Zimbabwe workers discuss land seizures

HARARE, Zimbabwe—"If 20 years after independence, people have to pay high rents and cannot have 500 square meters of land, what did we fight for?" asks Albert Vingwe, the chairman of the Organization of Collective Cooperatives in Zimbabwe, who is himself a farmer and combat veteran of the liberation forces that fought a guerrilla war against the former Rhodesian white-minority regime.

The current occupation of farms, he says, "is a political issue. Land redistribution is not debatable. But one can't be happy with the way it's being done right now. It's a mixed grill, because now it includes thieves and thugs."

Views such as these are common in this southern African nation, which is undergoing a severe economic crisis, and where the two-decade-long political rule of President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has worn thin.

"Workers in urban areas, as well as their parents, brothers and sisters require land—as they have, with high expectations, since independence," said Isidore Zindoga, the acting secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), in an interview in central Harare April 28. "Land redistribution is paramount to wealth creation for all. Of the 12.5 million people in Zimbabwe, those who have access to arable land with fertile soil are about 4,000. These commercial farmers control 60-80 percent of the arable, fertile land.

"The successive struggles of the people in this country have all been based on the land question," he said, since British colonizers recruited by Cecil Rhodes's South Africa Company invaded the area north of the Limpopo river in 1890, stole Africans' land and cattle, and went on to establish the white-minority Rhodesian regime, which was overthrown in 1980 with the triumph of the national liberation movement.

"Over six million people live in Zimbabwe's marginal rural lands without fertile soils and reliable rainfall, lacking control of water rights and restricted from access to the bulk of the nation's natural resources...(and) 4,500 mainly white, large-scale farmers today dominate Zimbabwe's largely agrarian economy," wrote Sam Moyo in The Land Acquisition Process in Zimbabwe (1997/1998).

Many of these farms are massive. According to 1998 statistics, the largest 233 farms were more than 19,760 acres each. Anglo American Corporation alone owns 25 farms totaling 1.17 million acres.

Farm takeovers

According to the Commercial Farmers Union, which represents the predominately white capitalist landholders in Zimbabwe, as of April 27, 1,099 farms had been "invaded," and of these 669 were still occupied. Harare's Standard newspaper reported April 30 that 14 people had died in clashes since the occupations began.

The farm occupations started in late February, two weeks after Mugabe suffered a defeat in a referendum that would have expanded presidential powers and allowed the government to seize white-owned land without compensation, ostensibly for redistribution. The vote reflected growing popular dissatisfaction with the economic crisis and ZANU-PF rule.

Members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, which represents a section of war veterans closest to the party, have led the majority of farm occupations with Mugabe's consent. Generally, a few representatives of the association, in combination with ZANU-PF officials and supporters, are responsible for organizing takeovers, which have included unemployed youth from urban townships and peasants from nearby villages. The war veterans group and ZANU-PF have organized bus trips from Harare for purposes of occupations, and many of those who participate receive a small sum of cash and promises of land. To date little or no farming has begun in occupied areas.

Zindoga expressed the view that "the haphazard manner of redistribution through invasions will do more harm to the land than good. It would be better if it was planned."

The occupations have gone hand in hand with efforts by ZANU-PF to undermine growing support for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is winning the lion's share of growing political opposition to Mugabe's regime.

The MDC, closely aligned to the ZCTU, is led by Morgan Tsvangirai, outgoing secretary-general of the union federation. It has won support from capitalist interests in Zimbabwe, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom, who are hoping that a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe will allow continued exploitation of the country's resources while keeping a lid on workers and peasant struggles.

There is growing support for the MDC, not only among workers in urban areas, but also in the countryside, including among farm workers. As a result, ZANU-PF supporters and war veterans have reportedly administered many beatings to rural working people to teach them a lesson during the occupations.

"Their intention is not to farm—it is to campaign for ZANU-PF," said Golden Magwaza, organizing secretary for the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe, which represents 100,000 farm workers. He said union organizers were being assaulted as they approached occupied farms, and the Zimbabwean government's Central Intelligence Organization was tapping union phone lines. "If the workers are displaced from the farms they will become squatters. Farm workers are fighting back because they are not sure of their livelihood. They have not been considered in the government's land reform program," he stated.

