Why some find Julius Malema's views on Zimbabwe so provocative

South African political rabble rouser Julius Malema was in Zimbabwe over the weekend. During and immediately after his brief visit he ruffled a lot of feathers in his host city as well as at home. It is clear that he finds Zimbabwe's 'revolution' inspiring for his own battles, but what he means as praise for Zimbabwe sometimes comes out sounding as mockery. Still, his views are partly provocative because they offer a a view of the events in Zimbabwe that is diametrically opposed to the dominant South African and western narrative of the country as a 'failed state' that South Africa should carefully avoid emulating.

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Zim white farmers' Pyrrhic South African court victory

A few score white Zimbabwean farmers who had land expropriated from them by the government have won a protracted, convoluted court battle to have a government property sold to pay towards compensating them. One big problem: their victory is in a South African court. That foreign court's freedom from the influence of the Zimbabwean government's clutches is one reason such a judgement could be delivered in their favour, and be possibly actionable. But it is also why the ruling is of very little use to the majority of white farmers' search for compensation, or to their overall plight.

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The messy nexus of land, property rights and race in Southern Africa

by Chido Makunike

Eddie Cross is an MDC MP with strong, frequently publicly articulated views on many issues, including the hot one of land. He has sometimes been referred to as the MDC’s ‘policy advisor,’ so his views on this subject are interesting as a window into the ‘advice’ he gives to his party on this deeply contentious issue. He argues that traditional, communal ownership of land; without individual title deeds, works against ‘development’ and against freedom and democracy. How do his arguments tie into Zimbabwe’s past and present?

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The significance of Zambian president Michael Sata’s ‘Western stooge’ outburst on Morgan Tsvangirai

Newly elected Zambian president Michael Sata has astonishingly called Zimbabwean prime minister and aspiring president Morgan Tsvangirai a ‘Western stooge.’ Even for a man known to be outspoken and cutting in his comments, it was certainly undiplomatic and arguably ill-advised for Sata to say this about the at least nominal head of government of a neighboring country. But beyond the ill-advisability of Sata’s comments, they show just how deeply entrenched this view of Tsvangirai is, even amongst those who might be expected to be his natural supporters and sympathizers.

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ZANU-PF’ ‘empowerment, MDC’s ‘more investment’ need not be seen as contradictory

ZANU-PF and the MDC will start 2012 with a heightened awareness that a crucial election for them and for the country is not far away, whatever the final dates will be. As the parties sell themselves to the voters, it has become clear that their visions of how to bring about an economically prosperous Zimbabwe are starkly different. But are ‘empowerment’ and ‘attracting investment’ best thought of as opposing philosophies, or as two sides of the same coin?

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Policy lags behind reality as GM foods flood into Zimbabwe and public calls for official acceptance increase

by Chido Makunike

During a severe drought-caused period of maize deficit more than a decade or so ago, Zimbabwe was confronted with the choice to accept or reject donated genetically modified food aid. The government chose to maintain its stance opposing the importation of GM maize as grain, but compromised on allowing it in if it was milled first; as ready-to-use flour. In recent years there have been significantly increased levels of importation of various processed food products known to have a GM component. This is making the official anti-GM policy look increasingly untenable. But as public calls for a revision of the policy increase, a new danger may be an unrealistic expectation of the benefits that GM crops can deliver in a political and economic environment where many of the structural issues that have caused such a steep decline in Zimbabwe’s agriculture remain un-addressed.

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Land and race in Zimbabwe: A new review, itself worthy of review, of the book ‘Mugabe and the White African’

Mugabe and the White African is a film about a white protagonist’s attempts to resist being moved off his farm by the government of President Robert Mugabe. It played to limited but sympathetic audiences in the West, but made no traction at all in Zimbabwe or anywhere else in the black world, which admittedly was not the target audience anyway. There were very few black reviews of it, and none that were positive. A book of the same name as the film, authored by the film lead’s son in law, has received an interesting scorching review by Percy Zvomuya in the Mail and Guardian.

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The effect a farming season’s maize surplus would have on Zimbabwe’s land reform

by Chido Makunike

After many years of stagnation and regression, there has in recent years been a sense of Zimbabwe’s agriculture being positively on the move. As the 2011/12 cropping season gets under way, if the rain pattern is favorable, the country will take another annual step towards what will be a watershed event with very far-reaching effects in Zimbabwe and beyond: the first maize surplus since land reform began a decade ago.

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What future for Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers’ Union?

From being one of Zimbabwe’s most powerful and influential non-governmental bodies, the Commercial Farmers Union struggles to be heard at all today. Most of its members have been unceremoniously dispossessed of their farms, leaving the representative body of the country’s large-scale white farmers struggling for relevance. Is there much of a future for the CFU?

