My encounter with South African Police

Rumours about xenophobic attacks being unleashed on foreigners soon after the world cup have been doing the rounds for a long time. Many Zimbabweans I know have been preparing to leave or at least move out of the townships into safer areas.

I never really took the threats seriously until I encountered what I consider xenophobic sentiments from the very people supposed to uphold the law and safety of every individual in South Africa, the police.

The first incident was when I went to obtain an affidavit from Kempton Park police station to allow my uncle to drive my car to Zimbabwe and back. I had two previous affidavits for the same car from the same police station, one of them authorizing my uncle to drive to Zimbabwe and back. It had expired.

Apparently there is a directive saying police station should no longer issue such affidavits. The reasons for the directive might be legitimate, but the response I got from the police officer sitting at the counter was decidedly xenophobic.

'You foreigners are stealing our cars and taking them over the borders. We are not going to give you those affidavits anymore?'

I produced the two previous affidavits, my traffic register certificate, and the registration book of the car. "These are the papers of the vehicle" I tried to explain. "As you can see I got affidavits from this same police station before."

"We are not giving foreigners affidavits anymore. You take our cars"

"How can I steal the same car three times with affidavits from the same police station" I asked.

The policeman simply turned away and started talking to his colleagues in Pedi or is it Sotho.

That there is a directive stopping police stations from signing affidavits authorizing people to take cars out of South Africa may be true. However I don't think such a directive would be specifically targeted at foreigners. I believe this was merely a case of the individual policeman's xenophobic sentiments coming to the surface, causing him to mis-explain an action that may have entirely valid reasons.

That same evening I drove to Ellim north of Polokwane in the Limpopo Province. As we were driving back at night we were stopped by policemen in a van. One of them, came to the passenger side where I was sitting and asked me for my papers. I gave him my passport. In the meantime my colleague went to the back to open the canopy for the other policeman.

When my friend came back the policeman standing beside me gruffly grunted to him, "Passport?"

My friend produced his asylum document.

"Oh you have got asylum." The policeman was looking visibly excitable. "Do you know we are going to stop this soon after world cup". He declared flailing the sheet of paper in his hand.

"After world cup no more!" spittle showered on my face as veins stood out on the policeman's forehead. "We at SAPS will work very hard." He declared. "We will bring buses, trucks, and trains and take you to the river" I presumed he meant the Limpopo. "Once across the river - once across that bridge - no more coming back for you guys. We will deploy helicopters, SAPS in full force, to stop you."

"No more!" He thundered as he threw the asylum document back at my colleague.

He glowered at us for a full half minute breathing heavily. The look on his face was scary. I don't know what was going on his mind, but the chances that it was sympathy or good intentions are about as high as those of finding a glacier in the Sahara.

"You can go." He finally declared. My colleague quickly started the car and drove off. We heaved huge sighs of relief as we left him walking back towards his patrol car.

The question that begs an answer is what are the chances of policemen, who express views such as the above, acting decisively to stop xenophobia motivated criminal rampages from ordinary members of the public. If the inspector at Kempton Park police station or the Polokwane patrolman had found me being neck-laced in the street would they have acted decisively to save me. Were they not going to dilly-dally and wait for the crowd to 'finish the job'.

It is perhaps educative that nobody was ever arrested or convicted for the 2008 xenophobic rampages despite scores of people being murdered. There was also plenty of evidence including photographs showing attackers. There were more than enough leads to allow any competent and correctly motivated police force to find plenty of the attackers and bring them to book. However after my weekend encounter with two police officers, I can't help but think that nothing decisive was done to bring the criminals to book because a lot of the officers are sympathetic to their xenophobic viewpoint.

Is Zimbabwe a normal country?

I noticed that the BBC couldn't resist taking a negative dig at Zimbabwe when reporting on the magnificent friendly between Zimbabwe and Brazil.

Concluding a piece on the game the BBC's Africa correspondent Andrew Harding wrote "It feels - at least today - like a refreshingly normal, happy country." This sentence suggests that Zimbabwe is normally not a normal country.

While we have our problems we are not the grotesquely abnormal monster that much of the ignorant Western media have convinced themselves we are.

The are many things about Zimbabwe which are much better than in most of the places that Andrew Harding would consider ‘normal’. For example, Zimbabwe has the highest literacy level in sub-Saharan Africa. Until a couple years back school enrolment of school going age children was also the highest. I am not sure about now but many parents are making tremendous effort to make sure their children get a good education.

Zimbabwe also has some of the best sanitation standards found in rural Africa. The Blair toilet we take for granted is a luxury in most countries. Here in South Africa the richest country in Africa, there is a big hullabaloo about toilets being installed for the first time in some parts of urban Cape Town.

The deep well with a hand-winch that we also take for granted in most of Zimbabwe is also a luxury for most in other parts of Africa. It provides clean ground-filtered water and is found at nearly all rural homesteads.

Most Zimbabweans enjoy housing standards well above those found in much of the region and the world. Most homesteads including rural homesteads have a solid burnt brick house with a cement floor, with many having at least two buildings (the traditional and culturally important kitchen hut, and a brick under asbestos 'bedroom').

Most of South Africa's blacks still live in substandard shacks (mukuku) with no sanitation at all. On the other hand, Zimbabweans can't imagine themselves living an entire lifetime in a chitangwena (a shack), but here in South Africa generations have lived and are still living in shacks.

If the same standards that were applied in Operation Murambatsvina (which was supposed to clear Zimbabwe of illegal and substandard structures) were to be applied in other parts of Africa, more than half of the populations would be left homeless. That estimate includes South Africa.

Many Zimbaweans actually have two homes, an urban home and a rural home (kumusha) a feature of our lives the we take very much for granted. However that feature is a very very effective social safety net. Zimbabweans can retreat to their rural homes when things are not going well in the urban setup. In the rural homes the Zimbabweans can live off the land growing what food they need. Relying on their own labour and effort, they even building their own houses using local materials.

This land-based self reliance is one of the important reasons why ownership and control of the land is such a big issue in Zimbabwe. The ability to grow commercial crops on land is a bonus. The real nity-gritty is the ability to grow one's own food.

The logic is simple. If someone grows food which you then have to buy it means you still have to find a job to get money to buy the food. If you can't find the job you go hungry even if there is plenty food. You will be forced to become a beggar. If you have your own piece of land big enough to feed yourself then you need a job only to improve your income flow and not as a basic means of survival. You will never become a beggar because with, access to land you have a chance to use your time to do something for yourself.

Outside of political violence we have extremely low crime rates. We have almost no problems with gangsterism. Contrasts that with supposedly normal countries like Jamaica where gangsters virtually run their own armies and polices forces. Contrast with countries like Mexico where gangsters routinely murder government officials. We don't have serious problems with hard drugs like cocaine and heroin.

Outside of political violence Zimbabwe also provides excellent protection and security for its citizens. It is difficult to imagine a crazed person driving around taking pot shots at people as recently happened in the United Kingdom.

Andrew Harding thinks Zimbabwe is not a normal country but he can walk around knowing that nobody would dare mug him in broad daylight in a crowded street. Such brazen muggings are a daily routine occurrence in places like Johannesburg.

Zimbabwe's politics have been nasty and atrocious for the past decade. As a result the western media have convinced the world, including some Zimbabweans, that they have the short end of the development stick. However a simple look at hard facts is enough to show that Zimbabweans enjoy much better lives than Afghanis, Iraqis, Jamaicans and the majority of black South Africans.

The truth is that based on the usual human development indicators, Zimbawe is more much more ‘normal’ than most of the countries which receive less negative coverage from the Western press.

Land reform is not ill-conceived

I will never agree that land reform is ill-conceived. Yes it may have been mis-managed by Zanu-PF but land reform remains a necessity, not only in here but in our neighbour South Africa as well. Without equitable distribution of resources, our countries will be saddled with social imbalances that will be a source of conflict for generations to come.

Social and wealth distribution imbalances did not start being sources of conflict only in Africa but since time immemorial. You may be aware of conflicts precipitated by social imbalances such as the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Mr Ncube, you definitely are not going to deny that the current land distribution imbalances were created by unjustifiable and virulently racist and discriminatory policies of colonial governments in their various forms. It is ill-conceived to call land reform ill-conceived.

I believe you may also have witnessed what happened to the fortunes of farmers who were marketing their produce around Boka auction floors. I am sure you will agree with me that they became the centre of economic activity. Is that a bad thing?

