The Truth About Land In Zimbabwe

To the president of the Global African Congress (GAC), the executives of the GAC and the representatives of GAC and all the organizers of the International People’s Assembly on Zimbabwe, your Excellency the High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, the members of Parliament from South Africa, members of Parliament from Zimbabwe and from the Central Committee – my party – ZANU PF, my colleagues, comrades and friends we are grateful to be here the Zimbabwe delegation that arrived here this morning.

We appreciate what you are going through as black people. Some of us have studied and lived here. We know what it feels like to be a black person in the UK or in the USA.

Blacks Thrown off the Land 

In the 1960’s as a young woman in primary school I experienced seeing lots of Lorries filled with people moving from Chivhu Masvingo.

They were crossing Harare through my area – my homeland which is called Mhondoro and I asked where all these Lorries are going to. People said to me these are the banished people who are being moved because they occupy the fertile land which is suppose to be for the white man.

Brothers and sisters I was not told this, I did not read about it in a history book, I saw it and I experienced it as a young lady.

They were being moved to Gokwe in an area which was infested with wild animals and tsetse flies which caused sleeping sickness and fever. Africans being Africans and being determined as always, were moved into an area of poor soils.

They decided to make a living out of that environment and now it is one of the areas that has the best cotton in the world.

Seventy per cent of the cotton grown in Zimbabwe is coming from that area where [black] people were thrown out, into an area that did not have enough rain and poor fertility in the soil, but they made the best out of it and somehow god was with them.

We might talk about the feelings of the white people in Zimbabwe and how the British and the Americans are feeling about their kith and kin but I now understand them thoroughly because of the experiences I have had being on the land. Those white people were having it good and I can’t even find the right word to describe it.

Those people as we saw them when we decided to fight for our rights we thought that having the ‘vote’ was the final victory. We thought that by living in Harare and putting out ties on as usual from the colonial times we were taught to drink our tea at 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock. We thought that was the best thing to have.

But I tell you that the white man in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Zambia and Malawi is still having it good.

There is no where else in the world than in Southern Africa where the whites are living a fantastic and excellent life where they continue to exploit your people.

The white person in Zimbabwe as I grew up and as I see him every day, he wears his long socks, his khaki shorts and shirt and he walks around in Harare for the one to two hours that he comes to town and he goes back to the land.

I used to say there must be something wrong with these guys, why do they like to stay on the land but do you know this is where all the money is. They are the richest people in the world. You tell them to come and live here in Britain – they will kill you.

Fighting For Our Land – (Chimurenga)

We had the first Chimurenga in the 1890’s when Cecil Rhodes stood in the British Parliament and he promised the British who were going through economic problems in the 1890’s that he would go and find food and the solution to the problems the British were facing in this country.

The first Chimurenga was about the land. They held onto the land which our ancestors fought for. They were defeated because they did not have the technology to withstand the enemy.

He went and found the diamonds, the crops and cooking oil that they needed. Rhodes brought back the money and even up till now you still have Rhodes scholarships where the British and Americans benefit.

When Rhodes came with the settler regime and the British and started walking through the forest and killing as they proceeded and taking over, nobody talks about the pioneer columns anymore or the brutality that took place when people were shot. We had spears and they had machine guns and cannons.

Thousands of our people perished. Nobody talked about that violence. Today you can’t even find any history book that talks of that violence perpetrated against us. They moved on into Zimbabwe. They destroyed what they could find. There was a lot of resistance.

The second Chimurenga came that we have experienced and among you there might even be children of those who have stayed in detention. There were people who stayed in prison for 20 to 27 years.  They were tortured in prison and some became sterile. They were tortured and sterilised.

Now we have the third Chimurenga and we are saying enough is enough. After 1980 our President and his cabinet in the political leadership decided to reconcile with the whites the three armies that were in Zimbabwe – the ZIPFRA Forces, Ian Smith army and the ZANLA forces. They said we cannot have a civilian war in Zimbabwe. They reconciled and from experience and from what you see now it was the black man who was always apologetic. It was the black man who reconciled. It was not the other way around.

Again we were seen as fools because when we reconciled we wanted to sit in the offices in the urban areas and suburbs that we were not allowed to stay in but the white man decided to stay on the land where it mattered. He decided to stay in his mines where it mattered and this is where we have threatened the West, the British and the Americans because this is where it matters.

