refuse_resist
18th July 2005, 22:17
In Support Of Zimbabwean Land Reform and Anti-Imperialist Ideology
---Andrew Kahn, NACAZAI C.C General Secretary
June 29, 2004
"The expropriators have been expropriated," wrote Karl Marx in his seminal work Capital. While not foreseeing the events that were to transpire in Zimbabwe more than a century later, this statement may be used to describe the land expropriation and redistribution that is now a fact of life in Zimbabwe. For many years, as the student of history knows, present-day Zimbabwe was known as Rhodesia--Rhodesia, the land of white colonialist privilege. Rhodesia, the land of an oppressed majority. Rhodesia, the ally of apartheid South Africa.
Yet in 1980 it was Rhodesia that fell and Zimbabwe that rose, following the long, valiant struggle led by the revolutionary guerrilla forces of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Robert Mugabe. In 1979, prior to the formation of the state of Zimbabwe, at the Lancaster House Discussions in London, the question of the holding of land by European colonialists was raised. The resulting Lancaster Agreement, which affirmed the right of a sovereign nation of Zimbabwe to exist, failed to outline the steps that would be taken to rectify the racially skewed holding of lands in Zimbabwe. The fertile farming land was held at the time by the tiny European minority, while the African majority was relegated to the worst lands, others crammed into poor urban areas. While the Lancaster Agreement did not outline how this issue was to be resolved, the British government assured the leaders of the Zimbabwean guerrilla forces that Britain would do all it could to aid the new nation of Zimbabwe in returning the land to its rightful owners, the non-European majority. With this unwritten promise in his pocket, Robert Mugabe was elected head of state in 1980 with the overwhelming support of the Zimbabwean masses. Zimbabwe was free, Africans were in power, and Rhodesia was dead, consigned to the grave. So what became of the land in the years that followed? Did England aid Zimbabwe as promised?
The land issue was not answered during the 1980s and not until 1997 was a serious push made for land redistribution at which point President Mugabe served notices to the owners of over 1,500 farms informing them that their properties would be nationalized by the state and redistributed to the land-hungry African population.
It had been 18 years since the Lancaster Agreement--the British had done nothing and the colonialists remained, profiting off the riches of land that they had stolen. The Zimbabwean people and their leader President Mugabe had been patient. They had waited for England to fulfill its promise. Naïve, however, was the belief that they could expect an imperial country to aid the revolution. As England showed, imperial countries despise revolution.
So it was that in 1997 President Mugabe began a program of land redistribution with the hope that the British government would compensate the white farmers and that the white farmers would agree to leave the stolen land that they were occupying. President Mugabe allowed for the notices of land expropriation to be challenged in court. As the time passed the consciousness of the Zimbabwean people was raised as they saw there was no use in waiting for the colonialists to bend to the revolution. The land reform program was spit upon by England and the colonial land holders. Legitimate land expropriation was tied up in the courts and throughout this time the Zimbabwean people still went without their land. "What is independence?" was the question asked. And it was a legitimate question. What was independence if the same colonial and imperial leeches were allowed to survive, forever attempting to suck the life out of the African people?
Years of peaceful attempts to persuade the colonial farmers to return the land to its legitimate owners had proven futile. In a September 12, 2002 article by the Associated Press it was noted that, "Before the seizures began two years ago, 4 500 whites owned a third of Zimbabwe's farmland, while 7 million blacks lived on the rest." [1]
Robert Mugabe, in defense of the land reform, was quoted as saying, "The primary objective of our agrarian reforms is to redress the colonial injustice perpetrated by Britain whereby a minority of British settlers in 1890 seized our land and acquired our natural resources but never paid any compensation to our ancestors." [2]
It was out of this dynamic that resistance in Zimbabwe began anew in the first years of the new millennium. The landless of Zimbabwe began to revolt. Like the eruption of a volcano, they rose up against their oppressors and began to reclaim their land. The time for negotiation had long since passed. Action was needed; words alone had solved nothing. The promises of the imperialist and colonialist held no value. The time was ripe for revolutionary expropriation. The masses were on the move.
So great was the support for the land seizures that even the Catholic nuns of the Little Children of the Blessed Lady joined, demanding that land be turned over to them. "On May 3, the nuns visited us and said we had 24 hours to vacate the farm to make way for them," said the director of the lands that the nuns sought to seize.
