at least N$180 mil worth; that is nett (sic) economic value. These farms generate an annual turnover of at least N$10 mil. At least 350 Namibians benefit directly from the salaries paid by these farm owners. About 2250 Namibians will loose (sic) a livehood (sic) if Mr Pohamba has seized these farms. The direct, indirect and value added tax these farmers pay annually is enormous.107 The broader political climate in which the agrarian reform debate took place was the public speculation over a possible fourth term in office by Nujoma throughout 2004. The apparent indecision raised fears (as before) that the government’s parliamentary majority would be used to alter the constitution and the implications that that held for the sanctity of property rights. In the end, Nujoma’s decision, confirmed in the aftermath of a controversial Swapo Central Committee meeting in April 2004, not to seek a fourth term in office was a crucial one. In so doing, Nujoma took an important step in disentangling the politics of succession from the land issue, paving the way for his chosen successor, former Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Hifikepunye Pohamba, to frame the new policy. Swapo unity, apparently threatened with Nujoma’s withdrawal, was reaffirmed through Pohamba’s skilful coalition politics.108 Pohamba’s election to the presidency in
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November 2005 and Swapo’s gains in the National Assembly of 55 seats cemented the stronghold that the government had over Namibian politics, consigning the fragmented opposition to the margins.
Between symbolic politics and substantive agrarian reform The government’s listing of 24 farms for expropriation in mid-2004, coupled with an increase in the MLRR’s budget for farm purchases to N$50 million per annum, has been accompanied again by a stated commitment to conduct expropriation within the framework of legality and just compensation. Having contacted the owners of the 24 properties asking them to sell their land, the Namibian government moved to expropriate the first of these, Ongombo West, a farm fifty miles from Windhoek. The owners’ involvement in a labour dispute seems to have played an important role in its selection though there were indications that mining interests were also a factor.109 Reportedly, the government refused to pay the farmer’s asking price of N$9mn and offered N$3.7mn instead, a price which a leading Namibian economist suggested was in excess of market prices and reflected improvements undertaken as well.110 In any case, in the end the owners did not wish to challenge the government in court. The NAU reflected a sense of white resignation to the process, ‘Even if it is difficult due to emotional and economic reasons, we have to accept that land reform is a part of the new Namibia.’111 Two other farms, which had already received waivers and were in the process of being sold to mining interests, were subsequently purchased for resettlement by the government. By 2008, the Namibian government had purchased 256 commercial farms under the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ formula and settled 2000 families while the Affirmative Action Loan scheme was responsible for the purchase of over 600 farms. Contributing to the funds available to the Ministry was the land tax fully in place since 2005, which provided an additional N$3 million revenue for land purchases.112 At the same time, the technical capacity for resettled families remained weak; they continued to be dependent upon the government for resources and, due to the ambiguity around title deeds, were unable to raise capital from banks for seasonal needs or vital improvements to fencing and wind pumps. Even black commercial farmers were experiencing difficulties in the unforgiving environmental conditions of Namibia, with 37 per cent defaulting on their loans by 2004 and others having to sell key assets like cattle to meet interest payments.113 The fact that 41 per cent of these
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emergent farmers were actually part-time underscores the difficulties in making commercial agriculture a genuinely viable commercial concern. In spite of these very public measures, the Pohamba government’s approach to agrarian reform remains tempered by a variety of considerations, including a critical reading of the sources of pressure on land, the necessity of reform in the Namibian context and the potential impact of the ‘fast track’ approach on economic stability. When the MLRR asked that regional governments sign up Namibians for resettlement schemes on expropriated farms, they came up with a tally of 240,000 individuals (this figure remains, as with many such statistics emanating from the MLRR, in dispute).114 Black Namibians living in the communal areas in the south-central regions, which are generally poorer in land quality and suffer from overgrazing, have often been portrayed as a significant source of pressure to accelerate land reform, as are squatters in the urban and municipal areas, who land activists claim are demanding to be resettled. There has not been contemporary national survey to support this claim and analysts suggest that, with national unemployment rates of well over 30 per cent, the real demand among black Namibians has been for jobs.115 Furthermore, there was a sufficiently widespread recognition as to the hardships and obstacles inherent in commercial farming to dissuade a significant number from aspiring to this profession.116 Related to this, there is little evidence that Swapo’s key rural based constituency among the Ovambo is interested in farming in the central or southern parts of the country, where the commercial farms are located, but rather prefer to gain access to land nearer their existing settlements.117 Most significantly, urbanisation continues to gather pace, with Windhoek’s population alone growing at a rate of 5 per cent per annum, and predications are that by 2030 twothirds of all Namibians will reside in cities and towns. With respect to the sources of pressure, the fact that Swapo continues to gain in strength with each election only serves to have reinforced its control over the reform process. Trade union leader Alfred Angula, himself an advocate of more thoroughgoing land reform, observed in 2003: The ruling party is strong: Swapo does not need the land campaign to convince people to vote for them If elections took place tomorrow, Swapo will win – no doubt about it. Maybe the land issue is not a top priority because every Minister has already got his farm. They can postpone this issue … until there is strong pressure from the poor. Of course the poor first have to get organised. Their patience may run
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out … it is just a question of time. It is all about the capacity of the political leadership to control certain explosive issues.118 Its unassailable position, and the concomitant failure of the opposition to capitalise on such public discontent that exists, speaks not only to the government’s continued support across Namibian society, but also to Swapo party discipline as well as the fractured state of other parties. Unlike Zimbabwe, there is no credible black opposition challenge and this puts the locus of the land issue within the context of intraparty debates. In this sense, it is Swapo-affiliated organisations, particularly the Namibian Farm Workers Union as well as the Swapo Youth League, which have given voice to disquiet over the land reform issue.119 The Swapo leadership’s strategy has been to quell radicalism and opportunism within its ranks as it seeks to develop a solution which recognises the needs for some form of action on agrarian reform. Thus, dissident voices from within Swapo like Angula’s predecessor, Ya France, have been absorbed directly into the party hierarchy and effectively rendered silent in public.120 The opposition such as the Congress of Democrats, formed by ex-Swapo members from the internal movement with links to the trade unions, and even the DTA with its ethnic affiliation with black communities in the South, have criticised the government’s land policy for its favouritism and mismanagement but have not been able to translate this into electoral victories.121 The overall weakness of opposition is such that, according to one academic, diplomatic representatives and foreign companies were the only force outside of government articulating critical positions which Swapo took seriously.122 Another aspect of the land issue that has contributed to the government’s underlying conservatism towards agrarian reform is Namibia’s particular economic circumstances. Commercial agriculture, though not as important as other sectors, nonetheless represented under 10 per cent of total exports and thus the economic arguments for maintaining the status quo were convincing to the government. At the same time, by avoiding heavy borrowing from international financial institutions, the government has been able to maintain high levels of public spending and, through income grants and pension payments, ensure a basic livelihood for the bulk of the population. Neoliberal strictures, whether imposed by the IMF as in Zimbabwe or internally generated as in the South African case, have had only a limited effect on the government’s macroeconomic policy (through Pretoria’s monetary policy within SACU places certain constraints on the Namibian government). Furthermore, as avenues to enrichment still are found primarily
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through government itself or links to it, Swapo remains in a position to control or channel would-be dissidents. The centrality of civil service employment as an instrument of party patronage is reflected in the rising public sector spending such that government services represented nearly 40 per cent of all expenditure.123 In this context, the slow pace of growth, undercut by the expanding population, is the main danger for the economy as are its narrow base on mining, the prospect of overspending by the government and persistent unemployment. Given all of these factors, the question is perhaps not why hasn’t the Namibian government done more on land but rather why has it felt the need to act at all? At the heart of Swapo’s growing commitment to take action and, crucially, the form of action it has decided upon is linked inexorably to the meaning of land for the party and its activists. For the former liberation movement, the land’s saliency is not primarily economic, nor is it redistributive but rather its overarching importance lies in its symbolic value. Specifically, the contemporary re-emergence of the land issue touches on the seminal issue of Swapo’s moral authority as a liberation movement and its concomitant right to inherit the state (and with that, the accompanying economic largesse) in the name of the people. For this reason, each travesty committed by individuals within the settler community, such as an assault by white farmers on a black farm worker in Gobabis in 2003, in effect replays colonialism’s historical pageant and provides confirmation of the enduring pattern of uneven power relations and exploitation that inspired the liberation movement in the first place.124 In this sense, the instincts of the Swapo leadership have been to treat land as they have all vestiges of colonialism and apartheid: that is to combine assurances of political control with a policy of national reconciliation that does not fundamentally compromise economic interests. This approach conforms to Swapo’s overall reluctance upon taking power in 1990 to engage in the transformation of all but the most obvious reworking of national symbols. For example, the symbolism of liberation is manifested in a new country name, flag and national anthem as well as a belated construction of Heroes Acre (based on the Zimbabwean model) but significantly has left statues and memorials to German colonialism intact. Contrast the latter with Zimbabwe and Mozambique, where statues, public names and memorials of settler colonialism were systematically removed or desecrated after independence. Even name changes of streets, towns and cities – a standard feature of other post-colonial regimes – have been quite limited and further changes have been rejected by the government, arguing that it could damage tourism and investment.125
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Such is the government commitment to upholding this position that it is left to the opposition DTA to propose that Windhoek be renamed Otjomuise, Gobabis to Epako and Grootfontein to Otjivanda (a step rejected by Swapo). Faced with the public outcry fostered by a coalition of activists, Swapo radicals and opportunists and the media eager to see parallels with Zimbabwe, the government has resorted to essentially symbolic utterances and acts in addressing the land issue. Ritualised public condemnation of white attitudes serves the purpose of reasserting Swapo’s claim to legitimacy with the population as well as reminding settler-dominated economic concerns that their status remains beholden to the government. In this way, the attempts by farmers to gain the highest possible price for selling their land can be construed as asking ‘unpatriotic prices’ and a sign of colonial recidivism.126 The address of the Deputy Minister of MLRR Isak Katali to the Aroab Farmers Association points to this connection: Apparently white farmers are uncertain about their future both in farming and in Namibia. What happens to the policy of reconciliation? Have you not reconciled? The government wants to embrace the whites but you keep a distant away (sic). Where is your loyalty to the country and to the government? The national anthem that is the symbol and your identity is not sung. How should government think about this?127 The relative impotence of the settler community in the postindependence state, especially as it as withdrawn from active opposition party politics, allows Swapo to adopt these public stances at little or no cost to itself.128 At the same time, the political gains with the broader population can be considerable, especially in undermining critiques produced by potential adversaries among the black opposition. Much the same impetus has guided the position adopted by Namibian officials on events in Zimbabwe itself. Solidarity politics which drew together liberation movements during the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle are still important sources of political action and legitimacy for Swapo. Nujoma has been forthright in his support for his apparently beleaguered comrade in Zimbabwe and this has been reflected by such actions as Namibia’s electoral monitoring team claiming that the 2002 presidential elections were ‘water tight, without room for rigging’.129 Again, the relative costs of taking this stance are small when compared with the advantages such as an enhanced stature that
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comes with association with what is seen across Africa (and in some sectors of Namibia) as a principled position being taken by Mugabe against neocolonialism. In this context, the deliberate (though underreported) emphasis on legal, constitutionally sanctioned means of achieving Namibia’s agrarian reform are aimed as much at international donors and business as they are at local white farmers. This replicates Swapo’s traditional external orientation which had guided its approach through the years in exile. In spite of the possible gains accrued through symbolic radicalism on agrarian reform, government officials and many Swapo cadres are cognizant of the tremendous damage that a Zimbabwe-style approach to land reform has caused to that country and have expressed both publicly and privately no desire to follow suit.130 For that reason the Pohamba government has come to the conclusion that demonstrable action of some kind must accompany verbal posturing and that the situation in Namibia is containable only in conjunction with such action. At the same time, recognition of the continuing poor capacity on part of the government as manifested in the MLRR, which has led to failures of its resettlement programmes to date, remains a concern as a report by Sidney Harring and Willem Odendaal concluded, ‘A danger exists that the (MLRR) resettlement programme is perceived as simply “dumping poor people in rural areas”.’131 Thus an overriding fear of creating the conditions for communalisation of commercial farming is another key factor guiding the government’s approach to agrarian reform throughout.132 As Pohamba himself stated in a parliamentary debate in 2003: It is not a policy of the government to have communal areas in the commercial area. It is not the intention. To the contrary, the government does not want to see this and prohibits this situation.
Conclusion Swapo pragmatism and willingness to foreswear ideology, so much a feature of its strategy during the transitional period and the early days of independence, is the cornerstone of its response to the challenges of agrarian reform. The transitional arrangements were not, as in the Zimbabwean case, seen by the liberation movement as temporary impediments imposed by the West in collusion with the settler community to achieving the aims of the armed struggle. They were, in fact, seen as instruments that insured both national and internationally recognised political control and economic prosperity based upon
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the recognition by Swapo that the relatively precarious economic conditions facing Namibia. Furthermore, the constitution has not been an obstacle to Swapo ambitions: indeed, even the principle of expropriation has been an accepted (albeit reluctantly) legal instrument since the land conference of 1991. In the long term, it is not agrarian reform as presently construed but the challenges of urbanisation and accompanying changes to the governing party’s key rural constituencies, which may bring about a need by Swapo to revitalise and remobilise support. In that case, the erstwhile liberation movement may yet at some future date call upon the land issue and its links with the enduring patterns of past as a means of reinvigorating its electoral prospects.
5 Liberation and Compromise?
This book has sought to frame contemporary debates, policies and events surrounding the land question in Southern Africa in terms of three intertwined themes, the enduring role of the regional political economy, the effect of the transition and the important place of narrative. As has been demonstrated through examination of the empirical case studies drawn from the region, the political economy of settler colonialism and the transitional arrangements to majority rule in the embattled ex-settler states have been formative to the construction of the liberal-constitutional political regime and the accompanying constraints upon it. As a bulwark of neoliberalism produced in the wake of lengthy transitions, the liberal constitutional regime had not taken account of the underlying inequalities in the political economy of settler colonialism and thus replicated many of the contradictions inherent in it. When challenged by the failures of independence to realise the promise of liberation, be they justified or utopian, the institutions and political practices of the transition themselves became obstacles to addressing the structural features of the political economy that had allowed for black elite accumulation while entrenching white economic privileges. These transitional arrangements, of course, were drawn from a ‘happy convergence’ of neoliberalist institutions, past ‘dirigiste’ practices in settler states, African traditionalist assumptions of political power and the liberation movements’ politics of domination. Concurrently, the power of liberation era narratives, largely dormant in the aftermath of independence, was reasserted in the wake of economic hardships faced by the bulk of the population for whom independence had brought few or only limited tangible benefits. For liberation parties in power, the claims of political opposition determined to critique these shortcomings could only be effectively countered by reappropriating the 158
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liberation narrative to discredit opponents and, in so doing, embracing once again the radical politics of land. This act, whether pursued substantively or symbolically, threw into sharp relief the institutions and practices encoded in the liberal constitutional regime and the apparent false dawn they represented for liberation from settler colonialism. The post-colonial political regime in former settler oligarchies, to use Bratton and van de Walle’s terminology, is the cumulative expression of these three aforementioned themes and the key to understanding why apparently localised problems in Zimbabwe lit a spark that has raged in former settler states across the region. Events in Zimbabwe could not be isolated from other ex-settler states because they exposed the contradictions in the primordial political arrangements put into place across the region to replace the racially defined political order of the previous era. Having failed to address the structural inequalities inherited from the political economy of settler colonialism, the transitional device of a liberal constitutional regime remained hostage to its fundamental deficiencies. In short, the Zimbabwean crisis exposed the contradictions and predicament of the liberal-constitutional regime in the ex-settler states of Southern Africa. And, concurrently, the muted response to the Zimbabwean crisis in those states which had purged themselves of the underlying structure of the political economy of settler colonialism like Mozambique or were moulded to conform to (or accommodate) traditionalist institutions like Botswana underscored the sometimes stubborn terrain that confronted the different discourses of liberation outside of the core of ex-settler states wound tightly around the South African economic hub. Land, the thread which bound the past injustices of colonialism with the contemporary politics of independent Zimbabwe and its neighbours became the central metaphor for the failure of post-colonial regimes to fully address the aspirations of liberation. And, in keeping with this, the white farmer – no matter how removed from the reality of an exploitative past or how benevolent an individual might be – remained a living representation of brutal expropriation of land from the African population and ever a latent expression of that historical injustice. The saliency of this perception and experience for much of the population in other ex-settler states was made evident by the impact that the Zimbabwean crisis had had on their own local politics in Namibia and South Africa. The belated scramble by liberation parties to embrace the forgotten discourses of liberation came in the wake of their fear that the land issue would precipitate the emergence of political challengers to their rule who could stake their legitimacy on a critique of the sitting
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government’s mismanagement and failure to realise the promises of independence. This caused the liberation parties to recommit themselves to the symbols and, in some cases, the substance of land reform through the adoption of new instruments of redistribution such as accelerated land expropriation, new sources of funding and a reinterpretation (if not outright rewriting) of key constitutional provisions on property rights. It also reintroduced the language of race into discussions of national identity, spurning the rhetoric of racial reconciliation that dominated the transition and early independence. In Zimbabwe, where the clash between the impulse to rectify the land issue and the pursuit of democratic practices has reached cataclysmic proportions, the once-celebrated liberal constitutional regime became in effect the enemy for purveyors of liberation and has been progressively dismantled in pursuit of land reform and the retention of political power. The other transitional states of Namibia and South Africa were jolted by the shock of events in Zimbabwe as well and adopted, although in different ways, the rhetoric of ‘fast track’ land reform in addition to some of the tactical devices employed by Mugabe to force a recalcitrant white farming community into accepting the changing terms of postindependence relations. And, even Botswana’s apparently complacent marriage of neotraditionalism and liberal constitutionalism could not escape the shadow of radical discourses on land emanating from its neighbours. At the regional level, the residual imperatives of solidarity politics, which had been the dominant mode of foreign policy interaction between African government and liberation movements since the anticolonial struggle began fifty years ago, were also reaffirmed during the Zimbabwe crisis. Ironically this movement came just at the point when, under the auspices of South Africa’s New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) initiative as well as its influential role in structuring Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union, efforts were being made to introduce new modes of statesocietal interaction based on neoliberal precepts. Good governance, transparency and accountability, the jargon of democratic market-based politics, were incorporated into these new regional institutions with the aim of reconfiguring relations between the market, citizens and the state in Africa. Western leaders and their NGO counterparts mistakenly presumed that as the leader of this movement, the South African government would play a prominent part in castigating Mugabe and leading enlightened African opinion against his actions. Such was the pull of the liberation narrative with its anti-imperialist current that even ardent
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neoliberal proponents like Mbeki were drawn into its orbit of public conformity with Zanu-PF while expressing private dismay. To resist the ties of solidarity, as Zanu-PF adherents were quick to point out, was to deny ones’ own heritage of struggle and put oneself in the imperialist camp, and in so doing de-legitimise the very impulse for the armed struggle and the subsequent right to rule by African liberation parties. The differing structural features of the political economy in particular states within the region, as well as the character of the liberation party and its leadership, produced different reactions to the exposure of contradictions in the liberal constitutional regime among each of the states that varied in significant ways. For instance, the underlying structure of the economy in South Africa, which was at once profoundly more industrialised than its counterparts in the region, meant that the urbanisation of black society was a defining feature that impacted upon the land question. Apartheid, of course, through ‘separate development’ and investment incentives to encourage the relocation of industry in the Bantustans, sought to reverse the flow of rural migrants to the ‘white’ cities. Once this effort was effectively abandoned in the mid-1980s, the pace of migration quickened and with that the unloosening (but not severing) of the bonds between traditional modalities of rural life to those reshaped by the demands of labour and living in the cities. The result is that among the majority of urban-based black South Africans few aspire to take up farming nor do the black elite see the ownership of a rural idyll as an indication of wealth (in contrast to countries where the majority still live in the rural areas as is the case in Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe). Moreover, the commercial agriculture sector was one of South Africa’s few economic bright spots in the first decade of non-racial democracy, earning important foreign exchange for a country seeking financial capital, so that beyond the removal of racially inspired subsidies, Pretoria seemed mindful that agrarian reform could impact negatively on this situation. As was pointed out in Chapter 4, Namibia was in all respects an appendage of the South African state until independence and it has continued to rely upon the mining sector for revenue though agricultural exports from commercial farming remained important to the economy too. As was the case in South Africa, the Swapo government was unwilling to jeopardise these export earnings and, at the same time, contribute to an overall negative impression that agrarian reform might give to potential foreign investors. Rural-to-urban migration has been less a factor in Namibia than South Africa, with the bulk of Ovambo migration oriented towards employment in the isolated mines in the south
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not to the country’s only major city, Windhoek, where employment opportunities remain dominated by the public sector. In Zimbabwe, like the other states the effective perpetuation of its skewed land ownership patterns was connected to the country’s economic reliance on commercial agriculture’s export earnings. Modest manufacturing and secondary production facilities attracted migrants to cities such as Harare and Bulawayo and, significantly, it has been the urban-based population that has given its support to the opposition MDC. However, while urbanisation grew at a faster pace than in Namibia, the bulk of the Zimbabwean population still remained in the countryside and retained practices and aspirations which reflected these circumstances. In all cases, it should not be inferred that cumulative effects of urbanisation are such that the once rural African population loses the connection with the countryside altogether. In fact, crucial dimensions of the rural past remain intact, such as kinship ties, family (sometimes second wives and children for men), certain ceremonial practices around marriages and burial obligations, and more explicitly economic concerns such as land titles and property sales. Rural based practices, needs and attitudes towards land are subject to change and are reformed to accommodate the new circumstances – these are shaped by the experiences and demands of urban life. Although taking up an occupation based primarily (if not solely) on farming is less likely to be an orientation for a city dweller, the evolution of the conditions in the so-called first, urban-oriented economy – in particular the increasing unemployment problems, the incapacity of the formal sector to absorb the labour force and the deterioration of labour conditions mainly due to subcontracting in a globalised economy – re-emphasise the importance of rural linkages as safety nets for the masses, even in urbanised countries like South Africa. Another area of difference between the states in the region is that their respective liberation movements cum governing parties were, naturally, themselves products of local contingency and circumstances. Some liberation movements were deliberately cut in the Leninist mould, which emphasised iron party discipline in the course of the armed struggle, while others – out of circumstances as much as volition – allowed for greater diversity of opinion and policy latitude across the organisation and its allies. The African National Congress’ (ANC) coalition structure, for example, developed in the course of the liberation struggle provided for considerable dissent and so doing avoided much of the worst forms of fragmentation that were found among its fellow liberation movements. For the ANC in government, however,
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the chief problematic has been reconciling the liberation movement in exile and its democratic-centralist tendencies, with the United Democratic Front at home, the latter being based on a ‘broad church’ of trade unionists and other civil society groups who aligned themselves with the ANC. The tripartite alliance between the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP reflects this compromise. This contrasts with Swapo, which experienced a similar dichotomy between its exile and internal wings but, unlike the South African comrades, was forthright in asserting its authority over the domestic movement. Contributing to this disciplining impulse was the harrowing experiences of intraparty purges that ultimately took the lives of thousands of Swapo personnel in the 1980s but, though a few individuals defected, never led to the break-up of the organisation itself. Zimbabwe’s liberation movements were incubated in a hothouse of exile politics, leadership struggles, assassinations and violent factionalism. Zanu-PF, itself an ethnically based splinter group from Zanu, was controlled with Machiavellian mastery by Mugabe for thirty years. Mugabe’s survivalist instincts, his ability to set factions against one another, to compromise as necessary and to ruthlessly carry out actions against perceived threats has influenced the conduct of politics in post-independent Zimbabwe. In this sense, finally, it could also be said that the character of the liberation party in power is closely tied to the nature of its leadership. The undeniable element in a successful liberation struggle is the ability of a given leader to hold the organisation together, against considerable odds and over a sustained period of adversity, leading them ultimately to power. Mandela’s decades of imprisonment and famous gestures of reconciliation with his apartheid foes shaped the perception of the ANC in its earliest days in power. Mbeki, very much the exile and technocrat, imposed a different style on the liberation party reflecting his instincts and outlook. Nujoma’s ‘common touch’ belied a gut instinct for populist politics and compromise that nonetheless brokered no rivals. Pohamba, like Mbeki, is more of a party bureaucrat and less overtly charismatic. Mugabe’s influence has already been mentioned above, but it is worth repeating that despite his now tarnished standing in the West, for a long time he was held in high regard for his intellect (though not his personal warmth!) and steely determination. Today, as noted in earlier chapters, although it has been damaged mainly since 2006, his image is still feted throughout much of the African continent for the forthright stance against vestiges of colonialism and the new imperialism. Given that the liberation parties in power are still being led by the same generation that fought against settler rule, the discourses
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of the past – the settler narrative and the liberation narrative – remain formative and influential in the minds of the governing elite. The upshot of the specificities of each of the cases in the region is that these contingent variables effected what International Relations scholars call ‘norm localisation’ of external ideas (see below). In this instance, the formative concepts and institutions of neoliberalism which underpinned the liberal constitutional regime put into place after settler colonialism were challenged by the failure of the new government to adequately address the economic disparities from the past. Initially, the ex-settler states responded by denying the severity of the purported challenge to their legitimacy as liberators but, as the discourse of discontent – fuelled by economic dislocation and, in the case of the other Southern African states, the example of events in Zimbabwe – gained credence among local political actors, the governments increasingly had to rhetorically disassociate themselves with the ideas and even institutions of the liberal constitutional regime. In effect, the circumstances and contradictions inherent in the liberal constitutional regime eventually reached a point that not acting on land issues was potentially more destabilising to the liberation parties and the economy than acting on it. How they acted, the degree to which the liberation parties in power felt compelled to go beyond reappropriating the language of liberation to actual implementation of substantive agrarian reform, which audience they attempted to address through their actions and their international position on land reform all depended upon the local contingencies found in each of the case studies. At the same time, in applying this framework to both the ex-settler states in Southern Africa and states that were linked to the political economy of the region but had themselves not experienced settler colonialism or had broken definitively from it, the study shows the importance of agency, contingency and local conditions that mediated specific outcomes within particular states. In essence the compromises that formed the transition out of the political conundrum of armed struggle and white settler rule and ushered in the liberal-constitutional regime have been the most defining feature of these ex-settler governments and have placed them all in a similar situation vis-à-vis their past and contemporary situation. These parallels in the conduct of liberation parties in the post-independence period and their piecemeal approach or outright disinterest in implementing substantive agrarian reform, when held up to the limited gains experienced by the population, set the stage for an inevitable confrontation. The result was that when it did occur, the local media and political actors were able to draw on
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a common societally based narrative when confronted by the contradictions between the commitments of liberation movements during the armed struggle and their behaviour once in power.
