World Bank Statements on Land Reform Vindicates Zimbabwe Policy

Zimbabwe farmer workers in Nyamzura in Odzi. The earnings on production increased in 2012., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

World Bank vindicates Zimbabwe’s land reform

Tuesday, 16 April 2013 00:00
Sifelani Tsiko

Recent plans by the World Bank to place stronger emphasis on issues of land tenure and sustainable agriculture show that Zimbabwe was right in carrying out its land reform programme which sent an unequivocal message to the world on the importance of land in tackling poverty and enhancing social equity.

The multilateral institution which suspended aid for land reform and maintained an awkward etiquette of arms length policy towards Zimbabwe’s land reform, at its annual conference affirmed plans to strengthen the focus on land rights.

The World Bank also raised concern over large-scale corporate “land grabbing” that is dislocating the poor in various parts of Africa.

“The World Bank Group shares these concerns about the risks associated with large-scale land acquisitions,” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said in a statement from the bank’s Washington headquarters this week.

“Securing access to land is critical for millions of poor people. Modern, efficient, and transparent policies on land rights are vital to reducing poverty and promoting growth, agriculture production, better nutrition and sustainable development.”

Land reform has been a song Zimbabwe has sung for the past three decades, but few bilateral and multilateral institutions ever danced to it.

To many, moves by the World Bank acknowledging the importance of land in socio-economic development are a big surprise.

“Zimbabwe is right and I’m completely surprised that the World Bank which starved our land reform of critical finance is now seeing the importance of land,” said Nyasha Mavire, a young tobacco farmer who is part of the country’s 71 000 registered tobacco growers.

“All of the detractors of the land reform programme who fiercely opposed Zimbabwe’s land exercise should simply say sorry, Zimbabwe was right.”

The IMF, World Bank and other western multi-lateral institutions disseminated carefully sanitised data which demonised and harped on Zimbabwe’s land reform as lacking economic rationale.

When the Government convened the Land Donor Conference in September 1998, in Harare, with the attendance of donor organisation from Britain, US and multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, there was little commitment financially with major donors insisting that the land acquisition programme should not be compulsory but should be on a willing buyer, willing seller basis.

As a consequence for implementing the compulsory land acquisition programme, Zimbabwe is under economic and political sanctions from the West, the EU and the US, and has not received much foreign aid.

Development analysts say land and tenure rights issues which have been ignored by international investors — including bilateral donors and multilateral lenders such as the World Bank for years are now coming back to the forefront following a surge of interest across all types of investors and development institutions.

According to media reports early this week, Kim noted that the World Bank, too, had stepped up its agriculture-related investments, but warned that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights — and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”

At the World Bank conference on land and poverty which opened this week, the institution stated that it expected the global population to grow by two billion by 2050, requiring an expansion of global agricultural production of 70 percent.

And, despite serious opposition, Zimbabwe’s agrarian reforms have raised the profile of land as a powerful weapon to emancipate not only Zimbabwe but Africa as a whole from foreign aid and intervention.

Most agrarian land reform commentators, with Zimbabwe as their motivation, say that land is a prerequisite for socio-economic development for Africa despite the challenges that go with agrarian reforms.

They also say Zimbabwe’s land and agrarian reform has provided useful insights to the discourse on the land question in Africa.

Prof Ian Scoones in his presentation titled:
“Experiences with land reform in former settler colonies of South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe — myths and realities” revealed some important insights that challenge the “conventional wisdoms” dominating media and academic commentary alike.

The research he undertook with scholars from South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe raises some fundamental challenges to five often-repeated myths about recent Zimbabwean land reform and offers some important insights for the future direction of rural policy in Zimbabwe.

The myths, he said, cover beliefs that Zimbabwe’s land reform has been a total failure, that it benefited the elite, that agriculture is in complete ruins and that the rural economy has collapsed.

Contrary to these misconceptions, Prof Scoones said, Zimbabwe’s land reform programme was a huge success gauging from the research they undertook in the country.

In the interviews Prof Scoones and others conducted with new settlers, despite the problems, they noted that there was universal acclaim for the land reform programme: “Life has changed remarkably for me because I have more land and can produce more than I used to,” said one; while another observed, ‘We are happier here at our resettlement.

There is more land, stands are larger and there is no overcrowding. We got good yields in 2006. I filled two granaries with sorghum’.
With the right kind of knowledge and frame of mind, there is nothing that can prevent Africans from using whatever skills they possess in science and agriculture to boost production and enhance the livelihoods of the poor on the continent.

Analysts say it is clear that Zimbabwe’s land story has a role to play in clearing the confusion over Africa’s land questions and myths and to help build knowledge that will free Africa from the malignancy of low self-esteem, perpetual dependency on the West, lack of pride in African values and history and the sad episodes of stereotypes that undermine Africa’s potential.

At the height of Zimbabwe’s fast track land reform programme, the World Bank, IMF and other western leaning bilateral and multilateral institutions said whatever its socio-economic political input, the land reform programme represented a step backwards in terms of productivity, efficiency and competitiveness.

Pro-land reform experts say this view — a selective and politically driven prosecution of Zimbabwe’s land reform lacked a sufficient measure of acknowledging the numerous benefits of the country’s agrarian reform.

Last year alone, Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector registered 4,6 percent growth and contributed about 5,6 percent of the country’s GDP.

Zimbabwe’s 2012 tobacco exports raked in nearly US$800 million, after more than 144 million kilograms of the golden leaf went under the hammer, according to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board.

Growers pocketed a total of US$527 million compared US$361,4 million in 2011, representing a 46 percent increase.
In a major climb-down, multilateral and bilateral institutions are increasingly acknowledging the importance of Zimbabwe’s land reform.

Just this week, the EU unveiled a 9 million euro fund to support Zimbabwe’s smallholder farmers and promised a further 6 million euro for irrigation support and another 15 million euro for smallholder crop and livestock support.

All this has proved beyond doubt that “Zimbabwe is Right” in carrying out its agrarian reforms.