Ward Anseeuw

Land, liberation and compromise in Southern Africa

On the eve of the crisis in Zimbabwe, one that was to inexorably pull its neighbours into a regional reconsideration of the politics of land, a workshop was held in November 1999 in Windhoek, Namibia. The delegates, all members of the regional non-governmental network, Mwelekeo wa NGO or Mwengo, had come together to assess the regrettable inaction surrounding the land situation in their respective countries. In his opening remarks Uhuru Dempers pointed out that the liberation struggle in all the countries in Southern Africa had been inspired by the colonial dispossession of land. Despite this, he went on to say, land reform remained an area of struggle for all the countries. He hoped that the legacy of a common history and on-going initiatives in the area of land reform and redistribution would inspire Southern African NGOs to review their local circumstances and collaborate in future on land policy across the region

Sowing the Whirlwind: Zimbabwe and Southern Africa

Zimbabwe, upheld as a model of racial reconciliation with a liberal constitution based on market principles, was in many respects the linchpin of the post-colonial order in Southern Africa. Though its record on governance and agrarian reform had become somewhat tarnished by the early 1990s, nonetheless Zimbabwe’s status as the first settler state in the region to embrace liberal constitutionalism provided the inspiration for the structuring of political settlements between white settlers and liberation movements in subsequent years in Namibia and South Africa. Underlying this perception of success were, however, serious structural problems in key areas of the economy including those inherited from the past such as unequal land distribution and they were further exacerbated by the post-colonial state’s continued failure to implement agrarian reform or address rural poverty. Moreover, under Robert Mugabe’s leadership, corruption by Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) had become endemic and gave rise to popular urban-based political opposition as well as a host of court challenges aimed at the governing party. The imposition of a debilitating structural reform programme, coupled with open discontent within the population, sowed the conditions for a revival of the land issue by a government increasingly desperate to hold on to power.

Liberation and Compromise

This book has sought to frame contemporary debates, policies and events surrounding the land question in Southern Africa in terms of three intertwined themes, the enduring role of the regional political economy, the effect of the transition and the important place of narrative. As has been demonstrated through examination of the empirical case studies drawn from the region, the political economy of settler colonialism and the transitional arrangements to majority rule in the embattled ex-settler states have been formative to the construction of the liberal-constitutional political regime and the accompanying constraints upon it. As a bulwark of neoliberalism produced in the wake of lengthy transitions, the liberal constitutional regime had not taken account of the underlying inequalities in the political economy of settler colonialism and thus replicated many of the contradictions inherent in it. When challenged by the failures of independence to realise the promise of liberation, be they justified or utopian, the institutions and political practices of the transition themselves became obstacles to addressing the structural features of the political economy that had allowed for black elite accumulation while entrenching white economic privileges. These transitional arrangements, of course, were drawn from a ‘happy convergence’ of neoliberalist institutions, past ‘dirigiste’ practices in settler states, African traditionalist assumptions of political power and the liberation movements’ politics of domination.

Understanding Land, Politics and Change in Southern Africa

The crisis in Zimbabwe has transformed a region that was once thought of as Africa’s emerging democratic bastion, where multiparty pluralism had transcended the politics of racial exclusion of the era of colonial settler states and new leaders had firmly committed themselves to market economies and reconciliation as avenues for prosperity and hope. The unexpected slide into state-sponsored anarchy has found echoes in the rise of local militancy on the land issue in neighbouring states, coupled with the apparent chorus of support for Robert Mugabe by fellow Southern Africa leaders. It has threatened to recast the region as a potential repository of instability and, as leaders tilted with their constitutional restrictions on presidential terms, some would even say undemocratic practice.

Darkness at Noon: South Africa

South Africa’s celebrated transformation from apartheid pariah to bastion of non-racial democracy has earned it an international reputation as a site of political plurality and market stability underwritten by a liberal constitution. And yet, with the most biased land distribution in the region, South Africa is arguably the country with the most pressing land question and in many ways the one which is most intractable. The African National Congress’ (ANC) wholesale embrace of neoliberalism, coupled with the considerable problems of political consolidation within the framework of the ‘grand compromise’ negotiated between itself and the National Party, preoccupied the new government in its initial term in office. The lack of attention given to land issues in the rural areas, however, did not manifest as a political challenge for the new government until the outbreak of violence in Zimbabwe. The fact that the economic gains of liberation had mainly benefited a black urban elite disguised the growing discontent among the growing ranks of unemployed and rural poor.

A Distant Thunder: Namibia

An announcement by Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab on 26 February 2004 that the Namibian government would begin to expropriate white farms triggered fears that Namibia may witness the kind of violence that accompanied Zimbabwe’s fast-track approach to land reform in 2000. After years of relative quiet, land reform re-emerged as a defining issue in Namibian politics. Despite more than a decade of independence and majority rule, nearly 200,000 black subsistence farmers and tenant labourers remain mired in poverty. Now radical elements both within and outside the ruling South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) are pointing to the continuing failure to redress the vastly disproportionate patterns of land ownership between black and white Namibians, and are pressuring the government to adopt Zimbabwean style ‘fast-track’ land reforms. This heightened government rhetoric has alarmed the country’s 4,200 white commercial farmers and, increasingly, international investors.