'Compensating white farmers is an obligation' said Mnangagwa - bribe and last throw of the dice

"Zimbabwe was proceeding with the compensation of former commercial farmers who were displaced during the country's agrarian reform despite growing criticism against the policy, President Emerson Mnangagwa said last week, highlighting that compensation for land improvements was a constitutional obligation," reported Bulawayo 24.

Mnangagwa said "the land reform is irreversible", adding: "We fought for the land and we will never regret."

Rubbish! The Zanu-PF inspired land reform, like so many other things in post independent Zimbabwe, was NOT what the nation had fought and many had died for. The chaotic and violent seizure of white owned farms that started in earnest in 2000 were for two reasons:

1.    Mugabe needed something to give away to his ever demanding but wasteful Zanu-PF loyalists and their families and friends; with the country's economy already in ruinous there was nothing else left for him to give away other than land. Zanu-PF has maintained that the land would be given to the landless peasants but in practice it was the ruling elite who benefited and the millions of peasants are still stuck in the overcrowded and unproductive rural areas. Mugabe and his family got no less than 13 commercial farms.

The Zanu-PF cronies got the farms but failed to put it into productive use resulting in the country losing its cherished position as the breadbasket of the region. For the last decade, Zimbabwe has failed to produce enough to feed its own people, for Pete's sake!

Worse still, the total collapse of the country's agricultural sector was one of the contributory factors to the country's record breaking economic meltdown of the last 20 years. The collapse of the farming sector, commerce and industry has send unemployment rocketing into 80% plus and has yet to come down. Basic services such as supply of water and health care have all but collapsed. Millions of our people now live in abject poverty.  

To crown it all, Zanu-PF is using taxpayers' money to compensate the white farmers. Why should those who suffered from the chaotic land reform pay the compensation when those who inherited the looted farms and benefited from it all are once again allowed to go Scott free!

Of course, the ordinary people deeply regret Zanu-PF's chaotic and violent land reform because it is NOT what the nation fought and many died for! The land issue is one of the many botched issues in Zimbabwe that will have to be revisited once the nation rid itself of the Zanu-PF dictatorship. The country needs to put land into productive hands to have any hope of reviving the country's comatose economic; it will therefore nonsensical to allow the looters to keep the land.

2.    The chaotic and violence farm seizures were used by Zanu-PF as a smoke screen behind which to hide the party's sinister political scheme of using violence to deny the people of Zimbabwe their right to free, fair and credible elections. The party accused all its political critics and opponents including the ordinary Zimbabweans in the urban and rural areas of being against the party's land reforms and so the violence that always flared up in the farms during elections would soon sweep the whole nation.

Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because the country has been stuck for 39 years with this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu-PF dictatorship. It is ironic that the regime has used the botched land reform to justify rigging elections and extending its oppressive and ruinous reign. Fortunately for the nation, this is becoming increasing difficult to sustain.

When Mnangagwa seized power from his former boss and mentor, Robert Mugabe, in the November 2017 military coup; he promised to end corruption and to hold free, fair and credible elections. He knew the old worn-out excuses of blaming white farmers, western sanctions, etc. would never get the nation out of the economic mess the regime had landed us in. Alas, he failed to end the corruption and blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections and messed up the chance of ending Zimbabwe's isolation and economic meltdown.

Mnangagwa's resolve to compensate the white farmers is but a cheap bribe. He is offering the white farmers but a fraction of what the Zanu-PF thugs looted from them and, worse still, he is asking the impoverish taxpayers to foot the bill because the looters cannot stomach paying back a fraction of their vast loot. The world will not be so easily fooled. Poor Mnangagwa, it is his last throw of the dice and it will accomplish nothing!

The only way out now is for Zanu-PF to step down and allow the nation the time and space to implement the democratic reforms necessary to end the curse of rigged elections and pariah state!