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Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses supporters of his ZANU-PF party, March 30, 2005 during his last election rally in Harare before the start of parliamentary elections. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)
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INDEPTH: ZIMBABWE
A country in turmoil
CBC News Online | March 30, 2005
The history of the area goes back to 5000 BC when the first indigenous hunter-gatherer San people moved into southeast Africa, to be displaced in the great Bantu migrations of around 1000 AD. Around 1840, the Zulu-related warrior Ndebele arrived. The two main tribes fought over land and power but essentially lived as cattle herders and crop-growers. They had lots of space and plenty of land.
However, the blood began to flow in earnest when Cecil John Rhodes, the famous and notorious British adventurer and buccaneer capitalist, received his royal charter to establish the British South Africa Company (BSAC) with all the powers of a government. By 1890, the BSAC and white settlers had settled most of what today is Zimbabwe.
Fearing they would lose all, the Shona and Ndebele buried their traditional hostilities and started the first Chimurenga (liberation war) in 1896-97 against the British occupation. Thousands died before the superior weapons of the BSAC and British troops overwhelmed the indigenous fighters.
With the first liberation war over, "white agriculture" flourished as the "natives" were forced into employment on huge farms, subsidized by cheap labour and low taxes.
For the African communities, land was life: identity, history, spirituality and livelihood. It was sacred. But, quickly under the BASC and later the British Crown, huge tracts of the best farmland were allocated to the settlers, while Shona and Ndebele were forced to become farm labourers or were herded onto the dust bowls called "African reserves."
A 1925 land commission recommended segregation and in 1930 the notorious Land Apportionment Act made it law, allocating 12 million hectares of Southern Rhodesia's 40 million arable hectares to Africans, and setting aside 20 million for white farmers. The settler population was 48,000 at the time, 11,000 of whom were farmers.
The blacks got the low-rainfall arid, hilly land while the settlers, with thousands of cheap farm workers, built themselves lush farms growing sugar, tobacco, maize, beef and, more recently, exotic fruits and flowers for export.
With an area of just 390,245 square kilometres, Zimbabwe is one of the smallest countries in southern Africa. It was also one of the most industrialized and self-sufficient nations on the continent.
However, an extended drought and the disastrous economic policies of the Zimbabwean government have left about 80 per cent of the nation's 12 million people living below the poverty line. The pace of decline accelerated as the 20th century ended and the 21st began.
Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 after a 17-year bush war fought mainly between black liberation movements and the 250,000 white Rhodesians. The war, one of the most vicious in Africa, was all about land and its fair redistribution. Rebel leader Robert Mugabe became the country's first president in a post-independence landslide election victory for his ZANU-PF party.
Initially, he extended the hand of reconciliation to the country's remaining whites. About 100,000 remained after the war. Today, there are about 70,000.
The British and American governments of the day offered to buy land from willing white settlers who could not accept reconciliation and a fund was established, originally estimated at $2 billion US. It was used to buy some land to redistribute to landless peasants, but very few of them were resettled. However, hundreds of abandoned and expropriated white farms did end up in the hands of cabinet ministers, senior government officials and wealthy indigenous businessmen.
Election after election was fought on the land issue with ZANU-PF promising more and more to peasants. With a huge following in the communal lands, Mugabe was never in doubt about his victories, but after the violence and promises of these campaigns, the land issue always faded again into the background.
After the 1995 election, a group of young lawyers, academics, economists and businesspeople began to agitate for a new constitution and a new politics. Land was to be the key issue and plans were drawn up to begin a serious resettlement of peasants. Even the white Commercial Farmers Union participated, promising its expertise and the turnover of underutilized land. The union also pointed out that the government was the greatest underutilizer with "millions of acres lying idle while the elites who own the land live in urban mansions."
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. (AP photo)
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Drawn together by the militant Zimbabwe Confederation of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and its charismatic leader Morgan Tsvangirai, a new political opposition with some clout began to emerge, especially among the poverty-stricken and jobless in the urban slums and squatter camps.
They formed a National Constitutional Assembly to draw up a new constitution. The NCA would focus on land reform and it would spend many hours in the communal lands hearing from the black farmers.
But Mugabe sidestepped them and ran his own constitutional commission in 1999 and came up with a document in three months that would further entrench presidential powers, but with a land clause that still refused him powers of absolute expropriation without compensation.
Mugabe's constitution was his undoing. He'd never lost a vote before, but in February 2000, the country voted resoundingly against the government's proposed constitution. Mugabe was reported to be furious.
Things were not going well for Mugabe. Relations with the British were at an all-time low. Zimbabwe's decision to send troops in support of President Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 1998 was draining $1 million a day from Harare's coffers. Unemployment was around 65 per cent, inflation about the same, the Zimdollar had collapsed, investment had fled and corruption known about for years had become a public issue.
Mugabe's popularity with the masses waned as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – led by Tsvangirai – became a real threat.
Mugabe turned to his old comrades, the Liberation War Veterans Association, to whom he had paid billions of dollars in 1998 to keep them quiet as they demanded land and money. He forked over $4 billion in unbudgeted money to keep them happy and that, say economists, is when the dollar collapsed and the economy crashed.
The president, backed against the wall, wanted his payback. The veterans – and many hangers-on paid by the ruling party – began their increasingly violent campaign of farm invasions. By April 2000, some Mugabe backers said more than 1,000 farms had been occupied by 60,000 "war veterans." The opposition said half of the "veterans" weren't even born in 1980, when independence was achieved.
That harvest season, Zimbabwe was hammered by extreme weather. Many crops rotted in the fields, others couldn't be brought in because of the invasions. And at the time, squatters wanting to disrupt the country's economy further warned farmers not to sell their tobacco. Tobacco sales generate about 35 per cent of Zimbabwe's sparse foreign exchange.
As parliament was dissolved before the 2000 election, it passed legislation giving the government absolute rights to seize any farmland. Mugabe supported what the courts had called illegal three times, by urging the war veterans to keep invading, while subtly ordering the police not to intervene.
Zimbabwe's election for 120 contested parliamentary seats took place on June 24 and 25, 2000. Before the results were released, the head of the European Union team monitoring the election said it was fraught with violence and intimidation.
"The term 'free and fair elections' is not applicable in these elections," said Pierre Schori.
Mugabe's party – ZANU-PF – managed to win a majority with 62 seats, plus the 30 that Mugabe gets to appoint as president. It was a substantial drop from the 147 out of 150 seats the ZANU-PF held going in to the election. The opposition MDC stunned Mugabe as it took 57 seats. Another party, ZANU-N, won one seat.
The number of voters who showed up to cast their ballots more than doubled from the previous election. About 60 per cent of Zimbabwe's 5.1 million electorate voted in 2000, compared with only 29 per cent in the 1995 election.
In 2002, Mugabe won a third term as president in an election that international observers concluded was rigged. He managed 57 per cent of the vote in a battle against Tsvangirai. In the closing days of the campaign, Tsvangirai was charged with treason, accused of plotting to assassinate Mugabe. He was acquitted more than two years later.
Following the election, the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe for 18 months. Mugabe responded by pulling out of the organization.
While Western leaders have openly criticized Mugabe, few of his African neighbours have done so. At least not publicly. That's allowed Mugabe to claim that Africa is behind him – and that he's a victim of white racism. He frequently labels his political opponents as British lackeys.
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Area: 390,580 sq km
Pop: 12,671,860 (2004 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: 37.82 years
People living with HIV/Aids: 2.3 million (2001 est.)
Population below poverty line: 70 per cent
Inflation rate (2003): 385%
Government type: parliamentary democracy
Independence: April 18, 1980 (from UK)
House of Assembly: 150 seats - 120 elected by popular vote for five-year terms, 30 appointed by the president)
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