A Tyrant Ignored
By Blake Hurst
Bob Ballantyne was a Caucasian tobacco farmer in Zimbabwe. Now there's a politically incorrect trifecta. A white male in postcolonial Africa growing a crop responsible for causing cancer is not the easiest character to generate sympathy for on the world stage.
Yet Ballantyne's story deserves to be heard. For he, like thousands of other farmers in Zimbabwe, has lost his home, his livelihood, his land, and his connection to loyal African employees, friends, and neighbors, all thanks to the thuggish "farm invasions" orchestrated by president Robert Mugabe in the increasingly tortured country of Zimbabwe. Ballantyne (not his real name--all the farmers quoted here have requested for their own safety that I not use their names) is just one emblematic victim of political abuses that are endangering millions of lives.
Before the "land reform" that sparked forcible seizures of farmland from longtime owners, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa, exporting surpluses of wheat, corn, and soybeans, plus fully 25 percent of the world's supply of flue-cured tobacco, and 8 percent of Europe's horticultural imports. Today the country is suffering a serious famine. According to recent reports, nearly half of the country's 13 million people will need emergency food aid to avoid starvation this year.
The Zimbabwean government denies that a food shortage exists, and blames reports of famine on a U.S.-inspired plot to "vilify land reform." According to Mugabe, last year's bumper crop is being hoarded by white farmers. This is exceedingly difficult to believe, since most of Zimbabwe's white farmers are now plying their trade in Zambia, or Australia, or Canada. There are only around 300 white commercial farmers left in a country that once had 5,000. These 5,000 used to employ a million Zimbabwean farm workers, who in turn supported another million or so family members.
The suffering of the millions of blacks who used to work on white-owned farms dwarfs the misfortune visited on their employers. Most farm workers descend from Africans who immigrated to Zimbabwe specifically to work on these farms. They have no passports and aren't members of the indigenous tribes--a combination which now ensures a sort of stateless misery.
As a result of Mugabe's land confiscations, an estimated 70 percent of Zimbabwe's economically productive adults have left the country. Millions of refugees now crowd neighboring countries. And food is being used as a political weapon. Last November, AEI fellow Roger Bate witnessed food aid being withheld from areas of Zimbabwe where opposition to Mugabe is concentrated. When the food shortage is coupled with rampaging AIDS, Zimbabwe's demographic statistics are almost beyond belief. According to Bate, life expectancy has dropped from 60 to 33 in a decade. Infant mortality has doubled.
A man-made famine
The food shortage, blamed on drought when hoarding farmers aren't the scapegoats, is a direct result of the "land reform" that Mugabe rammed through after he lost a constitutional referendum on this subject in 2000. Mugabe unleashed a group of violent "war vets" (many of them teenagers) who systematically drove whites from their farms. The loss of agricultural experience and capital has caused production on those farms to plummet.
Former Zimbabwe farmer Ralph Smith, who now works on a dairy farm in Georgia, describes how large groups of urban dwellers were brought to his farm shortly after the 1999 harvest, backed by an armed group he called "pseudo military." They drove pegs into his land to stake out claims, and prevented him from entering his fields. Most of the contingent soon left, but sentries were posted to prevent him from resuming farming. He left for the U.S. when a neighboring farmer was killed.
Smith says the invaders used "whatever means were necessary" to force the farmers from their land. As recently as two months before this was written, one farmer in a similar situation was beaten to death. Smith's voice breaks as he describes his family's flight: "I can't describe the feeling when you get in your car and leave home for the last time." Smith's family was able to escape with a few boxes of pictures and other mementos, but arrived in the U.S. penniless, a lifetime of work sacrificed to heartbreak.
Ballantyne is aware that few people have concern for the plight of Zimbabwe's dispossessed farmers. "A large proportion of those who even know Zimbabwe exists say we got our just desserts," he says. He has immigrated to Australia, where he lives in an area with several hundred other dispossessed Zimbabwe farmers.
