National Peace and Reconciliation Commission

Public Meeting

 

Is Zimbabwe Ready for an Effective Truth, Justice,

Healing and Reconciliation Process?

 

30 March 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Freeth

Executive Director, Mike Campbell Foundation

 

 

National Healing and the Land Question

 

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this critical subject for the future of our nation.  The land question is so charged and it’s very important that we speak plainly and openly about what continues to go on in our country if there is any hope of “the healing of our land” taking place.  I have been given 10 minutes, so I will speak quickly.

 

Farmers who have been forced out of their homes and off their farms remain without compensation and Government continues to use our draconian Constitution to list even more farms for acquisition.

 

As white people, we are barred by that Constitution from challenging the racial nature of the acquisitions.  We are barred from receiving compensation for the land itself.  We are barred from challenging the acquisition notice.  We and our workers are considered “criminals” by the State if we remain in our homes, committing the “crime” of farming 90 days after such a notice is published.

 

It may come as a bit of a shock regarding our new Constitution – our brave new Constitution - but no constitution in the world is so lawless in its laws in this way.    

         

As we speak, High Court orders continue to be over-ridden with complete impunity. Those who are politically connected within the ZANU PF ruling party are able to take what they like with complete impunity.  Such theft continues all the time.  The result is that those farms are left to be stripped and to fall into wastelands – sad and sorrowful places which the fires go through every year and the former farm workers get poorer and hungrier from one year to the next.

 

Politics continues to override law in the land question – and nobody seems to care. The opposition is silent.  Civil society is largely mute.  The churches say nothing.  This is ZANU PFs holy cow and nobody wants to take courage to tackle it.  As a result, Zimbabwe becomes poorer and its people need food aid every single year. 

 

Mike Campbell, my father-in-law, who owned Mount Carmel farm in the Chegutu district, did challenge it – and the Southern African Development Community’s human rights court, the SADC Tribunal, ruled in our favour in November 2008. 

 

Amendment 17 to the old Constitution – which is the draconian Section 72 in the new Constitution -was struck down.  This final and binding judgment allowed to him continue farming.  But it was treated with contempt by the Zimbabwe Government and by President Mugabe.  Mike and his wife were abducted and severely beaten.  His house was burnt down, along with some of his workers’ homes and my own house.  His tractors and crops were all stolen.  The wildlife he had nurtured – some of which he had brought up all the way from SA – was all killed.  His safari lodge was burnt down.

   

We went back to the SADC Tribunal to hold the Zimbabwe Government in Contempt of Court for this in both 2009 and then again in 2010 - and the Court found in our favour each time.  Rather than comply with the law and the SADC Treaty, and allow us to carry on farming as the Court Order allowed us to, the Zimbabwe Government went on an all-out offensive to destroy the SADC Tribunal and stop it hearing any more cases.  With the death of the Tribunal, Mike also died of his injuries.

 

So we have a deep wound.   I was out on the farm recently and like all others, it is lying idle and a total ruin.  And we are barred from being protected if we try to invoke the protection of our judgment and go back farming there. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do we solve this mess?

 

1. The first thing that needs to be done to heal the land, get it productive again and get people employed is to return to the rule of law.  Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice and the rule of law.  We cannot have court orders both at a local and at an international level deliberately and continually disobeyed by our Government as is the case at the moment.  We cannot have racial laws and practices continuing to destroy the nation’s agricultural sector.  We cannot have Section 72 of our Constitution continuing to wreak havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods when it has been struck down by the SADC Tribunal through the SADC Treaty.  It is unjust, unrighteous and wrong - and so long as it remains in place it will continue to make the wound worse.

2. The second thing – in connection with the first - is to go through each individual title deed in the Deeds Office and discover who the owner is and whether he wants to be compensated, or whether he would like to be allowed to go back farming. 

 

Where farmers wish to be compensated, it is essential that those title deeds do not get swallowed up by the State, as has every agricultural title deed they have ever bought or taken from 1980.  Rather, they need to go to individuals who are prepared to pay for them and take full ownership and responsibility for them.  If farms are to be invested in, and farmed productively, they need to be owned by farmers and not by the State.

 

3.      The third thing that needs to be done to heal the land and bring it into production is to give communal people and resettlement people  

         on bought farms (i.e. farms that have been legally purchased), ownership of their land.  While communal and bona fide resettlement  

         lands remain owned by the State, the people in the communal lands will remain un-empowered, dependant and unproductive.  On 

         State land, dams will not get built, irrigation systems will not be set up, orchards will not be planted, high yield production will not

         happen. Farms that are not privately owned will always fail to yield up what they can and should.

 

Government through time has used its ownership of the land to control the people.  By making Zimbabwe into one big communal land, Government  has managed to get total control over the people.  As a result, “Independence” has not yet happened.  It is time the people got their Independence and had ownership of the land.  That way they can borrow against it and develop the farm if they are serious farmers; sell it if they want to pursue a career other than farming;  pass it onto to other family members or lease it to farmers who are keen to farm. 

 

2 Chronicles 7:14 makes it very clear what needs to happen if the land is to be healed:  “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from Heaven and heal their land.”

Our wicked ways on the land in Zimbabwe are evident, well known and continuous.  Healing, investment, productivity and employment will not take place until we turn from and repent of those wicked ways.  Greed and lawlessness always destroys nations.  Truth and Justice always builds them.                 

     

ENDS

 

The Mike Campbell Foundation is taking action to restore human rights, justice, the rule of law and property rights for all in Zimbabwe.  Our initiatives also include gaining compensation and restitution/justice for dispossessed or injured farmers and farm workers, and empowering destitute farm workers with conservation agriculture training.  http://www.mikecampbellfoundation.com/

 

Heal Zimbabwe Trust (HZT) is an organization that works with, and towards rehabilitation and reintegration, of survivors, perpetrators, victims and their communities, of violence  and torture by rebuilding a culture of tolerance and peaceful coexistence in local communities.

Website:  http://www.healzimbabwe.co.zw/