A torn Zimbabwe Flag flies over Zimbabwe House in Central London as evidence of how much we have progressed since gaining independence from colonial rule
By the time most of us turn 30 we will have made up our minds what sort of life we intend to lead.
Not so with Zimbabwe though as the country is still at crossroads in defining its destiny.
After waging a bitter war against colonisation and winning it with the advent of Independence on 18 April 1980 one would expect that the resolve and determination that drove us to fight for our liberation from foreign rule would have matured us into a homogeneous nation with a clear set of goals to guide us in our enterprise as a nation.
But alas, for one reason or another, issues that instructed us to take up arms against settler rule remain very much at the centre of our disunity and political acrimony.
It is common cause that we took up arms against colonialism because we felt severely prejudiced by the system of governance that favoured a minority of settlers with access all the country’s social, economic and political advantages while condemning the majority of us into servitude.
Ownership of all our means of production and the wealth distribution mechanism was at the centre of our struggle for liberation from settler rule.
The question then is to what extent has 30 years out of colonial subjugation moved us towards equitable ownership and distribution of the means of production and products and with what benefits to our social standing as a nation and at individual level.
The question demands that we analyse what constitutes the means of production that we felt we were being denied access to by the colonial system and the means by which we felt excluded.
We must be clear about how we intended to get our hands on the means of production and what we would do with our newly found possession.
The obvious first means of production we felt barred from by colonisation was land.
Not that we did not have somewhere to live but rather that we were condemned to live on state owned lands while the privileged minority settlers had unlimited access to titled ownership of whatever land they were interested in.
Unlimited because in the first instance they just laid claim to vast tracts of land they desired to own and if any indigenous people were resident on it the political system drove them off to make way for the new claimant.
The same political system would later be used to deliminate the country into privately and state owned estates conferred in title deeds that became executable assets in the event of disputes.
We fought the system not because we did not want private ownership of land to be extended but rather because we felt prejudiced by a system that only allowed one race to own land anywhere it chose but denied the majority race the same opportunity.
After 30 years of dismantling the system at the centre of preferential racial allotment of land we have now replaced the minority race preferential system with the majority race and political patronage preferential system for land allotment.
To be allocated land of choice in colonial Rhodesia one had to be White. Now to qualify for land allocation in independent Zimbabwe one has to belong to Zanu PF and be Black.
The racial colonial land allotment system has been supplanted by a racial and political patronage system.
With regard to the more crucial agro-land allotments where the colonial allotment system was savagely racist and added executable landlord status and value exclusively to the Whites we have now replaced that with an equally racially ruthless system that is premised on political patronage that has reduced land baron value statuses for settlers to the less glamorous state tenancy status.
All farmers are now settled on leased properties whose leases are none transferable and thus of no economic value as they are not possible of execution on in the event of a dispute.
Because of that, money lenders who used to accept title to land as collateral for borrowing to fund commercial agriculture are now reluctant to extend credit to the farmers as they will not be able to recover the loans from selling the properties in the event that borrowers fail to service their debts.
That has left the farmers clamouring for government financial support to fund commercial farming at a time when the government is in an economic quagmire and unable to raise necessary funds.
The result was for government to resort to printing money to finance the restless farmers. Hyper inflation set in and political turmoil increased for a regime that refused to heed advice on the best way to proceed in accommodating hitherto disadvantaged majority to access land as a means of production.
With poor funding agricultural productivity plummeted and the country is now more reliant on food handouts and imports from a point where it was the largest net exporter of food and agricultural outputs across the globe.
The confusion in what land tenure system we want for the country remains unresolved.
For most of us land ownership is only meaningful if it is titled and executable and thus has an economic value that can be risked to finance production.
As long as that ideal has not been achieved political strife around the land issue will remain firmly rooted in class struggles in our country.
Commercial land must be placed in the custody of private citizens and the risk of making it productive or lose the land squarely placed on land barons who must be at liberty to use land ownership as a means to access financial support.
The correct role for government to play is not to own land and lease it to farmers as this will only result in the tenants seeking intervention of the government in financing production which no government will be capable of sustaining.
Rather the government must know that by its very existence we are guaranteed ownership of land within our borders and all that is required is for the government to regulate what land is for what use and we will then compete to own and utilise the land for economic advantage.
The competition for ownership must be fair and the capable must be allowed to put land to best use for national advantage rather than for central government to involve itself in land distribution through issuance of leases when all it should do is demarcate boundaries of land for specific uses through the Department of Physical planning and leave local authorities and private owners to decide which land to buy and for what use they will apply it to realise value for their purchases.
As it is we are worse off in terms of land ownership than we were in colonial Rhodesia as now none of us owns any land and the government which has expropriated it is unable to finance its productive utilisation by its tenants.
The other issue that impelled us to militantly confront the colonial masters was the system of governance they had put in place that excluded us from participating in political activity and determination of our national leadership.
The colonial system excluded Blacks from voting in elections to choose the government. The current government has corrected that by allowing those of us willing to vote to do so but has replaced racial voting barriers put in place by the imperialists with its own subtle barriers that also exclude many of us from participating in national leadership selection.
Zimbabweans have numerous obstacles to surmount before they are entitled to vote in elections to choose the Legislature and Executive authority to run their political affairs.
First they are required to renounce presumed citizenship if they somehow have foreign sounding names. If not they have to be physically present in Zimbabwe to cast a vote.
And when eventually they do they have to suffer the humiliation of seeing their votes stolen by an electoral system that is rigged left right and centre in favour of a political establishment they have long lost faith in.
The bottom line is their vote counts for nothing as leadership is now the prerogative of the military to install and with support from SADC to retain.
The voting rights that so many of our gallant sons and daughters paid the penultimate price of life to attain is as meaningless today as it was during the colonial days when it was completely denied.
It can be argued that perhaps the colonial system that out rightly barred one man one vote was more honest than the current system that wastes scarce resources and invites votes that count for nothing in the final analysis.
We are far from realised the cherished goal of us determining who runs our political affairs.
Thirty years into our independence we are still legislating for our empowerment and one wonders what the triumph over colonialism was if it did not empower us to determine our destiny.
We want to take over companies without paying for them and hope we will be able to sustain the levels of empowerment they have conferred on those that worked and paid to nurture them.
That is myopic because we get them easy and we will lose them easily too. If not to other repossessions then to mismanagement caused by lack of appreciation of how hard it has been for the companies to be developed to their current enviable statuses.
There is nothing like empowerment through pillaging of other people’s possessions. Real empowerment is not measured in terms of what we raid and possess but on what we innovate and grow.
We can take over anything but as has been demonstrated by the land invasions we will not be able to sustain the acquisitions.
As we turn 30 maybe we will somehow acquire the wisdom that we already own everything that is Zimbabwe but we are just not capable of distributing the wealth among us equitably because of unbridled greed and corruption.
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