A SELF-FULFILLED PROPHESY
OR
IT WASN’T TRUE UNTIL THEY MADE IT SO.
Successful farmers do not have to be white. Black farmers (not the `telephone farmers’ or the thieving politicians and their friends who only take farms for vanity or spite) are very able farmers. The proof would have been found in that brief moment after independence when the racial barriers to ownership of good land and good farming practises started to come down. The commercial farmers and the Union (GAPWUZ) of black farm workers who had become managers and foremen were producing crops, not merely for subsistence, but surplus food for the nation. All this can be traced in the statistics but that is not the point of this piece. Let me try to explain how pre-independence prejudice and doubts about the abilities of black farmers have turned into a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy.
Almost overnight, after the white farmers were driven so hastily and so violently away, the infrastructure that sustained their good farming methods started to collapse. A new farmer, ANY new farmer was going to find it heavy going, once the little islands of expertise in large and small towns serving the whole range of farming needs were gone. Where was the machine shop that repaired the tractor, the plough, the harrow and the harvester, the farm `bakkie’ and even the old office typewriter? What happened to the warehouse filled with agricultural lime, fertilizer, gypsum insecticides, veterinary supplies? How can the tonnes of seed be delivered before the planting season when the warehouses are empty or the supplier has no fuel? What about keeping the country roads accessible and in good repair? Where are the transporters and their managers both private and public keeping the trucks roadworthy, the goods trains running? Who mends and keeps open the bridges, the arteries of supply? Why can’t the grain for stock feed be delivered from the fields to be milled and widely distributed? What happened to the little factories, the grinding mills that need diesel fuel? These are just a few of the `downstream’ industries that a good farmer needs. They have been trashed, overrun, put out of business, their owners made bankrupt and keen to go somewhere else where business is not so difficult to do.
For a new farmer, operating in the absence of an infrastructure that took a hundred years to bring to near-perfection is not a practical proposition. Farming in such an environment as has existed in Zimbabwe since the mad rush to drive the commercial farmers off the land is impossible.
So there is no produce, the people are starving and the people who say that blacks can’t farm are now speaking the truth. They can’t farm, and soon, neither can whites or anybody else farm successfully in Zimbabwe.
Before independence Zimbabwe had developed over many decades to become a white farmer’s paradise and it has now become anybody’s hell. Droughts cannot be overcome because lakes and dams and river water reticulation are losing their pipes to thieves or their overhead irrigation equipment to vandals. A black farmer walked in to the white farmers’ paradise, looked around and saw that everybody who was needed to sustain it, was leaving, or had already left. They did not leave willingly, there was no farming going on to sustain them. It was a two way thing.
And now the filling station owner a few miles from the farm has closed his pumps and his little workshop because there were few vehicles running and there were sometimes no vehicles because there was no fuel. Or it could have been the other way around: there was no fuel and so there are no vehicles calling by every day to keep the business alive. Whichever way you look at it, it is all quite mad.
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance, Herbert Murerwa recently came up with a make-believe budget. He knows that agriculture was the bedrock of the country’s economy before his deranged boss destroyed it, but he has to pretend that there is such a thing as an economy without farmers – never mind the skin colour of the farmers. Tony Hawkins, the economist, giving his annual evaluation of the budget has no need to pretend. He has plenty of facts and statistics at his disposal. He pulls no punches: “If anyone was hoping the budget will alter the direction of the economy they are living in a fool's paradise” and “Murerwa's predictions on growth and a reduction in inflation from 411% at present to 80% by the end of next year were suspect”, he said. He was in no doubt about what happens to an economy whose foundations have been destroyed.
New, black farmers haven’t a hope of showing how good they might have been, given the supporting infrastructure that they need. It wasn’t true about black Zimbabweans being useless as farmers, until the ZANU (PF) government made it so.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Thursday, December 1, 2005
FIGHTING OVER THE CARCASS OF PARLIAMENT
I haven't blogged for several days - ` so much to do, so little done'. Only relics like myself will instantly recognise the dying words of Cecil John Rhodes. That wicked colossus of British imperialism had at least managed to kick start a country before he kicked the bucket, while I generally waste my time.
