Washington Post 2/21/00
Africa’s Racial Land Divide

Glendale, Zimbabwe, Jon Jeter- Tells a story about two families. One about a couple that moved from England 51 years when Zimbabwe was a British colony Rhodesia. Their rich farm soil has provided them a good living. The land seems to stretch practically into another day, beginning at the paved road and ending 2,000 acres later. The couple has, in fact more land than they can use.

The other is about a family with six children who is trying to make a living from shallow, stingy soil on a spit of land that covers maybe four acres. This farm does not produce enough to feed them, and if the family had only a few more acres, they would have enough corn and beans to last the year and, perhaps, a surplus to sell so that they could pay the son’s school fees.

"It’s painful to know that we have so little, " the mother said while sitting on a stool in front of her mud hut, "when a few have so much."

Zimbabwe’s 12.5 million people won its independence from Britain 20 years ago, but the balance of economic power remains Only 70,000 whites remains there, down from the 280,000 at the time of independence, yet they own 70 percent of the land in a country roughly the size of Texas. Four thousand white farmers own nearly a third of Zimbabwe’s most fertile farmland, while blacks squeeze into tiny plots that yield little more than misery.

The problem is not unique to Zimbabwe. Across Africa, the most bountiful soil remains disproportionately in the hands of an elite minority. In South Africa, for instance, blacks represent three-quarters of the population, but occupy less than 15 percent of the land. Similarly, whites in neighboring Namibia account for nearly 7 percent of the population but own 44 percent of all private land.

Without question, warlords and tyrants, corruption, and disease have eaten away at the promise of sub-Saharan Africa free of its colonial rulers and Cold War patriarchs. But just as vexing for the continent is the resolved legacy of the European settlers who stole land at gunpoint and never returned it.

As Africa tries to strengthen its economies with free-market reforms, appeals for reparations have crescendoed. The calls for repayment are similar to those of some African Americans whose ancestors were never paid for slave labor. But Africa’s abiding poverty and history of oppression, which is still fresh in the minds of many people, lend the issue a sense of urgency that is unmatched in the United States.

In Africa, reparations are as much a practical matter as a moral one. The concentration of vital lands among Africa’s white minority is having a direct impact in the continent’s future, economists say, arresting the development of former colonies such as Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Malawi and Namibia. Unless more people can gain access to land, analysts say, there can be little expansion of indigenous African middle class -- something the continent badly needs to reduce poverty and political instability.

"Land is the key to accumulating wealth in an agrarian society," said a law professor at the University of Witwatersrand. "You cannot possibly improve Africa for the future generations without somehow addressing the need to return to its rightful owners the land that has been unlawfully taken from them over the course of 300 years. What you have is a very small segment of the population ready to jump to the industrial phase, and everybody else gets left behind."

While Zimbabwe’s black population is mostly rural and widely in support of land reform, they focused their anger on Mugabe’s failed fiscal policies and mismanagement, which many blame for steering the country into its worst economic crisis.

British settlers began shoving blacks off their farmland from virtually the moment they arrived in that southern African country in the 1890's, resettling about half the population onto barren communal properties similar to Indian reservations in the United States.  Neither blacks nor whites here publicly dispute the need to redistribute land, but the way it should be done is a divisive and emotional issue, complicated by politics, race and history.

In Zimbabwe last week, voters rejected President Robert Mugabe’s proposed revisions to the constitution that would have given his government authority to seize lands from the descendants of British settlers without compensation. Mugabe’s governing party exhorted black voters to approve the changes, issuing black nationalistic appeals that were openly scornful of whites.

The arrangements have hampered each Black majority government in its efforts to remedy the disparities in land ownership. Inheriting from their predecessors a neglected population badly in need of improved housing, hospitals, schools, and jobs, the new governments discovered their resources were stretched too thin to buy much land at market rates. Zimbabwe has brought on average, just 50 properties annually since 1992. South Africa devotes less than 2 percent of its federal budget to the purchase of land.

Nokwamzi Moyo, an organizer of the Zimbabwe’s Indigenous Commercial Farmers Union stated that the redistributed of land likely would fail without investment in training. But that would be no more than the colonial government provided whites. British soldiers returning from World War II were offered free plots in Rhodesia. Thousands accepted, even though many had no experience as farmers.

The government gave them training, low- interest loans and subsidized crops. When a beginner had a hard time catching on, the Rhodesian government often forgave each government loan until they he a profit, Moyo said. " It was affirmative action before affirmative action got a bad name," Moyo said.

Historically, the efficient use of agricultural lands has been a crucial factor in developing economies, agricultural economists say. Much like American’s Homestead Act in the 1860's, which gave settlers up to 160 acres of land for a nominal fee, the redistribution of land in Africa would create wealth, help families educate their children and prepare them for the industrial and technological developments that typically follow, economists predict.

"If you look at most successful markets today," said Van den Brink of the World Bank, " there has been some sort of efficient land use policy and liberalization of markets that are key features in every one: the United States, Singapore, China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. That’s really how to broaden your economic base."