Understanding the regional impact of the Zimbabwean crisis At the periphery of the South African system are states like Mozambique and Botswana which, along with Zambia and Malawi, had been drawn into the formative construction of the regional political economy around the Witwatersrand hub of mining, manufacturing and financial capital. Although to a lesser extent as compared to Zimbabwe in its colonial manifestation, Rhodesia, and after it gained independence, Botswana and Mozambique served as alternative poles to South Africa’s economy. Acting as a source of labour for mining and agriculture in South Africa, as well as a destination for South African investment in everything from large capital intensive projects like the Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique and the Orapa diamond mine in Botswana as well as smaller commercial enterprises and tourism, the economies of these two states were intimately bound to South Africa. Furthermore, colonial Mozambique and Botswana (or Beuchanaland as it was known) harboured white settler populations whose racial status conferred much the same kind of privileges found in apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. Though it is true that Portuguese rule in Mozambique and Crown Colony standing in Beuchanaland did introduce variations in the practice of racial discrimination (see below), the underlying legal and normative web of colonialism ensured that whites were given better access to arable farmland, transport to markets, capital inputs and generally more rights to land than the indigenous population. In light of this, it is puzzling to see how the governments in Mozambique and Botswana have reacted to the crisis in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean crisis has had the most visible impact in the cases of Mozambique and Botswana in the area of foreign policy. Botswana in particular has modified its once forthright position criticising the demise of rule of law in neighbouring Zimbabwe to one less straightforward. Although often criticising its neighbour at a domestic level, Botswana’s stance internationally tended to conform to the public utterances of sympathy and understanding for Mugabe. In the first instance, like their confreres in Pretoria and Windhoek, official positions towards the instigation of ‘fast track’ land reform and the accompanying economic chaos have been generally supportive in public of the rationale
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for Mugabe’s actions, especially the underlying analysis of colonialism’s role in creating the conditions for crisis. The solidarity politics, though occasionally challenged on the continent, still remained the leitmotif of international action by African states. Both governments acquiesced to the Pretoria-led attempt to unseat the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Don Mckinnon, who was said to be biased against Mugabe, and participated in the subsequent SADC condemnation of the decision at the Abuja summit meeting to continue with Zimbabwe’s suspension. At the same time, Botswana’s President, Festus Mogae, has been more forthright than other Southern African leaders in criticising the undermining of legal and constitutional structures by Zanu-PF in the course of the crisis while Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano has quietly sought to encourage white Zimbabweans to take up farming in the underutilised agricultural areas of the country’s central provinces. These public positions, one upholding the liberal-constitution model promulgated during the transition from colonialism, and the other divesting ‘white settlers’ of their past and seeing them as ‘foreign investors’, were at variance with those being articulated by the South African and Namibian governments. But, while the Zimbabwean economy’s meltdown did produce costs for Mozambique and Botswana (although in some respects Mozambican tourism proved to be a beneficiary), their respective governments could feel secure that, unlike other ex-settler states, their domestic publics were essentially indifferent to the rhetoric of the armed struggle on land. Unlike South Africa and Namibia, the powerful anti-imperialist narrative has produced only faint echoes in contemporary Mozambican and Botswanan civil society and the domestic political debate on land – at least initially. Understanding this difference is both important in its own right and highlights more clearly the determining role that the transition has over the shape of policies towards land in the post-colonial period in Southern Africa. Independent Mozambique’s radical break with the political economy of colonialism, coming on the heels of a bitter armed struggle and the ousting (or flight) of most white settlers, and Botswana’s relatively strife-free gaining of independence under the British, both countries experienced transitions that severed the remnants of settler colonialism in a way unrealised in neighbouring Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia. Though substantively different from one another, Mozambique and Botswana nonetheless simultaneously illustrate the centrality of the regional political economy as mediated through the transitional arrangements in shaping the postindependence reaction to the challenges posed by the Zimbabwe crisis.
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At the same time, these non-settler states demonstrate the diminished power of narrative in the domestic discourse while revealing its continued saliency at the regional level. As was the case across the rest of Southern Africa, events in Zimbabwe cast a shadow over the land issue in Mozambique though in unexpected and fundamentally different ways. An underlying historical connection between the two independence struggles meant that the liberation movements themselves were quite familiar with one another. Mozambique’s drift away from Zimbabwe’s influence, a process that began with the ending of apartheid and was accelerated through collaborative ventures like the Maputo Development Corridor and Mozal (the giant aluminium smelting project), coincided with a shift in foreign policy outlook. The crucial part played by South African capital in fostering Mozambique’s double-digit growth, albeit mostly experienced in the southern part of the country, helped confirm the reorientation towards a market economy and, in particular, one which was dominated by South Africa. Zimbabwe’s history of armed struggle was closely linked to events in Mozambique and the role of Frelimo in providing a sanctuary for Zapu guerrillas, as well as instituting economic sanctions against the Rhodesian government from 1976, all contributed enormously to the precipitous deterioration of Ian Smith’s fortunes. During the civil war of the 1980s, Zimbabwean troops were deployed to guard the Beira corridor against attacks by Renamo guerrillas. Mugabe’s personal role in convincing Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, both Shona-speakers, to adhere to the 1994 electoral results was another example of the political ties between the two countries. This history of mutual support and interest between the two leading liberation movements cum political parties, including the cautionary experience of seeing first hand the negative impact that white settler flight and wholesale nationalisation had had on Mozambique’s economy, resulted in a strong affinity in regional matters (if not necessarily mutual respect). The complication of Mugabe’s controversial authorisation of intervention in the Congo in 1998 under SADC auspices placed the Mozambican government on a collision course with its neighbour as the South African government sought to rally SADC members against this action. In keeping its now close relationship with South Africa, the Chissano government supported Pretoria’s policy of removing Mugabe from key posts within the SADC security structures as well as participating in some of the South African-led discussions with the Zimbabwean leader on stemming the land crisis in 2000. Like South Africa, the Frelimo government
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spoke publicly in support of Mugabe’s dilemma, emphasising their shared colonial legacy of land dispossession but privately officials were concerned about the negative impact that land invasions were having on Mozambique’s own economic prospects. Frelimo, along with the ANC and Swapo, hosted a joint liberation party congress in Maputo in 2002 to discuss shared areas of concern. In fact, by 2003 the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy was such that the historical migration of Mozambicans seeking better prospects across the border had reversed and Zimbabweans had begun crossing into Mozambique in larger numbers to look for work. Most interesting of all was the distinctive attitude that the Mozambican government held towards economic refugees from Zimbabwe. While annunciating a policy of sympathy for Zanu-PF and the Zimbabwean government, Maputo openly encouraged white Zimbabwean farmers to settle in the country as part of its overall drive to attract foreign investment. Indeed, Zimbabwean investors had already been important sources of capital in the underdeveloped central provinces of Manica, Sofala and northern Inhambane. Manica province, which bordered Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands and was familiar to many white and black Zimbabweans, became a destination for white farmers fleeing land invasions. Initially, the Zimbabweans farmers had wanted to settle in a large concession of territorially linked farms – effectively creating a country within a country – but the provincial and national authorities rejected this. Instead, sixty-three families were given leases to develop commercial agriculture in Manica province and, along with several thousand black farm workers, began the arduous task of establishing working farms in a region which had little more than rudimentary infrastructure, poorly resourced towns and no significant domestic market.1 Like South African whites who had taken up farming in Niassa province a few years earlier, the Zimbabwean farmers found that the circumstances they faced in Mozambique, including official corruption and problems getting their products to market, made success at commercial agriculture a much more difficult prospect than they had expected.2 The reaction to the government’s invitation to white farmers from Zimbabwe provoked a minor public debate in Mozambique. The official press, still dominated by elements aligned with the marginalised ‘leftist’ factions of Frelimo, raised concerns about the white settlers importing their racist practices to Mozambique.3 That this produced no notable change in government policy, nor in the welcoming attitude of Manica provincial officialdom to the Zimbabweans, reflected the uncontested nature of this event in post-liberation Mozambican society as a whole.
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A similar public debate on the white farmers from South Africa did not bring about any discernible change in policy nor in the reaction of Mozambicans living in the local areas affected. The Zimbabwean crisis provoked a sharp initial reaction from the Botswanan government. Mogae, responding to Mugabe’s condoning of violations of property rights in the Zimbabwe, declared: ‘Land reform needed to be done in Zimbabwe. But now it is just a question of doing the right thing in a wrong way. (…) Even the good things that are coming out of Zimbabwe are overshadowed by these acts of lawlessness.’4 The situation even led till a diplomatic rift between the two countries.5 Botswana joined South Africa and Mozambique, as well as Nigeria, in participating in the diplomatic efforts to resolve the land issue in 2000 and 2001. Concurrently, the government supported South African-led efforts to restrict and ultimately sideline Zimbabwe’s role in the security and defence mechanisms within SADC. However, though forthright in its criticism of the Zimbabwean government internally, by end 2005, the president had changed his tone considerably particularly at an international level. On a visit to Zimbabwe during August 2006, President Mogae of Botswana showered praise on Mugabe for his land distribution policies. He even reportedly told the UN Food and Agricultural Programme that Zimbabwe would become one of the top farming nations in the world in the near future.6 Contributing to this surprising shift in public discourse was the emergence of a local reaction to events in Zimbabwe, tempered by the experiences with Zimbabwean migrants and the influence of ideas from neighbouring states. Like Mozambique and South Africa, Botswana’s border with Zimbabwe has meant that it has seen a rise in illegal migrants fleeing adverse conditions in their country for the relative prosperity of its neighbours. The reaction of Botswanans has been two-fold. In the first instance there was a willingness to allow Zimbabweans to take up refuge in what was seen at the time to be a temporary politically motivated situation. However, as the numbers have steadily increased in response to the deteriorating economic circumstances in Zimbabwe, local attitudes have hardened and a range of complaints and accusations against Zimbabweans has taken root. For instance, Zimbabweans are said to be willing to work for lower wages than native Botswanans and, generally living in squalid conditions at the edges of the main urban areas and participating in car theft rings and other criminal activities, are contributing to pressures on existing social services. Like many South Africans, and particularly since the spread of cholera in the region, including Botswana, a strong streak of xenophobia informs local views of Zimbabweans.
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Though the vast majority of migrants to Botswana are black Zimbabweans, usually with few means at hand, a small minority are white Zimbabweans who have taken up residence, have purchased land and even begun some commercial farming. The latter have been the subject of concern by some members of the public, even causing them to echo a localised version of the anti-settler discourse circulating in other parts of the region. ‘How can we allow white settlers to grab land in an area where land is not enough for cattle to graze’ said Margaret Nasha – an inhabitant of rural Marokolwane, cited in one of Botswana’s local newspapers.7 While emphasising the situations in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, the newspaper asks, ‘Why they (the Whites) are not satisfied with all the land they grabbed (till now) (…) not to mention the homes they have stolen from ignorant people to run businesses?’ While in June 2002, Bocongo (Botswana Council of NGOs) and Fonsag (Forum on Sustainable Agriculture) organised a conference entitled ‘Growing Land Hunger in Botswana?’8 dealing with land problems and scarcity, others speak about an invasion and an uncontrolled scramble for land: We understand that white Zimbabweans and South Africans are faced with problems in settling in those countries … and most of these problems are land based. Millions of black South Africans and Zimbabweans were dispossessed of their land under the white regimes. We don’t want this to happen in our country.9 Given that Botswana has historically espoused a deliberately non-racial, universalistic form of liberalism, most emphatically under Khama and more recently in the government’s initial reactions to the Zimbabwean crisis, the shift in the government’s discourse and the public discourse on racial identity and land is especially significant. Its emergence in the Botswanan political discourse demonstrates the power of the regional liberation narrative to both influence public outlooks and ultimately government polices even outside the context of a country’s direct historical experience of settler colonialism. This examination of the neighbouring states in Southern Africa, in particular Mozambique and Botswana, one an ex-settler state and the other a colonial protectorate with no historically significant white settler community, sheds light upon the overriding importance of the three seminal factors identified in this study for the politicisation of the land issue. The enduring legacies of the political economy, the nature of the transition from colonialism (or apartheid) to independence and
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the place of narratives have all played a determining role in shaping government policies and public reactions to the problem posed by land. Nonetheless, the particular trajectories pursued by governments in Mozambique, which had broken decisively with settler colonialism upon taking power, and Botswana, which had experienced a transition to liberal constitutionalism that reinforced its traditional authority structures, have produced distinctly different impacts on their domestic debate on land, its relationship to and liberal constitutionalism as well as their foreign policy responses to the Zimbabwe crisis. In the first instance, the Mozambican case provides particular insight into how the rupture with the political economy of settler colonialism eliminated not only the physical manifestations of the colonial past but conditioned the population to accept the political elites’ subsequent embrace of market capitalism. For Mozambique, having in effect driven out its settler population thirty years before in the course of an armed struggle and through its implementation of socialist policies, the break with the structures of the political economy of colonialism was sharp and complete. This has meant that Frelimo’s policy of opening up the country to foreign investment in the late 1980s, coming as it did against the background of having already nationalised private property (and with no guardians of settler privileges or interests anymore in place), principally drew fire from the residual leftists within Mozambican politics (along with some foreign NGOs) who joined traditional authorities and their supporters to preserve the rights of small holder agriculturalists. The result was that the government’s decision to move towards leasehold arrangements while recognising traditional authorities and communal practices marked a compromise with these interests, an important step towards private ownership but one which stopped short of fully adapting land policies to the exigencies of market capitalism. Carlos Cardoso, the slain journalist and one-time Frelimo idealist-turned-government critic, reflected just how far the ‘new thinking’ within Frelimo had come when he declared in 1991 that ‘the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism was to not be exploited by capitalism’.10 Far from seeing the incoming white Zimbabweans as emblematic of a resurgence of colonial practices (not to say the Portuguese returning to claim property nationalised at independence) Mozambican elites and society have overwhelmingly accepted a significant foreign role in the economic development of the country and its resources. Liberation narratives, so powerful in shaping government and civil society responses to land in the other three exsettler states, have no special grip on the contemporary politics of land
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in Mozambique. But, as Hanlon puts it in his assessment of the sources of controversy on the matter of land, ‘The problem is not foreigners stealing Mozambican land, it is the new Mozambican elite stealing land from peasants.’11 Mozambique is in this sense, as Dorman suggests, very much a post-liberation state.12 In the case of Botswana, though it was (and remains) part of the regional political economy, the absence of settler colonialism has meant that it has not carried forward any racially defined legacies in the area of land ownership or other socio-economic manifestations of racially inspired privilege into the post-colonial period. Coupled with this was the nature of the transition to independence which occurred without recourse to armed struggle or the accompanying self-conscious ideological embrace of socialism (or its rhetoric) but rather relied upon a commitment to blend liberal constitiunalism with traditional authority structures. The seamless transition from the colonial protectorate, which gave the diskgosi (traditional leaders) a preponderance of authority and power, to a liberal constitutional state that reaffirmed their standing by providing new sources of economic and political largesse, has meant that domestic land issues have remained impervious to external definition. Though this may be in the process of changing, this situation has been bolstered by the relative lack of corruption, as compared with other resource-rich developing countries, under Botswana’s leadership that has enabled these Botswana Democratic Party- (BDP) dominated institutions to benefit from the legitimising force of democratic patronage and traditionalism in equal measure. Indeed, the vitality of this structured democratic traditionalism – or if one likes ‘democratic patrimonialism with Tswanan characteristics’ – remains, so far anyway, intact as the recent wide-ranging consultations on the Land Boards demonstrates. Furthermore, under the tutelage of the temperate liberalism espoused by the BDP, the government has actively contested both domestically and internationally perceived threats to private property and constitutional rule posed by the Zimbabwean crisis. Interestingly, it is only when the liberation narrative has been localised, that is to say ahistorical claims are made regarding the enduring role of white settlers in Botswana’s political and economic life, that it has some small purchase on local sentiment. The Voice, a popular local Botswanan newspaper, writes, [w]e call upon each and every Motswana (sic) to stand up for our land. We should not allow the imperial era of land dispossession to happen on our door step.13
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At the same time, as in Mozambique, the scope for political opportunism on the issue of land – so much a driver of actions taken by the liberation movements cum governing parties in Namibia and South Africa – is restricted to local concerns and not particularly influenced by events, experiences, or accompanying discourses emerging from the Zimbabwean situation.
The enduring power of narratives As this study has shown, narratives provide the most salient explanation for the volatile current of political dynamics which accompanied the sudden escalation of the land question after years of apparent disinterest and neglect within ex-settler states. All three narratives – realised and articulated through perceptions and discourses, political institutions and social practices – form part of the complex and overlapping historical significance ascribed to land in the region. The cascading series of events which were triggered in Zimbabwe reaffirmed the role of narratives to the very definition of the politics of Southern Africa and the centrality of land to the character of the prevailing political regime. With regard to the liberation narrative, its latent power is evident in the rapid spread and appeal that land, its meaning and its imagery have had across most of Southern Africa. As a source of the legitimacy of liberation parties in power, the liberation narrative has been key as a mobilisation strategy – especially so among the predominantly rural societies of Southern Africa (with South Africa a partial exception – see above) in the historical past and, again, under the present climate. Central in bridging the revolutionary past with the contemporary discourses of the present has been Robert Mugabe’s rehabilitation of land in the public discourse on politics. At the heart of Mugabe’s offensive against opposition to his rule are repeated attempts to frame the Zimbabwe problem within a larger anti-imperialist and pan-African discourse. Mugabe’s ability to resituate land inequalities and colonial legacy in the present context, questioning as such Africa’s autonomy, has been readily echoed by Southern African leaders and beyond the region as well. For example, South Africa’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nkososana Dlamini-Zuma stated that it was the backing for white settlers by London which had complicated efforts to find a political solution to the Zimbabwe crisis.14 Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa have all refused to succumb to bullying tactics by Britain because they
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are all aware of its hidden agenda to topple the present Zimbabwean government … The intention of the British to recolonise Zimbabwe is not an April Fools’ joke but is real.15 Also the President of Tanzania Benjamin Mkapa actively supported Mugabe and his land reform at the SADC summit in Mauritius held in 2004: ‘Let the SADC speak with one voice and let the outside world understand, that to us Africans, land is much more than a factor of production – we are spiritually anchored in the lands of our ancestors, but now we are in power, we cannot run away from our historical duty to set right these historical wrongs’.16 At the same occasion, Mauritian Prime Minister and new SADC chairperson Paul Berenger praised Mugabe and said the SADC had agreed earlier this year to establish a technical committee to advise on land reform, which was crucial to develop.17 Even voices critical of Zanu-PF in the regional media have characterised the actions of the international community as a form of ‘regime change in Zimbabwe … through acts of economic sabotage … under cover of instruments of democracy, human rights, rule of law, good governance, to sound reasonable’.18 These principles, as prominent Zimbabwean activists themselves point out, are then used as a tool for overturning the Zimbabwean government.19 For a political actor in Southern Africa to take a stance against the liberation narrative, in support, for instance, of neoliberal principles, is to immediately contest the veracity of the liberation struggle and the post-colonial order. The settler narrative retains importance in two distinctive ways. First, it continues to inform the outlook of the white community, especially those in the commercial agricultural sector as they seek to redefine their place within the changing political and economic dynamics of Southern Africa. Its standing as a symbolic ‘other’ at the apparent heart of the exsettler state is a visible signpost of the past and its saliency to the contemporary situation. Moreover, given the seminal role played by the settler narrative in the very construction of sovereignty in Southern Africa, this status carries over to the structures and processes of the post-independent state bequeathed to the liberation party. It exercises influence over, for instance, the expectations of incoming liberation movements as they assume the privileges of office, dispense patronage and purse strategies of accumulation. This can also be seen in the common response of ANC apologists in post-apartheid South Africa to accusations that through affirmative action policies they are engaged in racially based exclusion is to point out that the National Party pursued the same approach in creating the conditions for the upliftment of the Afrikaner.
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And, finally, the neoliberal narrative occupies a position as co-terminus with the liberal constitutional regime and the rationalist policies which accompanied its ascendancy. Recourse to discourses on economic efficiency, individual rights and, above all, the overarching structures of law are integral to it and these ideas are encoded in the transitional arrangements away from the formal trappings of settler colonialism. On the matter of agrarian reform, it promulgates a view that emphasises land as a productive asset and explicitly calls for the unbundling of traditional forms of agriculture both for their inherent productive inefficiencies and undemocratic impact on the polity. As such the neoliberal narrative serves as an instrument for promoting the developmental possibilities of law with the ultimate aim of giving shape to a modern market-oriented economy in Africa. The character of the narrative as external to the region – and therefore increasingly seen as less ‘authentic’ to African perspectives – is enhanced by its persistent advocacy by international actors and processes. Even the South African and Botswanan governments, widely viewed as committed to neoliberalism, eventually could only muster a somewhat tepid defence of its principles in the public discourse on land as the Zimbabwean crisis developed.20 The importance of retaining the coherence of the political processes of neoliberalism – adherence to the constitution, legislative processes and the use of courts – is therefore underscored by Southern African governments even as they begin to institute policies on land which deviate from the premises of neoliberalism. The anti-imperialist discourse, a key feature of the liberation narrative, is broader in reach than the land issues and extends to any neoliberal initiative. For South Africa in particular, with its lofty visions for transforming the African continent, the impact of narratives went beyond the land question and its domestic implications. The criticism mounted by the Zimbabwean president, which was infused with the anti-imperialist discourse, was adopted by other Africans critical of South Africa’s continental initiatives. On several occasions, Mugabe openly accused South Africa’s imperial behaviour. Recent initiatives such as Mbeki’s African Renaissance, Nepad and even Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies are criticised as being an African variant on imperialism and colonialism, and bringing about the perpetuation of inequality in African societies through its neoliberal prescriptions.21 The South African anti-globalisation strategist Denis Brutus has declared that Mbeki and his African colleagues were apparently intent on selling out the continent under the rubric of a plan drafted by the same technocrats who wrote Pretoria’s failed
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Growth, Employment and Redistribution economic programme, under the guidance of Washington and the corporate leaders of Davos […] It is time for us to insist that President Mbeki rise off his kneepad and assume the dignity of an African leader or face ridicule.22 Critics allege that the Africa Renaissance and more particularly its concrete economic programme, Nepad, are subimperial projects, influenced by an elite team of (South) African emergent black and traditional (white) bourgeoisie ‘partners’. If these elites are often seen as South African, they are regularly depicted as representing the Western – indeed white – powers.23 Whatever the real meanings behind the terms ‘recolonisation’ and ‘imperialism’, they harmonise with the African image of individualism, superiority, Western dominion vis-a-vis the rest of the continent.. Even though these initiatives proclaim themselves as African programmes developed by Africans, in fact they have been worked out and negotiated in conjunction with G8 countries with the support from international organisations and reflected the dominant neoliberal narrative. As Bond writes, Nepad itself surfaced only after extensive consultations with the leading international financial institutions, the G8 leaders and representatives of international business.24 No other local African institution, trade union, or civil organisation was consulted. This resulted in criticism aimed at these so-called neoimperialist initiatives, from a content as from a process point of view. By emphasising that ‘Africa is not for sale!’, there occurs a call for an African people’s consensus, inspired by a vision of the development of the continent that reflects more genuine African thinking, instead of what is often judged as seemingly ‘home grown products of the Washington Consensus augmented by transparently false promises of good governance and democracy.’25 For instance, during the African Union launch in Durban in mid-2002, more than 200 human rights organisations, trade advocacy groups and others from the DRC, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe held a militant demonstration. The local newspaper reported, [A] group which met in Pretoria recently and was addressed by Mbeki, planned several aspects of the blueprint for Africa’s economic recovery, referring to Mbeki and members of Nepad’s steering committee as ‘a small group of political elites’ and saying the nature of Nepad would ‘perpetuate and reinforce the subjugation of Africa in
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the international global system, the enclavity of African economies and the marginalisation of Africa’s people.26 Similar critics are directed to Nepad’s Agricultural Programme, Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). A major part of the CAADP concerns land and land management in Africa. It has nevertheless been criticised for being, on one hand, a copy of World Bank’s land programme, and on the other hand, implemented by this very same international institution.27 And it is precisely this portrayal of South Africa as a tool of Western imperialism or even an imperial power itself on the continent that caused Thabo Mbeki to be cautious in his dealings with the Zimbabwean crisis. Criticising Mugabe’s land reform programme publicly would simultaneously destabilise Mbeki’s domestic position and his own neoliberal oriented policies for the African continent. Mugabe and his employment of the anti-imperialist discourse are in a position to question, if not destroy, the legitimacy of South Africa’s expansion initiatives.28 And while Zanu-PF’s actions are increasingly acknowledged to be those of a party desperate to retain power at all costs, the power of the liberation narrative remains undeniable.29 As one veteran Zimbabwean activist points out, ‘Mugabe has very successfully portrayed the Zimbabwe crisis as an anti-colonial and anti-imperial problem, and in so doing has forced other African countries to support him.’30 Criticising Mugabe is seen by many Africans as being pro-Western and anti-African. Although the man is part of the past for the large majority of Africans, the liberation narrative continues to claim allegiance within Zimbabwe and across the continent.