This blog has been given freely to The Zimbabwean for later publication so my blog's three regular readers should not put it up for any prizes until it has been published. I joke about the prizes, of course.
SEVEN SENATE SEATS - A WORTHLESS QUOTA
Seven has always been my favourite number, but I am going off it. When the MDC’s pro-Senate faction won seven seats it set me thinking about numbers – not my favourite pastime – but words have begun to fail me since the whole sorry scenario of a futile and possibly fatal fight with the party’s President over the Senate seats began. So I ruminate over another historical, and equally unhelpful political win for seven opposition men whom I knew long ago. Working together in our little opposition political party, we helped them on their way to parliament. We were looking for political space; we were naïve enough to believe that we could change things. We were wrong. Our seven men won seven seats but they could do absolutely nothing to advance the cause of our party which fought for freedom from minority rule in our country.
Thirty five years ago, the parliament of Rhodesia was almost exclusively filled with devotees of the ruling party, the Rhodesian Front (which was the same as the government). The opposition could not even boast of the worthless quota – in seats, not in personalities - that the current Zimbabwean government (which is the same as the ruling party) has permitted their MDC opposition. It is by Mugabe’s ZANU (PF) party’s design that they currently occupy too few seats to be effective in either the upper or lower chambers of Parliament. A two thirds majority for the ruling party gives them licence to change the constitution, to do whatever they like. Twenty five years of increasingly brutal preparation for this achievement has seen to that. The parallels with Smith’s RF falter here because it has to be said that the majority of white voters followed him out of love (they wanted to believe that he could keep the country safe for them forever), and not, as in Mugabe’s case, out of fear.
In the general elections of 1970, undaunted by the same uneven playing field as exists today – correction, it wasn’t nearly so uneven then as it is today - the Centre Party put up eight good men and true, led by Micah Bhebe, for the eight seats that could only be contested by the very limited numbers of black people on the `B’ roll. Seven of them won (the eighth was won by a candidate from Masvingo called Gondo). All the whites, who contested on the `A’ roll, lost. We were not surprised but we were thrilled to bits with our seven men in parliament. The record (Hansard) reveals, however, that they could change absolutely nothing – just as is the case for the MDC in today’s parliament of Zimbabwe. The little opposition CP had no chance of making alliances in the House with other minority parties - because there were none, way back then, either - to outvote the ruling RF regime. Mere `window dressing’ it was then and window dressing it is now. A small quota of opposition seats was expensive window dressing, but well worth the cost as it presented our apartheid South African neighbours and others disposed to support white rule with the false face of a democratic dispensation. The uninitiated were given the impression that democracy could prevail in a country ruled by one party. We all know now that under the ruling RF, the minority whites eventually had to fight a bloody war,and power came to the majority blacks through the barrel of a gun.
MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai went against his party’s formal decision to contest for seats when he urged a boycott of the Senate election. He was ineffectively suspended, quite legitimately, but unwisely `at this point in time," as his party’s non-partisan Legal Secretary, David Coltart put it. He reacted by making things worse. "I don't want to get bogged down in legal interpretations. This is a political problem and would have to be sorted out politically,” he said, through Bango, his spokesman. William Bango is a good man but perhaps he should shoulder the blame for this awful blunder. Zimbabwe’s most powerful man, the cause of most of Zimbabwe’s problems has exactly the same attitude to `legal interpretations’. He has never allowed himself to get bogged down in them. The only interpretations he will accept are his own, and look where that has brought the country.
Morgan is on firm ground, however, with his reported remark “All this political fiddling while the country is reduced to ashes…” That is indeed a piece of political wisdom. The score between the two factions is just about even `at this point in time’. David got it. Now why can’t the rest of them get it?
The Seven Senate Seats provide a fine piece of alliteration for a headline. Unfortunately, the number Seven is as hopeless as it proved to be thirty five years ago. There really are no words worth concocting around the whole dreary episode of a fatal fight over the carcass of a once proud parliament. Except for the opportunity to play with words and numbers, it is an exercise in futility.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
This blog has been given freely to The Zimbabwean for later publication so my blog's three regular readers should not put it up for any prizes until it has been published. I joke about the prizes, of course.
