MidNight Words of Love

If you want to record a sustainable success in relationships please understand that love is nothing more than a reification of what is essentially a complex process of social interaction among human actors whose mutually oriented actions create and sustain the associated emotions, feelings and attitudes towards one another and this gives no room for selfish expectations of traditional African one way courtship. We are living in a different world from our parents and that world has little room for flimsy and rather clumsy self celebrations of ladyishness grounded in the belief that a man's love is reflected by the level of their unresented persistence in their pursuance of a woman. That world is a bygone never to return and we all need to realise that. In the new order its the survival of the fittest and its got no room for the light hearted, those who think that they can work up at 10 in the morning and find bread on the table everyday. You either adapt to the new system or you join the bandwagon of losers whose numbers are ever on the increase.

Our society is built on a universal code of  TRUST which history has shown to be a very fragile and rather flexible concept. Without Trust life would be a misery and the majority of society's interpersonal failures are a result of the failure to realise this. The greatest risk of life is that the only way to garantee your happiness is to surround yourself with people whose actions and intentions you gullibly trust even in the darkest night.

Without trust do not waste your time trying to find happiness. Besides one of the most liberating freedoms come with the realisation that the Joys of life - like GOD - are not something that is out there to be discovered
but its in here to be explored inside everyone of us. Happiness is not an event or occasion nor action but the result thereof.

One other thing - do not full yourself thinking that behavioural traits can be built overnight. As they say - people are not born but are made. Thus make a deliberate and conscious decision to want to be someone and take the appropreate action that will lead you to where you want to be. Nothing comes on a silver plate but you have to work for everything that comes your way.       
  
Worrying is often a sign of the unconscious registration of confusion hence should always get you thinking. When we worry, are nervous or are uncomfortable its usually because something inside us knows that we are
unprepared for whatever it is that we are attempting to do hence the alarm signal triggered by the parasympathetic system. 

Finally - sometimes the best way to hold tight is by letting go. It is a fundamental but rather paradoxical principle of life that black and white are opposite ends of the same shades of light. In fact its not possible to
have white without black and our perception of black is made possible by our conscious awareness of white without which black would be non-existent. However outside the physical world or more specifically in the social cosmos it is not neccessary to be consciously aware of black in order to perceive white because everything is a social construction.
That is why we often "hate" those we "love" and we "love" those we "hate". In the same vain I have realised that it sometimes makes a lot more sense although its against popular norms to let go of those you love the most as a cabalistic sign of enduring love.   

Arrighi’s thesis of “stimulation and strangulation” of the peasantry and how it facilitates the understanding of the creation of wage labor in Southern Africa.

This paper seeks to analyse the relevance of Arrighi’s thesis of stimulation and strangulation within the context of the development of waged labour in Southern Africa. The exploration will be made within the understanding of the Marxian thesis of primitive accumulation and the historical exploitative development of capitalism with cases from Southern Africa where land appropriation, taxation, forced labour, forced cropping, monitarization and commoditisation were used by the colonial administrators on behalf of colonial capital to force and bully Africans into waged labour and or the global capitalist system.   

The question of prolitarianisation in southern Africa has received remarkable scholarly analysis and one thing that interests the most is its analysis within the general development of capitalism world over. Maybe it’s a good starting point to posit the general tendencies of capital development within the understanding of primitive accumulation and the consider how Arrighi postulates his thesis developing it from the Marxian primitive accumulation notion. Historically,  the  accumulation  of  capital  is  a  kind  of metabolism between  capitalist  economy  and  those  pre-capitalist  methods  of production  without  which  it  cannot  go  on  and  which,  in  this  light,  it corrodes and assimilates. Thus capital cannot accumulate without the aid of non-capitalist organisations, nor, on the other hand, can it tolerate their continued existence side by side with itself. Only the continuous and progressive disintegration of non-capitalist organisations makes accumulation of capital possible (Rosa Luxemburg 1917). Furthermore according to Harvey, the concept reveals a wide range of processes. These include the commodification and privatisation of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetisation of exchange and taxation (particularly of land); slave trade; and usury, the national debt and ultimately the credit system as radical means of primitive accumulation. All these are a correct representation of both the colonial and neo-colonial realities in southern Africa and that is exactly what arrighi meant by stimulation and strangulation. Let’s mull over these points in isolation.

