6. The land crisis
White farmers held a grossly unfair 39% of Zimbabwe's most productive land at Independence, a situation requiring urgent redress. By 1998, only 71 000 families had been resettled. The land crisis is only a part of Zimbabwe's unresolved agrarian question.
Farm invasions, which began in 2000, have continued and have been accompanied by the compulsory acquisition of commercial farms under an Act of Parliament that has been amended to render the acquisition process increasingly unfair and arbitrary. The land programme itself has been anarchic and accompanied by considerable violence.
Despite the drought and disruption, since the election both the extent and speed of the "Fast Track" land reform have been dramatically increased. Approximately 95 per cent of commercial farms are being seized. 60% of the farmers become criminals if they continue farming after Monday 24th June, or stay in their homes after 8th August. None of these contested farms have been acquired through the courts. Many fall outside all given criteria. By criminalizing farming, government plans to avoid the courts.
Many of the larger special beneficiaries of the fast-track land programme are not landless peasants but Ministers and other senior government officials and prominent supporters of the ruling party, including those who officially supervised the Presidential election in the ESC's stead.
The economic dimensions of the Crisis
The political events described above have resulted in the deliberate destruction of various facets of the market. There has been serious confusion in both fiscal and monetary policy suggesting that ZANU PF's self-recreation bid may become the undoing of the Zimbabwean economy. This fact can be demonstrated through the following factors:
- The unresolved Agrarian question. Clearly, the system whereby a handful of whites controlled over 80% of the most productive agricultural land in Zimbabwe was neither sustainable nor desirable. However, violent seizures of farmlands in contravention of the constitution are indefensible in any law-governed state .The out-rightly criminal activities that attended the land seizures coupled with government's encouragement of violence should be continuously condemned. What all this has meant is that there is no longer a viable market for the sale and purchase of farms .The precariousness of tenure due to the never-ending invasions also means that farms no longer constitute viable collateral.
- The fixing of the exchange rate at the current statutory levels effectively means that currency exchange has been taken out of the formal market into fringes of legality or extra-legality. This policy on the part of the state has resulted in over 75% of currency exchange now taking place on the parallel market .In real terms we now have a parallel economy that is more vibrant than the formal economy. Over 50 % of foreign exchange, deals are taking place on the alternative market.
- Interest rates have been lowered in order to arrest the budget deficit. However, the continued failure to rationalise monetary and fiscal policy effectively means that Zimbabwe now has a negative real rate of interest. This is not helped by the myriad of inflationary factors that confront the country.
- The economy is expected to shrink by between 7 to 10 % during the current fiscal year.
- The domestic debt is now set at Z $ 237 billion and there are no immediate prospects that it will be retired soon. More so in the absence of balance of payment support from the multi-lateral donors.
- Inflation is pegged at 113.3 % and as indicated above Zimbabwe has a highly inflationary monetary policy .The major source of inflation is the government. What the government has repeatedly attempted to do is to penalize the private sector and taxpayers for the myriad of inflationary factors confronting the economy .A case in point are the price -controls. Whatever the utility value of price-controls might be in the immediate, their long-term impact is undesirable .In essence, this will take pricing of all basic commodities out of the market and force retailers out of business .The costs of production have not been regulated such that there is rational pricing throughout the production line.
- The violence and anarchy referred to above, together with reckless economic policies and widespread corruption, have devastated the Zimbabwean economy. Gross domestic product has declined 14 per cent in real terms in four years and is forecast to fall by 12 % this year. Unemployment is estimated at over 60 % and inflation is over 120 %.
- Agricultural production has decreased to such an extent that Zimbabwe faces a severe unprecedented food crisis, with nearly half the population needing emergency food aid. Most basic commodities are short, and the livestock base is being destroyed. This food security situation is exacerbated by the delayed resolution of the agrarian.
- Destitution is widespread, with over 74 per cent of the population living below the poverty-datum line, and malnutrition and HIV deaths will be escalating.
- There has been a serious exodus of skilled and unskilled people seeking better lives elsewhere, and children are dropping out of school at an alarming rate. The growth of prostitution and other forms of poverty related misdemeanours is unprecedented.
The factors outlined above are unlikely to change unless if there is a drastic alteration of the present government's policies or a change of leadership within or outside the government.
The Zimbabwe crisis described above is a confluence of several factors such as institutional and constitutional collapse; economic melt-down; endemic corruption; breakdown in the rule of law; gross human rights violations; failure of liberation movements to transform themselves into national governments and inherited colonial states into democratic states as well as the failure of liberal democracy.
These democratic and governance deficits have and continue to subvert peace and justice in Zimbabwe. NEPAD proposes a Peer Review Mechanism as the panacea to crises' of this magnitude.
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