The improved economy of farmers at household level will eventually lead to an improved national economy. We have the problem that many people and indeed the government are trying to force the agricultural economy to follow the same patterns as when we had highly centralized and few commercial farmers. The simple logic that due to change in demographic patterns, agricultural economic patterns will of necessity change is lost to most.

The mere change, and disruption associate with the it, of agricultural economic patterns is interpreted as abject failure of land reform by some. In addition, the disruption caused by excessive government control of agricultural marketing (price controls, marketing restrictions, monetary mismanagement) is completely ignored as everything is attributed to the mere act of land reform.

Surely the improvement in agricultural fortunes that was witnessed this year would not have been there of white ownership land was the only and necessary ingredient for agricultural success. The only thing that has changed is that excessive government control has been removed.

Secondly while economic and monetary mismanagement, particularly during the Gideon Gono era, may have considerably lowered our standard of living over the past decade, I believe you are being unnecessarily negative by calling life in Zimbabwe "pathetic existence" as if we have the worst conditions in the world.

What would you call life in Somalia, Darfur, Iraqi, Afghanistan, DRC and even Kyrgyzstan. Having had the opportunity to travel throughout the region, our standard of life is higher than in nearly all neighbouring countries. By standard of living I mean standard of housing, access to sanitation, access to education facilities and having reasonable infrastructure such as roads and clinic buildings.

For example the minimum standard of housing most Zimbabweans enjoy (a round ‘kitchen’ hut with an asbestos roofed 'bedroom' by the side), is higher than the standard of housing the most South African blacks have (a tin shack). What we often perceive as a lowering of living standards is merely a reduction of access to disposable cash.

I believe responsible journalism should encourage Zimbabweans to build on what they have rather than dupe them into believing that they have the shortest end of the stick. Such negativism encourages Zimbabweans to think life is much better elsewhere. As you may be aware many of them then cross our borders into countries like South Africa were many face much worse living conditions than they would have faced at home. They also place a strain on the service delivery in those countries resulting in xenophobia.

I have never supported Zanu-PF having build my political consciousness during the ZUM days. However I will never bad-mouth Zimbabwe in order to spite Robert Mugabe as you seem to be doing.

Gono is incompetent. Period!

Calls for Gono’s departure are reaching a crescendo with the editor of the Zimbabwe times being asked to provide a platform for publishing allegedly incriminating evidence against him. Many seem to want Gono to go because he can't work with Biti, or he is a member of the JOC.

My view is that Gono should go simply because he is hopelessly incompetent. He is totally ignorant and has survived this far because he is working with equally ignorant if not more ignorant people. Anybody  with a single molecule of knowledge in their brain would have realized that Gono was leading us up a creek a long time ago.

He has absolutely no idea how to interpret simple economic data and fit it into a simple economic model. Instead of using numbers to model the economy he tried to force the economy to model numbers. That is a completely wrong approach to simple Mathematical modeling which is the basis of scientific analysis including econometrics.

Gono would set a number such as an exchange rate and then try and force the economy to conform to the number he had set. This was simply wrong. You derive your formulae and numbers so that the numbers reflect certain physical characteristics of the situation you want to mathematically analyze. Taking measurements from the physical situation you then calculate your numbers. You don't set your numbers and then try and force the physical situation to change to conform to your numbers.

Let me try and put it very simply. Suppose you want to measure how much meat you can harvest from a herd of cattle. You know each cow weighs about 250kg and has 4 legs. You then come up with a device for counting the number of legs as cows walk past. If you count 8 legs you know you have 2 cows and a potential 500kg of meat. The model is very simple. The numbers in the model are derived from physical characteristics of the cow. Four legs equal one cow yielding 250kg of meat. Eight legs equal two cows yielding 500kg of meat.

What Gono did with the exchange rate was that he decided that he would define one leg as one cow. He apparently thought that his model would now make eight legs equal eight cows therefore in the end he would get 2000kg of meat!!! Lost to him was that mere definition does not change the physical characteristics of a cow. If one American dollar is worth a thousand Zimbabwe dollars, decreeing that one American dollar be worth a hundred Zimbabwe dollars will not change the physical characteristics of the economy.