The major focus of the process of prolitarianisation in southern Africa was the appropriation of land by the colonialists and the subsequent restriction of Africans in reserves, or their becoming tenants in the “white man land”. This was a serious way of both stimulating as well as strangulating Africans because besides being stripped of their livelihood, they were also forced by their present circumstances of need to seek other ways of survival that were readily made available in the colonisers’ mines and farms. This process was more profound in Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, Kenya and Namibia with minor cases in Mozambique among others. In South Africa, the first legislative measure in this regard was the promulgation under the premiership of Cecil John Rhodes in the Cape parliament of the notorious Glen Grey Act in 1894. After the Union of South Africa in 1910, some of the provisions of the Glen Grey Act were incorporated in the Natives Land Act of 1913. This Act forbade Africans from buying and owning land outside the seven percent of the land that was reserved for their occupation. It also abolished the sharecropping system and labour tenancies. These developments, according to Bundy, by and large accounted for the fall of the peasantry in South Africa. Thus the whites came to own 87 per cent of land while the majority blacks were bundled into the remaining 13 percent, the reserves.  In Zimbabwe, the process of land alienation culminated in the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951, which effectively left Africans with less than 40% of land that in fact was semi-arid and not suitable for cultivation. The same goes for Namibia where more or less the same policies were put in place.

This policy of land appropriation was based on the idea of creating a landless and property-less reserve labour that could be conscripted at will. The settlers new very well that a competent peasant economy would be detrimental to their aspired capital accumulation. The traditional African mode of production had no need for capital accumulation, commodity markets and waged labour and the only way of forcing them into the system was to deprive them of their land. It is alleged that it was the development of the labour intensive mining industry in the 1900s that led to the reverse in British policy of sympathising with the natives in South Africa whom they had sought to protect and support in previously. In Rhodesia, the disappointment of lack of huge gold deposits led the BSAC to encourage commercial farming hence the need for farm labour and this was intensified by the development of the mining industry. The industrial boom after the Second World War necessitated the need for more labour, which then led to the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951.

The 1951 NLHA sought to effectively impoverish Africans as a means of encouraging them to seek waged labour. Among the many things, that it advocated for, it limited the number of cattle an African could have, limited the amount of land that could be cultivated and sought to control the planting of crops in the fields. This was meant to reduce Africans to a level of under-subsistence so that they would be left with no choice but to seek waged labour.

One other prominent way through which the colonial primitive accumulation was made possible was through taxation. This ranged from hut tax, cattle tax, and dog tax to taxes on people and graves and all this was to be paid in the colonial economy’s currency. Although taxation might not have been a new phenomenon to Africans, the fact that it was being paid in money brought new complications. Some scholars have pointed out that taxation was not necessarily a way of raising money for administrative purposes but was intended to drive the Africans into waged labour and or commodity production (Arrighi). According to Malaba (1980) having been forced to engage in commodity production in order to pay taxes, the colonial administration provided loans for the white settlers, set different prices for African produce and removed Africans from areas near railways and roads so that transport cost and profit ratios were discouraging. Thus whereas in 1900 70% of African earnings came from sale of produce, by 1932 that figure had fall to under 20%.

A variety of methods were employed by the colonial powers to force colonial subjects to become wage-labourers. Creating a landless, property-less class was not always preferred by colonial governments. Maintaining ‘reserves’ of some kind was beneficial to capital, for a number of reasons. If labour was seasonal, workers could return to home in the off-season and live off the subsistence base. In this way, wages did not have to be high enough to support workers and their families year-round, and profits could be higher. Even without seasonal labour, maintaining a subsistence base could supplement wages, which again would not have to be high enough reproduce labour-power. The problem was that if the subsistence base were capable of supporting the population entirely, colonial subjects would not be compelled to offer their labour-power for sale. Colonial governments thus required alternative means for compelling the population to work for wages. The historical record is clear that one very important method for accomplishing this was to impose a tax and require that the tax obligation be settled in colonial currency. This method had the benefit of not only forcing people to work for wages, but also of creating a value for the colonial currency and monetizing the colony.

