I have been reading Peter Godwin’s “When A Crocodile Eats The Sun” and found a particular part in it that is not only relevant to the situation on the ground in Zimbabwe today, but also underlines the obvious disdain Mugabe and his cadres have for ownership and property rights in that country.

In the book, Godwin is interviewing Maria Stevens, widow to David, the first white farmer to be brutally slaughtered by land invaders in 2000…

“We bought our farm from a black man in 1986. It was a rundown overgrown mess,” she remembers. “No rivers flowed there. It was called Arizona because it was arid and rocky. Now all the rivers flow. We grew tobacco and maize, and I bred ostriches. We employed seventy-five families. David spoke fluent Shona and was on the local council trying to sort out the roads in the communal area. Eventually he got involved in opposition politics and joined the MDC. There was even an MDC rally held on our farm.”

I also read a very interesting point in the book, and it dragged me into a huge reality moment.

“A poll conducted by the Helen Suzman Foundation in early 2000 found that only nine per cent of Zimbabweans saw land redistribution as a priority. By then, according to the Commercial Farmers’ Union, seventy eight per cent of white farmers were on property they had purchased after independence, only when that land had first been offered to - and turned down by - the government, as was required by law.”

The land grab began in earnest in 2000 after the new constitution was rejected by public referendum, and many - myself included - see it as Mugabe’s way of channelling anger, punishing the population and rewarding his loyalists, even when their activities are questionable.

Today, nine years since those bloody initial days, the land grab continues. White commercial farmers - the very people who provided food for the country, either find themselves poverty stricken having had their farms forcibly removed, facing marauding gangs of “war veterans” intent on forcing them out, or behind bars awaiting process in a criminal court for ‘remaining illegally on State land’.

Mugabe has stated that any compensation should be paid to the farmers by the British government. But I do believe that this should only be if the land was in the hands of the white farmer before independence. If the farmers have purchased the land since independence, then a fair and correct compensation would need to be paid to the farmer by the government. Not only for any improvements on the land, but recompense for the land itself.

This has not happened as Mugabe runs and hides behind the Lancaster House agreement - forgetting that the basis of any land reallocation was supposed to be a “willing buyer - willing seller” - which, by killing the farmer, is obviously not in any way “willing”.

Compensation levels have also got to be realistic. There was word at one stage that the offers were a mere 3 to 10% of the real value - and because of the political mileage that Mugabe was getting out of the land grab, and the want of the farmers to leave Zimbabwe, many of them accepted the pittance and left.

Who can blame them?

Today the farms are in the hands of the Mugabe faithful - very little land is worked and even less is produced. And Mugabe blames the failure of the country to feed itself on ‘illegal’ sanctions.

Before he starts pointing fingers, ask yourself this… Has anyone been dragged to court for the illegal killing of any of the commercial farmers or their workers?

Enough said.

Robb Ellis
The Bearded Man