Background
The national question of land informed the resistance of blacks against settlers at the very onset of colonialism culminating in the armed struggle whose rallying cry was Land, Land!!! The struggle for sovereignty and self-determination was premised on the black person’s right to access, control and use of natural resources of Zimbabwe. The land question has always been and indeed remains at the core Zimbabwe’s political, economic and social development. The political tension within the country and with the former colonial power, Britain, is rooted in the land question.
The 1893 invasion of the Ndebele Kingdom leading to the creation of the Gwaai and Shangani Reserves; the 1896-97 Shona and Ndebele rebellions first Chimurenga/Imfazwe (war of liberation) against the British colonial settlers; the nationalist struggle in the period before and after the Second World War; the second Chimurenga/Imfazwe which gave birth to an independent Zimbabwe following the contentious Lancaster House Constitutional negotiations as well as the current internal political developments all bear testimony to the centrality of the lands question in Zimbabwe.
The vehicle through which colonialists established a footing in the country was the Rudd Concession of 1888, fraudulently obtained from King Lobengula by the representatives of the British South Africa Company. The company under the then Prime Minister of the Cape, Cecil John Rhodes, who was obsessed with the creation of a Witwatersrand north of the Limpopo river subsequently sought and was granted a Royal Charter in 1889, which, among other things, granted it authority to administer and govern the region encompassing present day Zimbabwe. King Lobengula repudiated the Rudd Concession and made representations to Queen Victoria stating that he would not “recognise the paper, as it contains neither my words nor the words of those who got it”. The royal response was that “it would unwise to exclude the white men”
Having failed to find the ‘Second Rand” in Mashonaland and on the assumption that there existed more gold reserves in Matebeland in 1893, destroyed Lobengula’s Kingdom, seized and plundered cattle and other livestock and property and subdued the populace. Indeed the Company set up a “ Loot Committee” which determined that settlers who participated in the war would be rewarded with a free farm measuring 3000 morgen (6 350 acres) anywhere in Matebeleland however with no obligation to occupy the land; each man was guaranteed 15 reef and 5 alluvial gold claims, while the loot – Ndebele cattle- was to be shared with half going to the company, the remaining half being divided equally among the men and officers. The Rhodesia Herald of July 1893, in urging settlers to pursue the land grab now that gold was unavailable, stated that the dispossessed blacks did “ not use a large portion of their rich and fertile country, and the indemnity for expenses incurred could be paid without hardships to the natives in farms and mining ground” Henceforth the dispesal of the African populace into mostly marginal lands would be embarked upon with a ruthless determination, following the creation of the Gwaai and Shangani Reserves in Matebeleland in 1894.
Historical records for period leading to the 1896-97 First Chimurenga/Imfazwe depict a sorry picture of systematic violations of the rights and dignity of the indigenous people under white domination. Confirming the official sanctioning of this policy, the Rhodesia Herald of 19th April 1895 reported thus-
“ For the Rhodesian it was absurd to take the untutored savage, accustomed as he is from time immemorial to superstitious and primitive ideas of law and justice, and suddenly try to govern him by the same code of laws that govern a people with many centuries of experience and enlightenment”
The British Government’s Southern Rhodesia Order in Council of 1898 gave impetus to the policy of racial segregation by providing that the BSAC “ shall from time to time assign to Natives inhabiting Southern Rhodesia, land sufficient for their agricultural and pastoral requirements”. Invariably, such land was located in marginal and low potential areas.
By 1914, white settlers, numbering 23 730 owned 19 032 329 acres of land while an estimated 752 000 Africans occupied a total of 21 390 080 acres(R. Palmer: Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia: Heinemann 1977). The end of the First World War saw the BSAC embarking on a Land Settlement Policy through the launch of elaborate and extensive campaign of wooing immigrants to Southern Rhodesia. The British government under pressure to accommodate veterans of the war as well as mitigate the demands on it arising from the post war economic depression, lent support to the campaign. An increase in the settler population necessarily had to be matched with the availability of additional land for the new immigrants.
The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 provided for the restricted rights of the African to land ownership. The Europeans totalling 50 000 were apportioned 51% of the land constituting 49 149 174 acres; the blacks numbering an estimated 1 081 000 were apportioned 22% of the land which was 28 591 606 acres. A further wave of new European settlers escaping from post Second World War economic hardships in Europe resulted in the phenomenal rise in the white population from 80 500 in 1945 to 219 000 by 1960.
