Introduction

In May 2002, as part of the use of terror to maintain his grip on power, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe launched what one historian described as “the final onslaught against white farmers.” That month, almost all the white farmers in the country were given forty-five days to vacate their land, preparatory to handing it over to the state for redistribution. Rather than going to Mugabe’s landless black supporters, most of the land ended up in the hands of Mugabe’s family, and their extended clique. In the wake of this violence and corruption, commercial agriculture in the country essentially came to an end. It was the culmination of twenty years of rhetoric and idiocy which turned the country from a net exporter of food to one which needed international aid for its people to survive.

Robert Mugabe, c. 1979

 

Corruption aside, it is a measure of how important the land issue was in Zimbabwe. In a global economy where increasing wealth was marked by technological advances and automated production methods, the (false) promise of providing land for subsistence farming was still a powerful election tool. For all his corruption and violence, Mugabe understood this.

 

Resolution: General First Presentation

That said, I come not to praise Mugabe, but rather to (mostly) ignore him. My goal is to use the status of land in Zimbabwe as a platform to present a resolution for debate:

Is it permissible to use state power to rectify a previous abuse of state power?

I don’t have a definitive answer to this question but more wish to stimulate discussion (and comments, many, many comments). This essay comes with the SLD (Standard Libertarian Disclaimer) subject identifier under which a number of pieces were published in the early months of this site. The SLD here is that land should not be assigned or allocated by the state. But, as I will suggest, land became a flashpoint in Zimbabwe because the state got involved in allocation and redistribution long before Mugabe came to power.

A disclaimer: and if I could, I would write this in bright, flashing lights: nothing I write here should be construed as even partial endorsement of the actions of Robert Mugabe and/or ZANU-PF in the post-2000 period. For several reasons Zimbabwe simply offered me the easiest example from which to explore this question.

 

History: Southern Rhodesia (and Africa) Through 1945

A very brief summary which omits a lot of detail.

In the later nineteenth century, the territory which became the nation of Zimbabwe, was part of the Ndebele Kingdom, founded in the 1820s by Mzilikazi, a one-time subordinate of the Zulu king Shaka. Mzilikazi had rebelled against Shaka, but Mzilikazi’s forces were crushed and he fled into the region that became the Ndebele kingdom. After a few somewhat nomadic years, Mzilikazi and his followers settled in a region which Europeans called Matabeleland. The region overlapped, but was not completely coterminous, with Zimbabwe.

 

The face of a monster

Matabeleland

 

Mzilikazi was succeeded by his son Lobengula. By this time, gold had been discovered and the British were determined to get their hands on at least some of the shiny, shiny metal. Initial explorations in the region were made by Cecil Rhodes under the authority of the British South Africa Company (the names get tricky: the BSAC had nothing to do with the Republic of South Africa. And, although the territory which became Zimbabwe is in east Africa, it had no political connection to British East Africa). Skipping over a LOT of details, the BSAC, by a combination of moderately fair (theoretically honest treaties) and less than fair (betrayal of those treaties and a subsequent invasion), ended up “owning” the territory of the Ndebele Kingdom. Even in those early days, we can see the racism (and violence) inherent in the imperial system. As one young rifleman from the BSAC wrote home:

all over the place it was nothing but dead or dying niggers. We burnt all the huts and a lot of niggers that could not come out were burnt to death, you could hear them screaming but it served them right

From the 1880s until 1923, the BSAC ran the territory. However, as was fairly common practice in the British empire of the time, there were government officials in the region answerable to various departments of the imperial state. The BSAC itself remained steadfastly unprofitable: administrative costs always outweighed commercial income. By the 1920s, the BSAC’s territory extended across a vast portion of east central Africa, encompassing the present-day states of Zimbabwe and Zambia (it would be the twenty-fifth biggest nation in the world today – larger than Colombia, more than 1.5 times the size of Texas).

Southern Africa: Pre-WWII (thanks to Tonio for the pic)

 

By the 1920s, the BSAC realized it could no longer afford to run the southern region, now known as southern Rhodesia. The company favored a union of the territory with South Africa but, in a 1920 election for local government, pro-Responsible Government Association (RGA) candidates won a large plurality. Only 10% of the population favored union with South Africa, while 23% favored continuing BSAC rule. In a 1922 referendum, pro-RGA candidates won 60% of the vote. This led to southern Rhodesia becoming a self-governing crown colony within the British Empire in 1923 (The northern portion of the former BSAC land became a British protectorate known—creatively—as Northern Rhodesia. In 1964, Northern Rhodesia became the independent state of Zambia).

Southern Rhodesia had a significant degree of autonomy. Britain maintained control over foreign policy and had the right to veto any legislation concerning blacks – although this veto was seldom used. In virtually every other sphere, the colony took care of its own affairs. Southern Rhodesia went through a series of ups and downs over the next twenty years or so, its fortunes generally tied to those of the empire.

But, this decision to grant almost complete autonomy to southern Rhodesia would have dramatic implications post-WWII.

 

Next week, “Part II – The Mugabeaning.”