Riesgos de no recibir una alimentación normal

I wanted to develop a style of writing which would be consonant with lived experience, in all its variety and ambiguity83

Introduction

In this chapter, I wish simply to portray Zimbabwe through language that will give a basic yet elaborate depiction of the formation and culmination of crises. This chapter show the rural populace in Zimbabwe subsists within a context of multiple constraints. These overlap and contribute towards a multifaceted vulnerability that can be difficult to dissect. To aid the discussion, I give a stylised chronology of critical facts and events that have ensued since independence in 1980. This critical and complex milieu justifies the designation of the Zimbabwean context as a crises context.

The chapter is divided into two parts comprising a sequence of chronological events. The first part introduces the crisis formulation stages of the Zimbabwean experiment. The focus here is on independence in 1980, the Structural Adjustment period in 1992 and the growing civic unrest that was attached to the land question throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the second part, factors leading to the culmination of Zimbabwe’s interlocked crisis from 1992 to the present day will be presented. Although with political derivations, the interlocked crisis is presented in this chapter as being largely socioeconomic. To understand the crises will be to understand the very nature of rural people’s overall vulnerability. Before starting to explore the chronological events however, I first give a brief background to Zimbabwe in terms of its population structure.

Zimbabwe: Brief Background

According to the 2012 population census the country has a population of about 13 million people. Men make up 48% of this population, and women, 52% (ZIMSTAT (2012). The dominant ethnic groups found in Zimbabwe include the Shona people who make up 80% of the population and the Ndebele people, who make up 12%. The remaining 8% is made up of racial minorities which include white Zimbabweans. Buhera and Nyanga, the case study areas for this study are occupied mainly by the Shona people.

146

Figure 16: Map of Zimbabwe

Family is central to the Zimbabwean culture. The Shona concept for family is embedded in the word mhuri (Ndlovu, 2011). Mhuri is the primary site for gendered identities, hence men and women are crucial pillars of this institute (Owomoyela, 2002). Mvududu and McFadden (2001) highlight that the heterosexual, male constructed and male dominated mhuri has consolidated itself as part of the cycle of its evolution, and so the musha [home] that is headed by the Sa musha [man of the house] is considered the ideal family prototype. Muchemwa and Muponde (2007) reason that, this why the only feminism that has been tolerated in Zimbabwe, is that which does not threaten the official discourse of fatherhood (p. xxii). My focus on environmental change and gender in Zimbabwean rural areas can be understood further when the fact that at least 68.3% of Zimbabwe’s population is rural (ZIMSTAT, 2013a) and women make up about 70% of this population (MoWAGCD, 2013). Nonetheless, it is generally argued that the size of the rural population has resulted in population pressure on resources and has triggered an additional crisis that is ecological in nature (Lopes, 1996). Feresu (2010) claims however that, the disribution rather than the size of the rural population is what has acted as a major driver for environmental changes of biophysical form. She maintains that about 60% of the rural population remains concentrated on marginal lands even after the 2000 land reform which in part was sanctioned to rewrite the colonial legacy of irregular land tenure patterns.

Source: NationsOnline

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P

Part One: Zimbabwe’s Uhuru

Zimbabwe is a dialectician’s dream85

One cannot simply comprehend contemporary Zimbabwe without reference to the past86

After 90 decades of colonial rule Zimbabwe was born out of the Rhodesian republic in 1980. Following its birth, the republic status was never forfeited. This was a precedent that had been set by Rhodesia’s 8th _{Prime Minister Ian Smith, five years after the passing}

of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965. Smith had declared Rhodesia a republic so as to distance the colony further from the monarch, and it was for that reason and that reason alone. For in as far as the grounding principles of a republican society are concerned, Ian Smith had defied them all when he declared a minority rule. In his words,

I don't believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia, not in a thousand years87

In response to Ian Smith’s Rhodesian republic and its minority rule, Mugabe in his Zimbabwean republic nonetheless spoke a conciliatory message, “let us forgive and forget…” (see Mandaza (1986, p. 42). But he vehemently declared a majority rule, that is, a Zimbabwe for black Zimbabweans, and in his own words,

Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again88

A republican shift was not uncommon for newly independent States who often saw this as a way of asserting their self-rule. However many of the infant States (former colonies) have shown a totalitarian predilection to governance after independence. Therefore it has been argued that the States find themselves often caught between the ideology- structure nexus. This is a dichotomous position in which on the one hand, the State, often embodied in a single person, the President (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013), has to assert

84 _{Uhuru is a Swahili word meaning freedom.} 85 _{Gordon (1984).}

86 _{Schatzberg (1984).} 87 _{Wikiquote (n.d).}

148 its ideological underpinnings on the one hand, and on another, structurally walk the talk, through the effective implementation of its policies (Mkandawire, 2001). In African countries the nexus between ideology and structure is usually followed by a structural disarticulation where the State fails to altogether walk the talk, often resulting in situations of crisis.

The Home-Coming

At independence, the new government had inherited a paradoxical state of affairs from the colonial government. This state is often referenced as the ‘dual enclave’. The expression refers to the coexistence of a ‘sophisticated’ urban economy and the ‘rustic’ rural economy including, the modern versus traditional farming institutions. Due to marginality, the underdog in each example serves as an antithesis of the other. In essence, the sophisticated economy operates as a narrow enclave in a largely traditional society (Mamdani, 1996). In contemporary dialectic, in Zimbabwe the dual enclave has also been used to depict the small formal sector dominated by a majority of males and a large informal sector dominated by a majority of women (see Harold-Barry, 2004; Kanyenze et al., 2011). It was the incumbent government’s role to change the dual economy it had inherited, push-starting an integrated economy in order to navigate the nation towards the most viable pathway to growth.

To transition the State, the incumbent government had to choose between the colonial capitalist ideology and an Africanized socialist ideology. The case with many newly independent African States had been to adopt a variation of socialist ideologies in conjunction with one-party State systems (Gregory, 1986). Since Africa had not yet fashioned its own indigenous philosophy, it was easier for its newly independent States to borrow from the socialist ideology, for it was closely connected to their traditional communalism. Having been victims of a colonial era that was grounded on capitalist principles, African leaders also saw socialism as a non-exploitative ideology (Wamala, 2012). Problematically, as argued by Mandaza (1986), socialism was a deficient ideological reform for it had not been properly adapted to suit the post-colonial

149 reality89_{. Africa’s post-independence situation thus serves as juxtaposition to Geschiere’s}

notion of the return of the local, as the period after colonization was like a ‘homecoming’ only to find that the local had been replaced by the global (see Geschiere, 2009). The new home was a place where there was no real sense of belonging, and within which certain preconditions and concomitants had to be followed to become fully acceptable in the global village. Such was the position that the GOZ found itself post- independence.

Zimbabwe’s Post-Independence Development Plan

To undertake the daunting task of redressing the gross socio-economic imbalances, the GOZ put itself in a tight rope position. On one hand it embraced a reformist capitalist ideology that sought to please the West. This was mainly through protecting the interests of the white minority after independence90,91_{.On another hand it embraced a}

radical socialist ideology that sought to appease the native people. This was mainly through adopting welfarist approaches, and propagating the rhetoric of land redistribution. Mandaza (1986) who is not favourable to this type of compromise between imperialist forces (reformist approach) and democratic forces (radical approach) calls this outcome as a schizophrenic condition. The outcome was embodied in the politically ambiguous Transitional National Development Plan of 1982/3 – 1984/5. Gordon (1984) calls this the ‘accommodation’ period, the success of which was short- lived (also see Chimombe, 1986).

89 _{In the wake of the socialist movements, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Botswana’s Seretse Khama are} among the few African leaders who stuck to capitalist ideology post settler colonization (though Botswana was never colonized so to speak, and following its independence, Kenya followed through with a land reform which strictly adhered to the ‘willing-buyer willing seller’ principles).

90 _{At the dawn of independence in 1979, a team of native negotiators engaged in land talks with the} British in what is called the Lancaster House Agreement. Following this caucus, Britain had agreed to meet part of the costs of land recovery from white minority farmers but only on a ‘willing buyer’ ‘willing seller’ basis. The outcome of the negotiations between the two parties had been consolidated in a Bill of Rights under the new constitution. Section 16 of the Bill of Rights bonded the native government into a 10 year agreement to stop it from acquiring and redistributing private property. However, to facilitate the land redistribution process, a Land Acquisition Act was drawn in 1985. Being predicated on the constitution, the Act was limiting, as the government could only purchase unutilised or land lying idle. After the 10 year binding period of the Bill of Rights, the government then went ahead to amend section 16 of the Bill, to enable it to acquire land compulsorily, and without any limitations. This was achieved through the amended Land Acquisition Act of 1992.