The implications for democratic consolidation in Southern Africa While the trigger of the crisis in Zimbabwe may have been challenges posed by neoliberalism to the post-colonial state, the conflict as played out in the region itself came to be centred on the issue of land, the entanglement of these issues with the very legitimacy of liberal constitution state.31 The unresolved position of land ownership, encoded through the transitional constitutions which preserved property rights of white commercial farmers that, in so doing, froze the dire economic circumstances faced by the black peasantry, provided a potent and lingering source of discontent within the post-colonial state. For black-led governments, faced by the economic dislocation and social unrest that accompanied
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economic duress (be due to SAPs or otherwise), the land issue presented an admittedly volatile but potentially important means of regaining electoral support. At the same time, the public airing of the long-buried land question in independent states tapped into societally grounded narratives that inspired political entrepreneurs and inadvertently began to bring pressure to bear on these same governments. This was particularly the case with Zimbabwe, which led the way within the region in using the land issue as a counter to the challenges posed by neoliberalism. Concurrently, and here Zimbabwe again was at the regional forefront, the crisis inspired by neoliberalism provided a rationale for political opportunists to review and reinterpret the key features of the post-colonial state established by the transition from settler oligarchy. In the context of growing crisis, Southern African states came to ignore the pressure of international actors when it contradicted the sources of domestic legitimacy and the regional norm on solidarity. Domestic audience costs of taking a harsh public stance on the Zimbabwe situation were deemed by governing authorities in Pretoria and Windhoek too high, given the reverberations it would hold for their own domestic land question. Moreover, the residual impulse of regional solidarity (and perhaps the non-democratic influences derived from the liberation struggle), came to play a far greater role in situating these transitional states in relation to their self-ascribed identity as independent, post-settler states. Beyond the question of democratic consolidation posed by examining the conduct of the liberal-constitutional regimes in Southern Africa is the daunting prospect that political compromises, coming after independence, have damaged the long term prospects for democracy. With the pathologies of liberation movements cum governments, whose steadfast belief in their historically determined right to rule mingled with a sense of entitlement to the accumulative practices associated with the former settler states, remains basically unaltered despite domestic criticism it therefore becomes difficult to envisage how they will allow power to change hands by the ballot box. The sensitivity of all three liberation movements to the succession question and the rise of black-led opposition parties is one clear manifestation of this dilemma. This has resulted in the liberation governments’ growing reliance upon the other half of what Mamdani calls the ‘bifurcated state’ with its stultifying form of traditional authoritarianism – the same political device utilised by the colonial authorities as a counterweight to the rise of black nationalist aspirations for independence – and now being mobilised against political critics and opposition movements.
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Like the colonial authorities before them, the compromises that liberation parties make with traditional authorities in order to stay in power today in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa echo similar measures taken by the same liberation movements during the armed struggle in their quest to overthrow the settler state. The ramifications of these bargains on the possibilities of the ex-settler state to serve as a focal point of democratic change is self-evident. Genuine transformation, perhaps, still awaits more primordial forces of democracy rooted in wide sweeping economic change rather than the polemics of erstwhile revolutionaries’ intent on treasure and clinging to office.
Fieldwork For the purpose of this study, research has been conducted in 2004– 2005 in Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. The following institutions, organisations, people have been interviewed. For confidentiality reasons the names of the specific interviewees have been left out.
Botswana Academic and research institutions ●
University of Gaborone: ❍ Directorate of Research ❍ Faculty of Social Sciences ❍ Department of political science ❍ Student management and Political Counselling ❍ Department of Agriculture ❍ Faculty of environmental sciences ❍ Library of the University of Botswana
Government and public institution
●
● ● ●
● ● ●
●
Botswana Ministry of Local Government, Lands and Housing ❍ Department of Lands Botswana Ministry of Agriculture Botswana Ministry of Foreign Affairs Local Land Boards: ❍ Kweneng land Board ❍ Mogoditsane sub-land board BIDPA (Botswana institute for Development Policy analysis) Government Printer SADC Centre ❍ Agricultural Research ❍ Technical services UNDP 180
Fieldwork
181
NGO’s, associations, and unions ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Ditshwanelo – The Botswana Centre for Human Rights Democracy Research Project IDEAA (Institute for Development & Equity in African Agriculture) Foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Survival International First people of the Kalahari Kamanakao Shiyeyi association BAU (Botswana Agricultural Union) Botswana Horticultural Council
Political parties and parliamentarians ● ● ●
MPs for the ruling BDP MPs for the opposition BNF MPs and councillors with regional/local representation for Kweneng
Farmers, urban dwellers and other individuals (Kweneng) ● ● ● ●
Communal farmers (7) Commercial farmers (4) People with land issues in (semi) urban areas (14) Tribal chiefs(2)
Other ● ● ●
IRIN (Independent Press of United Nations) Mmegi (Botswana’s most important independent newspaper) Independent consultant
Mozambique Academic and research institutions ●
Universidade de Eduardo Mondlane – Ministerio do Ensino Superior, Ceincia e Tecnologia
NGO’s, associations, and unions ● ●
TerraFirm (Esme Joaquim) World Vision (Eleuterio Fenita)
182 ● ● ● ●
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Christian Aid (Matt Pickard) Centro de Promcao de Investimentos (Emilio Ussene) Terra Viva (Alda Salamao, Executive Director) UNAC (Ismael Osman)
Private ●
Sogecoa Mozambique, Ltd
Namibia Academic and research institutions ● ●
Institute for Public Policy Research Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit
Government and public institution (National, regional and local level): ●
Ministry of Land, Resettlement and Rehabilitation ❍ Department of Land Reform ❍ Valuation and Estate Management ❍ Resettlement and Rehabilitation
NGO’s, associations and unions ● ● ● ● ●
Namibian National Farmers Union Namibian Agricultural Union Desert Foundation (consultant PTT) National Union of Namibian Workers Namibian Development Corporation
Political parties and parliamentarians ● ●
SWAPO MPs and cabinet minister SWAPO Omaheke
Farmers, urban dwellers, and other individuals (Omaheke and Ashana region) ● ●
Communal farmers (14) Semi-commercial farmers (2)
Fieldwork ● ● ●
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Informal settlements (7) Resettled farms (7) Traditional chiefs (11) and paramount chiefs (1)
Private ●
Agribank
South Africa Academic and research institutions ●
● ●
University of Kwazulu-Natal ❍ School for Development Studies ❍ Centre for Civil Society University of Western Cape University of Pretoria
Government and public institution ●
● ● ● ●
Ministry of Agriculture and land Affairs (National, Provincial and local level) Department of Land Affairs Department of Agriculture Commission on Land Restitution Newcastle Municipality
NGO’s, associations, and unions ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
AFRA (Association for Rural Advancement) TRAC-NW (The Rural Action Committee) LAMOSA (Land Access Movement of RSA) LPM (Landless People’s Movement TSCC (Tenure Security Coordinating Council Utrecht Crisis Committee FEDCO (Federation of Vryheid Communities) Land Research Action Network CCF (Concerned Citizens Forum) Mankapaai Community Association NAFU (National Farmers Union) Agri-SA (Commercial Farmer’s Union) House of Traditional Leaders
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Political Parties and parliamentarian (National and local) ● ● ● ● ● ●
ANC DA SACP PAC ANC-Mafikeng ANC MPs
Farmers, urban dwellers, and other individuals (North-West Province, Kwazulu-Natal Province) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Commercial farmers (8) Communal farmers (5) Land Claimants (4) Land reform beneficiaries (3) Farm workers and labour tenants (23) Urban dwellers (12) Illegal farm workers (3) Victim of illegal evictions (2) Local traditional chiefs (3)
Notes Introduction 1. Mwengo, ‘Sub-Regional Reflection Forum: NGO action on land in Southern Africa’, Workshop Report, 15–18 November 1999, Windhoek, Namibia, p. 6. 2. Cited in Ben Cousins, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis in its Wider Context: the politics of land, democracy and development in Southern Africa’, in Amanda Hammar et al., eds., Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis (Harare: Weaver Press 2003), p. 263.
1 Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa 1. Thomas F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and its Remedy (London: Murray 1839–40; repr. 6, Frank Cass, London 1867), p. 511. 2. Cited in Martin Meredith, Mugabe: power and plunder in Zimbabwe (Oxford: Public Affairs 2002), p. 203. 3. See Gilbert Khadiagala, Allies in Adversity: the frontline states in southern African security, 1975–1993 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 1994). 4. Naomi Chazan, Robert Mortimer, John Ravenhill and Donald Rothchild, Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, 2nd edition (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1992), pp. 133–6. 5. See Gillermo O’Donnell, ‘Illusions and Conceptual Flows’, Journal of Democracy, 7, 4, 1996, pp. 160–8. 6. For general work in this area, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: democratization in the late twentieth century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press 1991); Larry Diamond, ‘The Globalization of Democracy: trends, types, causes, and prospects’, in Robert Slater et al., Global Transformation and the Third World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1992); Philippe C. Schmitter, ‘The Influence of the International Context upon the Choice of National Institutions and Policies in Neo-Democracies’, in Laurence Whitehead, ed., The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas (New York: Oxford University Press 1996); Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 1996). 7. Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle, ‘Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa’, World Politics, 46 (July 1994), p. 454. 8. Bratton and van de Walle (1994), pp. 457–8. It is worth noting that, building upon Dahl’s phraseology which itself harkens back to Aristotelian typologies – see Robert Dahl, Polyarchy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1971) – the transitologists utilise the phrase ‘regime’ or ‘political regime’ in a 185
186
9.
10. 11.
12. 13. 14.
15. 16.
17. 18.
19.
20.
21.
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa sense that binds the analysis of transition tightly to the state itself without looking beyond it to outside influences. See the critique offered by Gerardo Munck, ‘Disaggregating Political Regime: conceptual issues in the study of democratisation’, Working Paper no. 228, August 1996, c.f. 11. This creates confusion when working across fields such as international relations and institutional theory, both of which have a considerably different usage for the term. For international relations usage, see Stephen Krasner’s classic definition of regimes, in Stephen Krasner, ‘Regimes and the Limits of Realism’ in Stephen Kranser, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1983). See Sidney Eisenstadt, Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism (London: Sage 1972); Jean-Francois Médard, ‘The Underdeveloped State in Tropical Africa: political clientelism or neo-patrimonialism?’ in Christopher Clapham, ed., Private Patronage and Public Power: political clientelism in the modern state (London: Frances Pinter 1982). And, of course, neither are multiparty polyarchies. Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: regime transitions in comparative perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), p. 178. Bratton and van de Walle (1994), p. 487. For an overview of criticisms of transitology, see Jean Grugel, Democratization: a critical introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2002), pp. 60–2. As Rose and Mishler say, ‘The legacy that a non-democratic regime leaves to a fledgling regime effects what its governors can and cannot do. The point is invariably recognised in studies of socio-economic determinants of democratization but less attention is given to political regimes.’ Richard Rose and William Mischler, ‘Comparing Regime Support in Non-Democratic and Democratic Countries’, Democratization, 9:2, 2002, p. 4. See Fareed Zakaria, ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997, pp. 22–43. To a limited extent they acknowledge this but say that they believe it is a structural factor that is ‘too deep’ to have a bearing on transitions to democracy. Bratton and van de Walle (1994), p. 457. Terry Karl, ‘Dilemma of Democratization’, Comparative Politics, 23:1, 1990, p. 11. The transition in Zimbabwe is one of the best documented of this phenomenon in the region. See Norm Kriger, ‘The Politics of Creating National Heroes: the search for political legitimacy and national identity’ in Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger, eds., Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications 1995), pp. 139–62. Gilles Pollet, ‘Analyse des politiques publiques et perspectives theoriques’, in Faure Alain, Pollet Gilles et Warin Philippe, La construction du sens dans les politiques publiques: Debats autour de la notion de referentiel. Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995, pp. 36–9. Pierre Muller, ‘Les politiques publiques comme construction d’un rapport au monde’, in Faure Alain, Pollet Gilles et Warin Philippe, La construction du sens dans les politiques publiques: Debats autour de la notion de referentiel. Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995, p. 157. See Carsten Holbraad, Middle Powers in International Politics (New York: St. Martin’s 1984); Thomas Risse-Kappen, ‘Ideas Do Not Float Freely: transnational coalitions,
Notes
22.
23.
24.
25. 26.
27.
28. 29.
30. 31. 32.
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domestic structures, and the end of the Cold War,’ International Organization, 48:2, 1994, pp. 185–214. For a historical review of the Front Line States see Gilbert Khadiagala, Allies in Adversity: the frontline states in southern African security, 1975–1993 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 1994). For overviews see Duncan Innes, Anglo-American and the Rise of Modern South Africa (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1984); Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1995); Margaret Lee, The Political Economy of Regionalism (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2003); Kenneth Grundy, Confrontation and Accommodation in Southern Africa: the limits of interdependence (Los Angeles: University of California Press 1973). The only work that actively examines the political economy and political transformation from a regional perspective is Thomas Olson and Stephen Stedman, The New is Not Yet Born: conflict resolution in Southern Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute 1994): however it was written in the midst of the process. The legacy of slavery as a mode of production, which prevailed from the seventeenth century to the 1830s in South Africa and until the 1880s in Angola and Mozambique, was the central organising feature of relations between Europeans and Africans in the earlier period. See Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, eds., The Oxford History of South Africa: South Africa to 1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969); Malyn Newitt, A History of Mozambique (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1995); David Birmingham, Portugal and Africa (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1999); John Hammond, Portugal and Africa, 1815–1910: a study in uneconomic imperialism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1966); see also Michel Cahen, Mozambique: la revolution implosee, etudes sur 12 ans d’independence (1975–1987), Paris: Editions L’Harmattan 1987. Leroy Vail, ‘Introduction’, in Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London: James Currey 1988), pp. 1–19. Contemporary debates around South Africa’s role as regional hegemon reflect this continuing status. See, for example, Fred Ahwireng-Obeng and Patrick McGowan, ‘Partner or Hegemon?’, in Jim Broderick et al., South Africa’s Foreign Policy: dilemmas of a new democracy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2001); Ian Taylor, Stuck in Middle GEAR: South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign relations (Greenwood, CT: Praeger 2001). Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, ‘Introduction’, in Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, eds., White Farms, Black Labour: the state and agrarian change in Southern Africa, 1910–1950 (Oxford: James Currey 1998), p. 12. See Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London: Heineman 1979). David Lincoln, ‘Plantation Agriculture, Mozambican Workers and Employers’ Rivalry in Zululand, 1918–1948’, in Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, eds., White Farms, Black Labour: the state and agrarian change in Southern Africa, 1910–1950 (Oxford: James Currey 1998, pp. 142–4. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism (Oxford: James Currey 1991), pp. 49–51. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, pp. 21–3. Margaret Lee, SADCC: the political economy of development in Southern Africa (Nashville, TN: Winston-Derek 1989), pp. 33–4.
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33. Malyn Newitt, A History of Mozambique (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1995), pp. 494–6; Ruth First, Black Gold: the Mozambican miner, proletariat and peasant (Brighton: Harvester 1983). 34. Randolph Vigne, Liberals Against Apartheid: a history of the Liberal Party of South Africa, 1953–1968 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1997); Peter Goodwin and Ian Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die: the impact of war and political change in white Rhodesia, 1970–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993). 35. James Barber, South Africa’s Foreign Policy, 1945–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1973). 36. Chris Alden, Mozambique and the Construction of the New African State: from negotiations to nation building (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2001), pp. 1–4. 37. Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, ‘Introduction’, in Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, eds., White Farms, Black Labour: the state and agrarian change in Southern Africa, 1910–1950 (Oxford: James Currey 1998), p. 12. Also see Wiseman Chirwa, ‘“The Garden of Eden”: Sharecropping on the Shire Highlands Estates, 1920–1945’, in Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, eds., White Farms, Black Labor (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann 1997). 38. Graham Harrison, Issues in the Contemporary Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa: the dynamics of struggle and resistance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2002). 39. For example, on South African opposition, see Thomas Karis and Gwendolen Carter, eds., From Protest to Challenge, 1882–1964, vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press 1972); Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 (London: Longman 1983); on Mozambique and Angola, see Ronald Chilcote, ed., Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa: documents (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press 1972). 40. See Swapo strategy, Wolfgang Werner, ‘Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation: experiences from Namibia’, NEPRU Working Paper, Windhoek, August 2001, pp. 4–6. 41. According to scholars, the people of the Shangani reserve area in western Zimbabwe remained an exception. Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor and Terence Ranger, Violence and Memory: one hundred years in the ‘dark forests’ of Matabeleland (Oxford: James Currey 1999), pp. 85; 159. 42. Scott Thomas, The Diplomacy of Liberation: the foreign relations of the ANC since 1960 (London: IB Taurus 1995), pp. 42–4; Agostino Zacarias, Security and the State in Southern Africa (London: IB Taurus 1999), p. 49. 43. James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: the search for status and security, 1945–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), p. 147. 44. James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy, pp. 135–43; Agostino Zacarias, Security and the State in Southern Africa, pp. 50–1. Johnson and Martin outline the cooperative efforts in the dying days of Portuguese colonialism and Rhodesia’s UDI. Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, eds., Frontline Southern Africa: destructive engagement (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows 1988). 45. James Barber, South Africa’s Foreign Policy, 1945–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1973), pp. 18–19. The British government, as part of the Act of Union in 1910, committed itself to handing Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Lesotho to South Africa in the future. Even Southern Rhodesia was assumed to eventually be absorbed into South Africa at this stage. On the enduring
Notes
46.
47. 48. 49. 50.
51.
52.
53. 54.
55.
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impact on Botswanan–South African relations, see Louis Picard, ed., The Evolution of Modern Botswana (London: Rex Collings 1985) and John Imrie and Donald Wilson, ‘Botswana in the 1990s: prospects for prosperity, stability and security’, in Larry Benjamin and Christopher Gregory, eds., Southern Africa at the Crossroads? (Johannesburg: Justified Press 1992), pp. 41–7. For two very different accounts of that period see Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, eds., Frontline Southern Africa: destructive engagement (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows 1988); Al Venter, ed., Challenge: Southern Africa within the African revolutionary context (Gibraltar: Ashanti 1989). See, for example, Basil Davidson, The Eye of the Storm: Angola’s people (London: Hammondsworth 1975). Steve Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes’, International Security, 22: 2 1997, pp. 5–53. The authors thank Laurie Nathan for this observation. Of course, an additional – if short-lived – political regime emerged as part of the transition away from settler colonialism, namely the ‘liberation regime’. The ‘liberation regime’ came to power through accession or collapse of the colonial regime and direct hand over by the colonial authorities. No provision was made for specialist accommodation of white settlers during in the nominal negotiations between the metropole and the liberation movement with the result that the overwhelming majority of them emigrated. Land was nationalised in the name of the people but became the property of the new governing party to use as they saw fit. Peasant interests were viewed as backward and subject to change through government policy. Solidarity politics with the region and, in the broader international context, with other socialist states characterised the liberation regime’s foreign policy orientation. While Mozambique is the particular example, the other state that conforms to this in Southern Africa is Angola. Notably, by the mid-1980s – less than a decade after achieving independence – the economic failings of liberation regimes, coupled with external and internal military pressure, began a carefully calibrated shift to market capitalism that culminated in their own transition into liberal–constitutional regimes. Foucauldian considerations of power, for example, centre upon the perpetuation of a ‘discourse of power’ that reinforces the prevailing hierarchy through language and linguistic structures. Kevin Dunn, ‘Madlib #32: the (blank) African State: rethinking the sovereign state in international relations theory’, in Kevin Dunn and Tim Shaw, eds., Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2001), p. 56. See Bruno Jobert et Pierre Muller, L’Etat en action, Paris, PUF, 1987. Werbner speaks of these ‘popular counter-memorialisations’ that produced ‘unfinished narratives: in which the past is perceived to be unfinished, festering in the present’. Richard Werbner, ‘Introduction, in Richard Werbner, ed., Memory and Post-colony: African anthropology and the critique of power (London: Zed 1998), p. 9. Mozaffar, Scarritt and Galaich make this argument with respect to poorly understood or legitimated electoral institutions in emerging African democracies. Shaheen Mozaffar, James Scarritt and Glen Galaich, ‘Electoral Institutions, Ethnopolitical Cleavages and Party Systems in Africa’s Emerging Demcracies’, American Political Science Review, 97: 3, 2003, pp. 379–90.
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56. ‘I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity.’ David Livingstone (1857), David Livingstone, ‘Cambridge Lectures’ (Cambridge 1858), p. 24. Cited in www.gospelcom.net/dacb/ stories/non%20africans/legacy_buxton.html. For Zimbabwe, see Peter Goodwin and Ian Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’: the impact of war and political change on white Rhodesia, 1970–1980 (Harare: Baobab Press 1995), pp. 6–11; Anthony Chennells, ‘Rhodesian Discourse, Rhodesian Novels and the Zimbabwean Liberation War’, in Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger, eds., Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications 1996), pp. 102–29. For South Africa, see, for example, Hermann Giliomee, The Afrikaners: biography of a people (London: Hurst 2003). Also see Vincent Crapanzano, Waiting: the whites of South Africa (New York: Random House 1986). For Mozambique and Angola, see James Duffy, Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1959), and Norrie MacQueen, The Decolonization of Portguese Africa (London: Longman 1997), pp. 1–11. For Namibia, the sentiments were generally linked to Afrikaner nationalism and historiography, though the German settler population introduced a different dimension. See J. H. P. Serfontein, Namibia? (Randburg: Fokus Suid Pak 1976), pp. 123–32; Ruth First, South West Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1963), pp. 49–57. 57. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: the official mind of imperialism (New York: Macmillan 1978), pp 1–8; Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa, 1876–1912 (London: Abacus 1992); also see D. K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, 1830–1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1984). 58. Cited in John Lonsdale, ‘Mission Christianity and Settler Colonialism in Eastern Africa’, in Holger Hansen and Michael Twaddle, eds., Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World (London/Athens: James Currey/ Ohio University Press 2002), p. 196. 59. As Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush note with respect to white settler states, ‘The political power of the farming sector as a whole tended to bring the government behind the weakest, most vulnerable (white) producers, ensuring the survival of many who could not maintain themselves without government subsidies.’ Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, ‘Introduction’, in Alan Jeeves and Jonathan Crush, eds., White Farms, Black Labour: the state and agrarian change in Southern Africa, 1910–1950 (Oxford: James Currey 1998), p. 13. 60. Thomas Henriksen, Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Mozambique’s war of independence, 1964–1974 (New York: Greenwood Press 1983); Peter Goodwin and Ian Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die: the impact of war and political change in white Rhodesia, 1970–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993). White settlers tended to distinguish between those who immigrated before the Second World War, and those who arrived afterwards, the latter being more blatantly racist and less likely to acclimate to African governance. See comments of the Kenya settler leader Sir Michael Blundell in Richard West, The White Tribes Revisited (London: Private Eye/Andre Deutsch 1978), pp. 36–9. 61. Robert Ruark, Something of Value (London: Hamish Hamilton 1955). 62. See the numerous accounts of the Rhodesian, Namibian and South African wars by white officers or observers by Galapos press. 63. Flower Ken, Serving Secretely: An intelligence chief on record, Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964 to 1981 (London: John Murray 1987).
