The five-year decline in the manufacturing output index from 108 in 1997 to 64 in 2003 amounted to a cumulative fall of 40,7%.  After a brief improvement, the declining trend resumed until 2009.

 

COMMENT

 

The Land Reform programme was announced in 1997, with the land invasions taking place in February 2000, just days after President Mugabe lost a constitutional referendum which would have further entrenched his power. 

 

The Gross Domestic Product graph shows that GDP has declined every year since 1999.

 

Comparing the GDP percentage changes with rainfall figures for the years before 1997, the clear indications of GDP declines in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1992 and 1995 can be seen to coincide with very low rainfall years. The 1992 rainfall was the lowest on record.

In the 13 years since the announcement of Land Reform, Zimbabwe has experienced four below average rainfall years, but only the 2002 and 2005 seasons could be classified as drought years. However, neither of these was serious as the preceding year’s rains were good and the storage dams were almost full. 

 

Government has claimed that the agricultural failures since land reform were the result of droughts and illegal economic sanctions, but economic sanctions against the country as a whole do not exist and the only severe drought affected the southern half of Zimbabwe in the 2006 / 2007 growing season. Some other seasons had been disappointing, which is a very common occurrence in Zimbabwe, but good crops would have been possible in those years if the experienced commercial farmers had still been on the land.

 

The ruling party in Zimbabwe has chosen not to be persuaded by arguments that claim the current problems stem from the land reform programme, or that these were all accentuated by the profound linkages between agriculture and every other economic and social sector in the country. Instead, they have preferred to argue that colonialism and residual western influences have conspired to undermine traditional African socialist and communal ownership traditions and values.

 

All policy prescriptions have therefore been backward-looking to romantic portrayals of less demanding pastoral lifestyles, while the systems of governance proposed have been discipline-orientated to encourage compliance and unquestioned obedience to the leadership.

 

JOHN ROBERTSON
ROBERTSON ECONOMIC SERVICES