Dr. Sizo Nkala
IN a U-turn that will have a place of pride in the history books and make Robert Mugabe turn in his grave, the government of Zimbabwe has disbursed the first batch of payment (US$3.1 million) to a bunch of former white commercial farmers who were dispossessed of their land during the controversial fast-track land reform programme (FLRP) in the early 2000s.
The payment is part of the 2024 Farmers Compensation Agreement which is a revised version of the original Global Compensation Deed (GCD) signed by the Zimbabwean government and former white farmers represented by the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) and the Southern African Farmers Alliance in 2020.
About 4600 former commercial farmers who were victims of haphazard and often violent land grabs 25 years ago will get a total of US$3.5 billion. The country’s decision to compensate the former landholders is part of the Arrears Clearance and Debt Resolution process which commenced in 2019 when Zimbabwe committed to working with a group of international creditors and development partners to develop a roadmap to clear its US$21 billion debt overhang which has hampered economic development and blocked the country’s access to concessional external finance.
In 2022, the process evolved to the Structured Dialogue Platform (SDP) which is underpinned by three sector working groups namely the economic growth and stability reforms, governance reforms, and land tenure reforms.
The latter includes in its fold the development of bankable 99-year leases, the compensation of former farm owners, and the resolution of Bilateral Investment and Property Protection Agreements (BIPPAs). Zimbabwe’s land reform programme decimated a thriving agricultural sector which was the mainstay of the economy.
For example, maize production dropped by a massive 77 per cent between 2000 and 2002 from 2.1 million tonnes to only half a million tonnes. The sharp decline in agricultural productivity as a result of the poorly conceived land reform policy brought the country’s economy to its knees almost instantly.
The human rights violations which accompanied the process invited targeted economic sanctions on the key figures in Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zanu-PF, and the military by Western countries, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Having lost the significant agricultural export revenues which had kept its economy running since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe was unable to clear its arrears with multilateral, bilateral and private creditors.
This resulted in the country’s suspension from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June 2003 having lost its eligibility to use the institution’s resources in 2001. The World Bank also suspended aid to Zimbabwe following the country’s multiple defaults and disagreements over the government’s economic policies.
Thus, since the beginning of the 21st century, Zimbabwe has been deprived of access to concessional financing which many countries rely on to keep their macroeconomic fundamentals intact. Nothing demonstrates the faltering of the country’s economic fundamentals quite as clearly as its six failed attempts to adopt a local currency in the last 15 years.
Zimbabwe’s economic collapse has seen millions of its citizens migrating to neighbouring countries and to Europe in search of economic opportunities. It is in this context that the government of Zimbabwe has been forced to compensate the ex-farmers who lost their land through the FLRP.
Does this latest development signify the failure of the FLRP?
The FLRP was the culmination of decades of frustration over delayed land redistribution which was at the centre of the anti-colonial liberation struggle. However, the government of Zimbabwe only adopted the FLRP as a strategy to bolster its political support rather than a sound economic policy.
The events coincided with the emergence of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999, which mounted a formidable opposition challenge to the government for the first time since independence.
In a panic mode, the government hurriedly sanctioned the FLRP while being oblivious to its consequences. As such, the circumstances under which the land reform programme was implemented set it up for failure. The programme is estimated to have resettled almost 240,000 Zimbabwean households in the seized farms.
However, the lack of expertise in commercial farming for most of the resettled people who were accustomed to communal farming and the lack of government support meant that the new farmers could not possibly achieve the levels of productivity achieved by their predecessors.
Multiple farm ownership, mostly done by the politically connected, has not helped agricultural productivity either. As a result, the country has had to depend on imports for most of its basic food needs over the years as it has been unable to produce enough to feed its population.
However, as research has shown, it has not all been doom and gloom for Zimbabwe’s land reform. The Indigenous farmers have shown that they are capable of achieving the productivity levels of the white farmers if they get support as they did from the government through the Command Agriculture policy in 2017.
That year, aided by the fortune of good rains, maize production breached the 2 million tonne mark for the first time since 2000. The compensation of the ex-farmers and the diligent implementation of the other provisions of the SDP will take Zimbabwe back to the global financial system.
With access to these resources from international financial institutions, the government may be able to offer more consistent and adequate support to the new farmers. Thus, if these chips fall into place, Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector could turn its fortunes around in the years to come.
DR SIZO NKALA A Research Fellow at theUniversity of Johannesburg’sCentre for Africa-China Studies.