The International

On April 18, 2010, celebrating the 30th anniversary of independence from Britain, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe urged an end to political violence and a focus on rebuilding the economy in a country where the UN estimates close to 95 per cent of the population is unemployed and 47 per cent are undernourished. As the deadline to achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) moves closer, the situation in Zimbabwe has become increasingly desperate. The World Food Program (WFP) describes the situation as “alarming” and has provided assistance to close to 1.5 million Zimbabweans up to April 2010, noting that a series of bad droughts, as well as a lack of basic supplies, have produced a situation of acute food insecurity in the Southern African state.

President Mugabe and his rival-turned-Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangarai are facing one of the biggest challenges to reduce hunger and malnutrition on a continent known for its devastating humanitarian crises. However, President Mugabe stopped short of announcing an end to his controversial economic and agricultural policies, which Zimbabwean farmers’ groups such as the Commercial Farmer’s Union (CFU) and Western governments, specifically Britain and the EU, see as responsible for the collapse of what was once a stable and prosperous country. Indeed, President Mugabe announced that the take over of white-owned farms and the transfer of key industries to give indigenous Zimbabweans 51 per cent control of the economy would continue, saying in his speech on the anniversary of independence, “The economic empowerment policies are chiefly designed to redress the historic imbalances in the ownership of the economy.”

How did a country that was once an exporter of corn, livestock, peanuts, sugarcane, wheat, and millet to much of Southern Africa come to be one of the poorest and least well-fed in the whole region in the space of only ten years? Are the Zimbabwean government’s land redistribution policies unjustifiable and entirely to blame for this collapse or are there other factors involved? Finally, given that land redistribution has taken place and the country currently faces food shortages, how can Zimbabwe meet one of the UN’s MDG of reducing hunger?

From prosperity to near collapse

Robert Mugabe, now 86, has been President of Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Before that he led the native black resistance against the white minority-ruled state of Rhodesia during the second chimurenga (“rebellion” in the Shona language) between 1964 and 1979. The war between the Rhodesian army and the resistance groups, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), was particularly bitter, with charges of terrorism and unnecessary killing from both sides. Still, when black-majority rule was finally accepted and independence granted in 1980, President Mugabe said to white Zimbabweans in his inaugural address: “If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me, and me to you.”

However, in 1999 the matter of land ownership become the dominant issue for the Zimbabwean government. At independence, white Zimbabweans, though making up only 1 per cent of the population, owned over half the country’s arable land. This number had been reduced to 29 per cent by 1986 through a “willing-buyer willing-seller” program. Beginning in 1999, the Mugabe government moved aggressively to begin redistributing land to landless veterans of the war. Some 4,000 large-scale white-owned farms were seized. Though many more black Zimbabweans obtained land under this system there was a quick drop in output. With the large-scale farms gone the small farms that worked in tandem with them stagnated, and the economies of scale that kept prices for seeds and fertilizers low disappeared and many could no longer afford them. This was followed by a spiral in the Zimbabwean economy: by July 2008 inflation reached 231,000,000 per cent and the Zimbabwean dollar became almost worthless. Agricultural production began to plunge and the situation had become desperate. In December 2008, the charity Save the Children reported to the BBC that malnutrition rose by two thirds in a single year and that over 50 per cent of Zimbabweans required food aid. Scavenging in the country has since become a way of life. Reports in the New York Times in 2008 found people collecting corn kernels that flew off passing trucks and walking for miles to find muhacha trees to collect hacha fruit as their only sustenance.

President Mugabe claims that the situation in the country is the result of drought and Western sanctions by the U.S, and EU imposed in 2003 in response to his re-election in a vote widely criticized by observers as fraudulent. (The sanctions target over 200 people and 40 companies linked to Mr. Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF party.) Western governments are also displeased by the continuing land invasions, which have been declared discriminatory and illegal by a special court set up by the Southern African Development Community to investigate the issue.

The worsening situation in the country by 2008 prompted President Mugabe to form a government of unity with his former political rival Morgan Tsvangarai, whose Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has opposed the land invasions. However, the two leaders continue to disagree about the land invasion policy. Reuters reported in March 2009 that Prime Minister Tsvangarai called for the arrest of those responsible for the land invasions, saying they were causing agricultural disarray, while President Mugabe used his speech on the anniversary of independence to say that the seizures would continue.

Despite this apparent disunity, the government has said that aid to the small-scale farmers that have replaced the large white-owned farms has resulted in a harvest of 1.2 million tonnes of maize in 2009, a 130 per cent increase on 2008. However, the WFP report this is still a shortfall of 677,000 tonnes. And despite their optimistic forecasts, the government has re-introduced food-for-work aid programs in the provinces of Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West, Masvingo, and Midlands.

Scepticism and stoicism

The CFU has poured scorn on the government’s production numbers. Speaking in May 2009 to Reuters in an interview in Johannesburg, South Africa, union Vice President David Theron explained, “It’s a joke. It’s ridiculous. I find it incredible that those kind of figures could be put out. They’re not even close.” Theron, who has allegedly had three farm repossessed since 2000, also commented that the unity government was only trying to pull the wool over the international community’s eyes, saying “It really is close to hoodwinking the international community into releasing funds by making them believe everything is fine on the agricultural front,” In reality, the CFU claims the land invasions are at the heart of Zimbabwe’s agricultural woes, not sanctions or weather conditions.

