Opinion / Columnist
Zanu PF is evicting resettled blacks, Operation Mavhotera Papi mark 2023 in all but name
13 Feb 2024 at 19:17hrs | Views
"HUNDREDS of farmers and villagers in Mashonaland West province are facing eviction from the land they occupied on the strength of offer letters issued by politicians and lands officers during the chaotic land reform programme," stated one report.
"The situation is reportedly being replicated in all the country's provinces amid reports that government officials and politicians had parcelled out the land for cash.
"Government officials, who occupied lands offices then, and beneficiaries of the 99-year land leases, sold farmland to unsuspecting villagers, mostly former farm workers who found themselves homeless after their employers lost farms through the resettlement programme at the turn of the century."
Why am I not surprise! This is a Zanu PF political script we should all be familiar with by now.
Some of the people are being evicted today have lived on the same area for 20 years. This is a regime that has thrived on ignorance and fear backed up by brute force.
Zanu PF rigged the 2023 elections as SADC, AU and Zimbabwe's own ZHRC election observers readily stated in their reports. The regime has always conducted a post-election analysis of the voting trends to identify those sections of the Zimbabwe electorate who dare reject the regime. The resettled farmers were picked up as one such group who did not vote for Zanu PF last August and it is pay back time!
All those who were resettled by the regime are expected to vote for Zanu PF or they will be punished. Period!
In 2008 Zanu PF instigated Operation Mavhotera Papi in which the party set out to punish the people of Zimbabwe for having rejected the party in the March 2008 elections. This is Operation Mavhotera Papi mark 2023 phase 1 in all but name. No doubt other sections of Zimbabwean voters will be visited and punished in due course.
The resettled families were given a piece of paper allowing them stay, a piece of paper that can be revoked by the regime at the drop of a hat. The regime was very careful never to grant these settler anything legally binding like a Title Deed! The resettled families were denied ownership of the land for the same reason the rural peasants were denied ownership - to deny them economic power keeping them poor and easy to control.
Zanu PF has stubbornly refused to grant rural area folks title deeds to even 1/2 sq km of land on which the peasants' homestead is built!
In Zimbabwe the rural people are the poorest of the poor. The white colonial regime did not allow blacks to own land even the land on which their mud hut was built. All the land in the rural areas was owned by the tribe in trust hence the name Tribal Trust Lands (TTL).
Blacks were never allowed to have the confidence that they are settled and can invest in a better future. They always lived in fear of being asked to move and they were moved many times by the village head, chief and by the regime.
If you are a white person, you owned the land on which your house or business activities depended on. Whites could borrow money to develop using the Title Deed of the land as collateral security.
After independence Zanu PF kept the TTL policy because it too wanted to keep the masses poor for selfish political reasons. The rural area are Zanu PF's strongholds because the party's operative are the lords and the rural folk are nothing more than medieval serfs!
After 43 years of waiting to be granted title deed to the 1/2 sq. km of land on which their homestead is built, the rural peasants must claim it as their birth right. They must stake their claim by building a decent homestead fit for human habitation in the 21st century complete with clean water, toilets, 100 fruit trees, 1 000 indigenous trees, etc.
If Bona Mugabe is allowed own 12 farms over 30 000 sq. km of land, enough to fit Lesotho; a peasant is only asking for title deeds to 1/2 sq. km, that is not asking for too much!
As a people, we blacks have been slow in realising and asserting our basic freedoms and rights. We have allowed others to ride roughshod over us, we are the downtrodden. We and we alone can end this curse of being the downtrodden by reclaiming our freedoms and rights as a birth right and not a privilege to be given today and taken away tomorrow at the whim of some tyrant!
"The situation is reportedly being replicated in all the country's provinces amid reports that government officials and politicians had parcelled out the land for cash.
"Government officials, who occupied lands offices then, and beneficiaries of the 99-year land leases, sold farmland to unsuspecting villagers, mostly former farm workers who found themselves homeless after their employers lost farms through the resettlement programme at the turn of the century."
Why am I not surprise! This is a Zanu PF political script we should all be familiar with by now.
Some of the people are being evicted today have lived on the same area for 20 years. This is a regime that has thrived on ignorance and fear backed up by brute force.
Zanu PF rigged the 2023 elections as SADC, AU and Zimbabwe's own ZHRC election observers readily stated in their reports. The regime has always conducted a post-election analysis of the voting trends to identify those sections of the Zimbabwe electorate who dare reject the regime. The resettled farmers were picked up as one such group who did not vote for Zanu PF last August and it is pay back time!
All those who were resettled by the regime are expected to vote for Zanu PF or they will be punished. Period!
In 2008 Zanu PF instigated Operation Mavhotera Papi in which the party set out to punish the people of Zimbabwe for having rejected the party in the March 2008 elections. This is Operation Mavhotera Papi mark 2023 phase 1 in all but name. No doubt other sections of Zimbabwean voters will be visited and punished in due course.
The resettled families were given a piece of paper allowing them stay, a piece of paper that can be revoked by the regime at the drop of a hat. The regime was very careful never to grant these settler anything legally binding like a Title Deed! The resettled families were denied ownership of the land for the same reason the rural peasants were denied ownership - to deny them economic power keeping them poor and easy to control.
Zanu PF has stubbornly refused to grant rural area folks title deeds to even 1/2 sq km of land on which the peasants' homestead is built!
In Zimbabwe the rural people are the poorest of the poor. The white colonial regime did not allow blacks to own land even the land on which their mud hut was built. All the land in the rural areas was owned by the tribe in trust hence the name Tribal Trust Lands (TTL).
Blacks were never allowed to have the confidence that they are settled and can invest in a better future. They always lived in fear of being asked to move and they were moved many times by the village head, chief and by the regime.
If you are a white person, you owned the land on which your house or business activities depended on. Whites could borrow money to develop using the Title Deed of the land as collateral security.
After independence Zanu PF kept the TTL policy because it too wanted to keep the masses poor for selfish political reasons. The rural area are Zanu PF's strongholds because the party's operative are the lords and the rural folk are nothing more than medieval serfs!
After 43 years of waiting to be granted title deed to the 1/2 sq. km of land on which their homestead is built, the rural peasants must claim it as their birth right. They must stake their claim by building a decent homestead fit for human habitation in the 21st century complete with clean water, toilets, 100 fruit trees, 1 000 indigenous trees, etc.
If Bona Mugabe is allowed own 12 farms over 30 000 sq. km of land, enough to fit Lesotho; a peasant is only asking for title deeds to 1/2 sq. km, that is not asking for too much!
As a people, we blacks have been slow in realising and asserting our basic freedoms and rights. We have allowed others to ride roughshod over us, we are the downtrodden. We and we alone can end this curse of being the downtrodden by reclaiming our freedoms and rights as a birth right and not a privilege to be given today and taken away tomorrow at the whim of some tyrant!
Source - zimbabwelight.blogspot.com
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