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64. See, for example, Richard West, The White Tribes Revisited (London: Private Eye/Andre Deutsch 1978), p. 69. Indeed, they were known colloquially among Afrikaners as ‘see (sea) kaffirs’. 65. See interview with General Constant Viljoen, January 1995, extracts published in Les Temps Modernes, Paris, November 1995, pp. 554–61. 66. Sol Plaatje, Mhudi, (Oxford: Heineman/Qagga Press 1978) p. 175. Written in the decade after the passage of the Native Land Act of 1913, which dispossessed black South Africans of nearly 88 per cent of the land, the novel is a lament of the loss of tradition and land at the hands of the whites. 67. Richard Werbner, ‘Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: postwars of the dead, memory and reinscription in Zimbabwe’, in Richard Werbner, ed., Memory and Post-Colony: African anthropology and the critique of power (London: Zed 1998), pp. 75–6. 68. John Marcum, The Angolan Revolution: exile politics and guerrilla warfare, 1962–1976 (vol. II) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1980). 69. Ernest Renan cited in Richard Werbner, ‘Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: postwars of the dead, memory and reinscription in Zimbabwe’, in Richard Werbner, ed., Memory and Post-Colony, p. 74. 70. For further details see Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of Africa’s Economic Recovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993). 71. See, for example, the work of the Urban Foundation in South Africa which argued that apartheid restricted economic growth and limited the market to a racially defined elite.
2 Sowing the Whirlwind: Zimbabwe and Southern Africa 1. Cited in Lionel Cliffe, ‘Zimbabwe’s Political Inheritance’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance, (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), p. 23. 2. Cited in Martin Meredith, Mugabe: Power and Plunder in Zimbabwe (Oxford: Public Affairs Ltd. 2002), p. 105. 3. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: the official mind of imperialism (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1961), pp. 210–53. 4. An earlier rebellion in Matabeland against the British South Africa Company (BSAC) presence in 1893 resulted in the exile of Chief Lobengula, himself betrayed by the BSAC’s leader, and the destruction of the Ndebele monarchy. 5. Terence Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–1897 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP 1967). 6. Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Discrimination in Rhodesia, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1977); Nelson Marongwe, ‘Farm Occupations and Occupiers in the New Politics of Land in Zimbabwe’, in Amanda Hammer et al., eds., Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis (Harare: Weaver Press 2003), p. 156. 7. Colin Stoneman, ‘Anatomy of an Unequal Society’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance, (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), p. 38. 8. Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Discrimination in Rhodesia (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1977). 9. Guy Thompson, ‘Cultivating Conflict: agricultural “betterment”, the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA) and Ungovernability in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1951–1962’, Africa Development, vol. XXIX, no. 3, 2004, pp. 1–39.
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10. Cliffe, ‘Zimbabwe’s Political Inheritance’, p. 18. 11. Thompson, ‘Cultivating Conflict’, p. 2. 12. Ngwabit Bhebe, The Zanu and Zapu Guerrilla War and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe (Gweru: Mambo Press 1999), pp. 11–13. 13. The Central Africa Federation was a loose political affiliation between Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland created in 1953. It formed part of a liberal initiative to create a partnership between white and an emergent black middle class by easing key racial restrictions. The limits of this form of paternalistic liberalism was made clear by the Federation leader Godfrey Huggins who explained it more bluntly as a ‘partnership between the horse and its rider’. It was dissolved in 1963. 14. Sanctions included tobacco, ferro-chrome, arms and petroleum. 15. During this period, Southern Rhodesian development was spurred by copper revenues from Northern Rhodesian mines. 16. Blacks working in transport, for example, experienced a rise in wages while overall black income remained stagnant against white income improvements. Colin Stoneman and Robert Davies, ‘The Economy: an overview’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), pp. 97–9. 17. Colin Stoneman, ‘Agriculture’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), p. 132. 18. Ngwabit Bhebe, The Zanu and Zapu Guerrilla War, p. 28. 19. See Louise White, The Assassination of Herbert Chipote (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 2003). 20. Cited in Tapera Knox Chitiyo, ‘Land Violence and Compensation: reconceptualising Zimbabwe’s land and war veterans’ debate’, Track Two, 9:1, May 2000, p. 12. 21. See David Lan, Guns and Rain: guerrillas and spirit mediums in Zimbabwe (Oxford: James Currey 1985). 22. Cited in Ngwabit Bhebe, The Zanu and Zapu Guerrilla War, pp. 96–7. 23. David Lan, Guns and Rain. 24. Tapera Knox Chitiyo, ‘Land Violence and Compensation: reconceptualising Zimbabwe’s land and war veterans’ debate’, Track Two, 9:1, May 2000, pp. 12–13. 25. Ngwabit Bhebe, The Zanu and Zapu Guerrilla War. 26. Stoneman and Davies, ‘The Economy’, pp. 121–2. 27. Peter Goodwin and Ian Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’: the impact of war and political change on White Rhodesia, 1970–1980 (Oxford: Oxford UP 1993). 28. James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: the search for status and security, 1945–1988, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1990), pp. 181–6. 29. Stoneman and Davies, ‘The Economy’, p. 126 (c.f. 35). 30. Christine Sylvester, Zimbabwe: the terrain of contradictory development (Boulder, CO: Westview 1991), pp. 61–2. 31. Sylvester, Zimbabwe, p. 63. Arguably the clearest indication of this willingness to forge ahead without the liberation parties’ consensus was the British decision to deploy Lord Soames in early December, in spite of the fact that Zanu had yet to agree to the terms of the resumption of British sovereignty over Rhodesia-Zimbabwe. 32. See Hazelwood Arthur, ‘Kenyan Land-Transfer Programmes and their Relevance for Zimbabwe’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 23, 3, 1985, pp. 445–61.
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33. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil: land, politics and conflict prevention in Zimbabwe and South Africa’, Africa Report no. 85, 17 September 2004, pp. 27–8. 34. Rugube Lovemore, Zhou Sam, Roth Michael, and Chambati Walter, ‘Government-Assisted and Market-Driven Land Reform: evaluating public and private land markets in redistributing land in Zimbabwe’, in Michael Roth and Francis Gonese, eds., Delivering Land and Securing Rural Livelihoods: post-independence land reform and resettlement in Zimbabwe, Centre for Applied Social Science, University of Zimbabwe, June 2003, p. 119. 35. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 29. 36. Peter Goodwin and Ian Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’. 37. Cited in Ruth Weiss, Zimbabwe and the New Elite (London: British Academic Press 1994), p. 5. 38. Most notorious being Ndabiningi Sithole’s murder of a white farmer, for which he was pardoned. 39. Colin Stoneman, ‘Anatomy of an Unequal Society’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), pp. 54–5. 40. See Edward E. Brett, ‘From Corporatism to Liberalisation in Zimbabwe: economy policy regimes and political crisis (1980–1997), Working Paper no. 58, Crisis States Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science, January 2005. 41. Brett, ‘From Corporatism to Liberalisation in Zimbabwe’, pp. 6–7. 42. Suzanne Dansereau, ‘Liberation and Opposition in Zimbabwe’, in Henning Melber, ed., Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa: the unfinished business of democratic consolidation (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council 2003), pp. 26–9. 43. As seen by Stoneman as early as 1981. Colin Stoneman, ‘The Anatomy of an Unequal Society’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), pp. 54–5. Herbst notes a significant reduction in media coverage from 1981 (110 stories) to 1985 (45 stories). Jeffrey Herbst, State Politics in Zimbabwe (Berkley, CA: University of California 1990), p. 51. 44. Jocelyn Alexander, ‘“Squatters”, Veterans and the State in Zimbabwe’, in Amanda Hammer et al., eds., Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis (Harare: Weaver Press 2003), p. 84. 45. Noah Chatora, ‘Resettlement and Beneficiary Support – settlement and resettlement models in Zimbabwe’, in Michael Roth and Francis Gonese, eds., Delivering Land and Securing Rural Livelihoods: post-independence land reform and resettlement in Zimbabwe, Centre for Applied Social Science, University of Zimbabwe, June 2003, pp. 269–70. 46. Robin Palmer, ‘Land Reform in Zimbabwe, 1980–1990’, in Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Discrimination in Rhodesia, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977). 47. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 33. 48. Cited in Jeffrey Herbst, State Politics in Zimbabwe (Berkley, CA: University of California 1990), p. 45. 49. Noah Chatora, ‘Resettlement and Beneficiary Support’, p. 270 50. Noah Chatora, ‘Resettlement and Beneficiary Support’, pp. 269–70. 51. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 35.
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52. Tapera Knox Chitiyo, ‘Land Violence and Compensation: reconceptualising Zimbabwe’s land and war veterans’ debate’, Track Two, 9: 1, May 2000, pp. 11–16. 53. Christine Sylvester, Zimbabwe: the terrain of contradictory development (Boulder, CO: Westview 1991), p. 80. 54. Noah Chatora, ‘Resettlement and Beneficiary Support’, pp. 270–1. 55. Noah Chatora, ‘Resettlement and Beneficiary Support’, p. 270. 56. E. A. Brett, ‘From Corporatism to Liberalisation in Zimbabwe: economy policy regimes and political crisis (1980–1997), Working Paper no. 58, Crisis States Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science, January 2005, p. 7. 57. J. Stromm, Zimbabwe’s Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1988). 58. Tapera Knox Chitiyo, ‘Land Violence and Compensation’, p. 14. 59. The Customary Law and Primary Courts Act (1981), for instance, removed the jurisdictional capacity of Chiefs. 60. Terrence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla Warfare in Zimbabwe (Oxford: James Currey 1985). 61. An exception was Guy Clutton-Brock, a British missionary, who remains the only white buried at the national cemetery. 62. Controversy over Tekere’s candidacy and the short-lived Zimbabwe Unity Movement, which some claim was a front organisation to divide the opposition, remains. Eldred Masunungure, ‘Travails of Opposition Politics in Zimbabwe since Independence’, in David Harold-Barry, ed., Zimbabwe: the past is the future (Harare: Weaver Press 2004), p. 68. 63. E. A. Brett, ‘From Corporatism to Liberalisation in Zimbabwe’, p. 10. 64. Jeffrey Herbst, State Politics in Zimbabwe (Berkley, CA: University of California 1990). 65. See, for example, see Vitor Hugo Nicolau, ‘Poder, clientelismo e violência política no Zimbabwe: a Terceira Chimurenga’, paper presented at the conference on War and Violent Conflicts in Africa, Centro de Estudos Africanos, Lisbon, 21–2 February 2002. On Mugabe, see Stephen Chan, Robert Mugabe: a political life (London: IB Taurus 2002); Martin Meredith, Mugabe: power and plunder in Zimbabwe (Oxford: BBS 2001). 66. Cited in Brett, ‘From Corporatism to Liberalisation in Zimbabwe’. 67. Additional measures included further restrictions on sale and improvements on land by white commercial farmers, who needed government approval to undertake these steps. 68. Jocelyn Alexander, The Unsettled Land: the politics of land and state-making in Zimbabwe, 1893–2003 (Oxford: James Currey 2006). 69. According to Sam Moyo, 350 black elites owned commercial farms outright and a further 400 were leasing 400,000 hectares of state land. Cited in International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 58. 70. Cited in Teresa Barnes, ‘The Heroes’ Struggle: life after the liberation war for four ex-combatants in Zimbabwe’, in Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger, eds., Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Oxford: James Currey 1995), p. 136. 71. Cited in Teresa Barnes, ‘The Heroes’ Struggle’, p. 136. 72. Lahiff Edward, ‘The Politics of Land Reform in Southern Africa’, Sustainable Livelihoods in Southern Africa programme, Research Paper no. 19, March 2003, p. 35.
Notes 73. 74. 75. 76.
77. 78. 79.
80. 81. 82. 83. 84.
85. 86.
87. 88. 89. 90.
91. 92. 93.
94.
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Cited in International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 57. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 69 Fifty-five per cent voted against the referendum and 45 per cent for it. The Zimbabwean National Liberation War Veterans Association was launched with the blessings of Mugabe and Mnangagwa in 1990. Hunzi, though not a war veteran himself but a clerk in the Zanu offices in Lusaka during the armed struggle, took over leadership of the organisation in 1997. See Zimbabwean Liberators’ Platform, in David Harold-Barry, ed., Zimbabwe: the past is the future (Harare: Weaver Press 2004), p. 39. Edward Lahiff, ‘The Politics of Land Reform in Southern Africa’, p. 30. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 75. Joseph Chaumba, Ian Scoones and William Wolmer, ‘New Politics, New Livelihoods: agrarian change in Zimbabwe’, Review of African Political Economy, 30: 98, 2003, p. 6. International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 80 International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 80 International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, pp. 90–1. The first being the armed resistance against white settlement, and the second the anti-colonial struggle. Cited in Ian Phiminster, ‘Mugabe, Mbeki and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism’, Afrika Im Kontext Conference, University of Hanover, 2–4 February 2004, p. 5. See Terrence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla Warfare in Zimbabwe (Oxford: James Currey 1985). Jennifer Mohamed-Katerere, ‘Participatory Natural Resource Management in the Communal Lands of Zimbabwe: what role for customary law?’ African Studies Quarterly, 8: 4, 2006, www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v5/v5i3a7.htm#en88 See Africa Institute, ‘Report on the Africa Institute of SA Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe’, April 2001. The Telegraph, 3 September 2002, www.telegraph.co.uk Independent Online, 29 May 2001 (www.iol.co.za). The Herald (Harare), 3 December 2001, cited in Maxi Schoeman and Chris Alden, ‘The Hegemon that Wasn’t: South Africa’s foreign policy towards Zimbabwe’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 25:1, 2003, pp. 1–28. ‘Neighbours Warn Zimbabwe on Elections’, AfroNews, www.afrole.com/ news2002/zim003_sadcCarmns.him ‘Mugabe Charms SADC’, BBC World Service, 18 January 2002, www.news. bbc.co.uk For example, one liberal South African commentator declared that Mugabe was ‘speaking for black people worldwide’ at the WSSD summit. Harry Mashabela, ‘Zimbabwean Land Reform: implications’, Focus, 31, Helen Suzmann Foundation, Johannesburg 2002 (www.hsf.ognza/ %23articledatabase/article_view). According to one survey based in South Africa, Mugabe’s appeal was especially strong among middle and upper income black elite. Cited in Aidan Hartley, ‘Mugabe is their Darling’, The Spectator, 25 October 2003. For a general overview of this topic, see Liisa Laakso, ‘The Politics of International Election Observation: the case of Zimbabwe in 2000’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 40: 3, 2002, pp. 437–64.
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95. Statement by the SADC Parliamentary Forum, ‘Election Observation Mission: Zimbabwe Presidential Elections, 9–10 March 2002’, 13 March 2002, SADCPF, www.sadcpf.org 96. Cited in International Crisis Group, ‘Blood and Soil’, p. 54. 97. Absolom Masendeke, ‘The Challenge of Bringing Effective Governance in the Administration of Land and Land Rights in Zimbabwe’, in Michael Roth and Francis Gonese, eds., Delivering Land and Securing Rural Livelihoods: post-independece land reform and resettlement in Zimbabwe (Harare: Centre for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe 2003), pp. 354–8. 98. Blair Rutherford, ‘Belonging to the Farm(er): farm workers, farmers and the shifting politics of citizenship’, in Amanda Hammer et al., eds., Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis (Harare: Weaver Press 2003), p. 232. If one includes families, the number is said to be close to two million. 99. SADC Parliamentary Forum, ‘Zimbabwe Presidential Elections 2002’, Observer Mission Report, March 2002, p. 12, www.sadcpf.org 100. ‘Commonwealth: Zimbabwe elections deeply flawed’, 14 March 2002, www.voanews.com. 101. Colin Stoneman, ‘The Anatomy of an Unequal Society’, in Colin Stoneman, ed., Zimbabwe’s Inheritance (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981), pp. 54–5.
3 Darkness at Noon: South Africa 1. Helena Dolny and Heinz Klug, ‘Land Reform: legal support and economic regulation’, in Glenn Moss and Ingrid Obery, eds., From Red Friday to CODESA, South African Review, 6, (Randburg: Ravan 1992), p. 324. 2. Summit on Land and Agrarian Reform, Johannesburg, 27–31 July 2005, www.land.pwv.gov.za/land_summit 3. See Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, 5th edition, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2000). 4. Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, pp. 21–35. 5. May Katzen, ‘White Settlers and the Origin of a New Society, 1652–1778’, in Monica Wilson and. Leonard Thompson, eds., The Oxford History of South Africa, vol. 1, (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1969), pp. 187–228. 6. Monica Wilson, ‘Co-operation and Conflict: the Eastern Cape frontier’, in Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, eds., The Oxford History of South Africa, vol. 1, pp. 233–68. Also see Norman Etherington, The Great Treks: the transformation of Southern Africa, 1815–1854 (London: Longman 2001). 7. Allan Frederick Hattersley, ‘Slavery at the Cape’, in Eric Walker, ed., South Africa, Rhodesia and the High Commission Territories, The Cambridge History of the British Empire (Cambridge UP 1963), p. 269; Rodney Davenport, ‘The Consolidation of a New Soeciety: the Cape Colony’, in Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, eds., The Oxford History of South Africa, vol. 1, pp. 305–11. 8. Thomas Parkenham, The Boer War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1979).
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9. Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, pp. 267–8. 10. As population growth patterns among white and black South Africans changes throughout the course of the twentieth century, the balance of land to population group has become more skewed. 11. See Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London: Heinemann 1979). 12. Tom Lodge, Politics in South Africa: from Mandela to Mbeki (Cape Town: David Philip 2002), p. 59. 13. Charles van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: the life of Kas Maine, a South African sharecropper 1894–1985 (New York, Hill & Wang 1996); Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry. 14. This followed upon the Industrial Disputes Prevention Act (1909) which forbade black Africans to participate in bargaining process. 15. Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, pp. 636–7. 16. The passage of the Natives (Urban Areas) Act (1923) introduced formal restrictions on black ownership and residency in certain urban areas. 17. Maureen Swan, Gandhi: the South African experience (Johannesburg: Ravan Press 1985), p. 256. 18. Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, p. 314. 19. Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 (London: Longman 1983). 20. Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945. 21. Cited in James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: the search for status and security, 1945–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 90. 22. Chris Alden, Apartheid’s Last Stand: the rise and fall of the South African security state (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1996), pp. 148–9. 23. On business involvement in policymaking see, Robin Lee and Fran Buntmna, ‘The Limousine Lizard and the Taxi Proletariat: the business sector’s involvement in policy change, 1985–1989’, Centre for Policy Studies, South Africa at the End of the Eighties: policy perspectives 1989 (Johannesburg: CPS 1989), pp. 113–56. 24. Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country: the inside story of South Africa’s road to change (New York: Hill and Wang 1995), pp. 72–90. 25. Chris Alden, Apartheid’s Last Stand, pp. 258–70. 26. Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba, Comrades Against Apartheid: the ANC and the South African Communist Party in exile (Oxford: James Currey 1992), p. 175. 27. Timothy Sisk, Democratization in South Africa: the elusive social contract (Princeton: Princeton UP 1995), pp. 151–3. 28. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: power, apartheid and the Afrikaner civil religion (Berkeley, CA: University of California 1975); Hermann Giliomee, The Afrikaners: biography of a people (London: Hurst 2003). 29. Geldenhuys D, ‘What Do We think? A Survey of White Opinion on Foreign Policy Issues’, SAIIA, Johannesburg, 1982. 30. Scott Thomas, The Diplomacy of Liberation (London: IB Taurus 1990). 31. Timothy Sisk, Democratization in South Africa, pp. 73–5.
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32. Scott Thomas, The Diplomacy of Liberation (London: IB Taurus 1990). 33. Thabo Mbeki, cited in Chris Landsberg, The Quiet Diplomacy of Liberation: international politics of South Africa’s transition (Johannesburg: Jacana 2004), p. 57. 34. Frederik William de Klerk, The Last Trek: a new beginning (London: Macmillan 1998). 35. Chris Alden, ‘From Liberation Movement to Political Party: ANC foreign policy in transition’, South African Journal of International Affairs, 1:1, 1993, pp. 72–3. Most distressing from the African National Congress (ANC) position was that many African states and former communist governments in Eastern Europe and even Russia seemed overly anxious to establish close ties with the National Party government. 36. Chris Landsberg, The Quiet Diplomacy of Liberation, p. 291; Chris Landsberg and Kabemba Claude, ‘Working to a Foreign Text: international democratisation in South Africa’, paper presented at workshop ‘Comparing Experiences of Democratisation in Nigeria and South Africa’ (Cape Town, UCT 1998). As Hood writes, ‘If Mandela had entered prison at a time when nationalisation was an article of faith, he was released into a world where monetarism and its obsession with inflation and the reduction in state expenditure had become the new orthodoxy.’ In Christopher Hood, Explaining Economic Policy Reversals (Buckingham: Open University Press 1994). Commenting on this shift, it was observed that, ‘It was not unusual in the early 90s to hear senior ANC spokespersons arguing that the world had totally changed, and that those arguing for more radical or alternative economic solutions in this new globalised context were simply living in a bygone age.’ In Michie Jonathan and Padayachee Vishu, ‘South Africa’s Transition – the policy agenda’, in Michie Jonathan and Padayachee Vishu, eds., The Political Economy of South Africa’s Transition – policy perspectives in the late 1990s (London: The Dryden Press/Harcourt Brace 1997), p. 229. 37. Davis Dennis, ‘From the Freedom Charter to the Washington Consensus’, in Everatt David and Maphai Vincent, eds., ‘The (Real) State of the Nation’, vol. 4, no. 3 (Johannesburg: Interfund–Development Update, 2003). 38. Davis Dennis, ‘From the Freedom Charter to the Washington Consensus’. 39. Willie Esterhuyse and Nel Philip, Die ANC (Cape Town: Tafelberg 1990). 40. For more information concerning the latter, cf. Séverin Marianne and Aycard Pierre, ‘Qui gouverne la “nouvelle” Afrique du Sud? Elites, Réseaux, Méthodes de pouvoir (1985–2003)’, in Guillaume Philippe, Péjout Nicolas et Wa Kabwe-Segatti Aurelia, L’Afrique du Sud dix ans après: Transition accomplie? (Paris: Karthala 2004), pp. 19–50; Gumede William Mervin, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the soul of the ANC (Cape Town, Zebra Press 2005), p. 352. 41. Already during the 1980s, Mbeki notified that the ANC alliance with the SACP would have to be broken. According to Mbeki, the ANC should govern as a centrist party, keeping some remnants of trade union and SACP support. Mbeki resigned from the SACPs’ central committee and even allowed his membership of the party to lapse, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. See Gumede William Mervin, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC (Cape Town, Zebra Press 2005), p. 39. 42. Steven Friedman, The Long Journey: South Africa’s quest for a negotiated settlement (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies 1993), p. 29.
