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By Bernard Mpofu
FORMER British Prime Minister Tony Blair has for the first time revealed that London, during his term in office, had set aside funds for Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.
He insisted that the UK was still committed to bankroll a genuine exercise via a United Nations agency despite President Robert Mugabe’s hard-line stance on the emotive issue.
Blair recently told the NewAfrican magazine that plans by his government to fund the controversial land reform exercise, over a decade ago, failed to take off amid fears that Mugabe’s administration would misappropriate the funds.
While Mugabe has publicly announced that government had “successfully completed” the land redistribution exercise, Blair said Britain’s current coalition government led by David Cameron are prepared to sponsor a genuine land reform programme in Zimbabwe.
During the chaotic reform exercise in 2000 thousands of white commercial farmers forcibly lost vast tracts of land to native Zimbabweans. Britain was prepared to make £36 million available to Zimbabwe provided the UNDP approved a plan that reduced poverty and enhanced production, reports at the time indicated.
“One of the myths that Mugabe used was this thing that we wouldn’t provide money for land reform,” Blair said. “I set aside the amount of money they needed for land reform, but one important thing was that the money had to go through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and not through his government machine, because if it went through his government machine it wasn’t going to be used for the purposes for which it was directed. Therefore, that was the issue; not that we wouldn’t fund the land reform, we were happy to do that. And still are, by the way!”
Blair’s sentiments were, however, contrary to what the then British Secretary of State Claire Short wrote to the Zimbabwe’s government.
On November 5 1997 Short wrote a letter to then Agriculture minister Kumbirai Kangai that Britain would not fund the land reform exercise, a decision which according to Zanu PF, riled Mugabe and prompted the chaotic land programme.
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe,” she wrote. “We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers,” read the letter. “We do, however, recognise the very real issues you face over land reform. We believe that land reform could be an important component of a Zimbabwean programme designed to eliminate poverty. We would be prepared to support a programme of land reform that was part of a poverty eradication strategy but not on any other basis.”
In September 1998, the UNDP organised an international land donor conference where Britain and other Western countries pledged to fund a systematic land reform programme.
The Commercial Farmers Union had agreed to release about 120 farms for the first five-year pilot land reform exercise. This did not take off as two years down the line war veterans embarked on farm invasions after the electorate voted against Mugabe’s constitutional proposals.
The white commercial farmers took their cases to the Sadc Tribunal challenging the seizure of their properties. The tribunal ruled in their favour, but the government did not abide by the judgment and in turn questioned the legality of the regional body.
The legality of the Sadc Tribunal could today come under scrutiny at the Sadc heads of government summit in Windhoek, Namibia, although the Zimbabwe delegation is planning to block it.
Meanwhile, the government of national unity formed in February 2009 which undertook to carry out a land audit of the chaotic exercise has been slow in carrying out the audit, citing limited funding.
Critics contend that the audit is likely to expose Mugabe’s cronies accused of multiple farm ownership. The European Union has since the formation of the inclusive government in 2009 pledged to support the audit, a move Mugabe’s Zanu PF strongly opposes.
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