The exchange rate is a function of the balance of payments. How much you are producing and selling outside versus how much you are importing by and large determines the value of your money relative to other currencies. If you are producing too little and importing too much your currency devalues. It is a very simple model to understand even without going through Mathematical calculus that real economists use to make accurate predictions of economic trends.

If you reduce production by hindering producers, for example through price controls, at the same time increasing imports by importing all kinds of luxury goods, cars and even simple to make things like scotch carts and ploughs, your currency devalues massively. Setting the exchange rate at some number won't help an iota. It doesn’t matter whether you throw bones, consult tarot cards, peer inside crystal balls or climb up rocks barefoot to come up with the number. The exchange rate is modeling the physical characteristic which is exports versus imports. Its real value will always depend on the balance of payments not wishes of people.

Setting the exchange rate was wrong. Price controls made the situation even worse. To go back to our analogy of a herd of cows, price controls were like splitting the legs of cows into two halves hoping that as each cow passed, you would then count eight legs, and then claim to have 4000kg of meat from two cows. Of course you will discover that after cutting their legs the cows bleed to death leaving you with no meat at all!

After imposing price controls our producers bled to death leaving Gono and the government without a tax base at all.

While many people argue for Gono’s departure based on his political affiliations and his relationship, or lack thereof, with certain politicians, I am of the opinion that the major reason why he should depart is his lack of performance.

To put it simply it doesn’t matter whether Gono is a member of Zanu-PF, the MDC or even the Democratic Party of America. The reason why he should depart is his incompetent management of the monetary system, as well as destructive interference in other areas where he had absolutely no business poking his nose into, such as agriculture.

There are many who defend the governor by claiming that he couldn't have done anything as he was under political pressure. Gono was and is employed to advise politicians correctly, not for HIM to be advised incorrectly by politicians. There are some basic principles of econometrics that cannot be changed by politics, and if he didn't know how to put those across to politicians, it is further proof that he was incompetent. 

Who is in control

Honourable guests at the State House, for the swearing in of Zimbabwe’s cabinet, were treated to the biggest circus ever witnessed in diplomatic circles. While that may be amusing, it is however a strong indictment of Zimbabwe’s political leadership.

Clearly politicians are so pre-occupied with acquiring positions of power that the do not care about the dire circumstances the country is in. They do not care about the burden they are imposing on the tax payer and the debilitating consequences of that burden on the ability of the state to deliver essential services to the taxpayer.

The ease with which both sides are quick to add ministers of state on the burden is a big condemnation on the government, as well. Clearly both sides are more concerned with fitting as many of their cronies as they can, on the gravy train. That the country needs to save money seems to be totally and hopelessly lost to them.

If there are any doubts as to who is in control, I think recent events should have made it clear. Firstly human rights activists and MDC supporters under detention have not been released. One man promised that they were not going to spend a day more in prison. Well that day passed and more days are still passing and they are still firmly in jail. Can we therefore say the man who made the promise is in control?

Secondly arrests of opposition figures have been continuing. Roy Bennet is eating sadza with pumpkins in Mutare as we speak.

Tsvangirai seems to be suggesting that Bennet was incarcerated at the behest of rogue elements apposed to the unity deal. I submit that Bennet is in jail because Mugabe wants him there. Which police officer in Zimbabwe would keep a man in jail at the behest of, say Chihuri or Chiwengwa, in the face of a clear and unequivocal message from Mugabe that the man should be released?

The arrest of Bennet is clearly a message to the MDC to tell them, ‘Look here guys, we now have you by the balls.’ It is also a clear message to everyone that Zanu-PF are still in control.

The party’s bigwigs turned up in extra numbers to be sworn in as ministers because they are not prepared to make way for each other. If anybody believes that such people are prepared to easily make way for the MDC, then that person is still happily suckling at their mother’s breast.

It is also fallacy to believe that these people have turned against Mugabe, or that the latter has turned against them. When lions growl at each other it doesn’t mean one of them is now friends with the zebra.

The bottom line is that the route to true freedom for ordinary Zimbabweans has not yet been charted. The supposed captains are too busy charting their own routes to power.

Hoey too ignorant to be taken seriously

January 31, 2010
Jupiter Punungwe

RECENTLY Kate Hoey, a British Labour Party MP, wrote an opinion in which she intimated that she didn’t understand why regional leaders such as Jacob Zuma would not just tell President Robert Mugabe to go.

