As David Stevens, the first, white, Zimbabwean farmer murdered in the current land war in Zimbabwe, was buried last Tuesday, Trinidad and Tobago’s first ever diplomatic appointment to the Republic of South Africa as honorary consul, Ian Roach, spoke with me from Johannesberg, where he lives. Roach, an attorney-at-law, has been living and working in the Republic of South Africa for six years as consultant to the African National Congress led government, parastatals (state enterprises), and other corporations seeking to do business in southern and central Africa.
"As expected", said Roach, "the South African rand suffered its worst decline against the dollar on Tuesday, following offshore speculation about the unresolved crisis in Zimbabwe. Financial reports quoted the rand as 6.765 against the U.S. dollar, which is the lowest since 1998."
"The land crisis currently unfolding in the Republic of Zimbabwe is most challenging for the governments of Zimbabwe and all of the Southern African Development Communities (SADC)" says Roach "for most African Governments in the south have not dealt resolutely and expeditiously with the issue of land redistribution."
The honorary consul warns: "It is wise not to confuse the action of forcibly occupying white farm lands in Zimbabwe with the central issue of land redistribution, which is sought as a measure of addressing the past systematic confiscation of lands from Africans by colonial powers, and their subsequent minority, white, racist regimes, as were the cases in South Africa and Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe."
The genesis of the land dispute between Zimbabwe’s landless, black war veterans and squatters on the one hand, and the white land owning farmers on the other hand, is attributable to the failure of the incumbent Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Unity - Patriotic Front (ZANU-FP) Government, and successive British Governments to deal with the land issue as was provided for in the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, that the question of land redistribution and compensation would be settled after ten years, which should have been sometime in 1990. "At present" says Roach "some political analysts in southern Africa argue that the British Government saw to it that the land issue went unresolved as a means of frustrating Mugabe’s Marxist-Leninist (ZANU -PF) Government."
It is a fact that after 20 years of Independence from Britain there is no mechanism in place in Zimbabwe, similar to that being attempted in South Africa where the ANC led South African Government has made its policy of land redistribution and compensation, law, and urgently tries to rectify the apartheid laws under which the minority white population owned and occupied the majority of lands after forcibly removing and dispossessing the black majority from their ancestral lands without compensation, thereby in the process condemning the African population to township living, under sub-human conditions in most cases.
The local Trini saying ""when your neighbour’s house catching fire, wet yours" aptly fits the concern being experienced by white farmers and other white interests groups in RSA, that the crisis in Zimbabwe could unleash similar terror on their side of the border, disturbing a political transition that has gone on silently amidst the winds of change, notwithstanding alarms raised about inreased violent crimes since the historically disadvantaged have taken political charge of their destiny. Roach quotes excerpts from a 1995 address by then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki to the South Africa Chamber of Business, to put in context the problem most African Governments are faced with in their attempt to transform societies divided along economic lines based on race, as the fundamental criteria for economic advancement: "Let me also point out that noble and correct as they are, reconciliation and nation building, unless they are accompanied by the fundamental transformation of the entire socio-economic fabric of our society, would remain but unrealisable ideals for those of us who have been the objects and victims of racial oppression and social and economic deprivation.
Reconciliation must, therefore, of necessity encompass the transformation of everything else in addition to the political accession to power of the representatives of the formerly oppressed blacks. It must include the transformation and deracialisation of the South African economy for it is in the ownership, operation and management of the productive resources of our land that black people will begin to contribute to the generation of the country’s wealth - no longer as landless, propertyless, unskilled and semi-skilled workers or as street hawkers and marginal retailers in the formal sector." Concerns are also being expressed among certain political and business quarters about RSA’s President Mbeki’s apparent non-open stand against the forcible occupation by Zimbabwe war veterans of the white-owned farms. But, explains Roach, "that in itself is a very sensitive issue, for there may be a lot that can quite possibly be resolved by operating behind the scenes, given Mbeki’s successful modus operandi in settling complicated issues during apartheid, that went unnoticed until resolved. In addition, the Republic of South Africa cannot be seen to be taking an interventionist role in another sovereign country that is part of a regional organisation in southern Africa."
"There is understandable, emotional panic that lives are being lost in Zimbabwe, but hundreds of lives are continuously lost daily in all of Africa, due to many unresolved issues from the Continent’s historical struggles against oppressive colonial powers and racist, white, minority successors. Some even claim that the Continent has been marginalised since the end of the cold war. Unfortunately, the killings in Africa, be it in Zimbabwe for the moment, seem only to get international headlines when it is not black people that are being murdered. I hasten to say that the above observation in no way serves to justify the killings of white farmers or the loss of any human life, for preservation and respect for life is the bedrock on which any civilised democracy must be based, along with respect for the rule of law."
"We back in the Caribbean have been saved from much of the anxieties that the peoples of Africa are exposed to daily, such as the violent conflicts in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. We know nothing of the devastation of entire cities caused by rains, pestilences threatening to obliterate whole villages, suffering and human degradation brought about by large scale poverty. We can only imagine from the Caribbean shores."
The solution for Zimbabwe must be sought out of an understanding of what is just and fair, given the circumstances and history of the land issue in most of Africa. The South African Government must be very concerned about what is taking place next door in Zimbabwe, which also happens to be South Africa’s largest trading partner in Africa.
The consequences, if such a volatile situation in Zimbabwe as an emerging market goes unresolved for much longer, could only worsen and impact negatively on South Africa’s fragile investment climate, which is already under pressure from globalised market forces.