In addition, this method could be used to force the population to produce cash crops for sale. What the population had to do to obtain the currency was entirely at their discretion. From the first, it was assumed that ample cheap labour was a major asset in Africa…Practical experience soon showed, however, that Africans did not, as a rule, approximate to Indian coolies. Few in sub-Saharan African had experience of working for pay or outside the traditional subsistence economy, and few had any real need to do so. In course of time, monetary incentives might generate a voluntary labour force, but during the first decades after pacification, neither governments nor private investors could afford to wait indefinitely for the market to work this revolution. (Fieldhouse, 1971, p. 620)

Another important element in assuring the smooth functioning of the direct tax system was keeping wages low, which had the additional benefit of keeping costs down for private employers. If wages were too high relative to the tax burden, Africans would only work enough to pay off their tax obligation and the labour supply would remain limited. While taxation is high, wages are very low. It would not do to pay the Natives too much for they would not work a day more than it was necessary to get tax money. Therefore, employers pay the minimum in order to exploit their labourers as long s possible. (Padmore 1936, p67).

Direct taxation was used to force Africans to work as wage labourers, to compel them to grow cash crops, to stimulate labour migration and control labour supply, and to monetize the African economies. Part of this latter was to further incorporate African economies into the larger emerging global capitalist systems purchasers of European goods. If Africans were working as wage labourers or growing cash crops instead of producing their own subsistence, they would be forced to purchase their means of subsistence, and that increasingly meant purchasing European goods, providing European capital with additional markets. It thus also promoted, in various ways, marketization and commoditization. 

Parts of some African colonies were poor in natural resources. In these situations, the colonial regimes instituted policies that strongly encouraged able bodied men to leave their homes and migrate either to distant areas within the same colony or to neighbouring colonies where they worked in mines or on large farms. Mine owners and commercial farmers paid a recruitment fee to the colonial government of the worker's home country. For example, in Southern Africa the colonies of Bechuanaland (Botswana), Basotholand (Lesotho), Swaziland, and parts of Mozambique and Malawi became labour reservoirs for the mines and large farms of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and South Africa.

Furthermore, direct forced labour was in practice especially in Mozambique. Until 1961, under the labour codes of the Indigenato, only ‘citizens’ (Portuguese o assimilated) enjoyed the right to determine where, how and under what conditions they worked. All able-bodied men defined as ‘native’ were obliged to work, an obligation considered satisfied only if they had capital sufficient to live off the income, or exercised a profession, or cultivated fields of a size fixed by statute, or produced export crops in specified quantities, or did wage-work for a minimum period fixed at six months per year. Initially, forced labour was limited to impressment, or shibalo. Men not satisfying conditions of exemption were recruited for migrant labour. A small wage was paid when they returned to their home areas, if they were adjudged to have satisfactorily completed their six months of work. Both men and women were impressed for undefined periods of public service to the state, for road or rail construction. Both men and women were impressed for variable periods of punitive labour for non-criminal offences such as not paying tax, or escaping from contract labour. Penal labour was also used for public works and let out to private employers.

In the 1940s, the forced labour legislation was extended to forced cropping, obliging peasants, both men and women, to satisfy their obligation to ‘work’ by cultivating, usually on their own land, cotton or rice for obligatory sale to a concession-holder. Within households, particularly in central Mozambique, the two kinds of obligation sometimes overlapped. In some districts, men were recruited for plantation labour while women were obliged to cultivate cotton. In Mozambique, the development of waged labour exports to Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa was as a direct response to the unwillingness to be conscripted into the chibalo system hence the option of migrating to SA or Rhodesian farms and mines.

Despite entrenched racial inequalities in land access, land quality, and input availability in Rhodesia, African farmers, mainly in the reserves, produced roughly a third of the marketed maize in the colony from 1947 to 1954, along with almost all the marketed groundnuts and small grains. The colony also faced a serious labour shortage, particularly in the vital mining and white farming sectors where wages were lower and conditions harder than in manufacturing. Shortfalls in these industries averaged 15 percent in 1949, ranging up to 45 percent for some farmers. Attempts to solve this problem ranged from intensification of labour importation through the establishment of a Labour Commission to the intensification of land alienation.