Kate Hoey

Her statement implies that Zimbabweans are weak and docile, and need an outsider to tackle Mugabe for them.

There are a number of factors that she completely overlooks in her analysis of the Zimbabwe situation.
Hoey should not forget that people did massively support Mugabe for his role in getting rid of racist colonial rule. Many Europeans like to fool themselves that colonial rule was not hated that much. Yet even the likes of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai were card-carrying members of Zanu-PF. Musicians  who are now self-exiled like Thomas Mapfumo were busy singing songs in praise of Mugabe.

The truth is that Mugabe, despite all his warts and moles, is still considered to be more beautiful than colonial rule. That is why there has been no violent uprising against him. Do not forget that the very same people who are accused of being docile, now fiercely fought against colonialism twice.

The First Chimurenga was a military conflict that lasted almost two years despite the massive technological mismatch. Not even the Zulu lasted that long in their battles against colonial invasion.

The Second Chimurenga was again a very fierce conflict. By some accounts it was the fiercest fight for independence in Africa, eclipsing by far the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and the Algerian liberation war. It is simple logic to deduce that such fierce wars are not fought by docile people. We Zimbabweans are definitely not docile.

As I write this my brother was expelled from a Zimbabwe university for student activism. He is now on an MDC arranged scholarship in the Netherlands. Yet my father is an open supporter of Mugabe’s land policies. A cousin was at one time proposed as an MDC candidate in parliamentary elections. Yet my aunt was an elected Zanu-PF councillor at the time.

If Zimbabweans were to abandon the so called docility, whom would they fight? Would anyone of them ever be able to lay a hand on Robert Mugabe or even his son, Chatunga Bellamyne? Would the fight not be about son facing father, mother facing daughter and brother facing brother? What would be the result of such a fratricidal conflagration?

The run-up to the June 27 election was very violent. While controlling all the levers of power, Zanu-PF unleashed unprecedented violence on the community. The MDC tried to retaliate, but they were simply strategically outmatched in terms of controlling the instruments of violence.

What many outside observers may not know is that the parties did not manage to set people living in the same area upon each other. It may have happened here and there but most of the violence involved transporting truckloads of youths, plied with liberal amounts of beer and cash to areas they did not live in. Even the soldiers used in the violence were never deployed to their home areas. In cases where violence involved people living in close proximity one can almost always trace it to long standing feuds.

In the 1970s people left school and gainful employment to join the liberation struggle with absolutely no promise of any kind of reward, except liberating the country. That today’s ‘activists’ have to be plied with money and beer is a clear indication that they are opportunistic and not passionate about their cause.
The second fact is that most Africans, including many black Zimbabweans in opposition circles, are not quite as incensed by the plight of white farmers as the Europeans are.

That Zimbabwean society doesn’t seem to care much about the fate of white farmers, is a product of colonial segregationist policies. Segregation bred a ‘them and us’ mentality. Privilege was reserved for whites during colonial times. As a result, many black Zimbabweans simply don’t think whites can ever come to a point of needing succour from the community. They are perceived as always being wealthy. There is also a perception that they can always fly off to England while the blacks largely have nowhere else to go and live comfortably.
Hence the strong feelings about ‘our’ land, ‘their’ land being in England.

True the situation is dire for white farmers. Many are losing lifetimes of hard work and dedication. However, what is not true is that their workers are now much worse off than they were before. The wages they earned amounted to nothing and the opportunities they had to improve themselves amounted to nothing. So if the white farmer goes his departure is not such a big impact for the worker.

They just join their peasant cousins. The lifestyles of their cousins were actually better off. So in a way one can say farm workers are finally going to be better off by being forced to become peasants. I am not being cynical, that is how bad the conditions of farm workers were.

Apparently Hoey believes that it us up to outsiders, namely President Zuma, to tell Zimbabweans what to do. The problem we have in Zimbabwe right now is that the Zimbabwean population cannot agree among themselves and this is reflected in how leadership has evolved in the country.

A substantial number of people support Robert Mugabe and a substantial number support Morgan Tsvangirai. More precisely a substantial number oppose Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai seems to be the only viable alternative at the moment. The ideal solution to Zimbabwe’s problems is to get these two sides to work together without violence. To think that outsiders can simply tell one of them to simply disappear is not only impractical, but reeks of an ill-informed colonial mentality.