The entrenched policy of wholesale evictions and forced removals of black communities was scaled up to make further land available. In the decade 1945-55 at least 100 000 people were forcibly moved into Reserves, some of which were located in the inhospitable and tsetse-ridden areas of Gokwe and Muzarabani. Overcrowding and land degradation in the Reserves was confirmed by a former Land Development Officer in the Native Agriculture Department, one Ken Brown, in “ Land in Southern Rhodesia” that “ the majority of arable areas in reserves are already so eroded and so exhausted of fertility that nothing short of a 12 to 15 year rest to grass will restore them to a state of structure and fertility which would enable economic crop production to commence’ Overcrowding led people to settle on riverbanks, steep slopes. Grazing areas and fragile land, posing great environmental risks.
The Land Tenure Act of 1969 divided the land in half with 44,9 million acres allocated to each race. Blacks could not own land in white designated areas that included the urban areas, they could only reside there under Influx control laws, provided they were gainfully employed and had authorisation from the municipal authorities to reside on white land. The agricultural economy of the black was now reduced to subsistence levels. At independence in 1980, 70% of Zimbabwe’s best arable land was in the hands of whites that constituted less than 1% of the country’s population. Black people who were in the majority had to eke out an existence in congested and barren communal lands. Land has been pivotal to the country’s political problems, with the armed struggle premised on the basis of restitution of the land that had been illegally and violently taken away from the black indigenous population.
The restoration of the black man’s dignity and a reversal of the injustice visited on indigenous Zimbabweans could only be carried out through the land reform programme.
Rejecting the notion of “white justice for the black” and advocating for the notion of “native justice for the native”, the Rhodesian Herald of 7th January 1893 reported that “ For the Rhodesian it was absurd to take the untutored savage, accustomed as he is from time immemorial to superstitious and primitive ideas of law and justice, and suddenly try to govern him with the same code of laws that govern a people with many centuries of experience and enlightenment”. It urged settler farmers to “continue pegging the way” land, now that the gold goblets could not be found.
With the coming into power of the Rhodesian Front in 1962, any pretence at accommodating blacks was abandoned. Henceforth racial segregation would be pursued with vigour. Following the declaration of UDI, Anglican Bishop Kenneth Skelton reacting to the 1969 constitution stated, and “It is not good enough to wring our hands and say we must accept it and try and live with it. Justice is more important than law and order and can sometimes be incompatible with it….The Church is being challenged toady every churchman is being challenged. Are you tamely, passively to accept a constitution based on fear and therefore denying Christ? Are tamely, passively, going to accept a Land Act based on racial segregation and therefore denying Christ?”
The land issue was central to all the initiatives aimed at resolving the political crisis in Rhodesia. The near collapse of the Lancaster House conference in 1979 revolved around the land question. The Patriotic Front’s position at the negotiations was that the recovery of land which the black people had been dispossessed was the raison d’ etre of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. It was put to those involved in the talks that the dispossession without compensation was not a thing of the past, but rather an occurrence still within the memories of living people. In addition the Patriotic Front objected to British provisions in the draft Bill of Rights that sought to convert the freedom from deprivation of property into a right to retain privililege and perpetuate injustice whilst upholding the status quo. The final agreement did not address the land problem adequately; the Patriotic Front accepted the Lancaster House Constitution on the understanding that the UK, the USA and other donor nations would pay for land needed for resettlement. The then President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere during a press conference on 16th October 1979, opined that it would be impossible for an independent Government in Zimbabwe to “ tax Zimbabweans in order to compensate people who took it away from them through the gun. Really the British cannot have it both ways. They made this an issue and the are now making vague remarks mixing rural DEVELOPMENT AID WITH THE QUESTION OF LAND COMPENSATION….The two are separate…. The British paid money to Kenya. That the future government of Zimbabwe must pay compensation is a British demand and the British must promise in London to make the money available”.
As part of the Declaration of Rights, the British inserted section 16 of the draft Constitution which sought to prohibit the compulsory acquisition of property of any description except under the authority of law, which required the acquiring authority to give reasonable notice of its intention to acquire the property in question. The property could only be acquired in the interests of defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, and town and country planning. In the event of compulsory acquisition, the acquiring authority would be required to pay prompt and adequate compensation. Being part of the Declaration of Rights, section 16 would be entrenched for a period of 10 years from the date of independence. During this period, any amendments to the Constitution would be on the basis of a 100% parliamentary vote (i.e. every member of Parliament supporting such amendment). The Constitution had a clause reserving 20 of the 100 Parliamentary seats to whites. The Patriotic Front’s view was that such entrenchments of the Bill of Rights was unduly restrictive of the sovereignty of Parliament of Zimbabwe and that it granted a veto to the minority, contrary to democratic norms and in contradiction to the basic objective of the national liberation struggle. In addition, the concept of willing seller willing buyer precluded the possibility of a planned and systematic process of land reform in the country