Land Distribution before Resettlement

The Zimbabwe government has removed most of the archaic laws that were there, where we had all these laws that were used by Ian Smith and his ancestors. The native reserve order, the land apportionment acts and many of the laws that you may have read in your papers most of them have now been changed and we stepped on the white mans toes when we decided to change the land laws in Zimbabwe.

When I say the Mugabe is not the issue let me tell you my experience. I am a member of ZANU PF and I am very proud of my party.  It is a revolutionary movement that has liberated me and my children.

Even if I bring my brothers and sisters who are black who are in the MDC Party (Movement for Democratic Change) and are working with the whites, if you were to ask them [about the land issue], they also want the land because that is our base and our root.

But this is where we have created enemies all over the world because we have said that we are reversing the reconciliation policy because it has not worked for us. We are the ones who are apologetic but they are continuing with their ways disregarding what our requests are.

We have said that we will take the most fertile land back. The native reserves land – the African land – the rocky areas where we were pushed to on infertile soil, no good rainfall patterns is 29 million acres.

The native purchase areas where the better African farmer farmed and who had the skill, which is on the fringes of the commercial farm land for the white man is 8 million acres.

The European areas before the 1980’s was 49 million acres and there was an assigned land area of 6 million acres.

There was forestry for government state land of 3 million acres. All this land that was for the Europeans was on the best land on the most fertile land in good rainfall areas in the most beautiful parts of Zimbabwe. They were all European areas.

This is what we have taken back. This is why Comrade President Robert Mugabe and his team are in trouble.

When Mugabe reconciled with the whites and said let us move together as a Nation and came together and united all the political parties and said let us move as a Nation we were found to be fools again because with that reconciliation it was misinterpreted that we do not know what we want.

Now that we have decided that enough is enough Mugabe has had pressure from war veterans, mothers and children who are pressurizing Mugabe because they have been saying from 1980 we have been looking at you Comrade President and you have promised to deliver what the three Chimurenga’s should have delivered now we want what you promised us. So he was taken to task.

Blood actually flowed in Zimbabwe as people fought and died for the land but President Mugabe we have not yet seen the results. This was in 1998 after the failure of the land conference which was sponsored by the British and Western European countries which they failed to deliver.

Zimbabwean’s Resettled onto the Land

In 1998 the first tract of the resettlement program started because the people were saying enough is enough. Robert Mugabe did not move anyone onto the farms. It was the ordinary people of Zimbabwe who moved onto the farms.

Women are the farmers in Zimbabwe at every level. Eighty percent of the farmers in Zimbabwe are women. We have had from 1980 a resettlement program when I was an officer when the people were settled back onto the land.

71,000 families were resettled from 1981-1987.  Then the British stopped releasing their money. All the European countries had their money for infrastructure development in Zimbabwe and to assist with the resettlement program, but the land was to be purchased by the British, Zimbabwean and American governments. But they did not keep their promises.

Our people said but we do not need any ones money. What we want is to get out land back because we are just taking back what is ours.

From the year 2000 when the MDC started their organisation and their campaign to bring whites back onto the land we have had for Manicaland Province – from the first tract program where the people have said to hell with the government system we are moving onto the land – 1,015 families resettled. Families in Zimbabwe you multiply by six or nine because our families are big.

Beneficiaries of the Government’s Fast Tract Program:

Our country is divided into 10 provinces. 

·        Mashonaland East we have 3,172.

·        Mashonaland Central 1,165 families properly resettled.

·        Mashonaland West 6,354 families resettled. They have more farmland there.

·        Matabeleland North does not have much land 191 families resettled.

·        Matabeleland South again a derelict land and very dry where 242 were resettled

·        Manicaland in the Eastern part of the country where 10,926 families resettled

·        Mashonaland East where 22,377 families have been resettled.

·        Mashonaland Central 12,541 families have been resettled.

In total, the fast tract resettlement program has resettled 228,778 families as of December 2002.

You can visit us and ask the 228,778 families who have been resettled and ask them if they are related to the President as my colleague says. These are Zimbabweans who have benefited.

The real issue here is the interest of the West. We have taken over their kith and kin’s livelihood. We have disturbed the livelihood of the white man.

Purchase the Audio of Mavis Chidzonga speeking at the IPAZ event.

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