A Predictable Tragedy by Compagnon Daniel;

Author:Compagnon, Daniel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2011-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

The Indecent Landgrab by the ZANU-PF Elite

After the presidential election and the May 2002 acceleration of farm confiscations there was a rush to the rural areas as anybody with some leverage in the state or the party apparatus claimed a farm, and top ZANU politicians were busy accumulating several of the best ones. Those ministers, Politburo members and generals who had already received leases at very low rentals in the previous phases of the land-grabbing saga also came for a second helping. By mid-2002, the list of land predators read like a ZANU-PF who’s who: the two vice presidents, most ministers, deputy ministers, permanent secretaries, MPs, governors, provincial and district administrators, generals, CIO chiefs, police officers, ambassadors (Zimbabwe’s envoy to Washington Simbi Mubako), connected businessmen such as Enoch Kamushinda, ZNLWVA leadership, and quite often members of their families. Also on the list was a prominent bootlicker and ZBC presenter, so partisan he could not set foot in Harare townships without being assaulted by the public. Farms were also allocated to pro-Mugabe ex-Anglican bishop Norbert Kunonga and the top civil servants suspected of organizing the electoral fraud, Dr. Mariyawanda Nzuwah, chairman of the Election Directorate and the Public Service Commission, and Tobaiwa Mudede, registrar general.

The greed was greatest among the top echelon of the ruling party. Grace Mugabe received a farm with a twenty-seven-room mansion worth an estimated U.S.$100 million.51 Of course, Grace and Robert Mugabe’s siblings and their respective offspring got the lion’s share, including the first lady’s brother Reward Simbarashe Marufu, who had made a killing in the plundering of the War Victims Compensation Fund in the 1990s. Marufu grabbed Leopardvlei Farm from Bob Duncan and violently expelled the 200 farm workers on 23 July 2002. Menacing people with a gun like a common criminal, the president’s brother-in-law had the workers’ huts and belongings burned down by his security guards and some ZANU-PF youths. The ruling elite indulged in a desperate looting frenzy, which had little to do with any rational policy to restructure the ownership of agricultural land. With the collapse of the economy, there were less state resources left for Mugabe to reward his patrimonial clients. Land was a convenient accessible asset left for patronage, and the president announced in August 2002 that officers who fought in the DRC would also receive a piece of land.52 Although Mugabe claimed that the land reform had been completed by December 2002, and the government encouraged remaining white farmers to plant (with a guarantee of no political interference) to alleviate food shortages, the seizure of almost all remaining white-owned farms, some as small as 60 hectares, went on up to now, although at a slower pace.53

Squatters on invaded farms began to realize that they had been used to spearhead the farm invasions for the ruling elite’s benefit. Prominent politicians loyal to Mugabe now control scores of farms illegally acquired, while many poor blacks are stranded on arid stretches of land without adequate water or sanitation. As Wilfred Mhanda of the Liberators’ Platform hinted, “all the prime land [was] for the politicians and their cronies.

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