There is much we can learn from Zimbabwe

Irecently attended a media day held by the Southern African Agri Initiative in Pretoria. The event was aimed at drawing attention to the Zimbabwean government’s handling of the supposed compensation to be paid to farmers who had been removed from their land during the land grabs there in the early 2000s (see page 24).

Members of the media and some of these farmers had been invited to attend. During the briefing, the farmers shared their experiences.

Their stories are the stuff of nightmares. In most cases, political activists and affiliates invaded these farmers’ land, burnt down their houses and destroyed infrastructure. Some producers were forced to flee in the middle of the night, with nothing but the clothing they had on. Their farmworkers were, in some instances, beaten and chased off the land that they had been living on for many years.

These farmers lost everything they had invested into their farms and their ability to generate livelihoods. Their workers also lost their livelihoods, which had a massive and negative impact on their children and other dependants, as some of these farmers provided on-farm medical services and childcare facilities.

It is now 23 years later, and these producers have not been compensated. Despite the Southern African Development Community Tribunal declaring these land invasions to be unlawful and that the farmers needed to be compensated, the Zimbabwean government has continued to ignore the injustice served on them and their workers. Now, as the news story on page 24 describes, the government is offering to pay compensation to the value of US$3,5 billion (about R65 billion) in government bonds which, quite frankly, aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Moreover, as one of the farmers explained, the value of the farms lost is significantly more than the compensation that the government is offering to pay.

This is perhaps why the idea of the Expropriation Bill possibly being passed into law is such a massive milestone for South Africa. While President Cyril Ramaphosa and others in government have expressed how important agriculture is to South Africa, former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe similarly expressed this opinion a few years before the land invasions in his country. I fear that politics may ultimately trump all logic and reason, and that we are indeed on a slippery slope when laws that infringe on our rights to own land and property are passed. With the 2024 general elections around the corner, I have little doubt that the bill, despite all evidence suggesting the foolishness of it, will eventually be signed into law.

Of course, we hope for the best and prepare for the worst, and I have faith in South Africa’s organised agriculture to fight against laws that may lead to a similar disaster here as was experienced in Zimbabwe. It bears reminding that Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa, and that since the land invasions there, production has steadily declined. The country is now a net importer of food, with inflation rates that exceed even those of Venezuela.

There is a need for land reform in South Africa; this is something nobody can deny. However, the way government is going about it could end up in no one owning land, while food production plummets.