Both sides in the Zimbabwe situation spew propaganda. The trouble with the likes of Hoey is that they swallow hook line and sinker the propaganda of only one side. One of my A-level science teachers taught me a very important lesson. When conducting experiments never ignore your directly observed results if they don’t conform to conventional theories. Least of all never try and force your results to conform to conventional theories.
Rather seek the explanation of why they differ.
Despite conventional thinking, Zuma cannot tell Mugabe to disappear. Even if Mugabe were to openly declare a coup, Zuma has absolutely no power to intervene. Any adventures he might try would definitely disrupt the entire region. The results will not be a quick and clean disappearance of Mugabe, but a regional conflagration with no predictable outcome.
Zimbabwe might have sprung from Rhodesia but Zimbabwe is not Rhodesia. The people who claim that Zuma can do to Mugabe what John Vorster did to Ian Smith are simply not using their logic. Ian Smith was hemmed in on all sides by hostile neighbours. Mozambique was hosting Mugabe’s ZANLA forces. Zambia was hosting Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA forces. Incidentally ZIPRA and the ANC’s Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) were sharing the same camps, both being sponsored by the Soviets. Botswana was an important transit point for MK as well as ZIPRA.
Rhodesia was also under United Nations sanctions sponsored by the British. Only South Africa was friendly with Rhodesia to the extent of sending soldiers to fight with the Rhodesians. In short Rhodesia was mortally dependent on South Africa. The Harold MacMillan winds of change had become hurricanes of change buffeting Rhodesia from all directions except South Africa.

Ian Smith had no other friends in the region except John Vorster.

People like Hoey who think Zuma can snap his fingers and Mugabe will then just fall, like a bug off the woodwork, are simply too ignorant to be taken seriously.

Firstly, Mugabe is not hemmed in on all borders. In fact, governments like those of Frelimo in Mozambique and Kabila in the DRC owe Mugabe a debt of gratitude for saving them from demise. Mugabe’s army fought off the apartheid South Africa sponsored RENAMO to stop them from overrunning Mozambique. Frelimo is ruling today because of that critical Mugabe intervention.

Mugabe’s army again drove away Rwanda and Uganda sponsored rebels from the outskirts of Kinshasa to save Laurent Kabila from overthrow. Today his son, Joseph, is still ruling. Only a preposterous fool will believe such bonds tied in blood can easily be broken because someone in London says they should be broken. Only a fool can believe that Zuma can completely ignore such regional bonds, and even ignore the history of his own ANC and their close ties with Zanu-PF.

When Zuma has tea with the Queen, I am sure he will make every effort to make the right noises for the Queen’s and her subjects’ ears. However, I also know that it will never go beyond noises.

Not only do leaders like Hoey hopelessly misread the situation, but they allow themselves to be led up a creek by people who claim to be fiercely opposed to Mugabe but are merely opportunists after making money from Western sponsorship. Zimbabweans have shown in the past that they can fight for their freedom. Yet parties like the MDC seem totally incapable of organizing a real fight. People like Hoey should understand the reasons pretty well.

In 1965 the British would not fight the Rhodesians militarily because they were kith and kin. Today the MDC have no stomach to fight Mugabe militarily because of the kith and kin factor as well. While Tsvangirai himself has made so much money from opposition politics that he no longer needs a piece of land to grow his own food, I do not think his peasant relatives in Buhera are in the same position. I know they will eventually persuade him to get some land for them. It might take years but it will come.

The solution to Zimbabwe’s problems does not lie in merely giving Mugabe the red card. The biggest threat to Zimbabwe right now is corruption. Zanu-PF are masters of the game, having been in there for some time. The accusations flying around in the MDC over corrupt ministers, councilors and branch leaders suggest that the MDC have quickly seized the ropes of corruption as well. Giving one fox a red card to make room for others will not make your chickens safe.

Mugabe’s red card will never be handed to him.

More to land issue than Mugabe’s land grab

IT seems for many people Zimbabwe’s land issue has been reduced to a little more than ‘Mugabe land grab’ issue. The land question has shaped Zimbabwe’s politics for the last century. It is being extremely short-sighted and naïve to reduce it, for no reason other than anti-Mugabe emotions, to a simple Mugabe land grab problem. No matter how large he might loom in the sight of some, the land issue is much bigger than Robert Mugabe.