In the 1950, the colonial administration embarked on a project to build houses for the labour force as a way of luring more Africans to the town and to provide them with permanent town residence. Those in the farms were given rations although their wages were very low to create an illusion of security. Some companies such as those in the Nyanga area that produced tea established boarding schools in which the students worked for a certain period of the day before and then did their daily lessons afterwards. This was also a form of stimulation and strangulation in that young people were lured into the labour force with the promise of being given education although this education would never put them in any better position than a single white man in the land.

Thus all things put together it can be realised that the colonial system understood well and implemented the system of stimulation and strangulation in a bid to acquire waged labour from Africans. A number of methods were utilized to compel Africans to provide labour and cash crops. Among these were work requirements, pressure for ‘volunteers’, land policy squeezing Africans into ‘reserves’ destroying the subsistence economy, and ‘contracts’ with penal sanctions (Fieldhouse, 1971). Nevertheless, the most successful method turned out to be direct taxation. In those parts of Africa where land was still in African hands, colonial governments forced Africans to produce cash crops no matter how low the prices were. The favourite technique was taxation. Money taxes were introduced on numerous items—cattle, land, houses, and the people themselves. Money to pay taxes was got by growing cash crops or working on European farms or in their mines. (Rodney,1972).  

Bibliography

Ake, C. (1981). A Political Economy of Africa. Longman Press. Essex.

Bond, P. and Manyanya, S. (2003). Zimbabwe’s Plunge: Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice, London, Merlin Press; Harare.

Fieldhouse, D.K.(1971). “The Economic Exploitation of Africa: Some British and French Comparisons,” in P. Gifford and W. R. Louis (eds.), France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule. Yale University Press. New Haven, CT.

Malaba, L. (1980). Supply, Control and Organisation of African Labour in Rhodesia: In Review of The African Political Economy, No 18.

Rodney,W. (1972). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press. Washington, D. C.

Skinner, E.P. (1970). “French Colonialism and Transformation of Traditional Elites: Case of Upper Volta,” in W. Cartey and M. Kilson (eds.), The Africa Reader: Colonial Africa. Random House. New York.

Temu, A. and Swai, B. (1981). Historians and Africanist History: A Critique. Zed Books. London.

Thomas, C. Y. (1984). The Rise of the Authoritarian State in Peripheral Societies. Monthly Review Press. New York.

Wieschoff, H. A. (1944) Colonial Policies in Africa. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia.

Wray, L.R. (1998). Understanding Modern Money, Cheltenham. Edward Elgar. U.K.

             

    

         

With reference to the post 1999 land reform exercise account for the general decline in Zimbabwe’s agricultural and industrial production and the implications for the food security position of its people.

Zimbabwe has gone through a controversial land reform programme since 1999 and this has seen a general decline in its agric and other industrial output. There has been a raging debate as to whether the decline resulted mainly from the land transfers and tenure change or whether other factors have been more determinant.(Moyo 2007). Various perspectives abound as to the relationship between the agricultural and industrial decline and the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) but there is consensus that indeed there has been a plummeting effect on productivity across all the economic sectors. General industrial production is down to an average of 70% below capacity while agriculture the mainstay of the economy has suffered a 90% decline in tobacco, 71% in maize and various other declines across the board (CFU 2003). This paper seeks to augment this debate by locating Zimbabwe’s economic whores within the context of internal and external factors. The endogenous factors include the macro-economic conditions which affected the supply and use of inputs during the period, the land reallocation process itself and limited productive capacities of the new LSCF farming in the short term. Weak macro-economic conditions and policy (including agricultural policy) during this period, grossly affected the profitability of farming and of agribusiness and agricultural support agents, especially because forex shortages limited the entire range of inputs available to all farmers, while inflation and price controls resulted in a cost-price squeeze that weighed heavily against agricultural investment (Moyo 2007). However, these internal factors were exacerbated, if not triggered off in some instances by exogenous factors, whose real effects commenced prior to the fast track programme in 1997/8, including reduced external credit and aid (i.e. economic isolation) and political conflict, and later the protracted droughts and recurrent floods ( Moyo and Sukume, 2004; Moyo, 2005). The capacity of new and communal area farmers in terms of skills, own savings and credit to produce the crops formerly dominated by the LSCF have been limited. Access to investment resources (credit), has been limited partly due to the insecurity of their land tenure, and the poor political and economic conditions and policy environment. It is imperative to note that there is however a subtle connection between these factors it might mislead to look at the as exclusive and independent. These all the same have limited the potential gains of the land reform and this paper shall strive to consider these points interrelatedly. Although a gloomy  picture has prevail much of the time in terms of the country’s food security position, some scholars such as Sam Moyo(2007) and Ian Scoones (2008) have been pessimistic and expect a rebound in the long run if the right policies are put in place. The paper will start by considering the more controversial internal factors and close up with more technically external causations. 