91 _{According to Coldham (1993) at the time that Zimbabwe went through the Lancaster House} negotiations, it had not much choice but to comply with the terms. Meredith (2002) however reveals that Zimbabwe’s compliance with the Bill of Rights was a premeditated move, as the new government knew that there was a chance in the future to amend its position.

150 Disillusioned Rural People a Decade after Independence

Despite the native government’s rhetoric of redressing colonially inherited imbalances, the onset of independence from British colonial rule remained blemished by the control of 70% of the best farming land by the white minority who made up 1% of the population (Zamponi, 2005). The white minority had taken the bulk of the prime land and relegated the native majority onto marginal and agro-ecologically poor land under the provisions of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 (Kanyenze et al., 2011). The irony of this is that the rural areas with an estimated carrying capacity of 275,000 families had carried a number of about 700,000 families by independence in 1980 (Friis-Hansen, 1995). In contrast, at least 60% of the white farming areas lay idle or underutilized with each farm ranging between 500 and 2000 hectares (Harold-Barry, 2004). As part of its commitment to redressing the imbalances, the incumbent government pledged to resettle at least 162,000 rural families within the first five years of independence (Mlambo, 2014). In line with the Lancaster House Agreement, the British government under Thatcher would meet part of the cost for the market-based instrument of land reform allowing for land to be bought back from the white minority using the fair market value (FMV) principle of ‘willing seller willing buyer’ (Chung, 2006). But by 1984, only 34,000 families had been resettled (Jacobs, 1991), by 1989, 52,000 families had been resettled, and by 1990, 71,000 families had been resettled (Mlambo, 2014). There are claims that during this period, the government had misappropriated some of the land reclamation funds by securing land for the ruling elite as opposed to the landless rural people (Goebel, 2005). This is argued to be part of the reason why the British government under Blair later went on to cease funding for the resettlement programme (Chung, 2006).

Coupled with the slow-paced land redistributions, the pitiful living conditions in the rural areas led to rural discontent in the 1980s (Mlambo, 2014). Mlambo reports that during this period there were various attempted farm invasions on white minority land. The response from the government was to forcibly evict the illegal settlers. The government criticized the occupiers as unruly elements bent on disrupting the country’s economy (p. 225). Further, the government told the ‘unruly elements’ that it preferred to resettle people who waited patiently rather than those who preferred to be squatters (Chiviya,

151 1982, p. 165). It is no wonder then that the white minority praised the native government in the first decade of independence (Mlambo, 2014, p. 224). Against the pitiful living conditions of rural people, a white citizen was cited in Mandaza (1986) as saying,

We have a house, a swimming pool, a tennis court, three servants … We’re not living in Rhodesia. We’re living in Zimbabwe (p. 58)

Taking into consideration their excessive affluence in comparison to the native poor, Mumbengegwi (1986) comments that the native government had, on top of a dual enclave society, also inherited a spoilt white bourgeoisie.92 _{However, to address the}

colonially inherited imbalances, the Growth with Equity Strategy of 1981 paved the way for the improvement of several aspects of rural infrastructure (Kadhani, 1986). The government aimed for rural electrification, the construction of roads, schools, clinics, boreholes, sanitation, and the development of rural growth points as business centres (Mangiza & Helmsing, 1991). Paying particular attention to the latter, these settlements had been earmarked for development through the Integrated Rural Development Plan of 1978,93 _{and would serve as the sphere of influence for rural areas (Wekwete, 1988).}

According to Manyanhaire et al. (2011), the set targets were too ambitious, because in the end, not all districts managed to get business centres. For those that did, the growth points soon became characterized by stagnation and decay. Chirisa et al. (2013) essentially classify most growth points as downward transition regions.