I once came upon a story about an elephant and a villager. A hardworking villager built his hut at the edge of large savannah woodlands. One day a mighty elephant came charging out of the forest. It wrenched the farmer out of his hut and hurled him aside. It then barged into the hut and somehow managed to fit its large frame inside.

The puny little villager tried very hard to get the enormous elephant out of his hut. First he pulled at the tail, and then he pulled at the trunk. He hung on one of the tusks, then the other. He tried his best to wrap his arms around a leg and tug. But he simply couldn’t make the huge elephant budge.

As he escalated his efforts to liberate his hut he took a spear and started to stab the elephant. The skin was too thick. Then he lit a fire under the elephant’s belly.

“Hoo! Stop! Stop!” shouted the elephant. “Let us make peace.”

So the villager entered into negotiations with the elephant.

“Here is the agreement” proposed the elephant. “I stay where I am, but I will allow you some space in the hut.”

“But it was my hut in the first place, and given the amount of space you have already taken for yourself I won’t have enough space” complained the villager.

“I am willing to move some of my limps to give you more room. But we do it only when I am willing. Also you have to compensate me for loss of space.”

The villager was not happy with the terms but what could he do. The elephant was too big and fighting it out of the hut would be too much of a cost and maybe even result in the destruction of the hut itself. He forlornly and half-heartedly nodded his head.

“That’s it my man!” whooped the elephant happily. “Now we are friends. To make sure we know which space belongs to whom here, take this.”

He whipped out and brandished a piece of paper.

“This is my hut occupancy certificate, this is proof that I own the hut” he said pointing a tusk at the piece of paper in the villager’s hands.

“This piece of paper certifies that I own the hut. If there is a disagreement my friend Mr Rhinoceros will listen to our arguments and pass judgment. That way we will maintain the rule of law.” The elephant explained.

“But where was the rule of law when you were pulling me out of the hut,” the villager complained.

“My friend let’s forget the past. Let’s look to the future. After all you didn’t have the rule of law yourself did you?” the elephant asked.

“No, but I had my customs and system of rule. Everyone in my hut lived by those….”

“Your customs were primitive and backward my friend” the elephant intoned, interrupting the villager. “The certificate of hut occupancy I have introduced is modern, advanced and state of the art.”

“But it leaves you with all the good space. Besides you have taken so much space that me and my children are packed like sardines in a little corner.”

“Look my friend,” said the elephant, “You shouldn’t complain. You have an advanced state of the art system in your hands all because of me.”

Robert Mugabe is not even the villager in this story. The villager, Zimbabwe’s people, still needs equitable land redistribution urgently. The debilitating effects of racist pieces of legislation passed by colonial settlers such as the Land Apportionment Act, the Land Husbandry Act, the Land Tenure Act and others still need to be countered and reversed.

What Zanu-PF chefs are doing, taking white farms and mostly occupying them themselves is like a hippo butting out the elephant and occupying the hut. The villager still needs his hut back.

Some people are currently so incensed by the hippo butting out the elephant. They are focusing solely on the hippo and forgetting the original sin of the elephant. I hope they are equally incensed by the elephant wrenching out the villager.

I am sure we all know that the practice of kicking people out of their homes with only the clothes on their backs was not invented by Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF. I believe I don’t have to explain again where the popular name for a squatter shack in Zimbabwe, chitangwena, comes from. What happened to the people of Chief Rekai Tangwena was actually the tail end of colonial displacement. All the people who are now settled in the massive former native reserves (maruzevha) were forced there without any compensation and barely the clothes on their backs.

A very recent example of the precarious and insecure tenure afforded to those in the native reserves by colonial laws is the plight of the Chiadzwa people. After discovery of diamonds literally in their fields, these people are now being evicted from an area they have lived for generations. They only depend on the goodwill of government for compensation.

Their biggest problem is they don’t own the land they live on. Remember native reserves were originally Crown Land (land owned by the Queen), then they became TTLs (Tribal Trust Lands) after UDI, and lastly Communal Lands (after independence) owned by the government.