Although the need for land reform has been generally a pertinent issue in Zimbabwe’s socio-economic and political arena since the colonial times and the struggle for independence, commentators have been adamant that the implementation of the FTLRP was a mess because of its political nature and disruptive tendencies. Accusations abound that the allocation of land land was based on patronage and partisanship. Sithole (2008) notes that the poor peasants, who led the invasions, at the behest of Mugabe, have since been driven off the best farms. The prime properties have been reallocated to the president and his close relatives, ministers, the country's top judges and armed forces and police officers, and pliant journalists. These farms are mainly used as weekend retreats and, for the most part, have ceased to be productive. Professor Gordon Chavunduka a veteran African nationalist and former vice chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe is quoted by Sithole  saying "It looks like land reform was never meant to benefit the ordinary person, land reform was only meant to benefit a few special individuals, and that may lay the ground for future conflicts." The underlying grievance is that government land reform initiatives could have been appreciated if trancparency and equitability were the prime movers. Instead in some cases in looks like the whole land reform thing was a process of changing hands of the ruling elite and capitalist class from the former white “Rhodies” to the new black aristocracy without sincere regard for the needs and cause of the landless poor in the rural reserves and farm workers.

Substantiating  the above assertion, Moyo (2007) notes that most farm workers lost homes and employment, and received little land, as they were largely perceived to have been against the FTLRP (Chambati and Moyo, 2004), and tended to be relegated to being potential farm labourers by new beneficiaries (Ibid). Out of 175,000 fulltime farm workers prior to the FTLRP (Magaramombe, 2003; Chambati and Moyo, 2004), about 80,000 retained their employment in the unacquired large scale commercial and parastatal farms and on large scale plantations. The remaining 95,000 full-time workers were dispersed into communal areas, re-employed in A1/A2, and resettled, live on informal settlements or former compounds. The 170,000 part-time workers tended to relocate to communal areas, while only 5% (4,600) of the resettlement beneficiaries were former farm workers. Some provide casual labour to new farmers and live with informal rights in farm workers’ compounds. Close to 30,000 were displaced into informal settlements, while more than 20,000 joined the expanding informal gold panning industry. Thus, close to 90,000 former farm worker families at present, do not enjoy secure tenure in the rural areas. This of course is the population that one would have expect to be most needy of land allocation but for political grounds and personal enrichment were forced to find their own way of survival worse still after their form of livelihood as farm workers had been destroyed.

Another issue of contention that ripped credibility and viability of the land reform exercise was the violent nature of the process that led some to refer to it as ‘land inversion’. Violence is well known as antithetical to productivity and this has even been more dramatic and pronounced in Zimbabwe. The news of the seizure of farm properties, beatings and sporadic killings of white farmers and in cases labourers spent over the world like bonfire. This was received with virulent negative publicity especially in western countries and the rip off effect on the economy has been critical. Tourism experienced a 60% decline in arrivals as the EU, USA and their allies blacklisted Zimbabwe as an unsafe destination. The threats, plans and initiatives by government to take over the majority shareholding of all foreign companies in Zimbabwe exacerbated the situation leading to investor flight and general insecurity in the economy. In a capitalist world system, one thing that experience has shown not to be tempered with are property rights since the capitalist philosophy is centred on accumulation. The results have been an unprecedented industrial decline and a ravaging world record inflation rate and a spiralling unemployment rate together with worsening standards of living.