The same was seen throughout all of Zimbabwe and this militancy of the people scared the illegitimate land owners and the European nations. Zimbabwe was supposed to be a docile nation that accepted subjugation by European powers. It was not to be. The enemy was to be defeated by any means necessary.
Pacifism, the people realized, had solved nothing, and so they took up arms (whether knives, machetes, or small guns) and drove the colonial elites off the land.
What could be expected? Of course the people would revolt and continue the glorious revolution that had begun several decades before against then white-ruled Rhodesia. The people of Zimbabwe would not bow down to those who wished to keep them under the boot of imperial rule. Whether the land was called Rhodesia or Zimbabwe was irrelevant--the parasites had remained. For years the dispossessed Zimbabwean people and their leader President Mugabe were accepted by the West. They were not reclaiming their land. They attempted peaceful coexistence and "legal" means of settling the land problem. However, when the people recognized these methods accomplished nothing and decided to turn to arms to secure their rights, they were derided as criminals. The landless--those whose land was stolen--were derided as "squatters" by Western media. Yet who were the true squatters? Those who stole land and were colonialist settlers or the Zimbabwean people who sought to live and work on the land of their ancestors? For the West, the people of Zimbabwe were squatters, the settlers nothing more than aggrieved victims. The ugly head of racism manifested itself in the broadcasts of imperialist propaganda "news" shows highlighted by England's BBC. President Mugabe asked, "Now that we are taking the land from them you cry foul, we are going against the rights of the white people, what about the rights of the black people?" [3] The Zimbabwean people who dared to stand up for their rights were painted as thugs and gangsters, criminals and opportunists. Yet as any supporter of justice knows, these Zimbabwean people were patriots and rebels, revolutionaries and militants. Indeed, they were the soul of Zimbabwe, a beacon for resistance, a light for the African continent.
Coming to the present day, one sees that Zimbabwe has been freed almost completely from the scourge of colonialist-owned farms. Land has been returned to the people under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, and the Zimbabwean state apparatus is aiding in the process of proper land use by those who now live on the land, the people of Zimbabwe.
The struggle, however, is by no means over as Europe and the United States cannot bear to see an independent Zimbabwe. Just as the Belgians and United States could not endure a liberated, revolutionary Congo under the leadership of Patrice Lumumba, so too they cannot accept Zimbabwe as a nation that resists colonialism and imperialism. Lumumba was assassinated and Robert Mugabe faces the ever-present threat of assassination or coup.
Just this month Tony Blair admitted to "working closely" [4] with the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), a United States/European-backed "opposition party" in Zimbabwe. He further stated, referring to the government of Robert Mugabe, that "there is no salvation for the people of Zimbabwe until that regime is changed." [5]
Little surprise England is making such comments--ones echoed by the United States and other Western nations--in the face of the revolutionary actions of the Zimbabwean people.
However it is not merely the reclaiming of the land that is driving the West insane. President Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have established themselves as the voice of the oppressed across the world and as leading anti-imperialists who will not bend in the face of Western attacks and insults.
As Professor Jonathan Moyo, deputy national secretary for information and publicity in Zimbabwe, said in late June 2003 in response to written attacks by U.S. Secretarty of State Colin Powell, "Nobody in Zanu-PF will ever join Powell and his kind in selling out. The use of lies and deception by Powell and Bush has not worked in Iraq where he wanted to mix it with oil. "It will never ever work anywhere else and will certainly not mix with land in Zimbabwe." 6 When President Bush visited Africa in July 2003, President Mugabe said, "If Mr Bush is coming to seek co-operation, then he is welcome, but if he is coming to dictate what we should do, then we will say: go back home, Yankee." [7]
In response to U.S. claims of Zimbabwe violating "human rights" (the continuous, and unfounded, complaint of the West) Professor Moyo said, "These Americans who are pontificating about human rights and democracy would not recognise these things even if they hit them on their faces. So go and tell the imperialist to go to hell?" [8]
Zimbabwe's support for other anti-imperialists is firm. In an article on February 27, 2004 from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's news service KCNA it was noted that, "Robert G. Mugabe, president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, hoped that the reunification of the Korean peninsula would be realized in accordance with the proposal of the DPRK and voiced support for the DPRK's stand on the nuclear issue."
