After stealing almost everything else …
Zimbabwe - whites steal the show
THE RABID RACISM of the British press response to the land occupations in Zimbabwe has all but obscured the appalling injustice of white dominance over the land there.
One in four Zimbabwean adults are dying of AIDS, starved of drugs or medical care. IMF imposed cutbacks caused a 40 per cent rise in the number of mothers dying in childbirth. Between 20,000 and 40,000 minority tribespeople died in Mugabe's genocide of the Ndebele uprising of the 1980s. Yet it is the deaths of 3 white farmers that the British press mourns.
In the 15 year war of liberation from 1965-1980, it was those white farmers who were the main enemy. For those black nationalist guerrillas crossing back over the border, struggling through the bush, it was those white farmers who they fronted up to - with their Special Forces, razor wire, dogs and guns.
For all the thuggery and manipulation of the ZANU attacks on the opposition MDC, here in the ex-colonial country, we should not forget the symbolism of the use of the war veterans to lead the land occupations. The reclamation of the lands stolen by the whites is unfinished business of the war of liberation.
In a political game replete with symbolism, it is not by chance that the ZANU veteran gangs should have attacked farmers like Martin Olds, ex-fighter in the white supremacist counter-insurgency Grey Scouts, who even called his farm Compensation (how sick can you get?).
Violence
For us as socialists, the clamour over the land occupations raises many basic issues. The Land is Ours circulated a statement denouncing white domination but arguing that "none of this justifies violent seizures in today's climate".
But what is today's climate? Is the reality of class rule fundamentally different today than it was when Irish farmers burned out British absentee landlords 80 years ago?
Whether poor landless folk in Zimbabwe are facing up to white farmers or the mandarins of Mugabe's IMF backed regime, they will find that the realities of ruling class violence everywhere confront them.
When the anarchist workers of the Spanish latifundia rose against their pro-fascist landlords in 1936, or when the French serfs of the medieval jacqueries painted the night sky red with the flames of burning chateaux, they did so only after endless years of cruel repression.
The horror of the British media at the violence of the land occupations is primarily a horror of the class violence of the dispossessed. We can argue that this violence was needlessly cruel, that it often attacked other poor black people, or that it served the purposes of the corrupt ruling party. But it is its character as a threat to white property and international investment that chills the British media.
The British connection
Many of the big media shareholders and establishment tycoons may well have more personal reasons for their horror of the killing of white farmers.
Members of the House of Lords, newspaper barons and others with big British landholdings also own huge estates in Zimbabwe. In Brighton, the Evening Argus has been giving free publicity to the notorious and frightening landlord and convicted arsonist Nicholas Hoogstraten, who has a million acre holding in Zimbabwe and close links with the Mugabe regime, going back to the 1960s when he funded ZANU in the war of liberation.
The role of the state
Time and again the media have contrasted the 'lawlessness' of the armed land occupation with the urgent need to return to the rule of law. The independence of the Zimbabwean judiciary has been praised. The need for due legal process in the takeover of land, the consent of the seller and proper compensation have been stressed.
Yet whom has this judicial independence served? Any radical land reform at the time of independence was scuppered by the pro-imperialist terms of the Lancaster House settlement, which guaranteed that no expropriation of the land should take place until at least 1990.
Of course, Mugabe should have challenged the terms of this settlement, which institutionalised a continuing political role for the white settlers and business owners and the continuance of their property rights. But to do so would have brought him squarely into confrontation with imperialism, and that he was not prepared to do.
All the main judgements of the Zimbabwean judiciary in the post Lancaster House period have supported the property rights of the whites.
The process of extracting land from them for poor rural blacks has been confined to quasi-commercial sale, mostly of marginal land, which has then tended to fall into the hands of Mugabe's cronies.
The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary have been a major block on social progress in Zimbabwe, because it means the rule of bourgeois law and the independence of the bourgeois state. Law is not neutral.
It serves the dominant class. It is Mugabe's implied threat to the independence of the bourgeois state that frightens European commentators most, not the prospect of legal, gradualist land reform - or even squatter violence.
As The Economist (22 April) said, "deplorable as it is, the violence ... is not, in itself, the main cause for concern. Nor are the calls for land reform... The sinister feature, rather, is the president's role in the current campaign... The president says, 'This is not a problem that can be corrected by the courts.' He thereby lends his support to mob rule."
If the wider needs of their class rule dictate, then the bourgeois state can take very radical action.
In the crisis of the Second World War, the British state took over vast tracts of private land for war production, war facilities and for military training.
Stately homes were temporarily (and sometimes permanently) expropriated and private ornamental parks unceremoniously ploughed. Farmers who did not comply with local state directions were expelled from their land.
What capitalist investment must have, however, is stability. And even a whiff of the self-activity and rebellion of the poor will send such investors off and away.
The Mugabe regime and the MDC
Driven by the pressure of imperialism, the Mugabe regime is desperate. All the vicious cut-backs of the IMF-born Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, with its end to food subsidies, abolition of the minimum wage and massive rises in the price of basic goods have not recreated the high growth rates of the first years of independence.
Huge strike movements of state and industrial workers, uprisings in the townships, demonstrations and student protests have mobilised the poor.
Yet the growth of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has taken the course so often followed by new opposition movements in the years since the fall of the Stalinist regimes discredited their version of socialism.
Although born out of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and mobilising large sections of the poor, the MDC was soon captured by business interests.
Democratic in its rhetoric, the MDC is neo-liberal in its programme, calling for all state-owned companies to be privatised in two years, for central bank autonomy, and a 100-day IMF-style stabilisation. No wonder it has been joined by the ranks of white farmers.
A real land reform
The British government has linked the process of land reform to the re-establishment of the rule of law and an end to the compulsory purchase of white-owned land. There is concurrence with the Mugabe regime that the reform should be confined to around 1500 of the 4500 white-owned farms, and to the purchase of those "farms which are voluntarily offered for sale".
Yet despite the heavy ZANU orchestration, it is difficult to conceive that the process of land occupation does not already involve the spontaneous activity of many poor and landless folk who merely wish to take advantage of these new opportunities.
That is how it should be. Genuine land reform does not require the consent of the landlord or their compensation. It is merely a return of what has previously been stolen to its rightful owners.
It proceeds in response to local needs and results from the self-activity of the landless themselves. It would be criminal to spend a penny on compensating the expropriated farmers in an economy where the average income has dropped to £279 per year.
Of course, the continuing presence of the white ex-farm owners in the capacity of skilled farm workers (if they have such skills) would be undoubtedly useful to the farm sector. It would be fascinating to see how many stayed, in such circumstances.
And of course, the Mugabe regime should not themselves benefit from the process of redistribution.
The Land Is Ours calls for an Independent Arbitration Board fully representative of the landless people to oversee the process of reform.
It calls for British financial aid for land redistribution to be consistent with the aims of local democratic accountability and to take into account the needs of indigenous, tribal and nomadic people, and for it to be ensured that priority for the best agricultural land is given to the landless of Zimbabwe to be managed sustainably, taking into account environmental considerations.
Britain's promise of a mere additional £36 million of conditional aid to fund this process is paltry.
As George Monbiot says in the Guardian, "our debt to the people of Zimbabwe runs into billions".
The problems of Zimbabwe are not primarily the problems of local corruption and commandism. They are the legacy of more than a century of imperialism. The comfort and wealth of Britain is built on the super-exploitation of Zimbabwe and other neo-colonial states.
Our first duty is to repay our debt for the suffering of the black population of Zimbabwe.