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43. ‘Sufficient consensus’ became the watchword for an ANC-NP agreement on a given issue to which other parties were forced to accept. 44. Steven Friedman, The Long Journey: South Africa’s quest for a negotiated settlement (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies 1993), p. 22. 45. Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, p. 562. 46. Robert Schrire, Adapt or Die: the end of white politics in South Africa (New York: Ford Foundation 1991), pp. 180–208. 47. Jo-Ann Collinge, ‘Launched on a Bloody Tide’, in Glenn Moss and Ingrid Obery, eds., From Red Friday to CODESA, South African Review, 6 (Randburg: Ravan Press 1992), pp. 18–22. 48. Steven Friedman, The Long Journey: South Africa’s quest for a negotiated settlement (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies 1993), pp. 157–8. 49. Details of the shift are laid out in a public document produced by the ANC. See African National Congress, ‘Negotiations: a strategic perspective’, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/transition/perspect.html; also Steven Friedman, The Long Journey: South Africa’s quest for a negotiated settlement (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies 1993), p. 161. 50. Rodney Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, 5th edition, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2000), p. 603. 51. See Levin and Weiner’s Final report for the MacArthur Foundation, Levin Richard and Weiner Dan, Community Perspectives on Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa, (Johannesburg, Department of Sociology 1994. 52. Simon Batterbury, ‘The Politics of Land Reform in the “New” South Africa, London, LSE, Report of ‘The Politics of Land Reform in the “New” South Africa’ workshop, 7 June 2000, www.simonbatterbury.net. 53. Helena Dolny and Heinz Klug, ‘Land Reform: legal support and economic regulation’, in Glenn Moss and Ingrid Obery, eds., From Red Friday to CODESA, South African Review, 6, (Randburg: Ravan 1992), pp. 322–3; 325; 335. 54. Helena Dolny and Heinz Klug, ‘Land Reform’, p. 324. 55. Helena Dolny and Heinz Klug, ‘Land Reform’, pp. 324–5. 56. Ralph Lawrence, ‘From Soweto to Codesa’, in Steven Friedman and Dorren Atkinson, eds., The Small Miracle: South Africa’s negotiated settlement, South African Review, 7 (Randburg: Ravan Press 1994), pp. 10–11. 57. See Vincent Maphai, ‘A Season for Power Sharing’, Journal of Democracy, 7:1, 1996, pp. 67–81. 58. World Bank, ‘South African Agriculture: structure, performance and options for the future’, Discussion paper 6, Southern African Department, World Bank, Washington D.C., 1994. 59. SSA (Statistics South Africa), Statistics in brief, SSA, Pretoria, 2000. 60. SSA 1997, Foreign Trade Statistics: volume, indices of volume and value – P6161. Pretoria, SSA, 11p. 61. Department of Agriculture, White paper on Agriculture, Department of Agriculture, Pretoria, 1995. 62. The Department of Agriculture estimates the number of non-white farming households at 2,000,000. Nevertheless, these estimations have to be taken carefully as the definition of a farming household is not well developed nor precise. 63. World Bank, ‘South African Agriculture’.
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64. See Congress of the People, Freedom Charter, Kliptown, 1955, www.anc.org. za/ancdocs/history/charter.html. 65. Gillian Hart, State Politics in Zimbabwe, Disabling Globalization: places of power in post-apartheid South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press 2002). The elaboration of the South African Constitution is a good example of this process. Vivien writes, ‘The South African Constitution of 1996 is widely regarded as a model constitutional text. (…) the process by which it was made has been hailed as a key part of the successful transition from the oppression of apartheid to a democratic society. (…). In a key phase from 1990 to 1994, agreements on process were negotiated in private and public sessions between former adversaries. These included a 1990 agreement to negotiate about constitutional negotiations; prolonged arguments from 1991 through 1992 about the form the constitution-making process should take; agreement in April 1993 on procedures; and in December 1993 agreement on an interim constitution including principles and procedures binding on the final constitution-making process’, Vivien Hart, Democratic Constitution Making (Washington: United States Institute of Peace 2003), pp. 7–8. 66. Department of Land Affairs, White Paper on South African Land Policy (Pretoria: National Department of Land Affairs 1997). 67. Ben Cousins, ‘Grounding Democracy: the politics of land in post-apartheid South Africa’, paper commissioned for IDASA roundtables series ‘Lessons from the Field: a decade of democracy’ (Johannesburg: IDASA August 2004), p. 17. 68. The NLC has organized, for example, the Community Land Conference of 1994, bringing together delegates from rural communities. This resulted in a more pro-poor debate within the emerging land policy. The NLC has also supported emerging social movements such as the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) and the Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA). See Ben Cousins, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis in its Wider Context: the politics of land, democracy and development in Southern Africa’ Unpublished final draft, (Cape Town: PLAAS July 2003), p. 11. 69. ANC, ‘The Reconstruction and Development Programme. A policy framework’ (Marshalltown: African National Congress 1994), p. 90. 70. Department of Agriculture, White paper on Agriculture (Pretoria: Department of Agriculture 1995). 71. ANC, ‘The Reconstruction and Development Programme. A policy framework’, p. 90; World Bank, ‘South African Agriculture’. 72. Department of Land Affairs, White Paper on South African Land Policy. 73. Department of Land Affairs, White Paper on South African Land Policy. 74. The Settlement/Land Acquisition Grants (SLAG) grant of R15,000 (which became R16,000 in 1999) can be accessed only once per household. A household which uses the grant for the purchase of land, will not benefit from it anymore for the construction or improvement of its accommodation or for other farm investments. 75. The Communal Property Associations (CPA) were defined under the Communal Property Association Act 28 of 1996. It represents a new legal mechanism whereby groups of people can acquire and hold land in common, with most rights of full private ownership. CPAs have been
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77.
78.
79.
80. 81. 82.
83. 84. 85. 86. 87.
88. 89.
90.
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established by groups receiving land under both restitution and redistribution programme. Ben Cousins and Aninka Classens, ‘Communal Land Rights and Democracy in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Conference paper presented at ‘The Politics of Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: ten years after apartheid’ Conference (Oslo: University of Oslo June 2004). This process was started with the implementation of the Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act of 1998. It provides for the repeal of the Rural Areas Act 9 of 1987 that applied to the 23 so-called coloured reserves in the Western Cape, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Free State. It deals with the control of commonage land but also provides for the transfer of township land to a municipality. Nevertheless, the Bantustan lands were dealt with, due to the difficult relationships and complex power structures of the tradition leadership system. Thabo Mbeki’s speech at his inauguration as President of South Africa (Pretoria: Union Buldings, 16 June 1999), www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/ mbeki/1999/tm0616.html Ben Cousins, ‘Controversy and Consensus in South Africa’s Land Reform Programme’, Invited paper presented at a World Bank regional workshop on land issues in Africa, Kampala, 29 April–2 May 2002; Aninka Claasens, ‘Community Views on the Communal Land Rights Bill’, Research report no. 15, PLAAS, Cape Town, 2003. William Mervin Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the soul of the ANC (Cape Town: Zebra Press 2005), p. 65. Tom Lodge, Politics in South Africa, p. 81; Ben Cousins, ‘Didiza’s Recipe for Disaster’, Mail & Guardian, 18 August 2000. Ben Cousins, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis in its Wider Context: the politics of land, democracy and development in Southern Africa’, Unpublished final draft, PLAAS, Cape Town, July 2003. Tom Lodge, Politics in South Africa, p. 79. Jaspreet Kindra, ‘Hanekom Appointees Shown the Door’, Mail & Guardian, 4 August 2000. Farouk Chothia, ‘Three Senior Land Affairs Officials Axed’, Business Day, 22 June 2000. Adele Sulcas, ‘Dolny “Vindicate” by Pay Hike’, Sunday Independent, 4 March 2000. Acting justice Nico Coetsee said that the findings had not recommended disciplinary action against Dolny. According to him, finding Dolny ‘guilty’ on the basis of the Katz report was unfair and even an unconstitutional action against her. Maureen Isaacson, ‘Dolny Gives her Account of Land Bank Saga’, The Sunday Independent 3 March 2001. Terence Smith, ‘Questioning the Crisis: international donors and the reconfiguration of the South African NGO sector’, Avocado working paper series no. 4, Centre for Social and Development Studies, University of Natal, Durban, 2001. LARN (Land Action Research Network), ‘NLC National Office: letter to partners’, LRAN, 23 July 2003, http://www.landaction.org/display. php?article=96.
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91. Ben Cousins and Aninka Classens, ‘Communal Land Rights and Democracy in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Conference paper presented at ‘The Politics of Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: ten years after apartheid’ Conference, University of Oslo, Oslo, June 2004, p. 21. 92. Ben Cousins and Aninka Claasens (2004) write that in the last two weeks of November 2003, a total of 35 submissions (besides others, 13 by community groups, 12 by NGO’s and by COSATU – ANC’s alliance partner) were made to public hearings on the Bill committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs. Only three were in favour of the Bill: besides Spoornet, the two others are the ones closely linked to traditional leadership, that is, the traditional leader lobby and the Bafokeng Royal Nation. The 32 others were highly critical. Ben Cousins and Aninka Classens, ‘Communal Land Rights and Democracy in Post-Apartheid South Africa’. 93. Ben Cousins, ‘Grounding Democracy, p. 23. 94. Commission on Restitution of Land Rights. Land Restitution in South Africa: our achievements and challenges (Pretoria: Department of Land Affairs 2004); Department of Land Affairs, Land Reform Update (Pretoria: National Department of Land Affairs 2004). 95. Since every claim concerns a large number of households/individuals (sometimes more than 1000 households), this financial compensation (representing the equivalent of the acquisition price of one or a certain number of commercial farms) only represents a small amount of money per household. 96. Department of Land Affairs, Land Reform Update, National department of Land Affairs, Pretoria, 2004; PLAAS, ‘Land Barometer’, Umhlaba Wethu, Quarterly Bulletin, PLAAS, Cape Town, June 2008. 97. Department of Land Affairs, Land Reform Update. 98. Department of Land Affairs, Land Reform Update; PLAAS, ‘Land Barometer’, pp. 1–2. 99. Department of Land Affairs, Land Reform Update. 100. These points of view are all the more relevant since of the 685 million available per year for land reform, only 359 million were utilised in 1998–9 and 103 million in 2000–01, in David Mayson, ‘A Critical Analysis of the 2001/2002 Budget for Land Reform in South Africa’, National Research Programme research report, SPP & NLC, Johannesburg, September 2001. Furthermore, these concerns are strengthened since only 50 million of Rands are attributed to the LRAD programme. Considering land prices, this amount is far under of what is necessary to attain the fixed objectives. 101. Michael Aliber and Reuben Mokoena, ‘The Land Redistribution Programme and the Land Market’, Unpublished paper, Department of Land Affairs, Pretoria, 2000. 102. Tom Lodge, Politics in South Africa, pp. 845. 103. UNESCO, Info by Country, UNICEF, 2003, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/ zimbabwe_statistics.html#6 104. SSA, Gross Domestic Product, Statistical release P0441, SSA, Pretoria, 2003. These statistics vary strongly according to the origin of the mineworkers and the location of the mine. But even in the mines of Kimberley, employing a more urban population, 31 per cent of the mineworkers keep strong relationships with rural areas and 17 per cent plan to engage in
Notes
105. 106.
107. 108.
109. 110.
111. 112.
113.
114. 115. 116.
117. 118. 119. 120. 121.
122.
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farming. In Ward Anseeuw, Politiques publiques et reconversion professionnelle vers l’agriculture marchande. Le cas des mineurs du Northern Cape, Thèse de doctorat en Economie Internationale, Université Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble, 2004. Tom Lodge, ‘The RDP: delivery and performance’, InTom Lodge, Politics in South Africa: from Mandela to Mbeki (Cape Town & Oxford: David Philip 2003). Andrew Whiteford and Van Seventer Dirk, ‘Understanding Contemporary Household Inequality in South Africa’, Journal for Studies in Economics and Econometrics, 24, 3, 2000, pp. 7–30; Ben Cousins, ‘Grounding Democracy’. SSA, Labour Force Survey, Historical Revision March Series 2001–2007, Statistical release P0210, SSA, Pretoria, 2008. Simon Ndugu, ‘New Forms of Super-Exploitation in the Post-Apartheid Labour Market’, New Agenda – South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy, vol. 31, third quarter 2008, pp. 66–71. Claire Horton, ‘Unemployment on the Rise’, National Labour and Economic Development Institute (NALEDI) Policy Bulletin, 2, 3, 1999, pp. 1–4. Guy Standing, John Sender and John Weeks, Restructuring the Labour Market: the South African challenge. An ILO country review, (International Labour Office, Geneva, 2000); Ward Anseeuw, Politiques publiques et reconversion professionnelle vers l’agriculture marchande. Le cas des mineurs du Northern Cape,. SSA, Labour Force Survey (Pretoria: SSA 2001). Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass, ‘Class, Distribution and Redistribution in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Transformation, 50, 2002, p. 25; Andrew Whiteford and Van Seventer Dirk, ‘Understanding Contemporary Household Inequality in South Africa’, Journal for Studies in Economics and Econometrics, 24, 3, 2000, pp. 7–30. Servaas Van der Berg and Megan Louw, ‘Changing Patterns of South African Income Distribution: towards time series estimates of distribution and poverty’, South African Journal of Economics, 72, 3, pp. 546–72; Morris Roodt, ‘Income Inequality in South Africa has Increased’, Johannesburg, SAIRR, Press release, 2008, http://www.sairr.org.za/press-office/archive/ press_release_ inequality_27_11_2008.pdf Ben Cousins, ‘Grounding Democracy’. This results in complex activity systems and intersectoral trajectories of households, which combine migrant labour and farming. Ward Anseeuw, Politiques publiques et reconversion professionnelle vers l’agriculture marchande. Le cas des mineurs du Northern Cape, Thèse de doctorat en Economie Internationale, Université Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble, 2004. Cf. ESTA (Extension of Security of Tenure Act), earlier in this chapter. Interview with landless unemployed, Northwest Province, July 2004. ISS (Institute for Security Studies), Report on Farm Attacks, Report of Committee of Inquiry Into Farm Attacks, ISS, Johannesburg, 2003. Human Rights Watch, ‘Unequal Protection: the state response to violent crime on South African farms, HRW, 2001, http://www.hrw.org/documents2001. In many ways this is another parallel with Zimbabwe, where the deaths of white farmers in the aftermath of independence far exceeded the number killed during the ‘bush war’. ‘Scrapping Ccommandos “a Mistake”’, SAPA, 14 February 2003.
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123. ‘AgriSA Upset about Commandos’, SAPA, 18 February 2003. 124. Talbot, Chris (2001), South Africa: ANC government evicts poor squatters. WSWS, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001 /jul2001/; ‘DA: Govt must look to land market for reform’ (Sapa, 15 August 2006). 125. Various broadcasts, April–June 2000. 126. Interview with landless farm workers, Northwest Province, July 2004. 127. ‘Squatters, PAC to Fight Eeviction’, Business Day, 13 July 2001. 128. ‘Police Clear PAC’s Field of Dream’, Mail and Guardian, 6 July 2001. 129. Andile Mngxitama, ‘The Landless Have Landed’, Debate, 8, 2002, pp. 8–10. 130. The Landless People’s Movement (LPM), the National Land Committee (NLC), The Rural Development Services Network (RDSN) and the South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO) have led the ‘Landlessness is Racism’ campaign. SABCnews, 7 September 2001. 131. ‘The March of Hope’, IPSnews, 31 August 2002. 132. ‘Robert Mugabe – the Hero of WSSD!’ David Steven, DailySummit, 07 September 2002, www.dailysummit.net/archives. 133. ‘250 Arrests Welcome the WSSD’, Indymedia, 22 August 2002. 134. S. Gutto, ‘Why they Cheered for Mugabe’, This Day, 04 May 2004; P. Du Toit, ‘Land Issue Illustrates Social Rift’, Business Day, 05 May 2004. 135. Interview with restitution claimant waiting for his claim to be processed, Northwest Province, July 2004. 136. Deborah James, Gaining Ground? Rights and Property in South African Land Reform (Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish 2007). 137. In 2004, the LPM had asked the landless and the poor to boycott the presidential elections. Most South African disapproved such actions and saw it as an unfaithfulness towards democracy and towards the ANC. This, according to the interviewees, is something an association such as the LPM, should not engage in. 138. Interview with restitution claimant waiting for his claim to be processed, Northwest Province, July 2004. 139. Hein Marais, South Africa: limits to change. The political economy of transition (London and Cape Town: Zed Press and University of Cape Town Press 2001). 140. K. Brown, ‘South Africa: ANC will win poll but lose credibility’, Business Day, 21 February 2006. 141. IEC (Independent Electoral Commission), Municipal Elections 2006 Report (Pretoria: IEC 2006). 142. P. Du Toit, ‘Land Issue Illustrates Social Rift’, Business Day, 05 May 2004. 143. Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma, South African Foreign Minister, cited by Marco Granelli, ‘SA Wont’ Condemn Mugabe’, The Saturday Star, 16 February 2001. Also see, D. T. Mckinley, Commodifying Oppression: South African foreign policy towards Zimbabwe under Mbeki, Pretoria, SARPN, 2003. 144. ANC MPs cited in the Editorial of Mail & Guardian, 22–8 march 2002. 145. Mbeki’s speech in ANC Today – vol. 1, no 9, 23 March 2001. 146. R. W. Johnson, ‘Mugabe, Mbeki, and Mandela’s Shadow – Robert Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela’, The National Interest, Spring 2001, p. 7. 147. Morgan Tsvangirai address at a meeting with MDC members of Parliament at Party Headquarters – Harvest House, Harare, 18 December 2002. Posted
Notes
148. 149. 150.
151. 152. 153.
154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.
161. 162.
163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169.
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on the website of the Centre for Civil Society (university of Natal – Durban), http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs Hamilton Weizmann, ‘Clinging to Power in Zimbabwe’, Socialism Today, issue 63, March 2002, http://www.socialismtoday.org/63/index.html S. Gutto, ‘Why they Cheered for Mugabe’, This Day, 04 May 2004. Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Order Out of Chaos, or Chaos Out of Order? A Preliminary Report on Operation ‘Murambatsvina’ (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum June 2005). Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), ‘South Africa: xenophobia bad, Mugabe’s retribution worse’, Irinnews, 20 May 2008. Rowan Philp, ‘Mbeki gives Mugabe Thumbs Up – Again’, Sunday Times, 29 June 2008. Nevertheless, Mbeki’s candidate, the Sri Lankan foreign minister Kadirgamar, lost with 11 votes against 40. Surprisingly or not, according to Zwnews, most of Commonwealth’s African countries voted against Mbeki’s candidate. ‘Mbeki Lashes Out at Whites’, Pretoria News, 08 January 2005. ANC, ‘The National Question’, African National Congress, 2005, http:// www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/ngcouncils/2005/nationalquestion.html Tony Leon, ‘End of the Rainbow Nation’, Sunday Times, 05 June 2005. Molefi Sefularo, ‘Are You Truly an African?’ Sunday Times, 29 May 2005. Maureen Isaacson, ‘Dolny Gives Her Account of Land Bank Saga’, 03 March 2001. Richard Davies, ‘Government to Classify Land Owners by Race’, Cape Times, 10 February 2005. PEFOL (Panel of Experts on Foreign Ownership of Land), Report by the Panel of Experts on the Development of Policy on the Regulation of Ownership of Land in South Africa by Foreigners (Non-Citizens), Pretoria, 19 February 2006. H. Hartley, ‘South Africa: no freeze on land sales to foreigners – state’, Business Day, 08 March 2006. Peter T. Jacobs, ‘A Note on South Africa’s National Land Summit’, Monthly Review Webzine, 26 October 2005, http://mrzine.monthlyreview. org/jacobs261005.html. G. Dyer, ‘South Africa – beyond a joke’, Join Africa, www.joinafrica.com/ articles/a35.htm, 15 August 2005. M. Le Roux, ‘Owner to Contest First SA Farm Expropriation’, Mail and Guardian, 22 September 2005. South African Press Association (SAPA), ‘South Africa: five more farms listed for expropriation’, The Citizen, 27 September 2005. P. Basildon, ‘South Africa Reveals Plan to Seize White Farmers’ Land’, The Independent, 03 August 2005. Cousins interviewd by M. Wines for the New York Times. See M. Wines, ‘South Africa to Take Farm form a White’, New York Times, 27 September 2005. H. Wyndham, ‘South Africa: no land grab for SA, says minister’, Business Day, 14 November 2006. Dale T. McKinley, ‘Commodifying Oppression: South African foreign policy towards Zimbabwe under Mbeki’, Unpublished paper, SARPN, 2003, http:// www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000263/P254_McKinley.pdf
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170. According to a study referred to by Cousins, the Zimbabwean crisis has led, between 2000 and 2003, to a decrease of South Africa’s gross domestic product by 1.3 per cent, to a reduction of foreign direct investment, and resulted in a weakening of the Rand, in higher inflation and higher interest rates and led to a drop in tourism. In Ben Cousins, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis in its Wider Context: the politics of land, democracy and development in Southern Africa’, Unpublished final draft, PLAAS, Cape Town, July 2003. 171. According to Buthelezi, the primary explanatory factor behind South Africa’s ‘constructive engagement’ policy is the desire to ensure that there is no total collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. South Africa is a net exporter to Zimbabwe, whose health is by consequence so important to South Africa. Buthelezi explains that the ‘cautious’ approach towards the Mugabe regime on issues of political repression and general abuse of human rights reflects Mbeki’s government’s desire of more gradual political changes that would prevent such a ‘collapse’. In Sipho Buthelezi, ‘South African Policy towards Zimbabwe’, Seminar talk presented at Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Johannesburg, 25 February 2003. 172. Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP), ‘Responding to Zimbabwean Migration in South Africa – Evaluating Options’, Unpublished Background document, 2007. 173. Just before Zimbabwe’s national parliamentary elections in 2000, Mbeki announced an economic ‘rescue package’ for the Mugabe regime of close to R1 billion. See IRIN, ‘Zimbabwe: SA economic aid’, Irinnews, 14 February 2000. The official explanation of such financial support was a pre-emptive move by the Mbeki Government to halt the decline of the Zimbabwean economy in the interest of the Zimbabwean people, South Africa and the Southern African region. See Dale T. McKinley, ‘Commodifying Oppression’. Nevertheless, this rescue package was aimed at reimbursing Zimbabwe’s debt towards South Africa, in particular to South Africa’s parastatals such as SASOL and ESKOM (debt evaluated at respectively R300 million and R250 million). Another part of this package also included more than twenty joint investment projects in Zimbabwe, in the areas of infrastructure, tourism and natural gas exploration. See IRIN, ‘Zimbabwe: economic rescue package’, Irinnews, 22 February 2000. As McKinley notes, ‘The rescue package represented the securement of the economic (class?) interest of an emergent black South African bourgeoisie, in both the state and private sectors, through the auspices of a “foreign policy” smokescreen. By providing political support and legitimacy to the (victorious) Mugabe regime, Mbeki’s government was ensuring the longer-term security and expansion of South Africa’s (capitalist) economic “investments” in Zimbabwe. […] As long as Mugabe occupies the political driving seat, the strategic impetus behind South African policy will remain the degree to which the “crisis” facilitates the longer-term interests of an emergent black bourgeoisie in South Africa that aspires to both regional and continental ascendancy.’ 174. Interview with official from South Africa’s Treasury, January 2006. 175. Rowan Philip, ‘Back to the Land, Comrades!’, Sunday Times, 25 January 2009. 176. Rowan Philip, ‘Back to the Land, Comrades!’.
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177. ‘Don’t Worry, Zuma tells US’, The Star, 22 October 2008. 178. Tony Leon, ‘Jacob Zuma Visits the USA’, Blog article, 31 October 2008, http://tonyleonblog.blogspot.com/ 2008/10/jacob -zuma-visits-usa.html.