Unlike white farmers who were granted title deeds and can take their cases as far as the SADC tribunal, the villagers do not have and never had title deeds. The villagers are victims of a system designed in colonial times to disempower the natives. The government of the day could evict them as and when it wished. What leaders like Robert Mugabe have done is usurp the powers of colonial masters without enhancing the rights of the people at all.

The people of Chief Rekai Tangwena faced the eviction problem under Ian Smith. Now the people of Chiadzwa are facing the same problem under Robert Mugabe. The whole import of this is that land reform has not been properly done. Land rights and security of tenure have not been passed on to the people, the victims of colonialism. Now everything is being left to the whim of politicians.

Let me hasten to clarify that this is not an attempt to defend Robert Mugabe. I am simply trying to make it clear that there is a huge mass beneath the tip of the iceberg. Melting the tip will only make more of it emerge. Let us not forget the entire context and complexity of the land problem in our haste to demonize Robert Mugabe.

As far as I am concerned both sides are taking people for granted. An honestly pursued land reform program would see white farmers losing the bulk of their land to peasants, anyway. The peasants are definitely not in, and will never be in a position to pay full compensation for the land at present market values. Given that they form the bulk of the population, there is very little chance that the government will ever collect enough tax to pay for the land. In my view this reduces the “willing seller willing buyer” principle to a mere ruse to slow down land reform in the hope that it will eventually fizzle out living most peasants without land, and the colonial occupiers enjoying use of the land.

On the other hand the current black elite have their eyes firmly on personal enrichment. They are clearly hoping to skim off the cream of the land and give it to themselves or have already done so. This scenario again leaves peasants severely shortchanged.

In short none of the two chief antagonistic sides, the white former colonial settlers or the ruling black elite is particularly keen on an honest fair and transparent solution. Both would like to see their respective privileges preserved on enhanced. Unfortunately preserving the privileges of either amounts to doing nothing concrete for the masses.

One of the great weaknesses of Mugabe’s opponents is that they hopelessly chew their words when it comes to specifying when and how land reform is going to happen. Talk of land audits and properly doing things does not assure the peasant that he is going to get a bigger piece of land now. Mugabe’s policy of allowing people to just invade land means that at least some people have access to land now. As more time passes it is going to be more difficult to remove them from that land without use of violence.

The question of who should pay compensation is simple if it is honestly approached. Whoever inherited the British South Africa Company (BSAC) which claimed ownership of Zimbabwe in 1890 should be pursued and made to pay. Alternatively whoever gave the BSAC ‘permission’ to own Zimbabwe must be held responsible. The BSAC were given ‘permission’ by means of a Royal Charter. Surely one doesn’t need to be the Scotland Yard sleuth Sherlock Holmes to figure out who issued that charter and must therefore bear primary responsibility for compensation.

Lastly, let me again express my utter disgust at the notion that blacks need white farmers if they are to avoid starvation. Calling such assertions hogwash would be insulting the bathwaters of pigs. Having grown up in rural Zimbabwe, not for a single day did I witness families around us depending on white farmers for food. Black Zimbabweans have always worked hard to grow their own food and still work hard to do so. The greatest impediments to food security are weather patterns and lack of access to adequate land. It is definitely not lack of the work ethic or skill.

Around 1906 one of the native commissioners reported that the major reason natives did not want to work in the mines and farms set up by settlers was that the average native had his good patch of land on which he grew enough for his needs and therefore saw no need to work for the settlers.

Indeed those who are familiar with the history of Zimbabwe’s urbanization will know that most local people shunned living in towns and depended on their rural homes for livelihood which is why most of the early suburbs in Harare like Mbare, Old Highfields, Mabvuku, Dzivarasekwa and Tafara have houses mostly owned by Zimbabweans of Malawian origin. Do people ever ask themselves what happened for these people to be forced to stop depending on agriculture for their livelihood.

People who attribute Zimbabwe’s agricultural problems solely to the eviction of white farmers are deliberately and dishonestly choosing to leave the bigger part of the picture hidden. The problem of idiosyncratic controls on commercial activity, including price controls on agricultural inputs and commodities, restrictions in the movement and trade of agricultural commodities was a big disincentive to agricultural producers.

Even if the white farmers had not been disrupted, Zimbabwe would still have not produced enough food with the kind of price controls and restrictions that were introduced by the government from around 2003 to 2008.