Regarding U.S. sanctions on Cuba, Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge spoke the following: "We call on the international community to join us in condemning such unilateralism as well as any other sanctions imposed by individual countries outside the framework of the United Nations." [9]
On the issue of Taiwan, Stan Mudenge noted, "The government of the Zimbabwe wishes to reiterate its support for the 'one-China, Two-systems policy' which seeks the peaceful reunification of the province of Taiwan to the mainland and condemned all forces both internal and external that seek to destabilize the country." [10]
The stance of Zimbabwe is clear. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans and No to Imperialism. The example of Zimbabwe is a threat to the imperialists and an example for all nations in the world struggling against imperialism and colonialism. When the question of Zimbabwe is raised, there can be only one answer: Yes to independent and revolutionary Zimbabwe under the leadership of Comrade and President Robert Mugabe! No to the imperialists and their lackeys within Zimbabwe!
The struggle against imperialism is being fought not just in Iraq or Palestine, Nepal or Venezuela but worldwide and especially in Zimbabwe. Let us raise the call for revolutionary struggle and support all those who struggle against the imperialist enemy! There can be no turning back in Zimbabwe. The imperialists must be swept away for good.
Long live independent Zimbabwe!
Long live revolutionary Zimbabwe!
Viva chimurenga!
1) "Zimbabwe Land Reform Sees Violence", By Angus Shaw, Associated Press, Sep 12, 2002
2) Ibid.
3) "President defends land reform", The Herald (Harare), January 12, 2004
4) "I'm Working With MDC, Admits Blair", The Herald (Harare), June 25, 2004, (http://allafrica.com/stories/200406240336.html)
5) Ibid.
6) "Zanu-PF blasts Powell", The Herald (Harare), June 26, 2003 (http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=22329&pubdate=2003-06-26)
7) "Zimbabwe steps up criticism of Bush on eve of visit", Sunday Morning Herald (Australia), July 7, 2003 (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/06/1057430082404.html)
8) "Decision to renew sanctions a non-event: State", The Herald (Harare), March 4, 2004
9) "Zimbabwe condemns US sanctions on Cuba", June 17, 2004 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/17/content_1530042.htm)
10) Zimbabwe describes Taiwan's referendum as provocative, Xinhua News Service, March 31, 2004 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-03/31/content_1394724.htm)
http://irsn.jeeran.com/zimbabweandrewkahn.html
---Andrew Kahn, NACAZAI C.C General Secretary
June 29, 2004
"The expropriators have been expropriated," wrote Karl Marx in his seminal work Capital. While not foreseeing the events that were to transpire in Zimbabwe more than a century later, this statement may be used to describe the land expropriation and redistribution that is now a fact of life in Zimbabwe. For many years, as the student of history knows, present-day Zimbabwe was known as Rhodesia--Rhodesia, the land of white colonialist privilege. Rhodesia, the land of an oppressed majority. Rhodesia, the ally of apartheid South Africa.
Yet in 1980 it was Rhodesia that fell and Zimbabwe that rose, following the long, valiant struggle led by the revolutionary guerrilla forces of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Robert Mugabe. In 1979, prior to the formation of the state of Zimbabwe, at the Lancaster House Discussions in London, the question of the holding of land by European colonialists was raised. The resulting Lancaster Agreement, which affirmed the right of a sovereign nation of Zimbabwe to exist, failed to outline the steps that would be taken to rectify the racially skewed holding of lands in Zimbabwe. The fertile farming land was held at the time by the tiny European minority, while the African majority was relegated to the worst lands, others crammed into poor urban areas. While the Lancaster Agreement did not outline how this issue was to be resolved, the British government assured the leaders of the Zimbabwean guerrilla forces that Britain would do all it could to aid the new nation of Zimbabwe in returning the land to its rightful owners, the non-European majority. With this unwritten promise in his pocket, Robert Mugabe was elected head of state in 1980 with the overwhelming support of the Zimbabwean masses. Zimbabwe was free, Africans were in power, and Rhodesia was dead, consigned to the grave. So what became of the land in the years that followed? Did England aid Zimbabwe as promised?
The land issue was not answered during the 1980s and not until 1997 was a serious push made for land redistribution at which point President Mugabe served notices to the owners of over 1,500 farms informing them that their properties would be nationalized by the state and redistributed to the land-hungry African population.