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Another eviction shows farm tenure security is a long way off

There has been a lot of loose talk recently about various schemes to avail finance to new, post-land reform farmers. Some of the details of a recent/on-going reported eviction of an 'old' white farmer show why security of tenure cannot be counted on as an element in giving financiers confidence to lend money for farming in Zimbabwe in any big way.

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Why Zimbabwe's farm expropriations will not be reversed after Mugabe

by Chido Makunike

In the Western media it is called 'Mugabe's land grab.' That terminology is partly to indicate not just the reality of how it was done, but to also show deep disapproval. Indeed, expropriating land from white farmers is one of the main reasons Mugabe is now depicted as a particular figure of hate in the West. However, a side effect of the narrative that he simply took productive land out of a fit of racial hate and then parceled it out to his 'cronies' is that it gives the false impression that Zimbabwe's controversial land reform might be temporary; to be reversed after 'dictator Mugabe' exits the scene. Here's in brief why that is not going to happen.

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Zim land reform: unsustainable new farming system replacing an unsustainable old system

Why land reform of one kind or another had to take place in Zimbabwe is well known, as are the problems that have resulted from the method that was chosen. While the new, still-in-progress system of agriculture is clearly not meeting the various needs required of it, an article about the current eviction of one of the remaining farmers from the old system also points to how it was a system that despite being once highly functional, had fallen behind the times in many ways. The old system has been decimated, but the new system cannot really work as currently structured. It is becoming clear that shifting ownership of who occupies which land is just one step in a long process of coming up with a new system of land management and of agriculture.

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A slightly more balanced article about transplanted Zimbabwean farmers' challenges in Nigeria

There is yet another article, this time on the BBC, tracking the progress of the white Zimbabwean farmers who were invited to setup shop by a regional government in Nigeria.While most such article have depicted the handful of Zim farmers as almost miracle workers suddenly transforming Nigerian agriculture while the locals look on expectantly and helplessly, this one is a little bit more honest about the great challenges the farmers face in their new environment.

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Farm lease changes unlikely to make banks eager to dole out loans

After Zimbabwe's land reform (or land grab, depending on your point of view), it was belatedly realized that possession did not automatically lead to productivity and wealth. Among the many impediments to farm productivity identified is the fact that the new farmers are lease-holders rather than owners of the land they work, and so cannot use that land as collateral to apply for bank finance. Changes have been made to the clauses of the 99-year leases to take into account the reasons for banks' reluctance to get involved in farm lending. Although the bankers' association is reported to be pleased and reassured about those changes, it is a patchwork solution that is unlikely to achieve the desired results.

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Did rulings in favor of white Zim farmers kill off the SADC Tribunal?

After finding little joy in the Zimbabwean courts, a group of the country's dispossessed white farmers went to the Namibia-based SADC Tribunal, which ruled in their favor. The outraged Mugabe government vowed to ignore the ruling and further argued that the tribunal was never properly ratified by all member states. When the tribunal was killed off in May this year, some thought it was to a large extent because of Zimbabwean pressure over arguments of interfering with the country's legal 'sovereignty.' An interview with the chief justice of the short-lived regional court makes it clear that member states other than Zimbabwe had their own misgivings about the court's role and jurisdiction.

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The shift in Zimbabwe's farming profile

Many African countries have decided that their heavy reliance on small scale farmers is one reason for low productivity and recurrent food shortages. This is one reason they are encouraging the controversial practice of letting big foreign agro concerns to come in and lease or buy huge portions of farmland. Zimbabwe has effectively gone the other direction, from dominance by large scale farmers to almost exclusive reliance on small and medium scale farmers. Is one more 'right' than the other?

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Farm invasions as a form of political control

One of the unfinished businesses of Zimbabwe's land reform exercise is to establish confidence amongst new farmers that their tenure is secure and can be legally protected when contested. However, that basic requirement for long-term farming development seems to clash against the need in some quarters to maintain tenure on farms as a political tool of control.

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Comments on a summary of the new book, Catastrophe: What went wrong in Zimbabwe?

As the fiercest international heat over Zimbabwe's expropriations of land from white farmers dies down, there are now coming increasingly more measured, more fully contexed analyses of how the land imbalance that gave rise to them came about.    

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Zimbabwe-influenced Julius Malema stirs the land reform pot in South Africa

The controversy-loving Julius Malema has just been re-elected as president of the youth wing of South Africa's ruling ANC party. He wasted no time in raising the hackles and fear of many by reiterating a call for radical land reform, even if it is to be without compensation. For both his detractors and opponents, the experience of Zimbabwe looms very large for South Africa in this debate.

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Why Zimbabwe's embattled white farmers had little black support

During the 10 year period that the government of President Mugabe was systematically dispossessing them, Zimbabwe's white farmers used many arguments to try to defend themselves, in various fora local, regional and international. One argument they employed that never quite gained traction amongst black Zimbabweans, even those opposed to Mugabe's brutal treatment of them, was that his actions were 'racist.'

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