Zimbabwe comes full circle

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views October 21, 2002]

Shakespeare Maya, Zimbabwe's leader of the opposition National Alliance for Good Governance, opined, "This land was stolen from our ancestors, and it follows that those who hold it now are thieves." It's this vision that has prompted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to target 95% of white-owned farms for redistribution. His Land Acquisition Act calls for the eviction of over 4,000 white farmers. Over 2,900 white farmers have already been evicted.

The late South African economist William Hutt, in his book The Economics of the Colour Bar, argued that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices or oppression "can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races."

In 1893, with the military backing of the British government, Cecil Rhodes confiscated land that had been settled and owned by the Ndebele and Matabele peoples. He established what was known as Rhodesia, a country that became the jewel of Africa, with its mining and agricultural riches. In a word, Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, became a net food exporter and the "bread basket" for wheat and corn for its own people and most of East Africa. By the 1960s, Rhodesia's per capita income and education were one of Africa's highest.

In 1980, Robert Mugabe, a Marxist-socialist, became its leader. As Hutt might have predicted, Mugabe began his oppression of other peoples. Later, he started attacking rule of law, harassing and suppressing Zimbabwe's free press and news media, and arresting dissenters. Opposition party leaders are now imprisoned and faced with kangaroo-court trials. Just recently, Mugabe ensured his president-for-life status by openly rigging national elections.

Zimbabwe has come full circle. Mugabe has created a disaster for both black and white Zimbabweans in the name of reparations and land redistribution. He has outdone the injustices of Cecil Rhodes, who by the way, was an avowed racist. Members of his ZANU-PF party have torched at least 10 million acres of cropland and prevented millions of others from being farmed. Per capita income, $380 a year, is about half of what it was just five years earlier. On top of that, inflation has reached 125% and is climbing. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) estimate that millions of Zimbabweans face imminent starvation.

One naturally asks where are the members of the Black Congressional Caucus, NAACP and other civil rights organizations who, in the 1960s, were demonstrating and calling for the end of English rule. There's a deafening silence, the same silence when Africa's black tyrants elsewhere on the continent commit brutalities making those committed by former colonial masters pale in comparison.

-- Walter Williams, syndicated columnist and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. He is author of The State Against Blacks, (McGraw-Hill), and several anthologies of his syndicated columns, which include: Do The Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks (Hoover), All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View (Regnery), and More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (Hoover). (Creators Syndicate)

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