Author: Tongkeh Joseph Fowale
Zimbabwe’s land crisis is a problem deeply rooted in the history of British colonial administration in Africa. It began with Cecil Rhodes and his BSAC.

The story of Zimbabwe today is a story of conflict over land between whites and blacks. It is a conflict that has dragged a once-prosperous country down to a level where it now constitutes a danger to its own self. It is also a story deeply rooted in the colonial history of Africa.

It has, however, been manipulated by politicians at the national and international levels such that the truth about the origins of Zimbabwe’s crisis has been buried in the ashes of international politics.

The Origins of Zimbabwe’s Land Crisis

The origins of the land crisis in Zimbabwe are firmly rooted in the period of British colonialism in Africa. Zimbabwe fell within the orbit of (Southern) Africa where in Walter Rodney’s words “the absolute limit of exploitation was found.” This tragedy began with the establishment of the British South Africa Company (BSAC) by John Cecile Rhodes in 1890.

Rhodes, the forerunner of British colonial rule in Southern Africa, obtained the Charter for the BSAC in October 1889 from Lord Salisbury; the then British Prime Minister whom Robin Harlett says “drew comfort from glis assumptions about the future.” To obtain this Charter, Rhodes had earlier duped the Ndebele King — Lobengula into signing two treaties in 1880 and 1888 which deprived the monarch of both his land and authority.

The BSAC and the Land in Rhodesia

According to the Charter granted to Rhodes, his administration was to last for 25 years, but BSAC administration only ended in 1923. Rhodes gave his name — Rhodesia to his new booty and proceeded to enact legislation that favored white ownership of land. This legislation was backed by force. The first instance in the use of force occurred in 1894 when the BSAC under L.S Jameson began allocating 6000 acre farms to white troopers.

In 1894, the BSAC promulgated the Matabeleland-Order-in Council by which the BSA assumed ownership of land by right of conquest. With the consent of British imperial authorities, the BSAC proceeded to destroy all African institutions that obstructed the “profit” motive of the BSAC. Africans where therefore prevented from growing food crops and used instead in white-owned mines and farms. “These Africans,” notes Atieno-Odhiambo, “lived in hovels where they could be controlled and made to feel very desperate.”

End of BSAC administration and the acceleration of Land excision

BSAC administration ended in 1923 and Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing territory. The 1923 Constitution that ended BSAC administration did not take African aspirations into consideration. It instead gave “effective powers to settlers” as Robin Harlett observes. This made further alienation of land easier. In 1925, the Morris Carter Commission recommended racial division of land in Rhodesia.

The outcome of the Carter Commission’s recommendation was the Land Apportionment Act of 1930. This law removed Africans from the most fertile lands to barren ones. Africans were also removed from settlements along railways and major roads to prevent them from enjoying any commercial advantages.

The Land Husbandry Act of 1957 and the monumental Land Tenure Act of 1969 revealed the climax of colonial land deprivation in Southern Rhodesia. In Claire Palley’s words, the Land Tenure Act “was the open acknowledgement of the principle of racial paramountcy in the respective racial areas.”

Zimbabwe’s land crisis was enmeshed in the political developments in Africa throughout the period of colonialism. Between 1890 and 1969, Zimbabwe itself underwent many political transformations. From the BSAC through British colonial rule to Ian Smiths UDI, all successive regimes placed emphasis on land seizure from blacks. It was against this background that African nationalism was born in Southern Rhodesia.

   Racist Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of Cape Colony, was also a gold and diamond mogul.

Sources:

•    Atieno-Odhiambo, E.S. “The Origins of the Zimbabwe Problem, 1888-1923 in S.E Wilmer. Zimbabwe Now, 1973.

•    Chiambatti, A.M. “Africans and the Struggle for their rights in Rhodesia” in S.E Wilmer. Zimbabwe Now, 1973.

•    Harlett, Robin. Africa since 1875, 1999.

•    Palley, Claire. “Analysis of the 1971 British Proposals for a Settlement with Rhodesia” in S.E Wilmer. Zimbabwe Now, 1973.