Ballantyne's mother was a farmer, and he expanded her farm using equal portions of borrowed capital and grit. During the 1980s, as his family grew, he concentrated on raising tobacco and greenhouse crops for export. By the time he was driven out, he had built a substantial operation employing over 300 people. Nearly a thousand people lived on his farm.
The farm invasions in his area began in earnest in early 2000. Initially, local farmers would rush to the aid of their besieged neighbors. Then the invaders made clear that this would be punished, and the farmers were relegated to listening to their neighbor's traumas on the private band radios owned by each farmer. Ballantyne relates all this with the sort of dry understatement that can only hint at the emotions felt at the time: isolated in wild areas, without telephones, listening to their neighbors fighting for their lives on the crackle of a private radio.
Then one day Ballantyne's farm was invaded. I'll let him tell the story:
"Bill had moved from his farm to a house up the road not far from me for safety after being invaded. One Sunday in April 2000 he contacted me on the radio to warn that there were two busloads (over 100 people) of chanting 'war vets' headed my way. I was summoned to the main security gate. By this time farmers had devised a plan to be non-confrontational. One had to take the heat and accept the humiliation of being abused and pushed around. Wives and children were also at risk--we attempted to shelter them from all this, but standing your ground could result in them being dragged into this nightmare.
"The ringleaders were invariably drunk or high on marijuana, standard issue to achieve the desired aggressive behavior. I ignored the taunts. My workforce was summoned to witness the instructions, to show that I was powerless. This group consisted of about a dozen hard-core war vets, with the balance being women, children, and older men persuaded to participate. They were from high-density suburbs in Harare where poverty and overcrowding were a problem.
"I was informed that for now I was to continue farming because the workers needed employment, but that gradually the interlopers would take over my farm. They would spend the next few days pegging out the farms and I would have to negotiate with the new owners if I required the use of these fields. They departed, and for the next few days there was frantic activity involving the placing of branches and sticks (supposed to be pegs) in areas meant to represent someone's 'plot'. Head honchos obviously took prime land and the emergence of a 'base camp' on the main road out of the farm signaled problems. Ramshackle huts sprung up everywhere, but only the base camp was occupied permanently, the others went back to their jobs and families in the cities. Many used to visit on the weekends and there were many abusive threatening meetings with us regarding the removal of 'pegs' or knocking down of so-called huts. They recorded my every move.
"My farm workers were forced to attend all night 'pungwes'--drunken indoctrination sessions where whites and the new opposition party were run down, and Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party glorified. Not attending resulted in severe beatings, and the workers had a terrible time while trying to keep up a full-time job. Many left and productivity suffered drastically. Those few who previously had been leaning toward Mugabe and his party rose to the top of the pile and became impossible."
Ballantyne, in his late 40s, spent 20 months under attack. There were many close calls. On one occasion he was surrounded by 20 militants, armed with machetes, who circled him as they poked and prodded with the sharp blades. His family lived behind a security fence, kept awake each night by the pungwes just outside. In late 2002, he and his family decided to leave Zimbabwe.
Where is the international outrage?
All of the farmers whose stories appear here purchased their farms under the present regime, free of any taint of colonialism. Paul Jones, who now lives in Canada, tells a typical story. The government claimed first right of refusal for all land, so before any plot could change hands it had to be offered to Mugabe and his henchmen. If they declined the land, a "certificate of no interest" was issued, and the farm could be sold. Jones received such a certificate, and according to him the large majority of land farmed in modern Zimbabwe was similarly purchased.
Still, Jones' farm was invaded by a group of war vets. They arrived in a blue pickup truck still prominently displaying a sign informing all that it had been donated to Zimbabwe by the international charity World Vision, "to help in the fight against the HIV virus." Jones is bitter that well-intentioned aid has often been misused in this way. International organizations have not come to the aid of farmers, nor have they protested as productive farmland is commandeered. The main interest the U.N. has taken in Zimbabwe recently has been to name the country to a panel deciding the agenda for a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
Paul Jones' farm does not currently produce anything, because land in his area can't be farmed without irrigation, and all his pumps and watering equipment have been stolen. Thievery on a grand scale has become the major "economic activity" on many of Zimbabwe's farms these days. Even Mugabe has admitted that most of the invaded farms now lie idle, and are returning to bush.