4 A Distant Thunder: Namibia 1. Richard Moorsom, Transforming a Wasted Land: a future for Namibia (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations 1982), pp. 11–13. 2. For details on Namibia’s colonial history see Reginald H. Green, Kimmo Kiljunen and Marja-Liisa Kiljunen, eds., Namibia: the last colony (London: Longman 1981); Ruth First, South West Africa (London: Penguin 1963). For a review of colonialism and missionary impact on the Ovambo, see Meredith McKittrick, To Dwell Secure: generation, Christianity and colonialism in Ovamboland (Cape Town: David Philip 2002). 3. Jan-Bart Gewald, Herero Heroes: a socio-political history of the Herero of Namibia (Oxford: James Currey 1999), pp. 141–91; Philip, Prein, ‘Guns and Top Hats: African resistance in German South West Africa, 1907–1918’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 20:1, March 1994, pp. 99–121. 4. Estimates range between 50,000 and 80,000 killed during the war and its aftermath. 5. Mary Seely ‘Environment: harsh constraints, political flexibility’, in Ingolf Diener and Oliveir Graefa, eds., Contemporary Namibia: the first landmarks of a post-apartheid society (Windhoek: Macmillan/Gamsberg 2001), pp. 35–6. 6. Moorsom, Transforming a Wasted Land, p. 31. 7. Moorsom, Transforming a Wasted Land, p. 27. 8. See Allan Cooper, ‘The Institutionalization of Contract Labour in Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 25: 1, 1999, pp. 121–38. 9. Moorsom, Transforming a Wasted Land, p. 29. For an analysis of the impact of labour migration see Ruth First, South West Africa (London: Penguin 1963). 10. Wolfgang Werner, ‘Land Reform in Namibia: the first seven years’, NEPRU Working Paper no. 61, Windhoek, August 1997, p. 13. 11. See Christiaan Keulder, ‘Traditional Leaders,’ in Christiaan Keulder, ed., State, Society and Democracy: a reader in Namibian politics (Windhoek: Gamsberg/ Macmillan 2000). 12. This was confirmed by the UN General Assembly, which recognised it as the territory’s sole legitimate representative in 1973 and again in 1976. SWANU lost its status as recognised by the OAU in 1965. 13. United Nations Institute for Namibia, ‘Namibia’s Prospects for National Reconstruction and Development’ (Lusaka: UNIN 1986), cited in Lionel Cliffe, Ray Bush, Jenny Lindsay and Brian Mokopakgosi, The Transition to Independence in Namibia (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1994), p. 157. 14. For more information on religion and state building, see Eric Morier-Genoud, Religion in Namibia, Report and links published by Le Fait Missionnaire, 1 February 2002, http://www2.unil.ch/lefaitmissionnaire/old_pages/Namibia. 15. For example, there was much surprise when only three internal Swapo leaders were given ministerial-level appointments in the first government, out of a total of 32 ministries. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 215
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16. James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: the search for status and security, 1945–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1990), pp. 143–5. 17. Robert Jaster, The Defence of White Power: South African foreign policy under pressure (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1988), pp. 59–68; 92–3. 18. For details, see Dennis Herbstein, Devils are Amongst Us: the war for Namibia (London: Zed 1989). 19. Jaster, The Defence of White Power, pp. 106–07; Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, pp. 67–9. 20. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 199. 21. Gerhard Erasmus, ‘The Constitution: its impact on Namibian statehood and politics’, in Christiaan Keulder, ed., State, Society and Democracy: a reader in Namibian politics (Gamsberg/Macmillan: Windhoek 2000), p. 82. 22. For the definitive account of this, see Kenneth Grundy, The Militarization of South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986). 23. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, pp. 148–9. 24. Herbstein, Devils are Amongst Us: The war for Namibia, pp. 61–94; also see Jim Hooper, Koevoet! (Johannesburg: Southern Books 1988). 25. Jaster, The Defence of White Power, pp. 106–07. 26. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 187; Ne-iem Dollie, A Political Review of Namibia. Nationalism in Namibia (Windhoek 1988). 27. Na-iem Dollie, A Political Review of Namibia: Nationalism in Namibia (Cape Town 27: Logo Print 1988). 28. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 175. 29. Chester Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: making peace in a rough neighbourhood (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball 1992), pp. 373–91. 30. Much controversy surrounds the Plan infiltration as well as the decision to authorise a South African military retaliation by the UN Special Representative. Soviet era analysts’ view, interestingly enough, was that Plan ‘does not always obey its leaders’. Vernon Aspaturian, ‘Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking and the Angolan Conflict’, in Owen Kahn, ed., Disengagement from Southwest Africa (London: Transaction 1991), p. 40. 31. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 178. 32. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 221. 33. AWEPA, Consolidation of Democracy in Namibia, AWEPA Electoral Observer Mission, December 1994 (Africa–European Institute, Amsterdam 1995), p. 9. 34. Cliffe et al, The Transition to Independence in Namibia, pp. 256–74. 35. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 178. 36. The DTA’s Dirk Mudge is reported to have said at one such session, ‘If you want more of the presently white-owned farms to be bought by black people: in principle, no problem. You can have my farm, you must only pay my price.’ To which Swapo’s Theo-Ben Gurirab replied, ‘Your property is your property.’ Cited in Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 205. 37. But this did not stop Swapo, and the DTA supported the maintenance of ‘preventive detention’ in the constitution. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 200; 205. 38. Interview with Sam Nujoma, New Times, December 1988, pp. 10–11, cited by Vernon Aspaturian, ‘Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking and the Angolan Conflict’, in Owen Kahn, ed., Disengagement from Southwest Africa (London: Transaction 1991), p. 41.
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39. Cited in Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 205. 40. Cliffe et al., The Transition to Independence in Namibia, p. 8. 41. NNFU, ‘Land Reform in Namibia: meeting economic and social responsibilities’, Discussion Paper, Namibian National Farmers Union, Windhoek, January 2003, p. 5. The statistics on numbers of farmers in the communal areas varies, for example, the NNFU declare there to be 138,000 subsistence farmers while the UNDP suggests that there are 144,000. 42. The composition of farm labour had changed over the years, from 45,000 in 1956 to 40,000 in 1970 and down to 36,000 at independence. Pre-1982 data from Moorsom, Transforming a Wasted Land, p. 33. 43. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia: Human Development Report 1996 (Windhoek: UNDP 1996), p. 30. 44. Alain Dubresson and Olivier Graefe, ‘The State, Accumulation and Regulation: for (sic) a political economy of Namibia’, in Ingolf Diener and Oliveir Graefa, eds., Contemporary Namibia: the first landmarks of a post-apartheid society (Windhoek: Macmillan/Gamsberg 2001), p. 71. 45. Willem Odendaal, ‘Confiscation or Compensation? An Analysis of the Namibian Commercial Agricultural Land Reform Process’, Unpublished Paper, 2005, pp. 3–4. 46. Moorsom, Transforming a Wasted Land, p. 40. 47. Evidence for this was recorded in a UNDP report. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia,1996, p. 71. 48. Christiaan Keulder, ‘Traditional Leaders’, in Christiaan Keulder, ed., State, Society and Democracy: a reader in Namibian politics (Windhoek: Gamsberg/ Macmillan 2000), p. 132. 49. For example, the Commission of Enquiry into Matters relating to Chiefs, Headmen and other Traditional or Tribal Leaders made no recommendations with respect to their authority to allocate land. Wolfgang Werner, ‘The Land Question in Namibia’, in Ingolf Diener and Oliveier Graefe, eds., Contemporary Namibia: the first landmarks of a post-apartheid society (Windhoek: Gamsberg/Macmillan 2001), p. 271. 50. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia, 1996, p. 42. 51. Wolfgang Werner, ‘The Current State of Land Reform in Namibia: some facts and figures’, background paper presented fro the Consultative Conference on Land hosted by the Namibian Agricultural Union and the Namibian National Farmers Union, Windhoek, 26–7 February 2002, p. 11. 52. Communal farmers were divided into two categories: those with less than 10 ha and those, ‘proto-commercial’ farmers, with more than 10 ha. 53. Government of Namibia, Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act, 1995, section 14. 54. Werner, 2002, ‘The Current State of Land Reform’, p. 6. 55. According to Fuller this represented a 250 per cent increase in 1995–6 over past registrations of land. 56. Economic Intelligence Unit, Namibia/Swaziland: Country Report, 1997–8 (London: EUI 1998), p. 33. 57. See, for example, ‘NGO Action on Land in Southern Africa: workshop report,’ MWENGO, Sub-regional Reflection Forum, Gaberone, Botswana, , 3–5 July 2000. 58. See annual reports of Ford, etc.
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59. Interview with Oloff Munjanu, NNFU, Windhoek, September 2003. 60. NNFU, ‘NNFU’s Position Regarding Governments’ Resettlement Scheme’, draft paper for internal discussion, Windhoek, 27 October 1998, p. 5. 61. Personal communication, Windhoek, September 2003. Rumours that Nujoma was granted a diamond mine concession by Kabila have never been substantiated. 62. Dubresson and Graefe, ‘The State, Accumulation and Regulation’, pp. 54–5. 63. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia, 1996, p. 33. 64. Dubresson and Graefe, ‘The State Accumulation and Regulation’, pp. 56–62. An exception has been the fishing industry that has expanded considerably since 1990 though questions around its sustainability are increasingly being asked. 65. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia: Human Development Report 2000/2001 (Windhoek: UNDP 2002), p. 7. 66. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia, 1996, p. 9. 67. Only four countries in the world have a higher discrepancy between GNP and HDI. Chris Tapscott, ‘Class Formation and Civil Society in Namibia’, in Ingolf Diener and Oliveir Graefa, eds., Contemporary Namibia: the first landmarks of a post-apartheid society (Windhoek: Gamsberg/Macmillan 2001), p. 318. 68. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia, 2002, pp. 32–3. 69. United Nations Development Programme, Namibia, 1996, p. 9. In Ohangwena region, the area bordering Angola and the worst case, it was N$1070. 70. Werner, 2002, ‘The Current State of Land Reform’, p. 1. 71. Werner, 1997, ‘Land Reform in Namibia’, pp. 13–14; also see Dubresson and Graefe, ‘The State, Accumulation and Regulation’, p. 61; Martin Adams, Land Reform in Namibia (Oxford: Oxfam 2000). 72. The Namibian, 8 September 1999, www.namibian.com.na. 73. Press statement released by the Namibian National Farmers Union and Namibian NGO Forum, 24 May 2000. 74. Interview with Kuaima Riruako, Herero paramount chief, Aminius, Namibia, September 2004. 75. ‘Namibia Moves Cautiously on Land Deals’, Africa Recovery, 12: 3 December 1998, p. 12. 76. Note the ease with which a change in the Agribank’s payment schedule was organised through parliamentary pressure. 77. Opposition MP Phillemon Moongo worried that farm workers would be allowed under legislation to claim part of his farm. National Assembly Debates, Hansard, 16 April 2003, pp. 7–8. 78. Communication with Deon van Zyl, Nepru, Windhoek, March 2006. 79. Cited in ‘Namibia Moves Cautiously on Land Deals’, Africa Recovery, 12: 3 December 1998, p. 2 80. AWEPA, Consolidation of Democracy in Namibia, AWEPA Electoral Observer Mission, December 1994 (Africa-European Institute, Amsterdam 1995), p. 28. 81. Odendaal writes: ‘(O)ut of the 142 farms that were offered for sale to the government in 1999, only four were acquired, while in 2000 only 15 out of the 125 farms were acquired for settlement purposes. Thus instead of overspending its budget for purchasing farms, it appears that the Ministry has been underspending.’ Willem Odendaal, ‘Confiscation or Compensation?
Notes
82.
83. 84. 85. 86. 87.
88. 89.
90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.
100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.
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An analysis of the Namibian commercial agricultural land reform process’, unpublished paper, p. 5. Author observation at Drimiopos and Vasdraai farms in Omaheke in September 2004; also see confirmation by Minister Pohamba, National Assembly, 16 April 2003, p. 10, p. 14. Odendaal, ‘Confiscation or Compensation?’ p. 5. The Namibian, 5 May 2004, www.namibian.com.na. Interview with NAFWU official, Gobabis, September 2004. See, for example, the criticism levelled in parliament. Opposition MP Justice Garoeb, National Assembly, Hansard, 26 June 2003, p. 220. Author interviews at Drimiopos and Vasdraai farms in Omaheke in September 2004; also see Legal Assistance Centre critique in The Namibian, 10 April 2002, www.namibian.com.na Opposition MP Linus Chata, National Assembly, Hansard, 2 July 2003, p. 271. According to Robin Sherbourne, 6.2 per cent of commercial farmland had been redistributed through Affirmative Action Loans against just over 3 per cent through MRLL’s resettlement programme. Robin Sherbourne, ‘Rethinking Land Reform in Namibia: any room for economics?’ IPPR Opinion No. 13, April 2004, Institute for Public Policy Research, Windhoek, pp. 5–6. Cited in Sherbourne, ‘Rethinking Land Reform in Namibia’, p. 7. See for example, President Sam Nujoma’s address to the 56th Congress of the National Agricultural Union, Windhoek, 18 September 2002. Communication with one of the authors of the PTT report, 2 May 2006. The Namibian, 25 August 2003, www.namibian.com.na. See Jan de Wet’s address to the Kaiserstraat Boere Vereniging in November 2002. The Namibian, 4 November 2002, www.namibian.com.na The Namibian, 4 March 2004, www.namibian.com.na The Namibian, 5 May 2004, www.namibian.com.na The Namibian, 16 April 2004, www.namibian.com.na Guide to the Communal Land Reform Act, Legal Assistance Centre and Namibian National Farmer Union, Windhoek, July 2003. Andre du Pisani, ‘State Power and Social Forces in Namibia’, in Justine Hunter, ed., Who Owns the Land? Analysis and views on land reform and the land question in Namibia and Southern Africa, Windhoek: Namibia Institute for Democracy/Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, February 2004, p. 38. Adams, ‘Land Reform in Namibia’, p. 8. New Era (Windhoek), 21 July 2005, www.allafrica.com/stories/200507210680. html Interview with I. J. Coetzee, NAU, Windhoek, September 2003; interview with Oloff Munjanu, NNFU, Windhoek, September 2003. Interview with Jan de Wet, Namibian Agricultural Union, ‘Interviews on land Reform in Namibia’, in Hunter, ed., Who Owns the Land? p. 119. See for example the Emerging Farmers Support Programme, a joint project by NAU and NNFU. Ryno van der Merwe, NAU president in 2008, said, ‘over 1000 farms are now owned privately by black people and altogether six million hectares have been redistributed, if you add the resettlement farms of government.
212
106.
107. 108.
109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.
115.
116. 117. 118.
119. 120.
121. 122.
123.
Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa The target of 15 million ha redistributed by 2020 looks realistic.’ Cited in Brigitte Weidlich, ‘Development-Namibia: land reform reaping fruits despite problems’, IPS, November 2008, www.ipsnews.net.asp?idenws=44666 See for example the dispute between Harry Schneider in the Waterberg area and farmworkers, which led to calls for a land occupation by NAFWU. ‘Namibian Farmworkers Call Off Land Grab’, Independent Online, 18 October 2004, www.iol.co.za. See, for example, Namibia Farmer’s Support Initiative, Media Statement on 2 June 2004. Robin Sherbourne, ‘After the Dust has Settled: continuity or stagnation?’ IPPR Opinion No. 16, June 2004, Institute for Public Policy Research, Windhoek, pp. 1–4. Ongopolo copper producer acknowledged this in an interview with Namibian journalists. The Namibian, 12 July 2004, www.namibian.com.na. Ben Fuller, 26 July 2005, www.africaisnotacountry.typepad.com/ namibianews/ Sunday Argus, 24 July 2005. Brigitte Weidlich, ‘Development-Namibia: land reform reaping fruits despite problems’, IPS, November 2008, www.ipsnews.net.asp?idenws=44666 Odendaal, ‘Confiscation or Compensation?’ p. 6. Oddly enough, the figure appears in NFSI material produced 1 March 2004 as follows: ‘The presently estimated 3800 commercial farmers employ about 37000 workers and support their families and dependents numbering about 240000.’ NSFI, ‘Founding of Namibian Farmers’ Support Initiative’, 1 March 2004, p. 1. Interview with Christiaan Keulder, Windhoek, September 2004. Keulder provided opinion survey data from 2001 which indicated that unemployment was the top priority for 25.5 per cent of Namibians while land reform was only important to 4 per cent. Interviews in informal settlements outside Gobabis, September 2004. Interview with Agribank official, Oshikati, October 2004. Interview with Alfred Angula, General Secretary of the Namibian Farmworkers Union, ‘Interviews on Land Reform in Namibia’, in Hunter, ed., Who Owns the Land? pp. 116–17. This is despite their reportedly shallow representation by genuine farm workers. Ya France, once considered a radical on the land issue, was made a Swapo MP in the 1999 elections and has rarely spoken out thereafter. His ambitions to be nominated Minister in MLRR were never realised (see The Namibian, 27 March 2000, www.namibian.com.na) His frustration was evident in interviews conducted by the author. Ponhele Ya France, Windhoek, September 2004. Opposition MP Phillemon Moongo, National Assembly Debates, 16 April 2003, pp. 9–10. Joseph Diesco, ‘Government and Opposition in Post-Independence Namibia: perception and performance’, paper presented at Conference on Building Democracy, Namibian Institute for Democracy, 30 November 1996, p. 14. Andre du Pisani, ‘State Power and Social Forces in Namibia’, paper presented at Conference on Building Democracy, Namibian Institute for Democracy, 30 November 1996, p. 30.
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124. The Namibian Economist, 14 February 2003. 125. ‘Legal Assistance Centre Report on Resettlements’, The Namibian, 13 July 2005, www.namibian.com.na. 126. Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba, National Assembly, Hansard, 25 June 2003, p. 177; Opposition MP Linus Chata, National Assembly, Hansard, 2 July 2003, p. 272. 127. Address by the Deputy Minister of MLRR Isak Katali to the Aroab Farmers Association, 8 August 2003. 128. Joseph Diescho notes that the Namibian government, like other postcolonial governments, ‘feels less threatened by white opposition which they do not see as dangerous as opposition emanating from their own groups. Black politicians would rather see white opposition as a temporary nuisance from which they nevertheless can draw logic and strength.’ Joseph Diesco, ‘Government and Opposition in Post-Independence Namibia: perception and performance’, paper presented at Conference on Building Democracy, Namibian Institute for Democracy, 30 November 1996, p. 22. 129. Cited in Henning Melber, ‘From Controlled Change to Changed Control: the case of Namibia’, in H. Melber, ed., Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa: the unfinished business of democratic consolidation (Cape Town: HSRC 2003), p. 146. 130. Almost without exception, all interviewees from top Swapo officials to youthful cadres in towns in Omaheke and Otjozondjupa expressed this point of view. 131. The Namibian, 10 April 2002, www.namibian.com.na. 132. Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba, National Assembly, Hansard, 16 April 2003, p. 14.
5 Liberation and Compromise? 1. Corrado Tornimbeni and Malyn Newitt, ‘The State, Local Politics and Migration in a Borderland Region of Mozambique’, www.kcl.ac.uk, pp. 8–9. 2. According to South African sources, ‘18,000 foreign commercial farmers from South Africa and Zimbabwe successfully applied for leases in 2000’. Farmers Weekly, 10 February 2006, p. 17. 3. Tornimbeni and Newitt, ‘The State, Local Politics and Migration in a Borderland Region of Mozambique’, p. 9. 4. ‘Mogae Blasts Mugabe over Land Grabs’, The Sunday Times, 11 November 2001. 5. ‘Zimbabwe Censures Botswana over White Farmers’, Mmegi, 16 August 2002. 6. Clottey Peter, ‘The President of Botswana Praises Mugabe’, VOANews, 30 August 2006. 7. ‘Land Issues are Bloody’, The Voice, 10 October 2006. 8. SARPN (Southern African Regional Poverty Network), ‘Growing Land Hunger in Botswana?’ Commentary on BOCONGO and FONSAG conference, June 2002.
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9. ‘Invasion – The scramble for land is getting out of control’, The Voice, 10 October 2006. 10. Cardoso made this surprising statement at a meeting with the author and Antoni van Nieukerk, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, in 1991. 11. Joseph Hanlon, ‘The Land Debate in Mozambique: will foreign investors, the urban elite, advanced peasants or family farmers drive rural, sustainable livelihoods in Southern Africa?’, Research Paper 19, Oxfam GB – Regional Management Centre for Southern Africa, Pretoria, 2002, pp. 15. 12. Sarah Rich Dorman, ‘Post-liberation Politics in Africa: examining the political legacy of struggle,’ Third World Quarterly, 27, 6, 2006, 1085–1101. 13. ‘Land Issues are Bloody’, The Voice, 10 October 2006. 14. The Star (Johannesburg), 11 February 2004. 15. The Herald (Harare), 9 April 2002. 16. Cape Times, 17 August 2004. 17. Cris Chinaka, ‘SADC shows approval for Mugabe’, Zimbabwean Information Center, 17 August 2004. 18. Mail & Guardian, 7 November 2003. 19. Ian Phimister and Brian Raftopoulos ‘Mugabe, Mbeki and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism’, Review of African Political Economy, 101, 2004, p. 394. 20. With individuals like Tito Mboweni, head of the South African Reserve Bank, left to make the most vitriolic critique of Mugabe and events in Zimbabwe. 21. J. Daniel, J. Lutchman and S. Naidu, ‘Post-Apartheid South Africa’s Corporate Expansion into Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, 100, 2004, pp. 343–78; J. Daniel, V. Naidoo and S. Naidu, ‘The South Africans have Arrived: post-apartheid corporate expansion into Africa’, in J. Daniel, A. Habib, and R. Southall (eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003–2004, HSRC Press, Cape Town, 2003; Lesufi, Ishmael, ‘Nepad and South African Imperialism’, Discussion paper, Jubilee South Africa, 2006. 22. D. Brutus, ‘Global Agendas are Set by the Usual Suspects’, Business Day, 27 June 2002. 23. Adedeji, Adebayo, ‘From the Lagos Plan of Action to the New Partnership for African Development and from the Final Act of Lagos to the Constitutive Act: wither Africa?’, Keynote Address prepared for the African Forum for ‘Envisioning Africa’, Nairobi, Kenya, 26–9 April 2002. 24. He points to meetings with the World Bank president and the IMF managing director (November 2000 and February 2001), major transnational corporate executives and associate government leaders (at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2001), G8 rulers at Tokyo in July 2000 and Genoa in July 2001, the European Union president and individual Northern heads of state (2001–01 Bond, Patrick, Talk Left – Walk Right. South Africa’s frustrated global reforms, University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, Scottsville, 2004. Be careful, in note, there seems to be a typing mistake). 25. ‘Foreword’, in Lesufi, Ishmael, ‘Nepad and South African Imperialism’, Discussion paper, Jubilee South Africa, 2006. 26. Business Day, 27 June 2002. 27. Anseeuw, Ward and Wambo, Augustin, ‘The Renenwal of Agricultural Policy Development in Africa – the case of Nepad’s CAADP’, Research paper, CIRAD and University of Pretoria, 2008.
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28. The latter is presently accentuated since President Wade from Senegal, one of the co-founders of Nepad, has heavily criticised Nepad as being a bureaucratic entity that should be closed (Diadie, Ba, ‘Senegal’s Wade Slams Africa Development Body’, Reuters, 13 June 2007). 29. Morudu Palesa, ‘The Demise of ZANU-PF: lessons for South Africa’, New Agenda – South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy, 31, third quarter 2008, pp. 76–7. 30. Cited by Lamb Christina, ‘Mugabe: why Africa applauds him’, New Statesman, 07 September 2006. 31. For a detailed rendering of the crisis see Joansie van Wyk, ‘The Saga Continues…the Zimbabwe issue in South Africa’s foreign policy’, Alternatives, 1,4, 2002, pp. 176–231.
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Opuwo
Outapi Oshikango Oshkati Ovamboland
Rundu
Kaokoveld
Eastern Caprivi
Okavangoland Etosha
Tsumeb Tsumeb Grootfontein
Bushmanland Outjo OljiwarongoHereroland West Damaraland Waterberg Hereroland East Plato Park Omaruru Hochfeld Karibib Okahandja Ovitoto Swakopound Oljinbingwe Windhoek Gobabis Windhoek Walvis Bay Tswanaland Aminuls Rehoboth Aranos Mariental
Legend Border Settlement Communal-Odendaal
Maltahohe
Communal- existing Namaland Loderitz Bethanie Keetmanshoop Keetmanshoop Aus Aroab
Bondelswarts Warmbad 1:7.500.000 0 125
250
500 km
Namibia’s land distribution in 1964
Private farmland Government
Opuwo
Outapi Oshikango Oshkali
Rundu
Tsumeb
Oljiwarongo
Hochfeld
Swakopmund
Windhoek
Walvis Bay
Legend Border Settlement Central Government Local Authority Private on communal land Private on freehold land Traditional Authority
Mariental
Keetmanshoop
Lüderitz
1:7.500.000 0 125
250
500 km
Namibia’s land distribution today
Namibia Land ownership in Namibia (1990) Land ownership
Number of units/ households
Area (thousand hectares)
Percentage of total area
Commercial farms Communal farms
6300 200 000 (approximately) n/a
16 256 33 784
44 41
12 360
15
n/a
82 400
100
National Parks/Urban Total Note: n/a: Not applicable
Source: Compiled and adapted from GRN, The Constitution of the Republic of Namibia, Windhoek, GRN, 1990.
Land reform in Namibia (1990-2006) Programme
Type of rights
Affirmative action loan scheme Resettlement (commercial)
Freehold in commercial farms Leasehold in commercial farms Conservancies Partial rights to groups in communal areas – tourism and wildlife only Communal Leaseholds rights registration in communal areas (25 ha limit) Total
Number of Area transferred Percentage household (thousand of total area beneficiaries hectares) 660
3 200
3.98
1 550
1 056
1.18
43 000
n/a
n/a
4 500
n/a
n/a
4 224
5.16
49 710
Note: n/a: Not applicable Source: Adapted from Fuller, Ben, Improving tenure security for the rural poor – Namibia country case study, UN-FAO Support to the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP), LEP Working Paper 6, 35p.
Resettlement acquisitions in Namibia from 1990 to May 2006 Year 1990–1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Total
Number of farms
Hectares
Households resettled
12 8 6 22 17 7 12 24 8 10 8 16 17
60 564 35 961 32 343 162 324 86 436 38 845 76 673 137 672 62 638 87 569 45 902 131 474 76 362
151 87 125 227 109 14 66 100 36 25 (2 farms pending) All farms pending 6 (15 farms pending) All farms pending
167
1 034 763
946
Source: Fuller, Ben, Improving tenure security for the rural poor – Namibia country case study, UN-FAO Support to the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP), LEP Working Paper 6, 35p.
