Zimbabwe Trip 4 - Part H

Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Good news is that the diarrhea seems to be gone. It has been replaced, however, with rock hard constipation. What gives? How do you go from 6 liquid explosions in one day to totally stopped up the next? I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'd much rather have constipation than diarrhea any day.

On to brighter topics...sort of. Land reform has been a big topic in the media around here. It's not just Zimbabwe, but Southern Africa in particular. I saw a piece on South Africa's land reform on the continent's version of "60 Minutes" called "Carte Blanche". In yesterday's paper, it mentioned that Namibia's deputy land minister was in town to find out how Zimbabwe conducted its "successful" land reform. Namibia wants to have about 9 million hectacres taken away from white people and given to landless blacks. They've got a "willing seller, willing buyer" program, but so far, that's netted only 1/10 of the country's goal. So now, they are looking at land seizure a la Zimbabwe where they'd use armed gangs to threaten, beat, destroy, and even kill white people who won't abandon their land. In South Africa, it's going a little more slowly. They have a system where blacks make claims against certain properties, and if those properties had the blacks forced off them after 1913 (not sure why South Africa chose that date), then the land will be forfeit and given to the claimants. Allegedly, if the blacks were forced off the land prior to 1913, then too bad for them. Here's the kicker, though. One of the white families owns a farm whose title history clearly shows that the first deed was established in 1911, yet the government is trying to seize the property anyway. We'll see if the courts will intervene. Another black farmer bought his farm in 1999, but it turns out that originally, the farm was taken from the native blacks in 1923, which makes it eligible for forfeiture. In the process, though, this black farmer will lose everything. Doesn't seem right, does it?

I find the whole notion of land reform troubling. On the one hand, Europe did wrong Africa and rape it of its resources while keeping the native Africans poor and illiterate. There is no denying that the white settlers took the best land for themselves and relegated to crappy land not fit for agriculture. The question is how do you correct this historical wrong while being fair to everybody? After all, when you have a family who has been in Africa for over 100 years, they're pretty much native. That may be the American in me talking, but I don't think skin color can or should determine whether you're a "legitimate" citizen of a country. Yet in Africa, that precisely IS the test. Cynthia McKinney must be proud as she's well known to have skin color tests herself. Also, there is something wrong with the theory of "corruption of the blood" where you punish someone for what their ancestors did. It's very much a similiar theory to reparations in America. I have never owned slaves, nor advocated for owning slaves. My ancestors did live in slave states, but they were poor enough that I doubt they ever could afford slaves. Therefore, how can you punish me with a tax assessment just because I'm a white person? It's ridiculous. Plus, not all white people have ancestors who were in the US pre-1865, and even in the south, it was only the elite who had slaves. Poor whites liked slavery because it gave them a sense of superiority to someone, but that was just ignorance. Anyway, it's as ridiculous to charge all white people a "slavery assessment" for reparations to all black people (not all of whom had ancestors in bondage in America) in the USA as it is to seize the homes and property of white people in Africa because their ancestors were part of a system that abused the rights of black Africans.

In Zimbabwe, they've taken it a step further by nationalizing all land. No one owns any land in Zimbabwe anymore. They can only hold 99 year leases. In America, we know that people who don't own something are less likely to take care of it. Look at rental properties and public housing versus privately owned homes. People take care of something that is theirs. Also, what collateral is a farmer supposed to offer a bank for a loan to farm his land? He doesn't even own his farm! It's a stupid, stupid move...but they say it's the "African way" because Africans have always had collective ownership until the white man came along.

That may be the case; I don't know. But in today's world that doesn't make sense. The newspaper here also rails against "globalization", calling it some Western conspiracy of neo-colonialism to keep Africa poor. It seems that Africa wants it both ways. They want to have a protectionist regime where Western money flows in and creates some kind of utopia for its citizens while making the "West" (read white folks) pay for past sins. They want Western money, but no Western influence. They want to be isolated and wealthy. That boat has long sailed where such a system is possible. The world is getting smaller and more interconnected, and either Africa accepts that and moves forward or it doesn't, and ends up destroying its own economy like Zimbabwe has.

With regards to land reform, I'm at a loss for a fair solution. I feel strongly that people who currently own the land should not be punished for what their ancestors did. If the land has changed hands several times, I think it's lost. You can't just seize land from someone who bought it in good faith, whether they are black or white. What they could do is designate land as part of land reform, and grant them a life estate but make it clear that if they ever decide to sell, they must sell to the government at a pre-determined price. Failing a sale, upon death of the current owner, the property reverts to the government. At this point, land will be distributed in plots using a lottery system or something similar to the homesteading acts used to settle the western US. The key is that the lottery must be fair (and not given to croneys like in Zimbabwe) and have in its pool the decendants of the "rightful owners" of the land. Also, they must make use of the land within a set period of time. So many of the farms seized have laid in ruin, not only in Zimbabwe but also in South Africa where transfers of land have been completed. Land that was once fertile and productive becomes overgrown with weeds and producing nothing. That's a huge part of the problem here in Zimbabwe and why there are shortages of things like bread and sugar. If that means that you set up agricultural schools to teach blacks modern farming methods with internships on farms still owned by white people, so be it. There may be some resentment from the whites, but there should be ways around that. Perhaps the internships could be looked at as free labor for the farmer who will teach the interns how to properly run a farm. Most farms are run by a staff of people, and those staffs could be filled with agriculture college graduates. It would be slow, but the land reform would be accomplished without destroying the land or the people.

Anyway, it was another quiet day. I'm worried that my "product" here will disappoint, but if it does, so be it. I didn't create the mess that is record keeping here; I am just trying to make sense of it without going nuts. I only have a week left, thank God.

We had lunch at Doon Estates, which is this white-owned little shopping village that has some great food. Debra will be leaving on Thursday, and Casey is busy tomorrow, so this was her "adios" lunch. Debra will be back at the beginning of July, so they won't have to miss her too long.

The WHO bus came late again today, so I didn't get home until after 5pm. I found an envelope under my door with my bill-to-date from Meikles asking me to settle my charges even though I'm not checking out until June 1. I was kind of offended by the implication, but I went down and paid. The strange thing is that my bill was around $213 million Zim. But they only charged $100 M Zim on my credit card. Not sure what that is about. Luckily, they have the conversion rate on there, so if any funny business happens, I'll be ready. :) I then went to the internet cafe which was open until 8pm, and did some emailing and looking at MySpace. I wish I could have MySpace at WHO, but that would probably totally prevent me from getting any work done :) After that, I went to the steak place that Beth and I ate at last week and had a cheese burger. It was OK; I'm just getting sick of hotel food.

I have had more trouble getting to sleep. Even though I have both windows open, it's still kind of warm in the hotel room. I hope to get to sleep just after midnight when the Great British Menu goes off. The Welsh cook Bryn Williams is so friggin' HOT this week! He's as yummy as Marcus Wareing was last week. I did go to the BBC food site, and found out that we're getting the episodes a week after they air in Britain (Africa being behind the rest of the world...shocking, I know). So I already know that Bryn is going to beat the hot shot female chef they paired him with in the competition. I bet she will be PISSED when they judges choose Bryn over her. The way she's carried on about being a woman in a man's world (apparently female chefs are a novelty...it's always been women that I've known who could cook, not the men!), I wonder if she'll cry sexism. Ehh, it will be interesting to see the judges' reactions. Watching BBC Food all the time makes me wish I could live in England just for a few years. I don't see that happening though, but if an opportunity arose, I'd be tempted to take it.