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BZS SUPPORTERS RAISE £1,000 FOR FAMINE RELIEF
Over £1,000 has been raised for famine relief in Zimbabwe from a meeting in Oxford addressed by Brian MacGarry SJ on 26 September and attended by 25 BZS members and supporters. The famine relief scheme run by the Jesuits in Zimbabwe has been importing maize meal and distributing to displaced people in Harare, Chinhoyi and Bulawayo.
Brian is a Jesuit priest who has worked in Zimbabwe on development and human rights issues since 1968, with a short break during the liberation war. He is a regular contributor to the BZS Zimbabwe Review, writing on the Zimbabwean economy.
Today, Zimbabweans describe themselves as having the highest I Queue in the world as they queue for essentials. The GDP is half what it was 5 years ago. Very few people are in formal employment. The last official inflation rate given was 7,500%; it is more likely in reality to be 15,000 or 20,000%.
But the economy is not the primary problem, he said. The fundamental issue is that society has been disrupted and destroyed by a small group with a mania for control. ZANU(PF) has a party culture of rigidity and obstinacy, reflecting Mugabe's own personality.
Brian reminded the audience that a lot of the land that changed hands in the 1980s and was resettled had been state land. Of the land that was bought for resettlement, much went to ZANU-PF cronies. It is remarkable that –alone in Africa, perhaps- Zimbabwe’s new government kept to the terms of the Independence Agreement that entrenched land clauses. Also remarkable that, for nearly 10 years after the entrenched land clauses ceased to have legal force, nothing was done to get rid of them.
After the Referendum, however, everything changed, he pointed out. Hardly anyone who holds land has secure tenure: tenure depends on the will of the Party. Some black commercial farmers who acquired land outside the Partywere evicted in 2000.
Most of the increased food production in the 1980s came from peasant farmers. But the vital hybrid maize seed was produced on the commercial farms and the fertilizer or inputs to manufacture it had to be imported. The destruction of the commercial farming sector and the lack of forex from exports has had disastrous knock-on effects for the peasant farmers. ZANU-PF’s socialism never stretched to seeing socialism as a system of production
The Churches and other civil society organisations have been split by ZANU-PF's style of politics. The only group that has remained relatively intact is the trade unions. Morgan Tsvangirai must be given credit for this. But the scarcity of formal sector jobs today means that the trade union movement is seriously depleted.
Brian's view of the prospects now is that there are no saviours waiting outside Zimbabwe. European interference only makes things worse. Because Mugabe and the ruling group operate by manipulation, they cannot imagine that anyone outside is not being manipulated by their own government.
No help is likely from other Southern African states whose leaders preside over systems sharing common features with Zimbabwe's own patronage system. Several Southern African governments don’t want the skeletons in their own cupboards revealed.
Within Zimbabwe, residents' associations are prepared to protest and WOZA encourage people to do so. Brian concluded with a text message that he had received that morning from a friend in Zimbabwe:
“People are fast reaching the elastic limit and it may snap at any time. What did Mbeki offer? Anything can happen. The pillars of oppression are feeling the heat.” He ended “and they may be too weak to inflict their customary brutality.”