Furthermore, besides being violent the whole process of Fast Track Land Reform Programme was poorly coordinated, disorganised, chaotic and haphazard. A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2002) technical report on the fast track program in January 2002 noted that the program is "affected by cumbersome consultations and decision-making processes involving numerous district, provincial and central government actors.... Problems of weak capacity and poor coordination have led to numerous errors in processing the acquisition of properties." Among the farms listed for resettlement have been properties totally unsuitable for the purpose, including land flooded under dams, land already resettled, or land currently used for industrial purposes. The team commented that even after recent amendments to the law, the land acquisition process was "complex, cumbersome and tedious to execute," and that the team "is not aware of any other country in the region where the procedure for compulsory acquisition of land is so elaborate.” A war veteran who was given a piece of land described to Human Rights Watch (2001) how he found that the same land had been reallocated to different people in subsequent weeks when he tried to go back to his plot. He had been given no written proof that the land was allocated to him. He lamented, "I felt angry because I felt there was some kind of disorder and there was no proper responsibility for the exercise."

The lack of proper coordination led to serious depletion of the national herd and misuse of other natural resources such as water and wildlife in Zimbabwe. According to Sithole (2008) because of the land reform Zimbabwe has of late been failing to meet its beef export obligations to the EU obviously resulting in loss of potential foreign exchange generation. The Commercial Farmers' Union estimated that close to 250,000 head of cattle (nearly 20 percent of the national commercial herd) had been forcibly "destocked" by late 2001, and that over 1.6 million hectares of grazing land had been burnt out  (CFU statement;2001). In some cases the “new farmers” occupied conservancies and started burning forests and hunting wildlife thereby disturbing and causing imbalance in the ecosystem. Others targeted irrigation dams as fishing grounds and had nothing to do with any productive farming whatsoever.

Another major shortcoming of the land reform has been the failure by government to provide dequete support systems in terms of inputs, training and extention work. According to Zikhali (2008) others who wanted land told Human Rights Watch that they had not taken up the opportunity because they did not have the resources to cultivate the land and there was no government support to assist new settlers. The absence of legal security and government assistance could leave them vulnerable to hunger and displacement. In addition, capacity constraints faced by public extension agencies have made them unable to meet the increased demand for extension services. This situation is located in context in which the majority of the new farmers had little or no priviuos extensive farming experience and badly needed at least basic training if productivity was to be an achievable dream.

Coupled with the above problem is the fact that these new farmers were denied loans by landing institutions because of lack of collateral. Because of the way land was forcibly and extra-judicially seized, and because farmers driven off their land continue to contest the evictions through the courts, Zimbabwe's new farmers -- whether from the powerful elite or the peasantry -- do not have title deeds to their land. Title deeds are the necessary collateral demanded by banks and other private financial institutions before they will advance loans. Samson Tigere interviewed by the Human Rights Watch (2001) a Mahusekwa new farmer, said serious problems are caused by the uncertainty about future land tenure or ownership, which currently is subject to the arbitrary decisions of Lands and Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, one of Mugabe's closest lieutenants."Today I am here, but there is no guarantee that I will be here tomorrow," he said. "Mutasa can issue an offer letter to somebody else soon after I invest my money in the land. It is risky business. I would rather buy moveable assets and be ready to move at short notice." In other words minimal production was as a consequence of uncertainty of the new farmers in the face of potential evictions given lack of substantive and explicit tenure rights. Because the "fast track" process of resettlement is being carried out so rapidly, short-circuiting legal procedures, it appears that many of those who have moved to new plots or those who might otherwise do so, are worried about the lack of certainty that their title will be secure (Masiiwa 2004). As noted by UNDP (2002), "apart from discouraging settlers from taking up plots allocated to them, this is likely to defeat the productivity goals of the resettlement programme as a whole.