•    Rodney, Walter. How Europe underdeveloped Africa, 1990

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Ghana: Obama Visits a Hopeful Nation on a Troubled Continent

   By: Prof. Richard Joseph
There is perhaps no region in the world in which there is a greater gap between the high expectations of an Obama presidency and knowledge of his administration’s intended policies than in sub-Saharan Africa. That gap should narrow when President Obama makes a fleeting visit to Ghana on July 10 and 11.

Unlike Kenya and Nigeria ? the countries he might have been expected to visit first in his presidency, but whose reputations are clouded by corruption, electoral misconduct, insecurity and other woes ? Ghana is now regarded as a “beacon of democracy” after two decades of political progress and renewed economic growth.

The country has witnessed five successive elections since its return to multiparty democracy in 1992. In 2006 the United States rewarded Ghana for its progress with a $547 million Millennium Challenge Account grant for capacity building — an initiative of the administration of President George W. Bush.

   Workers push a cart past a billboard depicting Ghanaian President John Atta Mills and President Obama
   at an intersection in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Tuesday.

The December 2008 national elections were hotly contested and ended in a confusion of lawsuits, the boycott of a run-off vote in one constituency and accusations of fraud and other irregularities. But when the defeated presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo of the governing New Patriotic Party, conceded to John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress after losing by a sliver (0.46 percent) of the popular vote, Ghana was spared the trauma of the post-election upheavals we have seen in recent years in Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

On the economic front, revenues will soon begin flowing from the export of petroleum, a result of the discovery of oil off Ghana’s west coast several years ago.

Nevertheless, the country faces substantial challenges. In last December’s election, the virulence of party campaigns, deepening ethnic-bloc voting and the mobilization of vigilantes showed that Ghana has not yet crossed the frontier to intimidation-free electoral politics.

In government, a bloated executive dominates and marginalizes parliament and the judiciary, and financial self-dealing among governing elites is again rampant. The prospect of oil revenue highlights the urgent need for improved and transparent systems of economic management.

Forty percent of Ghanaians still live in poverty and thousands leave annually to seek a better life elsewhere. Pervasive unemployment among youths, as throughout Africa, is one of the tragic consequences of high fertility rates and low economic productivity.

Yet Ghana could lead a new wave of accelerated and sustainable development in agriculture, industry and services.

In August 2006, while visiting Nairobi as a U.S. Senator, Barack Obama highlighted the failure of Kenya, and other countries in Africa, “to create a government that is transparent and accountable, one that serves its people and is free from corruption.”

On his first visit to Africa during his presidency ? to Cairo last month ? President Obama challenged government leaders to “place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party.” His summons applies acutely to Ghana.

There are buds of an Obama doctrine, seen in both the Nairobi and Cairo addresses, which can sprout in Africa. It emphasizes tolerance, transparency, the rule of law, government that rests on consent rather than coercion and “doesn’t steal from the people.” It urges political leaders to respect democratic rights and institutions while they are “in power” as they did “out of power.” In his recent July 3 interview with AllAfrica, he reiterated his understanding of “the direct correlation between governance and prosperity” and the need to stop making “excuses about corruption or poor governance on Africa.”

During his campaign for the presidency, Obama promised to double foreign aid once elected into office. But much more important for Africa is the need to spur enterprise-led growth and support the new generation of entrepreneurs and professionals who are fed up with aid-fuelled and corruption-plagued politics.

There are important initiatives of his predecessors that the Obama administration can build upon. President Bill Clinton’s most important contribution to Africa was the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that lowered barriers to African export products to the United States. While the Bush administration extended the scope of AGOA, a real breakthrough for Africa on trade issues crumbled with the collapse of the Doha Round of talks on a comprehensive deal on trade.

The establishment of the Millennium Challenge Account was one of the notable achievements of the Bush administration and one which President Obama can expand and extend to sub-national entities. Such an action is relevant to countries such as Nigeria with dynamic governments emerging at the state level.

The scope for the U.S. government and American companies to pursue agricultural, infrastructural, and other investment opportunities in Africa is vast. Sub-Saharan Africa now provides almost 20 percent of U.S. oil imports while its gas imports have jumped nearly ten-fold since 2000.

