There are disappointments across the board with the unity government and the once quick-out-of-the-gates transition cabinet team seems to have hit some bumps.
There were scores of items listed on the transition team's to-do list under the 100-Day plan. Those ticking boxes here and abroad have more Xs than ticks on their logs. The GNU is failing to get the job done.
In Nyanga, at a retreat organised to assess the success of the 100-Day plan, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai read out the embarrassing report card and told us what we expected to hear: the GNU has not delivered. This is beginning to cause problems in the uneasy marriage.
Parties to the agreement have started to accuse each other of sabotaging the project. DPM Arthur Mutambara's robust statement in Nyanga describing the elections last year as a fraud, has provided Zanu PF with a look-in in the blame game.
Mutambara gave a hostage to fortune. He is suddenly the biggest threat to the health of the government of national unity. Government propaganda was this week rolled out to fire volleys at the DPM who merely stated the obvious.
This sideshow cannot however mask the fact that there are fundamental problems, not just revolving around the power play between the principals to the agreement but to do with bureaucratic arrogance by sections of the government who believe that they can wage a war against the world and win.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa this week made some potentially damaging revelations about how our government perceives bilateral trade agreements. Commenting on the delay in the signing of the bilateral trade agreement with South Africa, Chinamasa said Zimbabwe would not sign an agreement that "impinged on the sanctity of land reform". He said Zimbabwe was prepared to sign the agreement as long as it excluded issues to do with land reform. He said there was a section in the agreement that had the "potential to open the way for a reversal of land reform".
Chinamasa's subterfuge here is as hopeless in the eyes of potential investors as it is damaging to any attempts to have Zimbabwe re-admitted to the community of nations. His pronouncement is an admission that the government is not prepared to pay compensation to dispossessed South African farmers. He is also admitting that the government of Zimbabwe cannot guarantee the farmers' business activities here. The South Africans should concentrate on mining instead, it was said.
This all amounts to the unfortunate admission that Zimbabwe cannot guarantee property rights of foreigners wanting to come to invest in farming in this country.
It also tells us a lot about government's retrogressive view on getting basic things right in crafting a respectable investment policy. Zimbabwe requires foreign investment and technical support in all sectors of the economy including agriculture.
Investors in agriculture require state protection. Investors should be free and confident to approach the courts in the event of a dispute regarding land ownership. The executive should be prepared to respect the decisions of the courts and law enforcers should execute decisions of courts to protect property. But more importantly fair compensation, based on clearly laid down valuation standards, should be guaranteed in any bilateral agreement in the event an investor wants out.
Our rulers have however decided to take a myopic view that because the country does not have funding to compensate farmers at the moment, compensation cannot be included in a crucial bilateral agreement. This does not resonate with government's own position on enhancing bilateral relations. In April at the launch of the 100-Day plan, Finance minister Tendai Biti had this to say about relations with other countries: "In short, what is required is to create confidence and sculpt a construction that Zimbabwe is in an irreversible paradigm shift.
"Over and above the Sadc initiatives underpinned by South Africa, there should be serious engagement with all cooperating partners, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, as well as the African Development Bank, with the objective of restoring the country's status as a credible recipient of external financial assistance... Hence, as part of this strategy should be an aggressive programme of bilateral engagement with all the key strategic countries".
South Africa is a key strategic partner of Zimbabwe and relations should be mutual. Chinamasa and his ilk cannot therefore hide behind the tired mantra of the "sanctity" of land reform to bend internationally-accepted investment rules. We cannot have investment policies which protect rights of miners and other industrialists while promoting chaos and arbitrage on the land.
Zanu PF's Paul Mangwana was quoted last week as saying mistakes were made in the implementation of the land reform programme. We cannot use the same mistakes to make policies and defend the glaring aberrations which have turned this country into a pariah state.
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Mr Editor, the land reform process is irreversible. You understand its content and form but you are pushing a western neo-colonial agenda.
South Africa or whoever non-Zimbabwean can not be guaranteed farming business on the expense of government compensating foreign farmers by pushing the international debt to Zimbabweans.
Our children must not work up tomorrow having inherited a Land Reform debt from IMF/WB or any international finance institution that would have gone to foreign farmers with 45000 of them being British.
The politics of Zimbabwe is very clear that the British and Americans take care of their inhuman soldiers of colonial fortunes ex-rhodesian farmers, by compensating them and inheriting the debt of these luxuries to their western governments if they so wish.
Simply put, Zimbabwean were unfairly dispossessed of their lands by colonial masters who benefited in farming activities for 100 years with cheap inhuman labour on free lands, now to have Zimbabweans agree to be nationally indebted to the ills of yesteryears by borrowing money from international finance only to pay the excesses of colonists farmers is dead impossible. Worse as it may, when the same colonists who would have pocketed huge cash are allowed to remain with even bigger portions of farm lands in the future.
When land was initially dispossessed from natives it was barren the colonial governments of the day worked out farming projects for 48 years until their farmers managed to hit good export. Today the revolutionary seizure in land occupation left the lands again barren, I submit to also let the government of the day manage farming projects of its indigenous farmers for only 20 years. We need international finance for national farming, but the west demand vise versa, they are clamoring for national finance (bonding borrowed land reform money to a Zimbabwean government) for foreign farmers.