Not everyone agrees. Government-run newspapers say that white commercial farmers are instructing workers they employ to support the MDC and inciting workers against the veterans.

"Farm workers are in a quandary," said cooperative farms chairman Vingwe. "White farmers are clever. They tell the workers that they will lose their jobs and security if the farms are taken over."

Farm workers struck in 1997 and won a 40 percent wage increase. Bargaining with the employers resulted in increases of more than 30 percent in each of the subsequent two years. "But these do not keep up with rising inflation," said Magwaza. The average wage of the lowest paid farm workers is Z$1,150 (US$30) a month. Many workers in manufacturing make about Z$2,000 ($52) a month.

Imperialist oppression

Conditions for workers and peasants in Zimbabwe are light years away from those of the wealthy landholders. According to the World Bank, 1998 per capita gross national product in Zimbabwe was $610. Some 63 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The cities hold only 31 percent of the populace. Infant mortality is 55 per 1,000 live births. The country's debt to imperialist banks and governments is $4.9 billion, and annual servicing of the debt was $989 million in 1998. Approximately 200,000 people work as gold panners to survive. About half of the working-age population is jobless. Inflation is running at about 50 percent and interest rates are between 56 percent and 70 percent.

The primary holders of the debt noose around Zimbabwe's neck are Washington, London, and other imperialist powers. Beginning in the early 1990s, the Mugabe government began implementing International Monetary Fund "structural adjustment facilities" that put the squeeze on the economy as a whole and working people in particular.

According to Zindoga, "the so-called deregulation of the economy as pursued by the IMF and World Bank has brought unemployment and poverty as a result of continuous hikes in basic commodity prices due to the removal of government subsidies, in particular on fuel, mealie-meal [ground maize—a staple food], milk, and bread."

The ZCTU represents about half of the working class employed in the "formal sector," which totals 1.2 million people, according to union spokesperson Nomore Sibanda.

In 1997 it organized the first successful general strike since 1948. The walkout and demonstrations protested a new tax imposed by the government to raise funds for remuneration to war veterans. Demonstrating workers were met with troops and cops firing tear gas and wielding riot batons, but the government reversed the levy.

Ruling party's hold weakens

ZANU-PF, which during the liberation struggle drew political inspiration and material aid from the Chinese government, today says it is the defender of national sovereignty and the rights of black Zimbabweans. "Lest they forget, remind the sellouts and their paymasters that the power of freedom, dignity, human rights, and sovereignty gained from our heroic liberation struggle just 20 years ago is firmly in your proud Zimbabwean hands," said the text of a full-page ZANU-PF election advertisement printed in the April 27 Financial Gazette. "Don't throw away that power by surrendering it to unrepentant racial and foreign interests."

There are fewer people willing to accept the ruling party's militant-sounding rhetoric, however, under the blows of the economic crisis, anger with cop assaults on workers, and ZANU-PF's failure to carry out radical land reform.

Under the Lancaster House agreement they negotiated in 1980 with the Rhodesian and British governments, the liberation parties had to agree there would be no nationalization of white commercial farms. Instead, any acquisitions would be acquired on a "willing buyer, willing seller" basis. There were few willing sellers. The latter provisions expired a decade later, but since 1990 relatively little redistribution has taken place. Many people complain that what redistribution there has been has benefited well-off supporters of the ruling party, including government ministers.

"The government's current indigenization policy enriches a few blacks at the expense of others," said Zindoga.

On April 27, police commissioner Augustine Chihuri invoked the Law and Order Maintenance Act—devised by the Rhodesian regime in 1960—ostensibly to prevent violence in the run-up to elections. He announced roadblocks would be set up to prevent the movement of large groups of party political supporters. The act empowers the home affairs minister, they so choose, to ban meetings for up to three months.

Many working people say that the current occupations are taking place in a haphazard manner. They argue that the government should be responsible for land redistribution, and emphasize that it should be done equitably to benefit the peasantry. But they also reject charges, as reflected in the big-business media and some capitalist politicians, that the conflict is at root a racial one, as opposed to one between the landless and the wealthy landholders.

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