Sinoia
Salisbury
Wankie
Umtali
Gwelo
Bulawayo
Fort Victoria Shabani
Land Apportionment Chiredzi
Tribal trust land African purchase areas, forest reserves and game parks Land formally reserved for Europeans (includes parks and forest land)
Beitbridge
National land
Rhodesia’s land distribution in the 1970s
Zimbabwe Land ownership and allocation in Rhodesia (before independence, since 1930 and the Land Apportionment Act) Category
Area (million ha)
European Native reserves Native Purchase Areas Forest Area Unassigned Area Undetermined Area Other (urban)
19.9 8.7 3 0.2 7.2 0.4 0.2
Total
39.6
Source: Rukuni and Eicher (2006).
Percentage of total land area 50.25 21.97 7.58 0.51 18.18 1.01 0.51 100
Land ownership and allocation in Zimbabwe (31 July 2003, after land reform programme) Category
Households
Area (million ha)
Percentage of total land area
A1* A2** Old resettlement area Communal Large scale commercial Small scale commercial National parks and urban State land (and other)
127 192 7 260 71 000 2 000 000 500 8 000 State Parastatals
4.2 2.2 3.7 16.4 2.6 1.4 6.0 3.1
10.61 5.56 9.34 41.41 5.57 3.54 15.15 7.83
Total
2 500 000
39.6
100
Model A1*: Individual Residential and arable land but shared common grazing land. Land allocation varied according to natural region Model A2**: Self contained farm units for cropping, residential grazing and woodlots Source: Utete report (2003); Rukuni and Eicher (2006).
Evolution of number of large scale commercial farms in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe Year 1945 1980 1990 2000 2003 ?
Number of large scale commercial farms 3 699 5 600 4 165 3 798 500
Area (million ha) Percentage of total land area 19.9 14.8 11.4 10.9 2.6
50.25 37.37 42.17 27.53 6.57
300
Source: Adapted from Ministry of Lands, agriculture and Rural Resettlement, undated.
ZIMBABWE MOZAMBIQUE BOTSWANA
Pretoria Johannesburg Vereeniging
NAMIBIA
Transvaal SWAZI LAND
Orange Natal
Free State Kimberley Bloemfontein
LESOTHO
Pietermaritzburg Durban
Cape Province
N East London Cape Town
Port Elisabeth
Provincial border International border
“Autonomour” Bantustans
LESOTHO
150 km
“Independent” Bantustans
Gazankulu
Bophuthatswana
KaNgwane
Ciskei
KwaNdebele
Transkei
KwaZulu
Venda
Lebowa
White owned private land
Cape Town Provincial capital Transvaal
0
Province Neighbouring country
Qwaqwa
South Africa’s land distribution in the 1980s Source: Adapted from Gervais-Lambony, 1997.
1. South Africa Land ownership in South Africa (1990, before the democratic elections) Land ownership
Number of units/households
Commercial farms
62,084
85,260
2,000,000 (approximately) n/a
12,740
Communal land National Parks/ Urban/other Total
n/a
Area (thousand hectares)
Percentage of total area 69.82 (87 of arable land) 10.43 (13 of arable land) 19.74
24,104 122,104
100
Note: n/a: Not applicable Source: Compiled by authors
Land reform in South Africa (1994–31 June 2009) Restitution programme Period (year)
Restitution claims settled
Beneficiary households
Hectares restituted
Percentage of total arable land
1994–9 1999–2009
41 75,510
3,508 312,655
112,919 2,436,652
0.11 2.39
Total
75,551
316,163
2,549,571
2.50
Redistribution programme Period (grants)
1994–9 1999–2009 Total redistribution Total
Redistribution projects settled
Beneficiary households
Hectares redis- Percentage tributed of total arable land
821 3,063 3,884
109,457 74,506 183,963
1,082,111 1,907,160 2,989,271
1.06 1.87 2.93
79,435
500,126
5,538,842
5.43
Source: Adapted from Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, 2009.
Index Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act (1993) (South Africa) 87 Abubakar, Abdulsalami Alhaji 72 Accelerated Resettlement process 52–3 access to land Namibia 136 Affirmative Action Loan Scheme 137–8, 146, 151 Africa division of at Berlin Conference 122 Africa Renaissance 175–6 African National Congress (ANC) 68, 75, 82–4, 86, 88–92, 94–5, 97, 108–9, 111, 113, 118, 162–3, 168, 174 banning of 20 changing policy on land reform 101–4 conflict with Inkatha forces 87 creation of 79 defeats Inkatha in 2004 South African general election 99 embraces neoliberalism 75 militants attempt to overthrow Bantustan government 87 unbanning of 84 African Union 37, 176 Africanisation 32 Africans forced resettlement of 16 Afrikaner nationalism rise of 79–81 agrarian reform see land reform Agribank 138, 147 Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act (1995) (Namibia) 137–8, 140, 143 agriculture contribution to South African exports 89–90
development of 16–7 labour shortages 40 Namibia 133–4 South Africa 102, 161 support for white 16 Agriculture and Rural Development Authorities 52 AgriSA 105–6, 116 Ahtisaari, Martii 131 air force destruction of Zimbabwean 50 Amathila, Ben 132 ANC youth league 80 Angola 20–1, 130 defence pact with Zimbabwe, Namibia and DRC 141 ideologically driven regime in 31 Angola Boers resettlement of 122 Angula, Nahas 145, 153 Anseeuw, Ward 102 anti-imperialism discourse of 175 post World War II 30–1 anti-imperialist rhetoric 68, 175 anti-militarism 22 anti-slavery movement rise of 77 apartheid 7, 18, 161 challenges to 20 criticism of by international organisations 84 extended to South West Africa 124 institution of 80 legislation of National Party 80 opposition to 82 referendum on ending 84 transition from 75–6 Aroab Farmers Association 155 authoritarianism 10
241
242
Index
balance of payments crisis of 1980s 34 Banda, Hastings [d.1997] 19 Bantu Education Act (1953) (South Africa) 80 Bantustan ANC militants attempt to overthrow government 87 relocation of industry to 161 South Africa 18, 78, 80–1 Basotho dominance of 77 Basters displacement of 122 support for South Africa 129 Batavia introduction of slaves from 76 Bechuanaland 18 colonial rule in 165 Beeld 114 Beira close of to Rhodesian goods 46 Beira corridor defence of 167 Belgian Congo 27, 29 Berenger, Paul Raymond 174 Berlin Conference (1884–5) 122 Bhebe, Ngwabit 44 Bill of Rights (South Africa) 87 black economic empowerment (BEE) 175 black farmers barriers to Namibian 135 black resistance rise of in South Africa 79–81 Boer Republics establishment of 18, 77 Boer War (1899–1902) 77 Boers 76 Boipatong Inkatha massacre of ANC supporters in 87 Bond, Patrick 176 Bosman, Lourie 116 Botha, Pieter Willem [1916–2006] 20, 81–3, 128 Botswana 22, 37, 165, 170 see also Bechuanaland critical of Zimbabwe 2–3
economic dependence on South Africa 165 effects of Zimbabwean crisis on 160, 165–73 independence 172 Orapa diamond mine 165 participates in diplomacy to resolve Zimbabwe land issue 169 relations with Zimbabwe 70 Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) 20, 172 Bratton, Michael 9–12, 22, 159 Brazzaville Agreement (1988) 132 Bredell occupation of vacant land in 107–8 Brett, E.A. 50, 56 Britain colonises South Africa 77 conquest of Southern African territory 16 grant to Zimbabwe for land resettlement 53 relations with Zimbabwe 67 resumes formal control of Rhodesia 48–9 support for MDC 66 unwilling to provide financial resources for land reform 59 British Empire abolition of slavery in 16, 77 end of 18 British South Africa Company 39–40 police of 39 Buthelezi, Mangosutho 81, 87, 89 Buxton, Thomas Fowell [1786–1845] 5 Cabora Bassa dam 20, 165 Cape Colony 76 land rights 78 capital flight Rhodesia 46 Caprivi 124, 130, 141 Caprivians 123 Cardoso, Carlos [1951–2000] 171 Carrington, Lord Peter Alexander Rupert 47–8 cattle communal raising in Namibia 135 Central African Federation 43
Index creation of 42 centralised command structures 19 certificate of no present interest 54 Chamberlain, Joseph [1836–1914] 77 Chata, Linus 146 Chief Land Claims Commissioner 114 Chikerema, James Robert Dambaza [1925–2006] 47 Chiluba, Frederick Jacob Titus 7 China financial support for Zanu from 44 support for Frelimo 21 Chipote, Herbert [d.1975] 43 assassination of 44 Chissano, Joaquim Alberto 166–7 Chitiyo, Tapera Knox 45 church groups 60 citizenship 8, 11, 13 notions of 7 Citizenship Act (2003) (Zimbabwe) 72 civil rights campaigns 19 civil servants proposed sacking of Zimbabwean 60 civil service sunset clauses for 87, 94 civil society 8 civil war effects of 34 clientelism 32 clientist networks 10 climate Namibia 121 Cabora Bassa dam 165 Cold War 82, 127 collectivisation 88 colonial administration 16 Colonial Office 79 colonialism 3, 5, 7–8, 26 collapse of Portuguese 130 land expropriation 1, 27 Namibia 121–7 negative consequences of 110–3 opposition to 15 political economy 39 reflected in place names 27
243
structural relationships forged during era of 12 colonisation political economy of Mozambique 159 Commercial Agricultural Amendment Act (2003) (Namibia) 147–8 Commercial Farmers Union 60–2 Commission of Inquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure Systems (Rukuni Commission) (1994) 58 Commonwealth 47, 72 criticism of apartheid 84 Eminent Persons Group (EPG) 82 relations with Zimbabwe 6 South Africa withdraws from 20, 83 task force for Rhodesia 48 Zimbabwe suspended from 166 Zimbabwe withdraws from 72 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting statement on Zimbabwe 112 suspends Zimbabwe for a year 72 Commonwealth Observer Mission 72 communal areas 55, 66, 71 Namibia 136–8 Communal Land Boards 148 Communal Land Reform Act (2002) (Namibia) 148 Communal Land Rights Act (2004) (South Africa) 96–8, 101, 118 Communal Land Rights Bill (CLRB) (South Africa) 99 Communal Lands Act (1982) 67 communal law 16 Communism collapse of 84–5 competition farming 40 competitive one-party systems 10 Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) 177 conflation 33 Congo see Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Congress Alliance 85
244
Index
Congress of Democrats 80, 85, 153 Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) 99, 116, 163 Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contrlesa) 86 Constituent Assembly Swapo win majority in Namibia 131 Constitutional Amendment No.11 (1990) 57 Constitutional Amendment No.12 (1993) 57 Constitutional Principles (1982) (Namibia) 133 constitutionalisation limits of democratic 6 Contralesa 94 Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) 86 corporatism 10 corruption Zimbabwe 38, 64 Cotswana Council of NGOs (Bocongo) 170 Council on Foreign Relations 119 Council of Traditional Leaders 136 Cousins, Ben 99, 116 ‘creative’ legislation Zimbabwe 64 credit availability for white agriculture 16 crony capitalism 113 customary law 86 colonial use of 17 invention of notion of 17 Namibia 135 Dabengwa, Dumiso 61 Damara 134 displacement of 122–4 support for South Africa 129 de Klerk, Frederik Willem 83–4, 89 negotiations with Nelson Mandela 85 de Wet, Johannes Marthinus (Jan) 149 Deborah, James 108 decision-making land 13
Declaration of Rights 48 Defence Pact signed by Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola and DRC 141 Delamere, Baron Hugh Cholmondeley [1870–1931] 27 democracy dynamics of transition to 9–10 human rights and 2 implications of Zimbabwean crisis for consolidation in Southern Africa 177–9 land reform and 2 potential conflict within 8 South Africa 89–96 transition to 3, 21 violations of 71 Democratic Alliance (DA) 106, 109, 111–2, 114 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) defence pact with Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola 141 Zimbabwean military intervention in 60, 68, 167 Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) 129, 131, 143, 153, 155 democratisation 11 impact of political economy on 11 post-colonial 5–37 Dempers, Uhuru 1 Department of Economic Affairs 88 Department of Land Affairs negotiating ability of 102 deportations forced 92 Dhlakama, Afonso 167 diamonds European discovery of in Northern Cape 77 dictatorships 10 Didiza, Angela Thoko 95, 97–8 discourses anti-imperialist 175 fear settler narrative 29 loss settler narrative 29 market efficiency 34 national identity 32
Index privilege settler narrative 29 self-interest 34 solidarity 32 sovereignty 34 symbolic restitution 32 discrimination legalised 12 displaced farmers Mozambique’s encouragement for 15 displacement 30, 73, 122 dispossessed populations 14 dispossession land 30 District Councils 67 political marginalisation in favour of 55 Dlamini-Zuma, Nkosazana Clarice 111, 173 Dolny, Helena 75, 88, 98, 113 Dongo, Margaret 60 Dorman, Sarah Rich 172 drought Namibia 146 Zimbabwe 55 Du Toit, P. 109 Dutch East India Company 76 Dutch settlement South Africa 76 Eastern Cape 86 Eastern Europe collapse of Communism in 84 financial support for South Africa ceases 85 economic activity legal restrictions on black 16 economic conditions changing 34 Namibia 141–2 South Africa 102–4 Zimbabwe 1, 50, 168 economic development 51 economic distribution 11 economic relations drawn from colonial past 14 settler oligarchies and 12 economic rights
245
denial of 42 Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESCAP) 57, 59–60 economy slowing of Zimbabwean 54, 56–7 education addressing deficiencies in 51 Eimbeck, Sigi 150 elections first democratic in South Africa 88–9 Namibia (1994) 145 Robert Mugabe wins first multiracial 49–50 South African general election (2004) 99 Zimbabwe 47, 49, 54, 62 presidential (2002) 68–72, 112 international reaction to 72 Electoral Commission 72 electoral violations British government unwilling to challenge in Zimbabwe and Namibia 23 electoral violence Zimbabwe 2 emigration promotion of white European 27 whites from Rhodesia 46 Eminent Persons Group (EPG) 82 employment creation 51 legalised discrimination in relation to 12 Europe early contact with South Africa 76–7 settlement of Southern Africa 15 territorial expansion 26–30 European Union (EU) imposes sanctions on Zimbabwe 71 Namibian exports to 134 expatriates Zimbaweans banned from voting 72 exports contribution of South African exports to 89–90
246
Index
exports (Continued) effect of squatters on earnings from 51 Namibia 134 Zimbabwe 50, 162 Expropriation Act (1975) (South Africa) repeal of 115 Expropriation Bill to Advance Land Reform (2007) (South Africa) 115, 118 expropriation of land South Africa 113–8 Zimbabwe 57–8 Extension of Security of Tenure Act (1997) (South Africa) 94, 101 extension services availability for white agriculture 16 famine 73 farm occupations Zimbabwe 2 Farmer Development Trust 58 farming competition in 40 importance of commercial in first years of colony of Rhodesia 40 inefficiencies of Namibian 135 public expenditure 54 subsidies for white 40 tobacco 43 farming practices prescription of 41 fear discourse of settler narrative 29 Ferreira, Kiewiet 106 Fifth Brigade 53 financial centres development of Johannesburg as 16 financial services Zimbabwe 50 First, Ruth [1925–82] 98 fiscal policy 33 forced deportations 92 forced removal 41 foreign ownership land 114
foreign policy influences on 8 Forum on Sustainable Agriculture (Fonsag) 170 Fosatu (later Cosatu) 82 Freedom Charter (South Africa) 80, 85, 90, 113 Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) 21, 44, 167, 171 Front Line States (FLS) 25, 45, 48, 127–8 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand [1849–1948] 79 Gaza provides labour reserves for mining 18 Germany occupation of South West Africa 122 Ghutto, Shadrack 114 Gobabis assault on black farm worker in 154 gold discovery of in Transvaal 16, 77 Gono, Gideon 117 Government of National Unity (GNU) 89 Green Paper on South African Land Policy 91 Group Areas Act (1950) (South Africa) 80 repeal of 87 Group of Eight (G8) 70 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy 95, 97, 113 Growth with Equity development programme 51 Gurirab, Theo-Ben 120, 126, 147 Gutto, S. 111 Hanekom, Derek Andre 94, 97–8 Hani, Chris [1942–93] 87 Hanlon, Joseph 172 Harare Declaration 83 Hardap land purchase in 138
Index Harring, Sidney 156 health care access to 51 Herero 131, 134, 136, 143 displacement of 122–4 Hereroland 18 Himba 123 Hlatswayo, Zakes 99 homelands establishment of 124 Howard, John Winston 72 Human Development Index 142 Human Development Report 2000/2001 141 human rights 22, 176 erosion of 6–7 land reform and 2 Hunzvi, Chenjerai [1949–2001] 61 hut tax imposition of 39 identity 13 national 33 notions of 7 illiberal democracies rise of 11 immigration Namibia 121–2 post-World War II into Rhodesia 41 imperialism see colonialism independence Botswana 172 halt to talks on Rhodesian 43 liberation narratives and 30–3 move of South West Africa towards 127–33 Namibia 133–9 South Africa reluctant to accept Namibian 128 transition to 8–9 Zimbabwe 50–6 Independent Electoral Commission 87, 109 India Office 79 Industrial Conciliation Act (1924) (South Africa) 79 industrialisation South Africa 16, 78–9
247
inequality Namibia 142 worsening in South Africa 103 inflation 59, 73, 85 Zimbabwe 57 infrastructure projects South African capital used for 20 Inhambane 168 provides labour reserves for mining 18 injustice redressing 92 Inkatha Freedom Party 21, 81, 86, 89, 118 ANC defeats in 2004 South African general election 99 conflict with ANC 87 massacre of ANC supporters 87 institutional structures 8 intelligence sharing 20 interim constitution South Africa 86–7 Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act (1996) (South Africa) 94 International Commercial Union (ICU) 79–80 International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejects South Africa’s claim to incorporation of Namibia 127 ruling on South Africa’s mandate over Namibia 126 international legitimacy 23 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 34, 57 suspension of loans to Zimbabwe 60 international organisations criticism of apartheid 84 investment dearth of in Zimbabwe 50 Jameson, Leander Starr [1853–1917] 39 Japan 85 job creation South Africa 102 Jobert, Bruno 25
248
Index
Johannesburg development of as financial centre 16 joint police action 20 judiciary whites to retain control over 47 Justice for Agriculture 62 Kabila, Laurent 140 Kapenda, Risto 144 Karl, Terry 12 Katali, Isak 155 Katz, Michael 98 Kaunda, Kenneth David 7, 46 Kavango 123, 130 Kenya Mau Mau movement in 27 as model for land reform 48 Khosian land European settlement of 76 Kissinger, Henry 46 Klug, Heinz 75 KwaZulu-Natal 99, 118 labour reserves of 18–9 labour migration Mozambique’s agreements with South Africa 18 Labour Party Britain 70 labour shortages agriculture 40 Lancaster House Agreement (1979) 25, 47–8, 51, 53, 56, 63 land colonial dispossession of 1 decision-making 13 dispossession 30 foreign ownership 114 legal restrictions on black acquisition of 16 legalised discrimination in relation to 12 loss of as theme of oral traditions 30 opened to black ownership in Zimbabwe 47 opening to white settlement 16
political regimes’ responses to 35–7 politics of 1 proposals for nationalisation 19 restitution of 6 status of 14 title deeds 54 Land Acquisition Act (1985) 54–5 Land Acquisition Act (1992) 57 Land and Agricultural Policy Centre (LAPC) 88 Land Apportionment Act (1930) 41 Land Bank 40, 88, 98 Land Claims Court 114 land expropriation colonialism 27 land occupation spontaneous 51 land ownership South Africa 77–8 land policy harmonising Namibia’s 148 land purchase government 137–8 land redistribution 100 South Africa 93 Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) 95–7, 100, 113, 118 land reform 1 Britain unwilling to provide financial resources for 59 changing policy on 101–4 criticism of slowness of in Namibia 142–5 discontent over slow progress of in South Africa 104–10 fast tracking 62, 71 Namibia 147–8 South Africa 113–8 financial support for 48 first phase of in South Africa 92–5 Kenya as model for 48 model for in post-independent Namibia 136–9 Namibia 6, 120–57 neoliberalism and 95–6 political aspects of Namibian 151–6 post-apartheid South Africa 90–6
Index revival of debate on in Namibia 145–51 setting up legal framework for 94–5 South Africa 89–96 limits of 100–1 state intervention in South African constitution 93 unwillingness of donor countries to finance 64 Zimbabwe 50–67 Land Reform Advisory Commission 137 criteria for economically viable smallholding 138 Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act (1996) (South Africa) 94, 101 land resettlement British grant towards 53 land restitution 31, 59 sidelined after independence 24 South Africa 93, 100 Land Restitution Commission 115 land rights minorities in South Africa 78 Land Rights Management Facility 101 land tax Namibia 147, 151 land tenure 78, 100–1 South Africa 93–4 Land Tenure Act (1969) 43 land transfer South Africa 96 Land Tribunal 137 Landless People’s Movement (LPM) establishment of 99 opposition organised by 107 Robert Mugabe invited to address 107 Latin America settler oligarchies 10 Law and Order (Maintenance) Act (1960) (Rhodesia) 71 League of Nations mandate over South West Africa 123 legislation retention of security 30 Leon, Anthony James 112–3
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Lesotho 18 liberal-constitutional regimes replacing settler oligarchies 23–4 liberalism 18 liberated zones 45 liberation 7–8 liberation movements 26, 38 Mozambique 20–1 pushed into action by Rhodesian UDI 44 rise of 19 rivalry within 19 South West Africa 20, 126 Southern Africa 20–2 spread of in Southern Africa 158–65 liberation narrative 14–5, 26 independence and 30–3 Mugabe and 63–7 South Africa 110–3 Limpopo River British expeditionary force across (1890) 39 Linz, Juan 11 Lodge, Tom 98 loss discourse of settler narrative 29 Lothar von Trotha, Adrian Dietrich [1848–1920] 122 Lund, Sue 98 Machel, Samora [1933–86] 48 McKinley, Dale T. 111 McKinnon, Sir Donald Charles 72, 112 attempt to unseat as Secretary General of the Commonwealth 166 Macmillan, Harold [1894–1986] 83 Macua 21 Maize Council Act (1931) 40 Maize Council Amendment Act (1934) 40 majority rule negotiations on 46–7 South Africa 31, 82–9 transition to 4
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Malan, Daniel Francois [1874–1959] 80 Malawi 165 see also Nyasaland labour reserves from 19 Mamdani, Mahmood 17, 178 Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla 80, 86, 89, 163 becomes President of South Africa 89 release of 84 Manica 168 provide labour reserves for mining 18 Manicaland Mozambique guerrilla infiltration into 45 spontaneous land occupation in 51 Manuel, Trevor Andrew 114 manufacturing Zimbabwe 50, 162 Mao Zedong [1893–1976] influence on Mugabe 65 Maputo Development Corridor 167 Marais, Hein 109 marginalised populations 14 market economies 22 market efficiency discourse of 34 marketing boards availability for white agriculture 16 creation of 17 martial law declared in Namibia 129 Mashonaland Zanu-PF operating out of 49 Master Farmers certificate 54 ‘Masters and Servants Act’ 79 Matabeleland first Chimurenga (1896) 39 spontaneous land occupation in 51 Zimbabwe launches military action in 53 Mau Mau 27, 29 Mbango, John 144
Mbeki, Thabo Mvuyelwa 69–70, 72, 76, 84, 86, 91, 95, 108–13, 116–7, 119, 161, 163, 175–7 diplomacy of 67–8 policy under 96–100 Meatco 135 metropolitanism 18 Mfecane 39 Mhudi 30 middle class growing black professional 85 migration legal restrictions on black 16 Namibia 161 South Africa 161 militarisation increasing among resistance movements 20 military campaigns 22 military cemetery establishment of 55 military oligarchies 10 Milner, Alfred [1854–1925] 77 mineral resources 39 exploitation of 43 Mines and Works Amendment Act (1926) (South Africa) 79 mining blacks urged to take work in 41 contribution to Zimbabwean economy 50 labour reserves for 18–9 South Africa 78–9 South West Africa 124 Witwatersrand 78 Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation (MLRR) 134, 137, 140, 144, 146, 151–2, 156 Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development (MLRRD) 52, 54 minorities land rights in South Africa 78 minority privileges maintenance of 23 minority protection 10 minority rule collapse of 15 miscegenation 76
Index Mishler, William 11 Mixed Marriages Act (1949) (South Africa) 80 Mkapa, Benjamin William 174 Mlambo-Ngcuka, Phumzile 75, 115 mobility legalised discrimination in relation to 12 Model A communal farmers 58 Model D farms 54 Mogae, Festus Gontebanye 166, 169 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) 63, 68, 72 Britain and Scandinavian countries support 66 foundation of 60–1 rumours regarding financing of 111 split in 74 Moyo, Jonathan Nathaniel 38, 63, 65 Mozal 167 Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) 46, 167–8 Mozambique 21, 37, 165, 170 Cabora Bassa dam 165 colonial rule in 165 critical of Zimbabwe 2–3 drawn into British settler orbit 18 economic dependence on South Africa 165 effects of South African economy on 17 effects of Zimbabwean crisis on 165–73 encouragement for displaced farmers 15 guerrilla infiltration into Rhodesia 45 ideologically driven regime in 31 immigration policy post-1950s 27 influx of Portuguese refugees from to South Africa mid1970s 28 labour migration agreements with South Africa 18 liberation movement in 19–21 non-aggression pact with South Africa 21