On Saturday, President Obama and his entourage will visit the Cape Coast Castle from which many Africans were dispatched to chattel slavery in the Americas. He will then address the Ghanaian Parliament and a great multitude in the capital city of Accra. To the thousands who will gather to hear him, 750 million sub-Saharan Africans will follow his remarks closely, thanks to independent media and telecommunication services that now flourish in the continent.

His anticipated message of hope, audacity, responsibility and “pragmatic progressivism” will reverberate long after he leaves. It will be a sublime and potentially transformative moment for Africa and those who have who have long argued for the United States to stand up boldly for democracy and developmental governance in the continent.

Ghana Prepares For Obama Visit

References:

1. Mood in Ghana: ‘We are a lucky country’ — Quietly, modestly ? but also heroically ? Ghana’s going about the business of rebranding a continent. New face of America, meet the new face of Africa.

2. BONO: Ghana is well governed. After a close election, power changed hands peacefully. Civil society is becoming stronger. The country’s economy was growing at a good clip even before oil was found off the coast a few years ago. Though it has been a little battered by the global economic meltdown, Ghana appears to be weathering the storm. I don’t normally give investment tips ? sound the alarm at Times headquarters ? but here is one: buy Ghanaian. On his visit to Ghana, President Obama has the chance to lead nations in building on the successes of recent efforts within Africa and to learn from the failures. [ READ MORE ]

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   [ By: Charles Onyango-Obbo ]
Africa’s longest ruling president, Omar Bongo of Gabon, has gone to meet his maker. The fact that Bongo was in power for a record 42 years means it is not enough for us to say we are rid of another corrupt strongman.

It is time to try and explain why people like him can survive for so long; why our leaders keep stealing our taxes and messing up our lives; and how come Comrade Bob Mugabe in Zimbabwe can run a once-great country into the grave, and yet some are still in office.

The short of it is that these rulers survive because they actually enjoy support. It could be from their tribe, the army, or like Bongo, they can buy loyalty with petrodollars, but that support is often more than what the democratic opposition can muster.

Even Uganda’s disastrous ‘Field Marshal’ Idi Amin had the undying loyalty of the rich class that grabbed the vast Asian “abandoned properties” after he expelled them in 1972. We tend to blame disorganised oppositions for the survival of wicked politicians like Togo’s Gnassingbe Eyadema. But wwhat else explains it equally is a cowardly, greedy, or ethnically-driven population.

Bongo, let’s be fair, was not your typically abominable African strongman. His prisons were not full of journalists and opposition politicians. Though most Gabonese still live in poverty, he managed to keep very many others happy by spreading the oil money around.

As The Guardian put it, Bongo “quickly realised that money could be more effective than bullets in keeping power.” Bongo’s case also suggests that instead of lumping the continent’s leaders together, we need to develop categories for classifying them. The list of African leaders here is by no means exhaustive.

1. The Predatory Dictators: These mostly rob, kill, and ruin everything. Here put several former presidents: DRC’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Uganda’s Idi Amin.

2. The Progressive Despots: These don’t democratise fully and fill their prisons with critics and independent journalists, but they still build roads, railways (Bongo spent $4bn on a railway network). Here I can think of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, Ghana’s Gerry Rawlings, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and, from an earlier period, Cote d’Ivoire’s Felix Houphuet-Boigny. Bongo belongs here.

3. The Enlightened Strongmen: These are men who shake up their countries with bold reformists initiatives, and make them distinctly leaders in Africa in some areas, but they still keep a tight lid on political life: Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Mozambique’s former President Joachim Chissano, and throw in Djibouti’s Omar Guelleh.

4. The Heartbreaker Backsliders: These started out well, held a lot of promise, and even had remarkable records in their first years, but then they went into reverse gear. Either they became two-penny despots, changed constitutions to perpetuate themselves in power, or went to the far extreme to impose a regime of terror ? as Eritrea’s Issaias Afeworki. The least bad of the lot is someone like President Museveni. Robert Mugabe belongs here (can’t dismiss his early good works).

5. The Miscast Democrats: These are decent men and women, who came to power with huge majorities, but when they are in office, they don’t convert that mandate into good or enduring works. Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki typify this group.

