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World Bank report vindicates President The realisation that land is the key to poverty reduction and eradication is the basis for our country’s home-grown and agrarian-driven National Economic Revival Programme (NERP). This realisation was also the reason why the land issue was a rallying point in the build-up to the June 2000 legislative and March 2002 presidential elections as was coined in the slogan "Land is the economy and the economy is land". This is why the recent World Bank report titled "Policies for growth and poverty reduction", as reported in The Sunday Mail (August 3 2003), embraces this universal truism and vindicates President Mugabe in that it identifies land to be the cause of social conflicts and the key to poverty reduction and economic growth in the developing world. President Mugabe is vindicated on three fronts. Firstly, he was right in abandoning the Bretton Woods institutions’ prescriptions such as Esap and its surrogate Zimprest, policies which are on record as never having worked anywhere in the developing world, and which effectively served to reverse the gains the Government had made since independence in 1980. Esap and Zimprest prescribed the reduction of State spending on essential services such as education and health delivery, the privatisation of strategic parastatals and the liberalisation of key sectors of the economy, all of which brought untold suffering on the people. The resultant economic hardships have been viewed in some sectors to have been well calculated moves which were meant to pave the way for the emergence of a pro-western opposition. Secondly, the President and the ruling party were right in embarking on the land reform programme which was a rallying point in both the First and Second Chimurengas of 1896 and 1966 respectively. To date, the Government has delivered over 11 million hectares to over 300 000 families who had been condemned to unproductive agro-ecological regions as a result of colonial injustices which privileged a few thousand whites at the expense of millions of indigenous black people. Thirdly, the World Bank report endorses the President’s preference for a home-grown economic revival programme based on land where it says: "The possession of land rights also typically ensures a baseline of shelter and food supply and allows people to turn latent assets into live capital through entrepreneurial activity . . . strengthening of poor people’s land rights and easing of barriers to land transactions can set in motion a wide range of social and economic benefits, including improving governance, empowerment of women and other marginalised people, increase private investment, more rapid economic growth and poverty reduction." Wasn’t the World Bank chief economist, Dr Nicholas Stern, talking about NERP here? The Zanu-PF election manifestoes for the 2000 legislative and 2002 presidential elections identified land as the key to poverty reduction and eradication among black Zimbabweans. Various regional bodies such as Sadc and Comesa, and even the Commonwealth Troika, with the obvious exception of Don MacKinnon, identified land to be at the core of Zimbabwe’s socio-economic and political problems. Thinking Zimbabweans in both rural and urban constituencies identified with the Zanu-PF election manifestoes which highlighted that land ownership was the reason for the disparity between the scandalous wealth of the white minority groups and the abysmal poverty of the black majority, which is the reason why they endorsed the ruling party at the polls. Not surprisingly, the threat posed by land reform to white sectarian interests is the reason why racist Rhodies and their misguided black surrogates hate the President and the ruling party, and spawned a stooge movement in the vain hope of subverting black empowerment through the preservation of the status quo. This is why the MDC, which was formed primarily to safeguard the interests of Rhodie commercial farmers, tried to trivialise the land issue in the run-up to the legislative and presidential elections, even to the extent of using fictitious surveys from the Helen-Suzmann Foundation and the so-called Mass Public Opinion Institute to the effect that land was not an issue among the black populace as they wanted jobs. What myopia and naivety? What will you say now Morgan Tsvangirai, now that the World Bank chief economist, Dr Nicholas Stern, says: "Land policies are the root of social conflicts in countries as diverse as Cambodia, Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire." What will you say now that the Bretton Woods institutions, which you lobbied to cut lines of credit to Zimbabwe, are of the same mind as our revered President, whose shoe- laces you are not even fit to tie? I know you will not say anything since you do not have a mind of your own. If you are to say anything, it won’t surprise me to hear you parrot Dr Stern’s words, oblivious of their meaning, of course! I have often wondered where you were between 1966 and 1980, some people were in the bush fighting for total independence from colonial rule whilst others were in schools, colleges and universities freeing themselves from ignorance. Where were you Tsvangirai since you are obviously not free from either evil? The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