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participates in diplomacy to resolve Zimbabwe land issue 169 political economy of colonisation of 159 sanctions busting by 43 structural adjustment programmes 34 Zimbabwean white farmers invited to settle in 6 MPLA see Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) Mpumalamga Province 107 Mugabe, Robert Gabriel 5–6, 14–5, 25, 38, 59, 61, 65, 69, 71–4, 112, 140, 145, 148, 156, 160, 163, 165–9, 173–7 anti-imperialist rhetoric of 1, 107–8 assumes control of Zanu 44 autocratic approach to governance of 64 behaviour of family of 64 criticism of 3 gives opposition politicians posts in government 50 liberation narrative and 63–7 LPM invites to address 107 relationship with Ian Smith 47 relationship with Sam Nujoma 68, 139 support for 111 wins first multi-racial election 49–50 Muller, Pierre 13, 25, 35 multinational companies (MNCs) Zimbabwe 50 multiparty pluralism 5 multiparty polyarchies 10 Mutambara, Arthur Guseni Oliver 73 Muzorewa, Bishop Abel Tendekayi 20, 43, 47, 49 Mwelekeo wa NGO 1, 140 Nama 134 displacement of 122–4 support for South Africa 129
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Namibia 69, 120–57, 166 see also South West Africa access to land 136 adoption of new constitution 133 agriculture 133–4 barriers to black farmers 135 British government unwilling to challenge electoral violations in 23 challenge to constitutional restrictions on presidency in 145 climate 121 communal areas 136–8 communal cattle raising in 135 customary law 135 defence pact with Zimbabwe, Angola and DRC 141 democracy versus human rights in 2 drought 146 effects of Zimbabwean crisis on 76, 139–41, 148–9 elections (1994) 145 exports 134 fears of white farmers 2 harmonising land policy 148 ICJ rejects South Africa’s claim to incorporation of 127 ICJ ruling on South Africa’s mandate over 126 immigration into 121–2 impact of Zimbabwean crisis on 139–41 independence 133–9 inefficiency of farming in 135 inequality 142 land reform 1, 6 land tax 147, 151 lessons for white farmers from Zimbabwe 149 liberation movements in 38 majority rule in 31 martial law declared in 129 migration 161 model for land reform in postindependent 136–9
negotiations over constitution 131–2 neoliberal structures 153 opposition to place name changes in 155 ousting black workers from white farms in 144 political aspects of land reform 151–6 political discontent in 141–5 political economy of colonial 121–7 poverty 142 relations with Zimbabwe 68 reliance on South Africa 161 resettlement 146 revival of debate on land reform in 145–51 Roman-Dutch law inherited by 132 South Africa reluctant to accept independence of 128 starving 146 title to land 136 UN peacekeeping operations in 130 UN sponsored elections 23 white farmers inflating land prices in 144 white farmers stay in 138 Namibia Farm Support Initiative (NFSI) 150 Namibian National Farmers Union (NNFU) 140, 143, 150, 153 Namibian Non-Governmental Organisations Forum (Nangof) 140, 143 Napoleonic Wars expansion into Southern Africa following 16 narratives definition 25 enduring power of 173–7 liberation narrative 26 neoliberal narrative 26, 175 post-colonial Southern Africa 25–37 settler narrative 26–30 discourses of 29 Nasha, Margaret 170
Index Natal 77, 87 land rights 78 nation-building 7–8, 13, 33 reconciliation and 11, 55 Zimbabwe 50–6 National African Farmers’ Union (NAFU) 97 National Agricultural Credit Programme 137 National Agricultural Union (NAU) 148–50 National Conference on Land Reform and the Land Question (1991) (Namibia) 134, 137 National Constitutional Assembly establishment of 60 National Development Plan (1995–2000) (Namibia) 138, 143 national identity discourse of 32 National Intelligence Agency South Africa 107 National Land Commission (NLC) 87–8, 91, 97–9 National Land Summit (2005) 115 national memorial establishment of 55 National Party of South Africa 18, 28, 81, 83–4, 86–7, 89, 91, 95 apartheid legislation of 80 creation of 80 National Union of Namibian Workers 143 nationalisation 12 proposals for land 19 nationalism 7, 23, 33 Nationalist Party 87 nationalists persecution of 19 nationhood 25 Native Affairs Department (Rhodesia) 41 native affairs officers 125 Native Authorities 17 Native Labour Regulation Act (1911) (South Africa) 79 Native Land Husbandry Act (1951) 41
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native purchase areas 41 native reserves creation of 40 population pressures in 41 within settler states 17–8 Natives Land Acts (1913) (Union of South Africa) 77, 93 repeal of 87 Natives Land Acts (1936) (Union of South Africa) 77 repeal of 87 Ndebele 39, 55 conflicts with chiefs 39 Nel, Maans 114 neo-liberalism challenges posed by 178 neoliberal narrative 26, 33–7, 175 discourses of 34 neoliberalism 34, 56–67 ANC embraces 75 land reform and 95 Namibia 153 Southern Africa crisis and 36–7 neopatrimonialism 7, 10 Netherlands conquest of Southern African territory 16 New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) 37, 70, 116–7, 160, 175–7 New National Land Police 58 Niassa South African whites take up farming in 168 Nigeria participates in diplomacy to resolve Zimbabwe land issue 169 Njobe, Bongiwe 97 Nkomo, Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo [1917–99] 44, 47, 49, 63 forced to resign 53 given post in Mugabe government 50 Nkosi, Stanley 98 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 1, 60, 98 marginalisation of in South Africa 99
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Norms and Standards of Elections 72 Northern Cape discovery of diamonds in 77 Northern Rhodesia see also Zambia economic disenfranchisement of black peasantry in 17 Nujoma, Samuel Daniel Shafiishuna 125, 131–2, 140–1, 145, 147–8, 155, 163 relationship with Mugabe 68, 139 seeks fourth term as president 150 Nyasaland economic disenfranchisement of black peasantry in 17 Obasanjo, Olusen Mathew Okikiola Aremu 72 Odendaal Commission (1962) 124 Odendaal, Willem 156 O’Donnell, Guillermo 11 Okavangoland 124 Omaheke land purchase in 138 One Day We Will All Be Equal 147 one-party rule move towards in Zimbabwe 56 one-party systems 10 Operation Murambatsvina 73, 112 opposition movements 12 opposition parties 8 exiled 19 oral traditions loss of land as themes of 30 Orange Free State land rights 78 Orapa diamond mine 165 Oshikoto land purchase in 138 Otjozondjupa land purchase in 138 Ovambo 126, 134, 136, 161 displacement of 123 support for Swapo 129, 152 Ovambo Peoples Organisation (OPO) 125 Ovamboland 20, 124, 130 native reserves 17–8 overpopulation 92
pacification 40 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) 106–7, 109 banning of 20 foundation of 80 unbanning of 84 Panel of Experts on Foreign Ownership of Land (PEFOL) 116, 118 establishment of 114 party politics ethnic overlay of 55 Patriotic Front 45 Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia (Plan) 129–30 Permanent Technical Team establishment of 147 Phase II Land Reform and Resettlement Programme 59–60 Plaatje, Solomon Tshekisho [1876–1932] 30 place names imperialism reflected in 27 opposition to changing in Namibia 155 plebiscitary one-party systems 10 pluralist practices respect for 22–3 Pohamba, Hifikepunye 147, 152, 156, 163 police zone South West Africa 123–4 political debate 13 political economy 8 centrality of 12 colonial 39 colonial Namibia 121–7 colonisation of Mozambique 159 impact on democratisation 11 Rhodesia 39–46 South Africa 76–89 political elites 14 society and 23 political parties merger of in Zimbabwe 56 transition and 22 political power struggle for in Zimbabwe 72–3
Index political reform South Africa 81–2 political regimes nature of 8–9 political rights campaigns for 26 denial of 42 political stability South Africa 109 Pollet, Gilles 13 Pondoland 17, 80 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) 130 population growth of white in Rhodesia 41 pressure of in native reserves 41 Population Registration Act (1950) (South Africa) 80 Portugal collapse of empire of 21, 81, 130 conquest of Southern African territory 16 fascist regime in 21 Rhodesia’s lack of security control with 28 Portuguese refugees influx from Mozambique to South Africa mid-1970s 28 poverty Namibia 142 worsening in South Africa 103 presidential pardons 64 presidential terms challenge to constitutional restrictions on in Namibia 145 constitutional restrictions on 6 primary schooling access to 51 private enterprise Zimbabwe 50 private finance access to 12 privilege discourse of settler narrative 29 Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) 115–6, 118 Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) 97
Progressive Federalist Party 20 property rights enshrined in South African constitution 92 violations of in Zimbabwe 169 protected villages 46 Protestant churches support for Swapo 126 Provincial Land Restitution Commissioner 115 provincialism policy of 43 public expenditure 33 farming 54 proposed increase in 51 South Africa 85 public finance access to 12 public sector salary restraint in 59 race politics of 110–3 racial discrimination outlawed in Zimbabwe 47 racial exclusion 5 racial segregation Rhodesia 43 Radebe, Jeffrey Thamsanqa (Jeff) 119 radicalism 18 rail network development of 16 Ramaphosa, Cyril 86 reconciliation nation building and 11, 55 pledges of 49–50 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) 92, 95, 103 regime legitimacy 7 Regional Council 136 regional policy 7–8 regional political economy dominated by London 17 Southern Africa 3–4, 15–22 regional solidarity 7 regional systems emergence of 26
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256
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Renamo see Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) Renan, Ernest [1823–92] 32 Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe 73 reserved parliamentary seats amendment of Constitution to remove for whites 55 reserves perceived as form of social security for Africans 16 resettlement Angola Boers 123 Namibia 146 South Africa 78 three-tiered scheme for 52 resistance movements 19 increasing militarisation of 20 Restitution of Land Rights Act (1994) (South Africa) 93 retribalisation 78 Rhodes, Cecil John [1853–1902] 39, 77 Rhodesia see also Southern Rhodesia, Zimbabwe Britain resumes formal control of 48 capital flight 46 Christopher Soames appointed Governor-General of 49 Commonwealth task force for 48 copper mining 18 early colonisation 39 emigration of whites from 46 first multi-racial election in 47, 49 growth of white population 41 halt to talks on independence 43 immigration policy post-1950s 27 importance of commercial farming in first years of colony 40 lack of security control with Portugal 28 liberation struggle in 19 Native Affairs Department 41 political economy of colonial 39–46 post-World War II immigration 41 racial segregation 43 sanctions 43, 167 transition to Zimbabwe 46–50
Tribal Trust Territories 18 unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) 28, 43 pushes liberation movements into action 44 rescinding of 48 Rhodesian Front 18 election of (1965) 43 road network development of 16 Roman-Dutch law inherited by Namibia 132 Rose, Richard 11 Ruark, Robert [1915–65] 27–8 Rukuni Commission see Commission of Inquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure Systems rule of law violations of 71 San 136 sanctions 73 EU imposes on Zimbabwe 71 Rhodesia 43, 167 Zimbabwe 148 sanctions-breaking activities 20 Scandinavia financial support for South Africa ceases 85 support for MDC 66 Schmitter, Philippe C. 11 security retention of legislation on 30 Security Council Resolution 385 126–7 Security Council Resolution 435 130, 133 security forces whites to retain control over 47 Sefularo, Molefi 113 self-interest discourse of 34 Selous, Frederick Courteney [1851–1917] 39 Separate Amenities Act (1953) (South Africa) 80 settlement encouraging European 16
Index European of Southern Africa 15 Settlement/Land Acquisition Grants (SLAG) 93, 96, 100 settler narrative 26–30 discourses of 29 settler oligarchies 10, 13 economic relations and 12 Sharpville massacre 80 Shipanga, Andreas Zack 130 Shona conflicts with chiefs 39 dominance of 55 support for Zanu 44 Short, Clare 70 Sithole, Rev Ndabaningi [1920–2000] 44, 47 slavery ending in British Empire 16, 77 smart sanctions against Zimbabwe 111 Smith, Ian Douglas [1919–2007] 21, 25, 43, 167 given post in Mugabe government 50 negotiations with 47 relations with Robert Mugabe 47 Smuts, Jan Christian [1870–1950] 77, 79 loses power in South Africa 80 Soames, Christopher [1920–87] appointed Governor-General of Rhodesia 49 Sobukwe, Robert Mangaliso [1924–78] 80 social security reserves perceived as form of for Africans 16 South Africa 104 social services addressing deficiencies in 51 society character of 23 political elites and 23 Sofala 168 provides labour reserves for mining 18 solidarity discourse of 32 Something of Value 28
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South Africa 69, 75–119 see also Union of South Africa agrarian reform 81–6, 89 agriculture 102, 161 ANC’s changing policy on land reform 101–4 apartheid 7, 18, 161 challenges to 20 criticism of by international organisations 84 extended to South West Africa 124 institution of 80 legislation of National Party 80 opposition to 82 referendum on ending 84 transition from 75–6 Bantustan 18, 78, 80–1 Britain colonises 77 capital from used to support infrastucture projects 20 claim over Walvis Bay 128 creation of marketing boards 17 democracy 89–96 human rights and 2 development of agriculture 16–7 discontent over slow progress of land reform in 104–10 Dutch settlement 76 early European contact with 76–7 economic conditions 102–4 economic dependence of Botswana and Mozambique on 165 economic disenfranchisement of black peasantry in 17 effects of economy on Mozambique 17 effects of Zimbabwean crisis on 76, 106–7 expectations on over Zimbabwe 70–1 expropriation of land 113–8 fast tracking land reform in 113–8 fears of white farmers 2, 105–6 first democratic elections 88–9 general election (2004) 99
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South Africa (Continued) ICJ rejects claim to incorporation of Namibia 127 ICJ ruling on mandate over Namibia 126 industrialisation 16, 78–9 inequality in 103 influx of Portuguese refugees from Mozambique mid-1970s 28 interim constitution 86–7 job creation 102 labour migration agreements with Mozambique 18 lack of criticism of Zimbabwe 3 land reform 1 first phase 92–5 limits of 100–1 land rights for minorities in 78 land transfer 96 liberation movements in 38 liberation narrative 110–3 loss of financial support from Eastern Bloc and Scandinavia 85 majority rule 31, 82–9 marginalisation of NGOs 99 migration 161 mining 78–9 Namibian exports to 135 Namibia’s reliance on 161 native reserves 17–8 negotiations 86–7 Nelson Mandela becomes President of 89 non-aggression pact with Mozambique 21 occupation of South West Africa 123 participates in diplomacy to resolve Zimbabwe land issue 169 political economy 76–89 political reform 81–2 political stability 109 post-apartheid land reform 90–6 property rights enshrined in constitution 92 public expenditure 85 relations with Zimbabwe 67–8
resettlement 78 rise of black resistance in 79–81 sanctions busting by 43 social security 104 structural adjustment programmes 34 suppression of trade unions in 79 unemployment 103 urbanisation 16 withdrawal from Commonwealth 20, 83 worsening poverty in 103 South African Agricultural Union 87 South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) 106 South African Communist Party (SACP) 80, 99, 115–6, 163 South African Defence Force (SADF) 21, 23, 50, 81–2, 125, 130–1 South African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC) 37, 52 South West Africa see also Namibia apartheid extended to 124 economic disenfranchisement of black peasantry in 17 German occupation of 122 League of Nations mandate over 123 liberation movements 19–20, 126 mining 124 police zone 123–4 South African occupation of 123 subsidies 123 transition to independence 127–33 Tribal Trust Territories 18 UN and 126 South West African National Union (Swanu) 125 South West African Native Labour Association (Swanla) 125 South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) 20, 23, 68, 120, 126–34, 140, 144, 147, 150, 154–7, 163, 168 increasing strength of 152–4 Ovambo dominance of 129
Index Protestant churches support for 126 reluctance to take power in 1990 154 wins majority in Constituent Assembly 131 South West African Territorial Force (SWATF) 125, 129 Southern Africa anatomy of crisis in 35–7 contradictory responses to Zimbabwean crisis from 7 effects of Zimbabwean crisis on 6, 14–5, 159, 165–73 European settlement of 15 implications of Zimbabwean crisis for democratic consolidation 177–9 nationalism of independent states of 7 peaceful transitions in 20 post-colonial democratisation 5–37 post-colonial narratives 25–37 regional political economy 3–4, 15–22 spread of liberation movements 158–65 state system 7 transitions 21–5 Zimbabwe’s relations with 38–74 Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) 153 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 6–8, 15, 37, 69–70, 73, 140–1, 160, 166–7, 174 Southern Rhodesia see also Rhodesia, Zimbabwe Britain assumes responsibility for 39 economic disenfranchisement of black peasantry in 17 sovereignty 25 discourse of 34 Soviet Union collapse of 85 support for Felimo 21 squatters effect of on export earnings 51
standard of living black Zimbabweans 51 starvation Namibia 146 state approaches to 8 state system Southern Africa 7 state-society relations 13 Stepan, Alfred 11 Stoneman, Colin 74 Stromm, J. 54 structural adjustment programmes 34, 57 subsidies availability for white agriculture 16 South West Africa 123 for white farmers 40 subsistence focus on in first phase of land reform 92–5 Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (2003) 111 Suzman, Helen [1917–2009] 20 Swapo Youth League 153 Swaziland 18 symbolic restitution discourse of 32 Tambo, Oliver Reginald [1917–93] 80, 86 Tanzania financial support for Zanu from 44 labour reserves from 19 operation of Frelimo from 21 support for Mugabe 174 territoriality boundaries of 13 Thatcher, Margaret Hilda talks on Zimbabwe with government of 47 third Chimurenga 63, 65 Thompson, Guy 41–2 title deeds land 54 title to land Namibia 136
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tobacco farming 43 Toivo ya Toivo, Herman Andimba 126 Tongogara, Josiah Magama [1938–79] 44 trade legalised discrimination in relation to 12 trade unions 60 activities suppressed in South Africa 79 encouragement of 51 traditional authorities 94 interpretation of 17 recognition of 41 reforming role of 58 Traditional Authorities Act (1995) (Namibia) 148 Traditional Leader Act (1998) 66 transition economies 5–15 transitional arrangements 158–9 transitions Southern Africa 22–5 study of 13 Transkei 86 Transvaal discovery of gold in 16, 77 Transvaal Indian Congress 79 Transvaal Republic invasion of 39 tribal identities invention of 16 tribal reserves agricultural activities in 78 Tribal Trust Areas (formerly native reserves) 43 tribes creation of 17 Tripartite Alliance 99 Tsvangirai, Morgan Richard 60, 71, 74, 110 Umkhonto we Sizwe 80, 84 UN-sponsored elections Namibia 23 unemployment South Africa 103
Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) 43 pushes liberation movements into action 44 rescinding of 48 Rhodesia 28 Union of South Africa establishment of 77, 79 Unita 129–30, 141 United African National Council 47 United Democratic Front (UDF) 20, 22, 82, 163 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) conference (1998) 60 Human Development Report 2000/2001 141 United Nations (UN) criticism of apartheid 84 formal role of as observers 87 imposes sanctions on Rhodesia 43 peacekeeping operations in Namibia 130 Security Council Resolution 385 126–7 Security Council Resolution 435 130, 133 South West Africa and 126 United States introduces Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act 71 urbanisation South Africa 16 van de Walle, Nicholas 9–12, 22, 159 Verwoerd, Hendrik Frensch [1901–66] 80–1, 83 Vision 2030 143 Voice 172 voortreks 77 Vorster, John [1915–83] pressures Smith regime to negotiate settlement 46 voting irregularities 72
Index second and third generation immigrants ineligible 72 Zimbabwean expatriates banned from 72 wages racially defined 79 Wall, Peter Anthony 49 retained as chief of Zimbabwean defence forces 50 Walvis Bay South African claim over 128 war veterans 1, 59, 61, 68 War Victims Compensation Fund looting of 65 Waterberg, Battle of (1904) 122 white farmers destating of 28–9 fears of 1–2 South Afica 105–6 inflating land prices in Namibia 144 lessons for Namibian from Zimbabwe 149 marginalisation of 28–9 statement issued by 2 stay in Namibia 138 Zimbabwean invited to settle in Mozambique and Zambia 6 white farms changing psychology of 28 occupation of 60–1 White Paper on Resettlement (2001) (Namibia) 146 White Paper on South African Land Policy (1996) 91 Whitehead, Laurence 11 Wilberforce, William [1759–1833] 77 willing buyer, willing seller model 92, 105, 110, 115, 118, 151 Wilson, Harold [1916–95] 43 Witwatersrand development of rail and road network from 16 mineral resources 39 mining sector in 18, 78 World Bank 34, 87–8, 97, 115, 177
261
World Conference against Racism (WCAR) 107 World Social Summit on Development 148 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) 68, 99, 107 World War I promotion of European emigration following 27 Xhosa dominace of 77 Xingwana, Lulama (Lulu) 116 Ya France, Ponhele 144–5, 153 youth militia foundation of Zimbabwean 65 Zambia 165 see also Northern Rhodesia structural adjustment programmes 34 Zimbabwean white farmers invited to settle in 6 Zezuru 55 Zimbabwe see also Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia British government unwilling to challenge electoral violations in 23 collapse of economy 168 contribution of political economy of colonialism in 39 corruption 38, 64 ‘creative’ legislation 64 dearth of investment in 50 development of land crisis 3 drought (1982–4) 55 economic conditions 1 effects of crisis on Botswana 160, 165–73 effects of crisis on Mozambique 165–73 effects of crisis on Namibia 76, 139–41, 148–9 effects of crisis on Southern Africa 6, 14–5, 159, 165–73 elections June 2000 62
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Zimbabwe (Continued) electoral violence 2 EU imposes sanctions on 71 expatriates banned from voting 72 expectations on South Africa over 70–1 exports 50, 162 expropriation of land 57–8 farm occupations 2 fears of white farmers 2 financial services 50 first post-independence election in 54 foundation of youth militia 65 IMF suspends loans to 60 implications of crisis for democratic consolidation in Southern Africa 177–9 independence of 81 inflation 57 internationalisation of crisis 67–71 lack of criticism of from South Africa 3 land opened to black ownership 47 land reform 1, 50–67 launches military action in Matabeleland 53 majority rule in 31 manufacturing 50, 162 merger of political parties in 56 move towards one-party rule 56 multinational companies (MNCs) 50 nation-building 50–6 post-independence 38–74 presidential elections (2002) 68–72, 112 international reaction to 72 presidential pardons 64 private enterprise 50 proposed sacking of civil servants 60 racial discrimination outlawed in 47 regional context of crisis in 15 relations with Botswana 70 relations with Britain 67
relations with Namibia 68 relations with South Africa 67–8 role of narratives in 173–6 rule of law violations 71 sanctions 148 scope of crisis 6–7 second and third generation immigrants ineligible to vote 72 slowing of economy 56–7 smart sanctions against 111 statement of Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on 112 structural adjustment programmes 34 struggle for political power in 72–3 suspended from Commonwealth 72, 166 transition from Rhodesia to 46–50 trigger of crisis in 35 unwillingness of donor countries to finance land reform 64 violations of democracy 71 violations of property rights in 169 whites to retain control over security forces and judiciary 47 withdraws from Commonwealth 72 Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) 38, 45, 58, 60–5, 68–71, 117, 145, 160, 163, 166, 168, 174, 177 declares itself Marxist-Leninist party 55 operating out of Mashonaland 49 Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) 19 convergence of cell structures 45 foundation of 44 Robert Mugabe assumes control of 44 tensions with Zapu 53 unbanning of 47 Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (Zapu) 19, 43–4, 167 tensions with Zanu 53 unbanning of 47
Index Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (2001) (United States) 71 Zimbabwe Development Fund 46, 48 Zimbabwe Herald 66 Zimbabwe lessons for Namibian white farmers from 149 Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (Zanla) 44–5 Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) 45 Zimbabwean air force destruction of 50
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Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) 51, 60 Zimbabwean Constitution 56–67 amendment to remove reserved parliamentary seats for whites 55 Zimbabwean defence forces Peter Wall retained as chief of 50 Zulu dominance of 77 Zululand 17 Zuma, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa 109, 118–9