It had been 18 years since the Lancaster Agreement--the British had done nothing and the colonialists remained, profiting off the riches of land that they had stolen. The Zimbabwean people and their leader President Mugabe had been patient. They had waited for England to fulfill its promise. Naïve, however, was the belief that they could expect an imperial country to aid the revolution. As England showed, imperial countries despise revolution.
So it was that in 1997 President Mugabe began a program of land redistribution with the hope that the British government would compensate the white farmers and that the white farmers would agree to leave the stolen land that they were occupying. President Mugabe allowed for the notices of land expropriation to be challenged in court. As the time passed the consciousness of the Zimbabwean people was raised as they saw there was no use in waiting for the colonialists to bend to the revolution. The land reform program was spit upon by England and the colonial land holders. Legitimate land expropriation was tied up in the courts and throughout this time the Zimbabwean people still went without their land. "What is independence?" was the question asked. And it was a legitimate question. What was independence if the same colonial and imperial leeches were allowed to survive, forever attempting to suck the life out of the African people?
Years of peaceful attempts to persuade the colonial farmers to return the land to its legitimate owners had proven futile. In a September 12, 2002 article by the Associated Press it was noted that, "Before the seizures began two years ago, 4 500 whites owned a third of Zimbabwe's farmland, while 7 million blacks lived on the rest." [1]
Robert Mugabe, in defense of the land reform, was quoted as saying, "The primary objective of our agrarian reforms is to redress the colonial injustice perpetrated by Britain whereby a minority of British settlers in 1890 seized our land and acquired our natural resources but never paid any compensation to our ancestors." [2]
It was out of this dynamic that resistance in Zimbabwe began anew in the first years of the new millennium. The landless of Zimbabwe began to revolt. Like the eruption of a volcano, they rose up against their oppressors and began to reclaim their land. The time for negotiation had long since passed. Action was needed; words alone had solved nothing. The promises of the imperialist and colonialist held no value. The time was ripe for revolutionary expropriation. The masses were on the move.
So great was the support for the land seizures that even the Catholic nuns of the Little Children of the Blessed Lady joined, demanding that land be turned over to them. "On May 3, the nuns visited us and said we had 24 hours to vacate the farm to make way for them," said the director of the lands that the nuns sought to seize.
The same was seen throughout all of Zimbabwe and this militancy of the people scared the illegitimate land owners and the European nations. Zimbabwe was supposed to be a docile nation that accepted subjugation by European powers. It was not to be. The enemy was to be defeated by any means necessary.
Pacifism, the people realized, had solved nothing, and so they took up arms (whether knives, machetes, or small guns) and drove the colonial elites off the land.
What could be expected? Of course the people would revolt and continue the glorious revolution that had begun several decades before against then white-ruled Rhodesia. The people of Zimbabwe would not bow down to those who wished to keep them under the boot of imperial rule. Whether the land was called Rhodesia or Zimbabwe was irrelevant--the parasites had remained. For years the dispossessed Zimbabwean people and their leader President Mugabe were accepted by the West. They were not reclaiming their land. They attempted peaceful coexistence and "legal" means of settling the land problem. However, when the people recognized these methods accomplished nothing and decided to turn to arms to secure their rights, they were derided as criminals. The landless--those whose land was stolen--were derided as "squatters" by Western media. Yet who were the true squatters? Those who stole land and were colonialist settlers or the Zimbabwean people who sought to live and work on the land of their ancestors? For the West, the people of Zimbabwe were squatters, the settlers nothing more than aggrieved victims. The ugly head of racism manifested itself in the broadcasts of imperialist propaganda "news" shows highlighted by England's BBC. President Mugabe asked, "Now that we are taking the land from them you cry foul, we are going against the rights of the white people, what about the rights of the black people?" [3] The Zimbabwean people who dared to stand up for their rights were painted as thugs and gangsters, criminals and opportunists. Yet as any supporter of justice knows, these Zimbabwean people were patriots and rebels, revolutionaries and militants. Indeed, they were the soul of Zimbabwe, a beacon for resistance, a light for the African continent.
Coming to the present day, one sees that Zimbabwe has been freed almost completely from the scourge of colonialist-owned farms. Land has been returned to the people under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, and the Zimbabwean state apparatus is aiding in the process of proper land use by those who now live on the land, the people of Zimbabwe.
The struggle, however, is by no means over as Europe and the United States cannot bear to see an independent Zimbabwe. Just as the Belgians and United States could not endure a liberated, revolutionary Congo under the leadership of Patrice Lumumba, so too they cannot accept Zimbabwe as a nation that resists colonialism and imperialism. Lumumba was assassinated and Robert Mugabe faces the ever-present threat of assassination or coup.