Those seizing land from white farmers are riding a tiger they can't control. The high-value plots and greenhouses are generally claimed by party functionaries, but the new "owners" lack the expertise or capital to maintain production. Even the small-scale farmers who have been given the use of plots have found it impossible to plant the commercial crops that used to thrive. Mugabe prohibits private ownership, so these tillers are unable to use the land as collateral, and thus unable to borrow for planting.
Agriculture is a long-term proposition. Like farmers everywhere, the growers I talked to mentioned the many improvements they had made to their farms. They'd invested in erosion control and irrigation, built greenhouses and barns. But investments like those don't get made without security of tenure. Paul Jones grew passion fruit for export--a crop that takes years to come to market. The squatters on his farm now, with their pegs and pungwes, can't be sure that the next political upheaval won't displace them, so they are unlikely to pay attention to soil erosion, replace and maintain the existing infrastructure, or plant a crop that takes many seasons to mature.
What has been taken once can easily be taken again. Recent reports from Zimbabwe state that with parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa now engaged in a power struggle within the ruling ZANU-PF party, his followers' farms are being repossessed. Other contestants in the struggle to succeed the octogenarian Mugabe likewise find themselves treated in a manner strikingly similar to how they treated the farmers described here.
The bill for bullying
Thousands of Zimbabweans once productively employed on farms are now in camps, dependent upon food aid to survive. The insanity gripping Mugabe's country will cut most deeply on poorer citizens. The previously successful farmers, though often heartbroken and in a few cases dead, are mostly rebounding. John Courtney, who used to farm in Zimbabwe, has immigrated to Zambia, where he is pioneering another farm, clearing virgin bush. Many other expatriates have joined him, and similar outposts exist in Nigeria and Mozambique.
Zimbabwe's elections this spring have been widely derided as illegitimate. Although the election was endorsed by South Africa, the leading power in the region, abuses, intimidation and outright fraud were widespread. There seems to be no chance for democracy and the rule of law in this country until the passing of Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF gang. The U.S. Congress has instituted sanctions targeted on the leaders of the regime. Personal assets of the top regime members have been frozen, and their travel to the U.S. prohibited.
Mugabe has shown little response to international pressure, but one of the farmers I interviewed was spared a beating by threatening to tell his story to CNN. Even Africa is afraid of 24-hour cable news. Annabel Hughes, once a farmer in Zimbabwe and now an activist for reform, urges the Bush Administration to "apply its Jeffersonian dream of exporting liberty and freedom to the oppressed and helpless nation of Zimbabwe."
Democracy doesn't solve all problems, but no democracy has ever undergone famine like Zimbabwe's. Secure property rights are easy for those of us in the West to take for granted, but without them no country's food supply is safe (never mind the economy). If Zimbabwe had laws that protected ownership, and democratically accountable leaders, Zimbabwe would not be a country without farmers or food.
Until those central elements of decency and prosperity exist, America should help shelter political refugees from this benighted place. Because of the complexity and expense of our immigration system, hardly any of Zimbabwe's dispossessed farmers have immigrated to America. Paul Jones' son had preceded him to Canada and explained to Canadian authorities his father's situation. The Canadians told him to bring his parent to Canada and worry about the paperwork later. We should do no less.
Will South Africa
Follow Zimbabwe?
By Roger Bate and Richard Tren
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's despotic leader, remains in power after yet another rigged election.
Most observers declared the March 31 election fraudulent, but the South African government and Zimbabwe's other neighbors endorsed it, so Zimbabwe is now set for further destitution and disease. While this is tragic in itself, South Africa's ringing endorsement of, and loyalty to, the Mugabe regime raises a further troubling thought: Can South Africa go the same way as Zimbabwe? And what would that mean?
Attempting to answer the second question is harder than one would think. For what was the fundamental reason for the collapse in Zimbabwe? It was not the loss of freedom of the press, or unsound monetary policy, or costly military actions abroad, or low health expenditure--although all these factors had a negative impact.
