Relic of colonial maladjusted development

THE rural- urban divide in Zimbabwe is largely economic, although the social and cultural divisions seen in other countries are there but in Zimbabwe the divide is largely a result of our distorted history, something that is finally being seriously addressed.

President Mnangagwa addressed these issues again last week when he was commissioning a fruit and vegetable processing plant in Mutoko.

Up until independence, the rural part of the country was governed by very long-term colonial attitudes and choices. The communal lands were set up after Cecil Rhodes and his followers grabbed the country and the land through force of arms, mainly by testing out the then new Maxim machine guns.

The British Colonial Office, while encouraging the conquest of new provinces for the empire, did have some rules, and as a result of these the British South Africa Company (BSAP) was forced to set aside some land for those indigenous inhabitants who did not want to work in what was called the modern commercial economy. The land set aside as “native reserves” was the minimum the company could get away with and even then was based on a bad population estimate. And it was not the best land.

The other half of the country was reserved for the white settlers, who did offer what they laughingly called a modern economy, one based on what amounted to serfdom under some very strange laws centred on the Masters and Servants Act, which meant workers who quit could be rounded up and returned to the estate they had fled.

The communal lands were seen as a dumping ground, where unwanted indigenous inhabitants could be shoved, kept and forgotten. Churches did some sterling work in putting in some of the basic social services, and the odd maverick civil servant did what was possible under the limits to do some good. But basically these areas were not seen as part of the “real Rhodesia”.

While opportunities in the white farms were limited, at least after the Second World War when large numbers who had been tolerated as tenants were evicted and dumped in the communal lands, the tiny white population meant that there were real urban openings, despite efforts to limit these. But the growing commerce and industry, limited to these areas, did need more workers than immigration could supply and employment opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled people were created, more as an ad hoc solution than a right, but the jobs were there. In addition that urban economy created further work in the semi-formal fields since the urban areas needed carpenters, handymen and others.

That was the position at independence.

There was a serious and largely successful attempt to provide the basic social, educational and health services and some effort to transform the rural economy.

Unfortunately most of the economic programme, unlike the social programmes, were ad hoc rather than sustainable steady development programmes based on investment.

The urban areas underwent some major changes with the rapid emigration of the bulk of the settler population but economically the changes were minor, just different people occupying the urban jobs and slots.

But those changes did make the bright lights a lot brighter and there was significant migration from rural areas to urban areas, especially among the better educated and more skilled.

While these groups visited the home areas, moving back would have been seen as a failure.

The growing economic meltdown from the 1990s affected rural areas more, limiting the investment that could be made and causing hyperinflation that made it fairly useless for farmers to join the commercial economy.

Urban areas still had a core of self-sustaining business and this generated opportunities for at least a large informal economy. So lights were brighter yet.

Land reform had limited effects for over 15 years. While it did remove historical inequalities its major benefit at that stage was to open more land for subsistence farming, allowing more people to survive but not to thrive.

This could be seen in the slowing of migration rates into towns. But some private sector contract farming in tobacco and sugar showed what could be done once a lot more investments could be made.

So come the Second Republic. It had to deal with what was still largely a colonial-era rural-urban divide coupled with far too long financial wishful thinking that created brief booms followed by long busts. President Mnangagwa brought on board a high-powered economic team and, what was new, threw the weight of the Presidency behind that team so that this time the reforms would work.

With Government budgeting finally brought under control there was now money for capital development and again President and experts agreed that this time we would build the infrastructure and the systems, rather than making short-term ad-hoc stabs at development that would soon peter out.

The biggest revolution was to commercialise small-scale farming and make the holders of larger farms choose whether they want to be farmers in the first place. Admittedly this was businesslike from the start, rather than a social welfare programme, so ghost farmers and the lazy were eliminated with simple tests. But basically genuine farmers prepared to put in the work won out.

So this year most rural families actually have cash in hand or at the bank. But this is just a start. More land can be brought under cultivation fairly easily, so other crops can be grown that are needed by local industries. But middle-income small-scale farmers need more than a few hectares of annual crops, so livestock programmes are being introduced and other sources of income generated, like orchards.

This is being backed by a number of what amount to pilot projects, like the one the President opened last week, to start processing and adding value to the rural produce, creating markets but also creating more rural employment. Not everyone wants to farm, even if they want to live in a rural area, so the downstream processing and industries have to be there.

In fact the percentage of the rural population who run farms or work on farms is a good measure of rural development. Once a rural are develops then a majority of people work off farm, the mechanics for all those tractors, the people who process the crops and make the fancy luxury foods, the shopkeepers and the like. The builders needed by the growing wealth on the farms.

Business centres become a bit more than a general store and four bottle stores. They become the local centre of downstream development with a range of local and service industry. And at this stage it becomes difficult to distinguish standards of living between urban and rural areas.