6. The 8am-5pm Regulars: Here, think of the more technocratic African presidents who came to power as freedom fighters or were elected in free elections. They govern without any drama. Are in office by 8 am and leave shortly after 5 pm, balance the national budgets, keep inflation down, and leave a healthy country that made normal progress during their rule.

Botswana’s leaders – Sir Seretse Khama, Ketumile Masire (he used to walk to the newsstand opposite his office to buy newspapers and pick coffee at a corner cafe), Festus Mogae, and now Seretse Khama Ian Khama.

But, perhaps, even better examples are Mauritius’ Sir Anerood Jugnauth, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame (Rwanda, typically, just became the first country in the Third World to introduce a national immunisation programme against pneumococcal disease, one of the leading killers of children in the world).

7. The Charmed Ones: These are leaders who are nation healers, inspirational, and we have to fight with the rest of an adoring world (where they assume a saintly status) to claim them as Africa’s own. We also like to gloss over their failings. Count Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and the great Nelson Mandela, here.

Reference: Libya’s Gaddafi takes the mantle from Bongo

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was in stable condition and recovering from head injuries Friday night after a car wreck that killed his wife, Susan, medical sources told CNN.

The crash, on a busy two-lane highway between Tsvangirai’s hometown of Buhera and the capital city of Harare, comes just weeks after the start of a power-sharing agreement between Tsvangirai and his political rival, President Robert Mugabe.

Analysts say the crash is bound to raise suspicion of foul play, with one former U.S. diplomat calling for an outside investigation, saying it is not the first time that a political foe of Mugabe has been killed or injured in a car crash.

Members of Tsvangirai’s political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said Friday that it was too early to tell whether the crash is anything other than an accident.

Tsvangirai’s aide and driver also were injured in the head-on collision with a large truck, according to his spokesman, James Maridadi.

Movement for Democratic Change spokesman Nelson Chamisa said he spoke to Tsvangirai at the hospital, and the party leader was in “relatively stable” condition. [ MORE ]

    Zimbabwean traffic police stand guard over the wreckage of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s
    vehicle, south of the capital Harare, Friday, March 7 2009.

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We have witnessed this mode of political assassination before — in Africa

Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi, both of Kenya, Idi Amin of Uganda and many other African dictators killed their detractors by staging accidents.

Victims of Kenyatta’s assassinations include — Pio Gama da Pinto, Ronald Ngala (a land rights crusader), C. M. G. Argwings Kodhek (MP and human rights lawyer), and the populist MP from Nyandarua Josiah Mwangi (JM) Kariuki, fierce critic of Kenyatta’s land grabbing disease.

Daniel Arap Moi, Kenyatta’s vice president for many years, picked up the killing after Jomo died, when he became president of Kenya — murdering and then burning the body of Dr. Robert Ouko, the then Foreign Minister in his government.

Idi Amin of Uganda, who was perhaps the most brutal military dictator to wield power in post-independence Africa, “staged” numerous accidental deaths too — Anglican Archbishop, Janani Luwum, was killed in a simulated car crash in Kampala — a fate suffered by many other political opponents.

I have a very strong feeling that Mugabe wants Morgan Tsvangirai DEAD!

Therefore his visit to Tsvangirai’s bedside immediately after the “ACCIDENT,” smells every bit as devious as Jomo Kenyatta attending Thomas Joseph Mboya’s memorial in Nairobi, in 1969 — after hiring the assassin who gunned him down.

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Tom Mboya Funeral

Tom Mboya & Dr. Martin L King at a civil rights rally in DC

African Nationalist Thomas Joseph Mboya coordinated an “airlift” in 1959 of 81 Kenyan students to the USA to attend college. With the help of Dr. King, the African American Students Foundation and its sponsors, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, and Sidney Poitier, Mboya raised sufficient funds to cover the students’ travel expenses. One of the students was a certain Barack Husein Obama snr., the late father of US President Barack Obama. This rally was in Washington DC, 1959

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By: Chris Agbiti

November 4th, 2008 will, undoubtedly go down in world history as epoch making.

It was a day that signposted the final internment of the age-long divisive philosophy that held one race superior to another (apology to the legend, Bob Marley); it was a day the entire world came together, irrespective of creed and religion, to recite Dune Dimitis (however, not with long faces) for the monster of racial discrimination that had for long defined the political climate of America but now chased away; it was the day Barack Hussein Obama won in landslide, the U.S Presidential election.