The WFP would seem to agree, at least in part with the CFU assessment, noting in its 2008 report on the agricultural situation in Zimbabwe that structural changes associated with land reform were having an effect on output: “The newly settled farmers cultivate only about half of the prime land allocated to them owing to shortages of tractor/draught power, fuel, and investment in infrastructure/improvements, and absenteeism on the part of some new settler beneficiaries. The large-scale commercial sector now produces less than one-tenth of the maize that it produced in the 1990s.”

However, Stephen Chan, professor of International Relations of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, in response to inquiries by The International in May 2010 says that while the land seizures have damaged Zimbabwean agriculture they are not solely to blame. A lack of government investment in the farming sector, specifically in critical infrastructure such as dams and irrigation systems, must take a portion of the blame. Though the government often blames Western sanctions for this lack of investment, Professor Chan says this simply is not true, explaining that: “Rocketing inflation has stymied reinvestment and credit schemes.” Moreover, he points out, Zimbabwe’s neighbours must bear some of the blame for the agricultural collapse, telling The International: “The surrounding states, hungry to seize markets, have moved aggressively to capture Zimbabwean markets.”

Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, both professors at the African Institute for Agrarian Studies in Harare, Zimbabwe, disagree with the CFU and Stephen Chan, stating that critics of the land reform policy fail to understand the real reason for Zimbabwe’s agricultural collapse. In their article “The Radicalised State: Zimbabwe’s Interrupted Revolution,” they claim the radicalization of the state and much of the land invasion policy was actually encouraged by “imperialist” forces such as the International Monetary Fund. Unlike Professor Chan Mr. Moyo and Mr. Yeros support the government’s view that the agricultural situation is further exacerbated by Western sanctions. This supports the unity government’s position, laid out in its 2009 Short Term Emergency Recovery Program, that continued sanctions deny the Zimbabwean government and companies access to vital lines of credit for investment. Professors Moyo and Yeros also claim the land redistribution can benefit Zimbabwe and circumvent the Western sanctions if the small-scale farmers form productive collectives to provide shared investment, specialized labor and starting local agro-industrial enterprises.

Towards the 2015 Millennium Development Goals

As the UN’s 2015 goals fast approach, Zimbabwe presents a considerable challenge regarding the reduction of world hunger. The unity government’s decision to financially support small farmers in June 2009 to the tune of $142 million, and the fact the CFU claims there are only about 400 of an original 4,000 large-scale farms left, suggests small farmers will lead the recovery. So the question then is how can Zimbabwe encourage agricultural recovery amongst those small farmers?

The WFP, in its report “Zimbabwe: High Food Production but Food Insecurity” cites the largest problems holding back agriculture are the high costs of seed and fertilizers and the lack of electricity in rural areas. In order to combat these situations they have three central recommendations. First, Zimbabwe must re-establish its domestic seed industry to provide cheaper product to small-scale farmers. Second, Zimbabwe must promote conservation agriculture that aims to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture through minimal soil disturbance and crop rotation, allowing land to produce more with less fertilizer. Third, the government must support farm mechanization, which was lost during the land invasions, and reinvest in infrastructure, like those highlighted by Professor Chan, such as irrigation systems.

This sort of investment will require funds that the battered Zimbabwean economy will struggle to provide. Therefore, the unity government’s efforts to secure foreign donations and investment will prove vital. This has met with some success as Prime Minister Tsvangarai announced in June 2009 that China has extended Zimbabwe a line of credit worth $950 million. His efforts also seem to have attracted a response from international donors, including Britain and the EU. Britain is offering $100 million in aid to Zimbabwe this year, its largest ever annual donation. Likewise, the EU announced in October 2009 that it would donate 15.4 million euros to help up to 700,000 small-scale Zimbabwean farmers in an effort to boost grain production.

Local community efforts may also be able to boost production amongst small-scale farmers who do not have access to modern farming techniques. Lawrence Gudza of Practical Action a charity dedicated to helping poor communities choose and use technology to improve their lives, is promoting the unusual idea of podcasts to help Zimbabwean farmers. Writing on SciDev.net, Mr. Gudza says, “We must look at new channels for disseminating information in countries that have limited road networks and poor communication infrastructure.” He claims that people in rural areas of Zimbabwe would benefit from knowledge such as how to identify, treat and control livestock diseases and how to best harvest, store and market their crops. The project has met with some success, with production of milk in the Mbire district, where the project was piloted, up 300 per cent in six months and an 18 per cent increase in livestock birthrates.

In the long term, Zimbabwean agriculture and the economy will only recover when it has markets for export. Though Professor Chan states there is no guarantee of recovering international markets, he has hope for the future. When asked in May 2010 by The International if there were any future positives for the Zimbabwean economy, he wrote, “Yes, insofar as [Zimbabwe] becomes a tributary of the megalithic South African economic state.” As South Africa’s need for agricultural products increases, Zimbabwe may recapture a vital regional market.