So when Westerners talk of the alleged property rights of white commercial farmers, they conveniently forget the rights of Africans who were dispossessed by the same farmers and their forebears?
In fact, the white commercial farmers had no property rights to speak of for the simple reason that those rights were supposed to vest in stolen property.
The Herald
By Caesar Zvayi
THIRTY-SIX years ago, a young Portuguese law student and activist stole several items of furniture from the office of the dean of the faculty of law at Lisbon University, and took them to the headquarters of the underground Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, of which he was a member.
The 18-year-old student, however did not receive the warm welcome he expected as party leader, Arnaldo Matos, reprimanded and ordered him to return the stolen property to the campus.
This incident occurred at the height of Portugal’s trying times under the regime of Marcelo Caetano, who was later deposed by carnation-wielding civilians and army rebels in April 1974 during a bloodless coup that lasted six hours, and that came to be known as the Portuguese revolution, or romantically — the Carnation revolution.
The theft of furniture was not to be the highlight of the young man’s political career as he later morphed into a seasoned politician, and is now former prime minister of Portugal and incumbent EU Commission president.
His name is José Manuel Barroso, the man who has maintained and defended EU sanctions on Zimbabwe even though they were imposed in a bid to protect stolen property.
For all his political savvy, Barroso does not seem to have learnt from that incident, 36 years ago, as he seems to be unaware that all stolen property, not just furniture, should be returned to its rightful owners.
And this includes even land pillaged during the colonial era which is what is at the core of the standoff between Zimbabwe and Britain in particular, and Zimbabwe and the EU in general.
Barroso despite that lesson earlier in his life has bought into British and American propaganda that their stand-off with Harare is about the quest for democracy and human rights.
He passes the biggest rights abusers of them all — the US and Britain as fighting to introduce these values in Zimbabwe while portraying President Mugabe as a repressive autocrat who stubbornly violates the rights of his own people.
The truth of the matter is that President Mugabe is fighting to preserve democracy in all its manifestations while Britain and its big brother Uncle Sam are fighting to subvert these values in Zimbabwe, continuing from where they left off during our 14-year struggle for independence, which was a lifetime compared to Portugal’s six-hour carnation revolution.
Well it’s not as if Barosso and his allies in the EU are unaware of what happens to stolen property or to people who destroy other peoples’ livelihoods for they made the Germans pay for their misadventures in World War I through a £22 billion reparations rap whose last instalment of £60 million was only cleared this Sunday ending 92 years of atoning for the destruction of World War I.
The £22 billion reparations were set by the Allied victors — mostly Britain, France and the United States of America — in the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919 as compensation and punishment for the 1914-18 war.
Most of the money was earmarked for Belgium and France, whose land, towns and villages were devastated by the war, and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging the war to repel Kaiser Wilhelm II’s armies. Individuals, pension funds and corporations also get the funds.
The initial amount agreed upon for war damages was 226 billion Reichsmarks, which was later reduced to 132 billion (£22 billion).
Western media reports say the remaining portion of the debt was cleared on Sunday.
The bill could, however, have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign, which actually came about on the back of German resentment over the scale of the reparations that culminated in the second Anglo-Saxon war, World War II.
The question is, since westerners see the need to compensate each other for wrongs, when are they going to compensate Africans for over 400 years of slavery, centuries of colonial pillage and decades of neo-colonial subterfuge?
Are we Africans united enough to present a formidable front to demand reparations from these rabble-rousers or are we going to continue to be divided, dominated and used against each other to further the interests of westerners?
This question is particularly pressing for us Zimbabweans given how gullible some of us have been over the past decade in failing to see how westerners have manipulated not only our country but its people to further their interests and those of their kith and kin who lost the land they pillaged to its rightful owners during the land reform programme.
It has to be noted from the outset that Zimbabwean law has no statutes of limitations (an enactment in common law that sets the maximum time after a wrong that legal proceedings may be instituted). We say mhosva hairovi (a wrong does not pass till righted) as such stolen property remains just that, loot whether the robbery was committed in 1890 or yesterday. It demands redress.
So when Westerners talk of the alleged property rights of white commercial farmers, they conveniently forget the rights of Africans who were dispossessed by the same farmers and their forebears?
In fact, the white commercial farmers had no property rights to speak of for the simple reason that those rights were supposed to vest in stolen property.
We all know that a right ceases to be when it infringes on the rights of others. This is why criminals are incarcerated for trampling on the rights of others in society.
As such by retaining control of 70 percent of the country’s arable land, the 5 000 white commercial farmers were infringing on the rights of 13 million black Zimbabweans. Surely that was not a picture any sane person could defend without looking ridiculous. The illegality of the western economic sanctions, therefore, does not only lie in the fact that they were imposed outside the purview of the United Nations but also in that they seek to protect non-existent rights that vested in stolen property.
Instead of applauding Zimbabwe for opting to share land with those who stole it, the westerners had the cheek to punish Zimbabwe through their illegal embargo that has decimated and constrained livelihoods for a decade when they should have been paying reparations. Zimbabwe should be compensated for the dispossession and reparations should be paid for the losses the country suffered since 1890, the same way the Germans were made to pay for their war games.
While we may not have the muscle to force the sabre-rattling westerners to pay us reparations or compensation for using our resources to build their countries, the least we can do as a people is ensure that we compensate ourselves by taking control of our economies and resources so that our wealth does not continue flowing to the west at the expense of our people.
Through ownership of the means of production we will be able to give our people better lives to undo the injustices of centuries of slavery and decades of imperialism and neo-colonialism.
The starting point for us Zimbabweans is shunning sell out politics and politicians who seek to preserve the interests of foreigners.
We need to support progressive people-centred programmes like the land reform programme and the indigenisation and economic empowerment drive.
Most importantly, we need to stop the heresy of western sanctions by not only speaking against them with one voice but also compiling a detailed analysis of the damage they have wrought over the years.
The childish grandstanding we have seen from the MDC-T leadership, some of whom — in this day and age — deny the existence of sanctions, does not help anyone in Zimbabwe.
caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw
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