-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 8, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
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EDITORIAL: LAND FOR ZIMBABWE
The African country of Zimbabwe used to be called Rhodesia,
after the British imperialist and diamond millionaire Cecil
Rhodes. Rhodesia's last prime minister, Ian Smith, was
known for his heavy-handed racist rule in a country where
whites make up 1 percent of the population but have
controlled the economy and reaped its benefits ever since
the area fell under British colonial rule.
Zimbabwe has now been politically independent for 20
years. The African people, led by the national liberation
groups ZANU and ZAPU, won their freedom in 1980, but the
tiny class of wealthy whites still holds the country's
richest farmland and much more.
Last month about 50 landless farmers and veterans of the
anti-colonial guerrilla war occupied Smith's 4,000-acre
ranch. Unfortunately Smith, like so many of his cronies,
wasn't there. He spends his time in a wealthy suburb of the
capital. But the squatters, especially those veterans who
had survived the hard years fighting Smith's army, no doubt
felt a great sense of historic justice anyway as they
hunkered down in quarters formerly occupied by their enemy.
This step toward long-delayed justice is just one of many
seizures of white-owned lands in recent months that have
been supported by President Robert Mugabe. Now the
Zimbabwean government has announced it will seize 841
white-owned farms and hand them over to landless Africans
by the end of June. Last month a law was passed empowering
the government to seize private land without compensation.
Those who confiscated the whole continent of Africa and
stole its people to boot are of course crying bloody murder
at all this. They accuse Mugabe of a political ploy, since
elections are coming up. Some in the progressive movement
echo this charge, adding that Mugabe has persecuted those
to his left who have long advocated redistribution of the
land. But even if Mugabe should have done it earlier, and
his motivation to do it now is "political," that doesn't
invalidate the land seizures.
Would anyone progressive oppose the Emancipation
Proclamation because Abraham Lincoln should have freed the
slaves earlier, did so as a last resort in order to win the
Civil War, and then did it only after African Americans
were already freeing themselves en masse?
If it's "political" to seize the land, that means Mugabe
is doing it to please the masses. In other words, the
people want the government to make this move. It's about
time.
Mugabe may very well hope that a deal can be struck with
Britain over this question. The Zimbabwe government has
been trying to get Britain to buy out the white farmers.
But the wily imperialists in London would rather see a few
farmers killed in these land battles than admit to the
principle that the colonizers owe something to those
they've oppressed for over a century.
Seizing the land and distributing it among the veterans
and other Black farmers won't change the class character of
the Zimbabwe government, which is bourgeois. But it will be
a big step toward bringing the economy more in line with
the political gains of the national democratic revolution
against colonialism and white rule.
- END -
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