Zimbabwe still has wealth and income inequality but the controversial land reform programmes that President Robert Mugabe embarked upon in 2002 helped reduce such inequality quite significantly. Resultantly, the country now has the lowest such gap compared to its neighbours, being Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique.
At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe had extremely unequal distribution of land, which was a direct result of European settlers either using the trickery of acultural written contracts or simply driving black communities out of their land with force. In 2002, Mugabe’s government set up a land reform programme through which the government seized white-owned farms without compensation and redistributed them to landless and poor farmers as well as new black commercial farmers.
The latest analysis from the World Inequality Lab, a pioneering research project focussing on the study of income and wealth distribution worldwide, is that as a direct result of this programme, the number of large capitalist farms fell by around 75 percent, while there was a 16 percent drop in the number of large foreign and domestically owned agro-estates.
“This significant redistribution of assets is a credible explanation for relatively lower inequality,” says WIL adding in another part that “compared to its neighboring countries, inequality, though high, appears relatively lower in Zimbabwe.”
On the whole, WIL concludes that “high levels of inequality are found in countries that experienced white settlers’ colonization, a type of colonization that produced very high land concentration – through discriminatory laws of access to land – as well as low rural wages – through mobility restrictions.”
At a time that Mugabe was confiscating white-owned farms, then North East MP, Chapson Butale, told parliament that those who were impressed with what was happening in Zimbabwe should know that Botswana (notably his constituency) had the same land problem as Zimbabwe. The message between the lines was unmistakably clear. Descendants of colonial settlers (meaning whites) own vast tracts of land while local black communities are crammed into much smaller tribal land. Before he went AWOL and while a member of the ruling party, Tati East MP, Guma Moyo, proposed that Botswana should also seize white-owned land without compensation and redistribute it among landless indigenous communities. On apparent pressure from the parliamentary party, Moyo would later develop cold feet but there is a very strong feeling among a significant number of Batswana that the government should also do what Zimbabwe did. Revelations by the WIL that Mugabe’s control land reform programme helped reduce wealth and income inequality will both intensify and validate such feelings.
On the face of it, seizing white-owned land to reverse a century-old socio-economic injustice might seem an attractive proposition but there are also practical realities to deal with. A world order created by what South Africa’s radical left has called “white monopoly capital” has been purposefully designed to preserve the commercial interests of European-origin whites all over the world. When Mugabe seized white farms, western nations responded with punitive sanctions that are still in place and have ruined the Zimbabwean economy. The same fate befell Cuba when communists overthrew a western-puppet government and nationalized United States-origin companies.
What is happening to the Zimbabwean economy has happened to Cuba’s for decades now and any African country that follows in Mugabe’s example will be subjected to the same punishment. The sanctions are meant to not so much punish Zimbabwe as to send a very clear warning to other Third World countries that reclamation of land that westerners stole from Africans will not be tolerated.
According to WIL, Africa is one of the world’s most unequal regions, with the top 10 percent capturing half the national income.
“Extreme inequality levels can be found among nations which historically experienced white settlers’ colonization and extreme forms of racial injustices (e.g. South Africa). The persistence of inequality in such countries is largely due to the lack of land ownership reforms, the absence of social security and progressive taxation systems,” it says.
A progressive tax is based on the taxpayer’s ability to pay by imposing a lower tax rate on low-income earners than on those with a higher income.
As Sunday Standard suggested in its last 2020 issue, it is more than likely that the Botswana Democratic Party will lose the 2024, largely on account of the damage that COVID-19 will do the national economy. The likeliest successor government will be that of the Umbrella for Democratic Change which has stated that it will “redistribute” land. However, what the UDC does in the future may not be as effective as what Mugabe did. In its 2014 election manifesto, the party said that it will introduce “new mechanisms and instruments” to correct this anomaly. One such would be “a more comprehensive purchasing of land around urban centres, for servicing and re-distribution to make available for the tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.”
At least according to what it says, a UDC government will conduct a comprehensive land audit to determine land ownership structure, use of land across the country and potential best use (tenure) of all land pockets in Botswana. The findings will guide process on how to best allocate that land and for what purposes.
The problem with “a more comprehensive purchasing of land around urban centres” is that it would come at great cost to the nation. To the extent it succeeded, Mugabe’s experiment was purposefully designed to not spend government money in reclaiming land because that would only further impoverish the country.
In the current scheme of things, the available legal avenue for compulsory purchase is charted in the Acquisition of Property Act which empowers the state president to acquire “any real property” in the interest of the public. In instances where a party whose land has been acquired in this way is unhappy about the compensation, the law recommends taking up the matter with the courts.
The Mugabe model could well gain popularity in Africa, especially if South Africa’s government makes good on its electoral pledge to implement a similar land reform programme.
