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Zimbabwe:
Who Owns It; Who Runs It? |
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Introduction |
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| On
April 18, 2000, the African nation of Zimbabwe observed 20 years of independence.
But for most of the country’s 12 million people, this event offered
little reason for celebration. Long considered a development model for other
African states, Zimbabwe now faces a number of serious crises: an unpopular
war in the Congo, a virulent AIDS epidemic, severe economic difficulties,
a corrupt and heavy-handed government, and a violent struggle between white
farmers and black squatters over land rights. Embattled President Robert
Mugabe, once considered one of Africa’s most highly regarded statesmen,
is the focus of widespread criticism for his role in fomenting rural discontent
and racial tension over the land issue and conducting a wide-ranging campaign
of intimidation against the country’s newly founded opposition party,
the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) have been the only leader and ruling party in the nation since independence. A veteran guerrilla fighter, Mugabe rose to power battling the forces of the white-minority Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith to a standstill during the 1970s, and then skillfully negotiating a peaceful hand-over of power to the country’s black majority. In its first decade of freedom, Zimbabwe prospered under Mugabe’s leadership, and represented an oasis of peace, stability, and economic and social progress in Africa. But in the 1990s world prices for Zimbabwe’s agricultural exports plummeted, international financial agencies imposed harsh terms for much-needed loans, and Mugabe and his party became increasingly dictatorial, corrupt, and unwilling to tolerate political dissent. Mugabe sometimes appeared to behave in a bizarre and eccentric manner, for example by accusing the country’s small and persecuted gay community of causing many of Zimbabwe’s problems. After a humiliating defeat in a constitutional referendum in February 2000 that proposed an extension of his term as president, Mugabe faced an uncertain political future. New parliamentary elections were to be held, and the MDC was gaining popular support. The economy was collapsing and many Zimbabweans wanted political change. At this point, Mugabe revived the land-reform issue in a calculated way, to shore up his electoral support in rural areas, put the opposition on the defensive, scapegoat the country’s small but prosperous white minority, and deflect attention from his own government’s failings. Land had been at the root of the struggle of black Zimbabweans against white-minority and colonial rule ever since Britain colonized and settled the region, which it named Rhodesia, in the 19th century. As a result of unfair treaties and sheer brute force, the white settlers had gained control of most of the country’s fertile land, leaving the black majority with only small tracts of rocky, unproductive soil. The white minority regime of Ian Smith, which ruled Rhodesia from 1965 to 1980, consolidated this unfair pattern of distribution, and the guerrilla groups who fought against it based their support in the countryside on their pledge to restore the land to its original owners. But after winning independence, Mugabe’s government had made only half-hearted efforts to rectify this injustice. Twenty years after independence, over two-thirds of Zimbabwe’s most prosperous and productive farmland still lay in white hands. And then in the spring of 2000 the land crisis intensified with the occupation of about 1000 white-owned farms. |
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Comprehensive
News in Review Study Modules Using both
the print and non-print material from various issues of News in Review,
teachers and students can create comprehensive, thematic modules that
are excellent for research purposes, independent assignments, and small
group study. We recommend the stories indicated below for the universal
issues they represent and for the archival and historic material they
contain. |
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