In the face of economic difficulties, insecure tenure and unpredictable seasons, most of the peasant farmers lucky enough to have been allowed to remain on the land they invaded have sold their fertilizer and maize seed on the thriving black market to raise money for immediate needs. Consequently, as the independent weekly Financial Gazette's trenchant columnist Mavis Makuni pointed out, "They are working the huge tracts of land allocated to them under the land reform program using their bare hands." This season, she said, they could not harvest their winter wheat crop fast enough before the spring rains caught up on them and destroyed the grain. Superior profits are being made from non-farm investments, particularly in parallel forex and commodity markets and many others have tended to sell the inputs they acquire from the government after all on a partisan basis.

Furthermore, in a bid to control production the government has arbitrarily involved itself in market controls of both inputs and produce through price controls and buying monopoly of all grains. This has led to a situations in which farmers find it economically rational to engage in other activities other than farming. According to a survey by the independent Mass Public Opinion Institute, MPOI those farmers still producing maize, Zimbabweans' staple food, refuse to sell it through the government's monopolistic Grain Marketing Board, said the MPOI survey. They instead prefer to sell illegally to private traders. They complained to survey compilers that the 33,000 Zimbabwe dollars (US$132) per metric ton offered by the marketing board is a pittance, which does not cover their costs. In addition, payments from the government agency are frequently heavily delayed and come in the form of bank cheques, requiring expensive travel into town. Black market buyers, they told MPOI, pay immediate cash at a rate of 51,000 Zimbabwe dollars (204 US) per metric ton. MPOI quotes Lloyd Phiri, a new farmer in the Mahusekwa area, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Harare, said he would like to farm properly but the government's buying prices makes agriculture unprofitable. "Why should I risk my money ploughing a piece of land when I can sell the fuel I get from government and get money for my immediate use?" he said. "Money is money, it doesn't matter how you make it. If I want a house or a car it doesn't matter whether the money is from farming or from selling fuel." Thus discordant policy management systems have negatively affected productivity thus compromising the food security position of Zimbabwe.

A look at the industrial and employment performance of the economy are unnerving. According to Chitiga and Mabugu (2008) before the onset of the fast track land reform, the agricultural sector employed a total of over 70% of the labour force.  Agriculture contributed between 9% and 15% to gross domestic product (GDP) and between 20% and 33% to export earnings. The sector was an important supplier of raw materials to the industrial sector, contributing 20% of the manufacturing inputs in the1980s. By 2003, inflation had risen to 600%, forex earnings had declined by at least 50%, and the cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) declined by about 30%. This was mainly due to the disruption of commercial farming cash crops particularly tobacco which happened to be the major foreign currency earner leading to gross forex shortages which made all other industrial productions unviable. A substantive number of agro material dependent and agro-supporting industries such as beverage manufactures, banks, fertilizer manufactures and many others were driven to near collapse as their major clients were being dissipated and forex became scarce. As a direct consequence, what has happened since then in terms of the economy is nothing short of a catastrophe (Chitiga and  Mabugu; 2008). Real GDP growth has been negative since 2000, reaching –14.5% in 2002, and projected at –12.4% for 2003. According to Davies (2004), real income per head in 2004 was projected to be 46% less than it was in 1996 based on government official data or 53% less if data from the International Monetary Fund were used. According to CIA (2007), the population below the poverty line was estimated at 80% in 2004, while the Gini index was estimated at 56.8 for 2003.  These statistics show that poverty and inequality increased substantially between the period 1990 and 2004. Chitiga and Mabugu (2005) report that poverty levels have likely continued to rise since 2000, largely driven by the dismal macroeconomic performance, drying up of important external aid inflows and high inflation (largely a result of supply shortages (due in part to reduced agricultural farming activity and droughts) and huge budget deficits)). Given the high inflation rates that have characterised the economy since 1997 and the massive job losses, it is not surprising that income distribution has not improved during the period.