The government also initiated health and education reforms in both rural and urban areas, the benefits of which were mostly felt in the first decade of independence (Muzondidya, 2008). For example, at independence, rural health care was so bad that for every 1000 babies born in Mufakose (a high density suburb in Harare) 21 would die before they reached age 1, whereas, for every 1000 babies born in Binga (a District in rural Zimbabwe) 300 would die before they reached age 1 (Agere, 1986). Amidst the progress, the amended public health service sector could only cater to a small

92 _{The expression “dual enclave” refers to the coexistence of a ‘sophisticated’ urban economy and ‘rustic’} rural economy, including modern versus traditional farming institutions. In essence, the sophisticated economy operates as a narrow enclave in a largely traditional society (Mamdani, 1996).

93 _{This is a development plan that had been initiated by the colonial government, but was later inherited} by the native government.

152 population, mostly in urban areas (Chimhowu, 2009), with only about 10% of the rural population covered by health care (Kanyenze et al., 2011). Most of the rural areas continued to receive health care and treatment from churches and missionaries (Chimhowu, 2009).94 _{While positive pricing systems, credit and input supplies, and}

subsidies were also made available to the rural people, and further outcomes of development were promised (Raftopoulos & Mlambo, 2008), not much development progress ended up being achieved in the rural areas (Moyo, 2007). Muzondidya (2008) thus concludes that government policy did not efficiently renew rural economies or revive rural conditions of poverty.

ESAP95_{: Zimbabwe’s Race to the Bottom}

Much of the policies that have turned out to be bad were at their insistence96

In general, the first decade after independence was marked by notable socioeconomic improvements. State welfarism had gained Zimbabwe real economic growth averaging 4.6% during the 1986-1990 period (Mazingi & Kamidza, 2011). Yet still, the growth had been highly disproportionate as the doors to economic growth had been open to only a few (Lopes, 1996) - the elites, who Muzondidya (2008) states comprised just 3% of the population made up of the white minority and a small black bourgeoisie.97 _{On top of}

being highly disproportionate, the growth was been ephemeral in nature. After the boom period in the first decade after independence, Zimbabwe had succumbed to a bag of mixed fortune, ranging from the global economic recession in the 1980s, to weakening terms of trade, and high interest rates and oil prices (Mlambo, 2014; Muzondidya, 2008). The impacts of the State’s welfarist policies were also starting to be felt. As Gordon (1984) points out, the policies gave rise to heavy investment in welfare expenditure, loss of control over fiscal spending, and a repeatedly overburdened budget. For instance, the education allocation budget between 1982 and 1983 was 22%

94 _{The situation did however improve due to the ‘Health for all by 2000’ Development Plan, but soon} deteriorated again due to the ongoing economic crisis.

95 _{ESAP is the Economic Structural Adjustment Program which led to the deregulation of the market and} reduction in welfare expenditure to facilitate economic growth but with negative impacts on the poor. 96 _{Mkandawire and Soludo (2003, p. 2).}

97 _{As compared to 4,500 white commercial farmers, as few as 300 natives owned commercial farms at} independence (Moyo, 1986).

153 of the national budget (Zvobvo, 1986). As a result, the Bretton Woods institutions with their preconditions and concomitants came to the rescue with a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), widely referred to in Zimbabwe as ESAP. SAPs are economic reform packages that comprise loans provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) to Third World countries dealing with critical economic hardship (see Wamala, 2012).

Worldwide, the early 90s had ushered in a new wave of neo-liberal Structural Adjustment Programmes which were engineered by the Bretton Woods institutions, and in particular the World Bank and IMF. These International Financial Institutions (IFIs) were more than happy to assist because, at the time, the West was preaching a liberal, modernisation doctrine to counter Soviet communism. Prior to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union had played an important role in aiding several African States (Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Somalia, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Kenya) with financial and military aid during their liberation struggles. As a result, there was a perceived danger that Africa would fall into the hands of the Soviets. The possibility was real because already several African States were adopting socialist ideologies which were an infant version of the communist manifesto98_{. Against Western fears, Ndabaninigi Sithole, a}

revolutionary figure in Zimbabwe had reasoned that,

The Russianisation of Africa is a possibility immediate or remote, but not a fact, whereas the Westernisation of Africa is an accomplished fact (Mandaza, 1986, p.