By Tinomudaishe Chinyoka
There are those that differ with me on whether or
not we still need to debate the question of why we had to take our land back.
Those that differ with me on this issue are, to use the colloquial, simply
wrong.
For example, we have news that Morgan Tsvangirai has ordered the seizure
of property and assets held by the rival Renewal Team led by secretary-general
Mr Tendai Biti.
Now, we all know that Mr Tsvangirai is very much against the seizure of
white owned farms by the original owners, but his conduct in this affairs
betrays a double standard: he sees nothing wrong with a rightful owner taking
his property back by any means necessary.
In fact, his lawyers in court when one of the cases
of seizures went to court argued that:
![](//4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLaigPB3_XM/U5iqS7EQGqI/AAAAAAAAAac/w9d6PDvjoak/s1600/Tsvangirayi+and+Bennet.jpg) |
Not prepared to upset his rich (former) friends : Tsvangirai (right) and Bennet (who has now ditched him) |
“My client had authority from
Tsvangirai to possess the party property, including the vehicle in question,” said
Mr Muganyi. “The authority shows there are
misunderstandings in the party and the court should not be used as a vehicle in
perpetuating these internal disputes.”
He must think that the
land is not ours then, if he does not apply the same principle to its
repossession.
Governor Karimanzira put it best, way back in 1998 when white farmers
went to complain about the people of Svosve taking back their lands.You see, the Governor stated, the people of Svosve had taken no farms.
Just their land. It was just unfortunate for the farmers that their farms
happened to be on the Svosve people’s lands.
We are now being told that it was because land was taken that
agricultural output has gone down. No mention there about the support that the
white squatters used to get from our financial institutions, with loans and
year round support to ensure that they succeeded.
No mention about the sanctions, declared and undeclared, all calculated
to cripple our government and effect regime change by stealth so that Morgan
Tsvangirai, who believes it is okay to repossess his MDC property but not
Zimbabwean land, can take over.
Besides, I think that the argument about output misses the point:
the land was ours, so we had to take it. If I bought a bicycle, and kept it
tethered to a tree because I have not yet learned how to ride one, or because I
choose to ride mine in a particular way, or because I have no present use
for it, you cannot suggest that it is okay for another person, who knows how to
ride it and happens to have an need for a bicycle, to just come along and not
only take it, but keep it.
Like President Mugabe said, “It is true that commercial farmers know how to farm. But, the fact
that the person that stole my car has a driving licence does not justify him
keeping it.”
And the taking was not kind. People died. Not by accident, but were
deliberately slaughtered. And after the slaughter, their Courts sat down and
decided that, you know what, they had every right to take this land, because
them ‘natives’ did not know that they owned this land in the first place.
I have recently been accused of interposing my own opinions to the
debate, so why not let them speak for themselves.
On 29 March 1896, after the Zimbabwean people dared to rise up against
the occupation of their land in the First Chimurenga, W.A. Jarvis, a former
Tory MP in the UK and settler in what they called Gwelo, wrote this about their
response to this temerity:
“There are about 5,500 niggers
in this district and our plan of campaign will probably be to proceed against
this lot and wipe them out, then move on towards Bulawayo wiping out every
nigger and every kraal we can find… You may be sure that there will be no
quarter, and everything black will have to die…. The beastly missionaries have
a lot to do with it, teaching the nigger that he is as good as the white man.
It won’t do. The nigger has to got to be treated as a nigger all the world
over.”
Rhodesian history books do not tell us how many ‘niggers’ were wiped out, but I rather like to
think that the 5,500 in Gwelo and those between that town and Bulawayo (some
145km or so) are a small percentage of those that were ‘treated like other
niggers’ the world over.
After the wiping out, the British South Africa
Company and the British Government argued as to who owned the vast land riches
of this country that they had conquered. Their argument went all the way to the
Privy Council in London, where no black interests were represented. There was
no need. After all,
“in February, 1894, trustworthy news came in
that Lobengula had died in January of fever or small-pox, and this is the last
that ever was heard of him. King Lobengula’s kingdom perished with him.”
So, the question facing the Court was, who between the British Crown and
the BSAC had the power to issue title to the land that they had found between
the Zambezi and the Limpopo. According to the Court, “White settlement and the
consolidation of British influence were objects common to both Crown and
Company. Both desired to encourage white settlers generally to select and acquire
land, and, on compliance with the prescribed formalities, they were to become
absolute owners of their holdings. Plainly, if white settlement was to take
place,” it would happen, it just needed to be justified somehow.
“Between 1893 and 1914 there has
undoubtedly been much migration,emigration, and immigration of natives in
Southern Rhodesia, and the aborigines of Lobengula’s time have both changed and
been scattered. It was said that the rights of the Matabele did not extend
beyond a radius of sixty miles from Buluwayo, and that beyond that the Mashonas
were the race entitled.
Whether the Matabele or the Mashonas of to-day are, in
any sense consistent with the transmission or descent of rights of property,
identical with the Matabele or the Mashonas of more than twenty years ago is
far from clear, and the fate of the Makalakas and the Maholies, once the slaves
of Lobengula, is as obscure as their original rights…..The estimation of the
rights of aboriginal tribes is always inherently difficult.
