Robert Mugabe vs. Ian Smith

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Neither. White Minority rule was an abomination - I suspect that people here probably have no idea quite how small the white populations of these countries were/are, and what white minority rule meant in practice: it was all about the parasitic exploitation of the overwhelming majority for the benefit of a rather small minority. In this case we're talking around 5%. About the only posters from North America who have any chance of automatically understanding the implications of that are those from Quebec - and was, in any case, going to end sooner rather than later. Essentially the Rhodesian Whites overplayed their hand; contrast with Kenya.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That might be true about land reform done right. That is not the case with how Mugabe did it.

Of course, but the principle of land reform in cases such as Zimbabwe must be defended. Of course what actually happened was a disaster - and the principle victims were not actually the white landowners. People here also need to grasp the sort of farm being discussed; the type that needs a large labouring workforce - but then that's partially because part of the point of Mugabe's land reform policies was not actually land reform at all. There was an understanding between Mugabe and the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s that land reform ought to be payed for, payed for not by the government of Zimbabwe, but by the British government and that it should be voluntary. The¹ idea was to protect - to an extent - the interests of white landowners,² and to satisfy the considerable grassroots demand for land reform at the same time. When Labour came to power in 1997 it decided to stop the payments.³ Mugabe was less than pleased by this.⁴ 'Land reform' thus became an (entirely ineffectual) way of getting back at 'the British' (Mugabe not quite grasping that the Blair government didn't give a fyck about white landowners in Africa or, indeed, in Britain), as well as A Cause in its own right (and a continued reward for loyal ZANU-PF/ZNLWVA troopers).

<sub>1. Incredibly stupid and shortsighted, not to mention inherently contradictory.

2. Who, remember, had just overplayed their hand in a big way, who had lost the political battle utterly, and who had no moral authority remaining whatsoever.

3. On the basis that the issue was an internal matter of Zimbabwe's and that it was no longer appropriate for Britain to act on behalf of the white landowners. The relevant quote is "we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe." The key phrase here is 'special responsibility'.

4. Incidentally, he publicly endorsed the Conservatives at the 2010 General Election. For some unfathomable reason they did not make much of this endorsement from a high profile foreign leader.</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also, are you too ignorant to understand that under Ian Smith the country was not a colonial state?

That's true, the rebel regime was not internationally recognised (not even by its South African allies) and was therefore technically not a 'state'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you want to make that argument (), then the responsible minister was Clare Short and this is the full quote:

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[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though really the main thing (I'd argue) is that the Lancaster House Agreement (and related trimmings) was basically a timebomb. It was a mistake to demand of Mugabe et al compromise on that particular issue. It doesn't reflect well on Carrington or the Foreign Office in general that white landowner interests were such a priority.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The important impact of Mugabe's 'land reform' (which is a very generous term) was to destroy the agriculture of the country. That harmed more than just white landowners.

The principle victims of what happened after 2000 were actually the black farmworkers (the lack of knowledge about this fundamental point on the internet is both depressing and telling). Who, by rights, ought to have been the very people to benefit from land reform.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, I don't believe that the Shona or Matabele had quite the same conception of private property as we Europeans had, and even if they did, they had no legal records to substantiate their claims. Therefore, the land cannot have been stolen...

It has been well established - Mabo is perhaps the best known example - that such arguments are completely irrelevant to the question of colonial land claims. Arguments on a theme of Terra nullius (beyond ludicrous in the case of Subsaharan Africa, but that's beside the point) have been so absolutely and comprehensively discredited that it is vaguely shocking to see someone brazenly flourish it around as if it were a rabbit pulled from a hat. It's not a rabbit: it's a turd. Using it doesn't make you look oh-so-very intelligent and gloriously iconoclastic; it makes you look like a tin-eared racist prick. Therefore, it is best avoided.

In any case, the issue in Zimbabwe was not/is not native title.

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Obviously that's your view, but you imply that such a few is 'matter of fact', when it isn't. One of the most important features of the state - and not just the modern state - is that it can seize property legitimately.

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Nobody here is seriously defending Mugabe's actual land reform policies. Just the principle of land reform in the case of Zimbabwe.

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That's not the issue at all. The issue is systemic social and economic injustice, rooted in land ownership (i.e. the fact that a small minority - again, just 5% of the population - monopolised the entire economic resources of the country. And land was/is one of Zim's most important economic resources). There's also the fact that - unlike Kenya, by way of complete contrast - the White Rhodesians got greedy and overplayed their hand during the age of decolonisation (i.e. they wished to maintain the entire parasitic economic and political system rather than cut their losses and become merely a very wealthy minority).

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Alternatively (and accurately) they were farms largely built by black labour and (much more to the point!) more-or-less entirely run by black labour. There is this idea that we're talking about smallholders or something, but that's not the case. This is the agriculture of large estates and considerable labouring workforces. We aren't talking about farmers as upright yeomen or similar nostalgic bollocks, but farmers as landowners.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(please note that supporting Ian Smith does not mean one necessarily supports segregation)

But it does mean supporting an economic and political system designed for the actually pretty conscious exploitation of 95% of the population by the remaining 5%, with the division between the two groups being made on the basis of 'race'. It can certainly be argued that such a system is actually worse than most forms of overt segregation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Kenya Britishers didn't really do so willingly, my friend.

Actually that's true, but the hand-overplay-thing wasn't quite so... er... massive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just to reinforce one of the basic points made in this thread:

Map of land use patterns in Zimbabwe:



Compare with this map of land ownership during the 1960s: