By Wilbert Mukori | If you asked most Zimbabweans out there today what the war of independence was about; most of them will say, “Land!”
Before independence the major would have said “One man, one vote!” but all political rights were kicked into the tail grass by Mugabe and his Zanu PF friends. They did not trust the people to vote them into power and so they made it clear in 1980 that if the party did not win the election the bush war would continue. Naturally, the people voted to end the war.
It was only in the late 1990s that the land issue took centre stage. By then the country’s once robust economy was now in serious trouble; the two decades of reckless spending on social welfare such as schools and health care but worst of all on political patronage to pamper his party loyalists was simply unsustainable. By the late 1990s Mugabe had no wealth to dish out, especially to his ever demanding but wasteful party loyalists, and so he turned to the one resource the nation still had in great abundance – land.
The worsen economic situation made the populous restless for meaningful political change and increasing popularity of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition, launched in 1999, was no surprise.
Mugabe’s first clash with MDC was over the Zanu PF proposed 2000 new constitution in which the party’s notable give away was seizing land from white farmers to accelerate the black resettlement of programmes. MDC campaign for the rejection of the new constitution on the grounds it was not democratic. Zanu PF lost the referendum.
Zanu PF’s response to referendum defeat was to politicise the land issue by making land redistribution its flagship policy for the next two decades. The party accused the MDC, the white farmers and all it’s critics, especially the British and their western allies, of conspiring to frustrate land redistribution from the whites to the black majority.
The land issue always flared up during elections in the form of blacks, mostly war veterans and Zanu PF youths invading white owned farms accompanied headline grabbing gratuitous violence. The violence would spread to target MDC’s supporters who were accused of seeking regime change to end and reverse the farm seizures!
In the early years of the white farm invasions Zanu PF insisted the seized farms were to resettle the landless peasants in the overcrowded rural areas. The rural areas are still overcrowded to this day because very few peasants were ever resettled.
The Zanu PF ruling elite and their cronies were allocated the seized farms. “All blacks are entitled to land, under one person one farm!” the party announced.
After a few years it again became clear that some of the leaders had more than one farm. The latest information I had was that the late Robert Mugabe, his wife, daughter and two sons had 13 farms between them. Now I realise I had been misinformed.
Bona, Mugabe’s daughter, is divorcing her husband and the couple have 21 farms, 17 cars including a Rolls Royce worth US$ 800 000, 21 residential properties including a mansion in Dubai worth US$8 million plus a lot more besides.
So, Bona and her husband alone have 21 farms, nearly twice as many farms as the 13 the whole Mugabe family was rumoured to have.
It is a well documented historic fact that Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector collapsed, with it the economy, soon after the start of the farm seizures in 2000. The new farm owners, the Zanu PF ruling elite and the cronies, failed to maintain the productivity of the disposed white farmers.
Zimbabwe had prided herself as the breadbasket of the region before the farm seizures not only lost that acclaim but has often relied on food aid – so economic impoverish we could not even pay for it. Zimbabwe is, for all practical purposes, the Biblical Garden of Eden. We are starving in the Garden of Eden, a damning testimonial to failed leadership.
Zimbabwe has had the great misfortune of being led by corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs who for the last 43 years and counting. The Zanu PF thugs have rigged elections denying the people a meaningful say in the governance of the govern for the last 43 years and counting.
The nation has had many opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship in the 43 years since the country’s independence in 1980. The best chances coming during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and sadly these too were wasted. Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends who were entrusted the task of implementing the democratic reforms failed to get even one token reform implemented.
Mugabe bribed Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the trappings of high office, the ministerial limo, the generous salary and allowances, a US$4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc., etc. And in return, the MDC leaders forgot about implementing the reforms.
The recent Al Jazeera Gold Mafia documentary shows how President Mnangagwa, who had no more white owned farms to seize and give again, has been looting the nation’s gold. We know the wholesale looting is happening with other resources such as diamonds and lithium.
It is no secret that Mnangagwa is filthy rich and so would be his wife and children. Rumour has it that Mnangagwa has a mansion in Dubai too. It is no wonder these Zanu PF thugs have been rigging elections and have even committed mass murders just to stay in power; when there is so much wealth to be amassed, giving up power is simply unthinkable.
Still, the nation must bite the bullet and demand the reforms and free elections because the present political system in which the few have grown filthy rich at the expense of millions forced to live in abject poverty is unsustainable. Zanu PF is rigging the 2023 elections we must make sure the regime does not get political legitimacy. We need a new GNU only this time, we must see to it that the democratic reforms are implemented.- SOURCE: zimbabwelight.blogspot.com