Our sino-zim, Zimbabwe- Iran, India-Zimbabwe, etc bilateral agreements on investments is what goes with our national aspirations. It is clear that any country in the world can sign a bilateral agreement on mining and industrial ventures in Zimbabwe hence they should stay put or focus on mining investments and leave the lands to internal politics of Zimbabwe.
South Africa should not be used to creep foreign possessions of land in Zimbabwe. The next will be the UK who will say we want a South African deal too and the rest of the western world. This will certainly distract the Zimbabwean indigenous aspirations to wealth creation by the ordinary folk through land use. Zimbabweans can not continue to live as second class citizens on their lands subjected to the whims and caprices of foreign land owners for their big bank accounts, we have tradition to maintain and develop too. we reject such neo-colonial aspirations!
onesoul, this editorial said nothing about reversing land reform only establishing individual property rights. How is that a 'western neo-colonial agenda'? It's preposterous to suggest that the west can somehow steal Zimbabwe from its own people.
Farming is as much an industry as mining and manufacturing. Is having a few million Zimbabwaens with a small plot of land scratching the dirt for a living really the way to prosperity? What's wrong with an individual or even a western agri-business buying plots for multi-thousand dollars an acre and putting cash in the peoples pocket to maybe start their own businesses? Wouldn't that provide a much needed capital injection and property tax revenue?
Is it better to have a perpetually bankrupt state providing seed and fertilizer to farmers in return for a meagre harvest? Or is it better to have property rights so the gov't can benefit from garuanteed tax revenue?
What happens when new leadership takes over Zanu Pf? Under the current system the new leader could take the land from all Mugabe's relations and cronies and give it to his own family and friends with total impunity. It's not really about the land for all but total power in the hands of the few.
I am sorry for my belated response;
The world is full of examples of how the west steals countries from their own people. I wish you get it but it can be difficult for you to comprehend given the subscription economic model.
Land reform and nativism is deeper than commerce. It is about correcting a wrong in ownership of a birth right. This does not make any sense to someone who sees cash generation opportunities in almost every aspect of life.
First and foremost, the west must understand that land in foreign nations is more spiritual than material. An Eskimo who lives on ice will give his life if forced to exchange his peace of land with the rich alluvial excellent farming soils of Zimbabwe. The spirituality and religiousness of land should be understood by respecting humanity differences and diversity. Cattle ranging is my business but I should accept that Indian culture would not tolerate the way I value beef in cash terms.
Zimbabwean culture on land is different from that of its erstwhile colonialists. America has patria laws that tend to protect what it values as non-negotiable sovereign issues. I am against the use of poor soldiers to protect US oil interest in the Gulf while Atlanta has oil deposits that can suffice American demand. Zimbabwe says leave the Land and invest in all other because of those intrinsic values it attaches to ownership of land. Dear discussant, you are saying Zimbabweans must in fact be happy that Nehanda Nyakasikana should have been killed because her people were so poor and white Rhodesians needed to farm for the benefit of GDP. You are saying about 50 000 communal peasants killed in a 15 year protracted war of liberating the lands was OK because farmers needed to feed the nation.
Zimbabwe, due to its history and other circumstances has decided to nationalize its lands. The world must simply understand. The aspect of farm commerce is exaggerated because pre-2000 statistical data of cash crop produce are there for comparison. Land is just one aspect this country is asking the west not to interfere but the west is busy with its spin doctor farm economics.
New farmers in Zimbabwe need financial support in terms of farm inputs, they may even take less time to fully utilize the farms that the 48 years taken by white farmers.
I agree with you when you say it is about total power in the hands of selected people but changing of governments is a constant feature in politics. I also hope that the west change governments that will not interfere with internal matters of poor countries. Land reform is cultural hence dynamic, a perfect solution to our land question start from sovereign land ownership.
>The world is full of examples of how the west steals countries from their own people. I wish you get it but it can be difficult for you to comprehend given the subscription economic model.<
Colonialism and imperialism have been dead for over 50 years. You don't see the U.S. gov't offering its citizens free land in Iraq and Afghanistan do you?
>Land reform and nativism is deeper than commerce. It is about correcting a wrong in ownership of a birth right. This does not make any sense to someone who sees cash generation opportunities in almost every aspect of life.<
Britain understood and supported the need for land reform, just not the way they went about it. Nativism is archaic and backward; what's wrong with a little racial diversity? A birth right should be about having the ability to own your own land, making a comfortable living off it and getting a good dollar for it if you decide to do something else.
>Dear discussant, you are saying Zimbabweans must in fact be happy that Nehanda Nyakasikana should have been killed because her people were so poor and white Rhodesians needed to farm for the benefit of GDP. You are saying about 50 000 communal peasants killed in a 15 year protracted war of liberating the lands was OK because farmers needed to feed the nation.<
You are being disengenuous. It's common knowledge that the western world condemned Smiths brutal regime and was in favor of majority rule.
>Zimbabwe, due to its history and other circumstances has decided to nationalize its lands. The world must simply understand. The aspect of farm commerce is exaggerated because pre-2000 statistical data of cash crop produce are there for comparison. Land is just one aspect this country is asking the west not to interfere but the west is busy with its spin doctor farm economics.<
It's ridiculous to assert that a nation can't be sovereign without nationalizing everything. Of all the socio-economic models Zimbabwe has chosen one that has proven to be an historical failure. Anti-neocolonialism has become more about moving toward communist socialism than fighting against the former status-quo.