A Net friend wrote:

A question: some months ago, I am certain I watched a TV program in which a previous secretary of the Commonwealth indicated that the Zimbabwean situation arose because promises made by UK and some other countries to ‘buy back’ the farm in Zimbabwe for the former rebel forces, as part of the negotiated peace deal then (some years ago) have not been kept. I am not trying to justify the government’s action, but just want to know if others can provide more light on this… is the situation as simple as it is made to appear, or is there this history of economic betrayal in the back ground?

~~~

My response:

Dr Onyeani makes sense to me on this one…

Dr. Chika A. Onyeani is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of The African Sun Times, based in East Orange, NJ.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/10_zimbabwe.html

Excerpts:

As we noted earlier, despite all the vociferous claims of injustice by the white farmers, the fact is that most of those whose land has been seized have been compensated by the Zimbabwe government. In point of fact, the new law passed by the Zimbabwe Parliament addresses the issue of some farmers having as many as 20 or more arable farms, some of which they have left fallow, while Africans are left with nothing…

Britain, which has been acting like the ostrich it is, giving the impression that it wants real solution to the land issue, should be held totally accountable for what is happening today in Zimbabwe. As the Zimbabwe government has rightly contended, the responsibility for compensating the farmers lies with Britain, since the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had agreed to provide the funds as a condition of Mr. Mugabe signing the Lancaster House agreement, which finalized Zimbabwe’s independence 22 years ago. “That agreement,” according to Shamuyarira, “was abruptly abandoned when the Blair government came to power. The British Minister, Mr. Cook, has now indicated that the British government would contribute to a resettlement program. That is a good change of position.” The agreement had further made it clear that if Britain failed to pay the compensation, then Zimbabwe had no obligation to pay for the land taken back for resettlement of landless Africans.

That agreement had barred the new Zimbabwe government of 1980 from grabbing privately-owned farmland for the first 10 years. For that guarantee, Britain had agreed that it would match a dollar for every dollar that this new independent Zimbabwean government would put as compensation to buy back the farms.

The British government of Tony Blair is now arguing that Zimbabwe had not put in place the mechanism for distributing land to the poor of Zimbabwe. “We agree,” said the British government, “that there is a very strong case for land redistribution in Zimbabwe…. Unfortunately, the government of Zimbabwe has not put in place a program of land reform that would provide land to the poor of Zimbabwe.”

Rowland Croucher