The real reason Zimbabwe collapsed is that there is no protection of private property. The executive rides roughshod over the judiciary in all matters of property rights. The result has been "dead capital"--a term coined by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto--and total economic annihilation. The economy is now worth a fraction of its value in 2000, when the Mugabe regime's "land reform" program, in which it appropriated farms and land-holdings from private owners, really started.
So is there a danger that South Africa will follow Zimbabwe down this tragic road? There are several similarities between the two countries' situations.
The laws that Robert Mugabe uses to retain power are remarkably similar to the laws that the apartheid government used in South Africa in its attempts to crush political opposition. The African National Congress (ANC), which is now in power in South Africa, fought a long, hard struggle to give South Africans the fundamental human rights Mugabe has taken away from Zimbabweans. One would have thought, therefore, that South Africa would defend the institutions of a free society and condemn Mugabe's actions. Yet South African President Thabo Mbeki and his government apparently lack principles and moral courage when it comes to their northern neighbor.
South Africa's endorsement of the Mugabe regime has eaten away at the international moral capital the country earned after the 1994 democratic elections that put Nelson Mandela and his party in power. Of course, it's important not to forget that South Africans today enjoy more freedoms and democracy than ever before, thanks in large part to the ANC. South Africans have enjoyed free and fair elections, and violent abuses of government are a thing of the past. Unlike South Africa during the apartheid era, people are not arrested without charge, tortured in dank basements, and then made to disappear.
Yet despite these enormous advances, the ANC's pro-Mugabe stance is disquieting and is accompanied by some other worrying trends. One could argue that the ANC's support for
Zimbabwe demonstrates that, just like the Nationalist Party that created apartheid, the ANC neither respects nor believes in the institutions of a free society.
Last year the ANC made vague, but nonetheless ominous, threats against the judiciary, potentially undermining its independence. Although the ANC has not yet directly attacked the rule of law, the grindingly slow legal system and an often corrupt police force make for a de facto assault on the rule of law.
Although there hasn't been a direct threat to property rights in South Africa, the government's policy of Black Economic Empowerment forces companies to hand over equity to black shareholders. Like Mugabe's "land reforms" in Zimbabwe, this system of "empowerment" is a partial taking that undermines a key institution and enriches a tiny, politically powerful elite. It has increased the risk of investing and has probably slowed economic growth. Furthermore, threats to white farms (on some of which thousands of people are squatting), exist and need to be resolved legally and fairly, or property rights could weaken dangerously.
South Africa enjoys a free and vibrant press, even though the state TV and radio broadcaster shows signs of becoming an ANC mouthpiece, just as it was a National Party mouthpiece in the past.
There are of course some important differences between South Africa and Zimbabwe. As Jonathan Katzenellenbogen, international affairs editor of South Africa's Business Day newspaper, points out, "The crucial difference is that S.A. has a liberal constitution and a far more active union, business, and civil society movement than Zimbabwe."
When it comes to Thabo Mbeki's policy of "quiet diplomacy" on Zimbabwe, Katzenellenbogen explains that this policy "has to raise questions about the democratic future in S.A., and even the Communist party has said as much. By not criticizing Mugabe openly and early, while there were screams from the West, Mbeki lost the ground on which to do so, as the rhetoric of external opposition became western and white."
The crucial test going forward will come with future elections in South Africa. South Africa has had unimpressive per capita economic growth, unemployment at around 40 percent, and a vocal and increasingly critical labor movement. This, along with the country's growing HIV/AIDS problem (which the government has done its best to ignore), means that South African voters may turn away from the ANC. If this happens, one hopes the ANC will do the right thing and allow South Africans to make free choices.
South Africa has an awful lot going for it, but the government's disgraceful behavior over Zimbabwe is a frightening warning that the hard-won freedoms that South Africans enjoy may be on the way out.
Roger Bate is a resident fellow at AEI. Richard Tren, a South African, is director of Africa Fighting Malaria.