The U.S. Presidential Election has come and gone but the echoes of it continue to reverberate in every nook and cranny of Africa especially in Kenya where Obama traces his patrilineal descent from. The euphoria of Obama’s victory will for long continue its ripples in the Negroid race of Africa.

However, the point is worth making that for the Americans, the euphoria of joy sweeping through its entire nation is understandable: That, at last, someone who has a clear vision and a good grasp of the issues that need to be addressed to restore U.S. lost glory, consequent upon the lacklustre performance of the out-going president, was not held back from realizing that ambition by prejudices. But for Africans, what other reason beside the sentimental consideration that a fellow brother African now becomes President of U.S., can we adduce to bedrocks our own euphoria at the election of Obama?

If one may ask, what business do African countries, together with their stinking leaders, have in rejoicing over Obama’s victory at the U.S. poll when we know in our hearts of hearts that we will never allow the kind of system that has produced Obama in U.S. election to be replicated in our own land?

Or, are we under a delusion that, with Obama’s presidency, African countries shall wake up one morning, like the fabled Alice in Wonderland, and find all the good things of life in sufficiency for all as obtain in the western world, even while our leaders and people continue in their culture of greed, corruption, ethnic hostilities and all such practices antithetical to the dictate of modern civilization?

It bears repeating to state here that it borders on crass hypocrisy for African countries such as Zambia, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, et al, to rejoice at Obama’s victory even when they are all still involved in various acts of prejudices, this time around, not even against a coloured person but against their own black brothers.

We have witnessed instances in Zambia where the first post independent Kenneth Kaunda had his citizenship withdrawn on the allegation that his ancestry is somewhere in another African country! Similar acts have played out in Ivory Coast and Nigeria (Shugaba’s case). The xenophobic hostilities in South Africa and Zimbabwe are all still fresh in our memories. Africans must be reminded not to expect too much from the presidency of Obama any more than they expected from the presidency of Bill Clinton.

Our only obvious claim to Obama is his blood ties to his Kenyan father. But we must call to memory that, for all the time the elder Obama lived, his conduct in juxtaposition to what Obama Jr. is and stands for today shows, in very lucid details, those sad commentaries of a pure bred African man. The elder Obama came to America and deceitfully led Obama’s mother into marriage, even while he was already married to another Kenya woman back home.

He was to later abandon Obama’s mother and returned to Kenya, leaving young Obama in the care of his maternal grandparents in America. It was recorded that he died drunk-driving. Should Obama’s father were to be alive, one imagines that he too may be rejoicing just like the other African leaders are hypocritically doing.

We must stop deceiving ourselves. It is high time we told ourselves a few home truths. Whatever Obama is today or stands for, he owes it all to the American society.

If he were to be brought up in Kenya, his fatherland, with all his seeming immeasurable grace of intelligence, he would have ended up, at best, as a very brilliant but frustrated university don holed up somewhere in one of our glorified secondary schools, called university, like many other frustrated Obamas in our African society today. The American society that shaped Obama to become what he is to day places a higher premium of kinship of ideas over and above that of blood.

That explains the acceptance of Obama’s candidature across the racial divides. If Obama were not of the rare breed of mankind (who recreates themselves independent of genetic force), he would not even be identifying his African root. It is only for Obama’s high sense of humility and decency that he does so and I commend him for it. Africans must be reminded that as we cheer Obama’s victory, we must cast away that extra baggage of hypocrisy and begin to reflect on the need for us to home-grow a system similar to what sustains in the U.S. that has made possible the Obama phenomenon.

The world today is ruled by ideas. It is not enough for us bank on blood kinship to Obama and think that alone will be the open sesame to our El Dorado.

In today’s modern world, kinship of ideas, as aforesaid, rather than of blood or ethnicity is one of the driving force of attraction. In doing so, we must remind ourselves that until we jettison that negative attitude that encourages subjugation of fellow man rather than our environment which is what the white man has effectively achieved, we shall continue in our collective grope.

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Chris Agbiti wrote from Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
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