The fast track resettlement program is also seen to endanger food security for the rural and general population. An agricultural extension officer interviewed by HRW (2002) commented: "I don't think the land invasions are there to promote production, because when you invade you are disrupting production," and complained that the unregulated movement of animals to the new areas spreads diseases. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO; 2002) warned in December 2001 that "the already tight food situation has deteriorated as a result of reduced cereal production and general economic decline... 705,000 in rural areas are at risk of food shortages. In addition, 250,000 people in urban areas are experiencing food difficulties due to a sharp increase in food prices, while some 30,000 farm workers have lost their jobs and are left without means of assistance." Thus Zimbabwe formerly hailed as a food exporter and ‘breadbasket’ of Southern Africa is now importing food from its former clients some of  which took advantage of fleeing farmers to strengthen their own agricultural sectors.

To a greater extent the role of the government in the chaotic land reform has been the prime cause of low productivity in industries and farms, but it is imperative to note that the majority of food producers in Zimbabwe have been communal farmers who were not directly affected by the land reform in the disruptive sense. These suffered severely, not because of land transfers but due to the frequent droughts and inputs shortages.

Although the effects of land reform on the Zimbabwean economy is deeply contested, some academic opinion seems to be shifting. According to Mamdami (2008) a recent study by Ian Scoones of Sussex University’s Institute of Development Studies – in collaboration with the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape – challenges some of the conventional wisdom in media and academic circles within and beyond Zimbabwe. The problem with this wisdom is that certain highly destructive aspects of reform – coercion; corruption and incompetence; cronyism in the redistribution of land; lack of funds and an absence of agricultural activity – have come to stand for the whole process. This ignores the many positive potential and this has admittedly informed by wester power and politics. Scoones identifies five myths: that land reform has been a total failure; that its beneficiaries have been largely political cronies; that there is no new investment in the new settlements; that agriculture is in ruins; and that the rural economy has collapsed. Researchers at PLAAS have been quick to point out that over the past eight years small-scale farmers ‘have been particularly robust in weathering Zimbabwe’s political and economic turmoil, as well as drought’. Ben Cousins, the director of PLAAS and one of the most astute South African analysts of agrarian change – who had previously argued that the land reform would destroy agricultural production – now says that the future of Zimbabwe lies in providing small farmers with subsidies so that food security can be achieved. According to researchers at the African Institute for Agrarian Studies in Harare,(Moyo 2007) new farms need to receive subsidised maize seed and fertiliser for a few seasons before achieving full production. Some might give up during this period, but not many – partly because the land tenure system doesn’t allow land sales; only land permits or leases can be acquired.

For ZFU the future of agriculture in Zimbabwe is closely bound to the country's political fortunes: political stability, macroeconomic stability, maintenance of law and order, long term security of tenure and incentive pricing for commodities are all cited as necessary for reviving the sector. For Sam Moyo of AIAS, the way forward for Zimbabwe's agricultural production is a strategy of accommodation in terms of greater inclusion, tenure security and production incentives. "A reversal of the land redistribution is neither politically feasible nor a pre-requisite to recovery," he says, noting that sustainable land utilisation required key land, agricultural and economic policy measures to increase agricultural productivity, investment and exports. "Land redistribution should be completed by allocating land to the excluded. This includes accommodating white farmers, on the basis of parity rather than privilege; namely, through the 'one person one farm' policy."  Moyo (2008)

The security of leasehold land tenure among “commercial” farmers can be improved by making leases transferable within a regulated land market and by enabling financial institutions to secure their loans. Land tenure policy should bring security of landholding among all the current landholders and those still to be included. Agriculture can become sustainable if a coherent agrarian reform strategy is implemented consistently, focusing on the main goal of improving the livelihoods of the majority. Smallholders can play a critical role in future production, if policies are supportive of them. Agricultural price controls, subsidies and, farmer and agro-industrial support should be rationalised to improve production incentives. Foreign exchange management should be rationalised and diverse external financing mobilised. (Moyo; 2007).

Thus although the fast track land reform in Zimbabwe has played a significant role in disrupting, discouraging, destroying and dislocating production both in industries and in agriculture itself, it would be a blunder to overlook the role of other factors in the drama. Within this context it would be noted that although land reform was a necessity in Zimbabwe, government would have avoided an unfortunate insecure food situation. In all this it is not too late for the government to reverse the gains of the land reform if appropriate policy measures are put in place.

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