Zimbabwe land reform scam - 13 years after the genocide in Matebeleland and Midlands

This article intends to capture the poignant moment when Zanu began its unpunished abuse of public office soon after Zimbabwe's independence.

All along Zanu felt a false sense of achievement in criminally subverting the will of the people since 1980 onwards as well as reversing the gains of both the liberation and the armed struggles.

Through the falsification of their murky role in the struggle for freedom they wrestled ownership of that liberation history from the public, introduced narratives out of sync with the objective of the struggle.

They worked over the years to carve a political niche for themselves that is beyond reproach, where they are never held responsible and accountable for the harmful ways of mismanaging the affairs of the country.

No consequences over the mass murders of innocent and unarmed civilians in Matebeleland and The Midlands. No consequences to the looting of the War Victims Compensation Fund where some of its leaders claimed 120% injuries and disability. Police dockets for high profile claimants in cabinet, parliament, army and other government departments just disappeared.

Disappearing a police investigation docket is in itself a criminal offence. No evidence of the country benefiting from the international good-will through the 1981 ZIMCORD. No consequences to the illegal seizure of Zipra and Zapu properties and war archives which they handed over to the British and American intelligence organisations and this brings us to the core of the article.

After seizing land from white farmers against advice because of the immediate real impact such actions would have on the economy and other aspects of life, Zanu has made an incredibly dramatic u-turn on the program without making a coherent explanation and an honest apology to the public. They do so without shame after noone was held accountable for the gruesome crimes including murder and rape committed by their supporters on  black farm workers, white farmers , livestock and other property, etc Congratulations though, for sobering up and swallowing their uselessly exaggerated fake pride. They show no remorse on the magnitude of crime and damage to life in the country over the years.

Untrammelled arrogance in claiming victory over colonialists by day while they sup with the former colonial masters continues to define who exactly Zanu is for us all to see.

I have strongly objected to government selective compensation to white farmers before , while they are silent on Zipra ex-combatants farms. Compensation is in itself an admission of wrongful treatment of a person or group of persons.

A comparison of the two cases should better illustrate the injustice to Zipra ex-combatants most vividly. All land in white hands was seized by the colonizers and allocated to white people in the 1890s.  All Zipra farms were bought in the open market and tittle deeds were acquired. White farmers resisted black freedom. In the process they killed many people demanding freedom, both civilians and guerillas. Ex-Zipra fought to achieve black freedom which Zanu used to dispossess them of property collectively acquired.

Ex-Zipras bought the farms and other properties with their Assembly Point Demobilization pay outs. We do not know why Zanla did not do the same. Without reason Zanu unawfully seized the properties and Zapus archives as collective punishment within the armbit of the genocide they committed on the people of Matebeleland and The Midlands whose other intentions are still ongoing to date.

Many ex-Zipra were killed soon they were disarmed.  It is now 43 yrs and Zanu pretends up to this point there is nothing wrong with the theft of private property while they see everything right in compensating for stolen land and even returning some of the farms to the whites in addition to the farms belonging to their friends that were never gazzetted. White friends who from time to time help to pay civil servants as bribery. Neocolonialism can never be as crude and crass as in this case.

The Zanu government does not shed light on the legal status of those properties nor the whereabouts of the tittle deeds. We know that some buidings such as Magnet House in Bulawayo's Joshua Nkomo St , between 10th Avenue and 11th Avenue is being used by the Central Intelligence Organization for 43 years.

It has been badly run down, dilapidated with broken windows and falling doors, giving a clue as to the current state of the rest of the properties. Some farms were rented out to Zanu cronies as economic empowerment to them while the owners languish in abject poverty or died as paupers. They dont say who the tenants on our properties are paying the rentals to. If they were resold they dont say who signed as seller to effect deeds transfer.

Clear case of fraud committed by individuals in government. This would have been done without the consent of the property directors like the late Velaphi Ncube.

Its a whole string of scandals where Zanu criminally helped themselves to stolen property for political ends.

The biggest insult to us as Zipra and the Zimbabwe general public is the whooping amount of US3.5 billion compensation to white farmers to be paid by the tax payer already burdened by perpetually skyrocketing cost of living, the highest in the region.

Taxes are raked in by government through all manner of economic activities people may be engaged in.  

The individual net worth of many Zanu bourgeois leaders and cronies who are obscenely rich which wealth was mostly acquired through systemic and deeply embedded corruption and other forms of political patronage scams, is more than US$3.5 billion.

Collectively they hold wealth that is more than what the country owes to international finance houses amounting to US$22 billion.

Given the chaotic manner of land re-distribution since the year 2000 we now understand why such an important program where national interests were at stake, was carried out in the midst of a sand-storm. Zanu wanted a cover up for the massive scandal of looting land. It has been reported that the Mugabe family own 15 named farms through this programme. There is no doubt that the rest of Zanu elites and surrogates helped themselves to more than one farm each, contrary to stated policy.

So the villagization of war veterans farms was another smokescreen to conceal the Zanu land heist.

The absence of a transparent land audit serves to confirm the scandal as there is no reason whatsoever not to carry out such a simple excercise.

It therefore means that the US$3.5 billion from taxpayers money is actually being used to buy farms for Zanu people who took the land, the improvements, farm machinery, crops, plantations clothing, furniture, livestock.

This is outrageously gross. The same people dipped their sausage fingers into the farm mechanization program with the sudden acquisition of state of the art imported farm equipment in addition to what they had seized from white farmers.

There is no evidence that such a dispensation made Zimbabwe food secure. Everyday South African registered trucks with double trailers bring-in maize suggesting that government is actually importing the staple food.

There is no explanation to what happened to the unpaid for farm impliments dished out to so called black farmers. For all we know most of it has since been resold or is decaying on farms awaiting disposal at the time of death of the beneficiaries.

The same farmers continue to be pampered/bribed with presidential inputs without any aota of meaningful selleable agro outputs.

This is besides the favoured access to capital in commercial banks.

Whatever the state of agrucultural activities is in this country truth is the black farmers have been on land for 25 years and should be able to pay the US$3.5 billion to the white farmers.

No sane person can bequeth such debt to an economy already on its knees. This is grossly unfair and not sustainable. Most African economies have been crippled by debt and only radical transformation can rescue them from the deadly claws of colonialism and multi national capital.

The deafening silence of Zanu over the events in the African Sahel region simply confirms the obvious, that the self serving Zanu are firmly located in the neocolonial nexus.

All we need to do is peel iof the very thin vernier around the truth.

The now tired and unintelligent rhetoric about revolution whose shelf life long expired is continuously being pumped into the public psyche, a public that is largely unable to comprehend Zanus committment to lies and deception.

Moses Mzila Nkalange (Ndlovu) is a former opposition MDC senior official