Just this month Tony Blair admitted to "working closely" [4] with the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), a United States/European-backed "opposition party" in Zimbabwe. He further stated, referring to the government of Robert Mugabe, that "there is no salvation for the people of Zimbabwe until that regime is changed." [5]
Little surprise England is making such comments--ones echoed by the United States and other Western nations--in the face of the revolutionary actions of the Zimbabwean people.
However it is not merely the reclaiming of the land that is driving the West insane. President Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have established themselves as the voice of the oppressed across the world and as leading anti-imperialists who will not bend in the face of Western attacks and insults.
As Professor Jonathan Moyo, deputy national secretary for information and publicity in Zimbabwe, said in late June 2003 in response to written attacks by U.S. Secretarty of State Colin Powell, "Nobody in Zanu-PF will ever join Powell and his kind in selling out. The use of lies and deception by Powell and Bush has not worked in Iraq where he wanted to mix it with oil. "It will never ever work anywhere else and will certainly not mix with land in Zimbabwe." 6 When President Bush visited Africa in July 2003, President Mugabe said, "If Mr Bush is coming to seek co-operation, then he is welcome, but if he is coming to dictate what we should do, then we will say: go back home, Yankee." [7]
In response to U.S. claims of Zimbabwe violating "human rights" (the continuous, and unfounded, complaint of the West) Professor Moyo said, "These Americans who are pontificating about human rights and democracy would not recognise these things even if they hit them on their faces. So go and tell the imperialist to go to hell?" [8]
Zimbabwe's support for other anti-imperialists is firm. In an article on February 27, 2004 from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's news service KCNA it was noted that, "Robert G. Mugabe, president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, hoped that the reunification of the Korean peninsula would be realized in accordance with the proposal of the DPRK and voiced support for the DPRK's stand on the nuclear issue."
Regarding U.S. sanctions on Cuba, Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge spoke the following: "We call on the international community to join us in condemning such unilateralism as well as any other sanctions imposed by individual countries outside the framework of the United Nations." [9]
On the issue of Taiwan, Stan Mudenge noted, "The government of the Zimbabwe wishes to reiterate its support for the 'one-China, Two-systems policy' which seeks the peaceful reunification of the province of Taiwan to the mainland and condemned all forces both internal and external that seek to destabilize the country." [10]
The stance of Zimbabwe is clear. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans and No to Imperialism. The example of Zimbabwe is a threat to the imperialists and an example for all nations in the world struggling against imperialism and colonialism. When the question of Zimbabwe is raised, there can be only one answer: Yes to independent and revolutionary Zimbabwe under the leadership of Comrade and President Robert Mugabe! No to the imperialists and their lackeys within Zimbabwe!
The struggle against imperialism is being fought not just in Iraq or Palestine, Nepal or Venezuela but worldwide and especially in Zimbabwe. Let us raise the call for revolutionary struggle and support all those who struggle against the imperialist enemy! There can be no turning back in Zimbabwe. The imperialists must be swept away for good.
Long live independent Zimbabwe!
Long live revolutionary Zimbabwe!
Viva chimurenga!
1) "Zimbabwe Land Reform Sees Violence", By Angus Shaw, Associated Press, Sep 12, 2002
2) Ibid.
3) "President defends land reform", The Herald (Harare), January 12, 2004
4) "I'm Working With MDC, Admits Blair", The Herald (Harare), June 25, 2004, (http://allafrica.com/stories/200406240336.html)
5) Ibid.
6) "Zanu-PF blasts Powell", The Herald (Harare), June 26, 2003 (http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=22329&pubdate=2003-06-26)
7) "Zimbabwe steps up criticism of Bush on eve of visit", Sunday Morning Herald (Australia), July 7, 2003 (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/06/1057430082404.html)
8) "Decision to renew sanctions a non-event: State", The Herald (Harare), March 4, 2004
9) "Zimbabwe condemns US sanctions on Cuba", June 17, 2004 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/17/content_1530042.htm)
10) Zimbabwe describes Taiwan's referendum as provocative, Xinhua News Service, March 31, 2004 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-03/31/content_1394724.htm)
http://irsn.jeeran.com/zimbabweandrewkahn.html