Some tribes are so
low in the scale of social organization that their usages and conceptions of
rights and duties are not to be reconciled with the institutions or the legal
ideas of civilized society. Such a gulf cannot be bridged. It would be idle to
impute to such people some shadow of the rights known to our law and then to
transmute it into the substance of transferable rights of property as we know
them. In the present case it would make each and every person by a fictional
inheritance a landed proprietor “richer than all his tribe.”
On the other hand,
there are indigenous peoples whose legal conceptions, though differently
developed, are hardly less precise than our own. When once they have been
studied and understood they are no less enforceable than rights arising under
English law. Between the two there is a wide tract of much ethnological
interest, but the position of the natives of Southern Rhodesia within it is
very uncertain; clearly they approximate rather to the lower than to the higher
limit…..By the will of the Crown and in exercise of its rights the old state of
things, whatever its exact nature, as it was before 1893, has passed away and
another and, as their Lordships do not doubt, a better has been established in
lieu of it. Whoever now owns the unalienated lands, the natives do not.”
So, we were rather fortunate that these kind people did not drive us all
to the Kalahari, because we had no right to be here. We did not own the land,
we had probably migrated from somewhere, and had no right to any of the land,
being too primitive to know what land ownership meant. Forget the fact that
only a few years before the whole country had risen en-masse to fight for this
very same land,forget that such uprising had been met with an extermination of
the ‘niggers’ to ‘wipe them out’.
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"We were never responsible; Ireland was colonised once": Claire Short |
Then some 80 years later, after trying to work with these people to find
an amicable way to get our land back, they decided that you know what, we were
never responsible, because even Ireland was colonised once! I swear I am not
making this up. Here is the letter from Claire Short, their ‘Development’
Secretary at the time:
“5 November 1997From the Secretary of StateHon Kumbirai Kangai MPMinister of Agriculture and Land
Dear Minister
George Foulkes has reported to me on the meeting
which you and Hon John Nkomo had with Tony Lloyd and him during your recent
visit. I know that President Mugabe also discussed the land issue with the
Prime Minister briefly during their meeting. It may be helpful if I record
where matters now rest on the issue.
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting,
Tony Blair said that he looked forward to developing a new basis for relations
with Commonwealth countries founded upon our government’s policies, not on the
past.
We will set out our agenda for international
development in a White Paper to be published this week. The central thrust of
this will be the development of partnerships with developing countries which
are committed to eradicate poverty, and have their own proposals for achieving
that which we and other donors can support.
I very much hope that we will be able to develop
such a relationship with Zimbabwe. I understand that you aim shortly to publish
your own policies on economic management and poverty reduction. I hope that we
can discuss them with you and identify areas where we are best able to help. I
mentioned this in my letter on 31 August to Hon Herbert Murarwa.
I should make it 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 programme of land reform that was part of a poverty
eradication strategy but not on any other basis.
I am told Britain provided a package of assistance
for resettlement in the period immediately following independence. This was, I
gather, carefully planned and implemented, and met most of its targets.
Again, I am told there were discussions in 1989 and
1996 to explore the possibility of further assistance. However that is all in
the past. If we look to the present, a number of specific
issues are unresolved, including the way in which land would be acquired and
compensation paid – clearly it would not help the poor of Zimbabwe if it was
done in a way which undermined investor confidence. Other questions that would need to be settled would
be to ensure that the process was completely open and transparent, including
the establishment of a proper land register.
Individual schemes would have to be economically
justified to ensure that the process helped the poor, and for me the most
important issue is that any programme must be planned as part of a programme to
contribute to the goal of eliminating poverty. I would need to consider
detailed proposals on these issues before confirming further British support
for resettlement.
I am sure that a carefully worked out programme of
land reform that was part of a programme of poverty eradication which we could
support would also bring in other donors, whose support would help ensure that
a substantial land resettlement programme such as you clearly desire could be
undertaken successfully. If is [sic] to do so, they too will need to be
involved from the start. It follows from this that a programme of rapid land
acquisition as you now seem to envisage would be impossible for us to support.
I know that many of Zimbabwe’s friends share our concern about the damage which
this might do to Zimbabwe’s agricultural output and its prospects of attracting
investment.
I thought it best to be frank about where we are.
If you think it would be helpful, my officials are ready to meet yours to
discuss these issues.
Yours sincerely
Claire Short”
So that we are clear: the British Government fought all the way to the
highest court in their land for the right to ‘own’ our lands, and the right to
give title to ‘white settlers’, but come independence, they no longer had no
responsibility to make right what they had stolen. Small wonder then that after
this letter, the people of Svosve went to reclaim their lands. It was just
unfortunate that the British Government, in giving title to the white settlers,
had given these people farms that happened to be sited on our lands.
We have to take our lands. I am well aware that there are those that
differ with me on whether or not we still need to debate the question of why we
had to take our land back. Those that differ with me on this issue are, as I
have said, simply wrong.
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Tinomudaishe Chinyoka is a Zimbabwean lawyer and a
member of the Zanu PF UK Chapter