SEVEN SENATE SEATS - A WORTHLESS QUOTA
Seven has always been my favourite number, but I am going off it. When the MDC’s pro-Senate faction won seven seats it set me thinking about numbers – not my favourite pastime – but words have begun to fail me since the whole sorry scenario of a futile and possibly fatal fight with the party’s President over the Senate seats began. So I ruminate over another historical, and equally unhelpful political win for seven opposition men whom I knew long ago. Working together in our little opposition political party, we helped them on their way to parliament. We were looking for political space; we were naïve enough to believe that we could change things. We were wrong. Our seven men won seven seats but they could do absolutely nothing to advance the cause of our party which fought for freedom from minority rule in our country.
Thirty five years ago, the parliament of Rhodesia was almost exclusively filled with devotees of the ruling party, the Rhodesian Front (which was the same as the government). The opposition could not even boast of the worthless quota – in seats, not in personalities - that the current Zimbabwean government (which is the same as the ruling party) has permitted their MDC opposition. It is by Mugabe’s ZANU (PF) party’s design that they currently occupy too few seats to be effective in either the upper or lower chambers of Parliament. A two thirds majority for the ruling party gives them licence to change the constitution, to do whatever they like. Twenty five years of increasingly brutal preparation for this achievement has seen to that. The parallels with Smith’s RF falter here because it has to be said that the majority of white voters followed him out of love (they wanted to believe that he could keep the country safe for them forever), and not, as in Mugabe’s case, out of fear.
In the general elections of 1970, undaunted by the same uneven playing field as exists today – correction, it wasn’t nearly so uneven then as it is today - the Centre Party put up eight good men and true, led by Micah Bhebe, for the eight seats that could only be contested by the very limited numbers of black people on the `B’ roll. Seven of them won (the eighth was won by a candidate from Masvingo called Gondo). All the whites, who contested on the `A’ roll, lost. We were not surprised but we were thrilled to bits with our seven men in parliament. The record (Hansard) reveals, however, that they could change absolutely nothing – just as is the case for the MDC in today’s parliament of Zimbabwe. The little opposition CP had no chance of making alliances in the House with other minority parties - because there were none, way back then, either - to outvote the ruling RF regime. Mere `window dressing’ it was then and window dressing it is now. A small quota of opposition seats was expensive window dressing, but well worth the cost as it presented our apartheid South African neighbours and others disposed to support white rule with the false face of a democratic dispensation. The uninitiated were given the impression that democracy could prevail in a country ruled by one party. We all know now that under the ruling RF, the minority whites eventually had to fight a bloody war,and power came to the majority blacks through the barrel of a gun.
MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai went against his party’s formal decision to contest for seats when he urged a boycott of the Senate election. He was ineffectively suspended, quite legitimately, but unwisely `at this point in time," as his party’s non-partisan Legal Secretary, David Coltart put it. He reacted by making things worse. "I don't want to get bogged down in legal interpretations. This is a political problem and would have to be sorted out politically,” he said, through Bango, his spokesman. William Bango is a good man but perhaps he should shoulder the blame for this awful blunder. Zimbabwe’s most powerful man, the cause of most of Zimbabwe’s problems has exactly the same attitude to `legal interpretations’. He has never allowed himself to get bogged down in them. The only interpretations he will accept are his own, and look where that has brought the country.
Morgan is on firm ground, however, with his reported remark “All this political fiddling while the country is reduced to ashes…” That is indeed a piece of political wisdom. The score between the two factions is just about even `at this point in time’. David got it. Now why can’t the rest of them get it?
The Seven Senate Seats provide a fine piece of alliteration for a headline. Unfortunately, the number Seven is as hopeless as it proved to be thirty five years ago. There really are no words worth concocting around the whole dreary episode of a fatal fight over the carcass of a once proud parliament. Except for the opportunity to play with words and numbers, it is an exercise in futility.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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