[Seattle-editorial] FEATURE PROPOSAL: Zim land

[Lance Larkin]

subtitle: RELATIONS WITH AFRICA OR THE NEW WHITE MAN'S
BURDEN
title: Corporate Media: "Mad despotic rulers and poor
black peasants."

The small landlocked country of Zimbabwe is in the
news again. The current crisis is one of drought, yet
the international press vilifies the government for
intentionally <a
href="http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1060287,00.html">starving
Zimbabwean citizens</a>. This natural disaster is
being used to focus attention on a regime the West
would rather see gone. But why?

The aging President Mugabe recently rejected food aid
from the United States, so Western observers
criticized him for irrationally subjecting his people
to further suffering. Astute journalists have linked
this rejection of food aid to a thread of thought that
is often invoked when discussing globalization: <a
href="http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=16676&group=webcast">
national sovereignty</a>. 

International criticism of Mugabe was focused during
the Zimbabwean Parliamentary elections of 2000. The
government promised that war veterans would get land
after Independence in 1980. The vets finally started
reclaiming white farms on their own prior to the
parliamentary elections. The Zimbabwean government
quickly implemented a fast track land reform program
to reclaim land and grant it to those who apply for
agricultural land.

The white landowners vehemently oppose the
reclamation, with violence occurring on both sides.
Their appeals to the international community emphasize
the brutality of the Mugabe regime and inexperience of
black farmers. The Zimbabwean government has <a
href="http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,48914.jsp">publicly
declared</a> white farm owners can retain their farms
if they go through the land application process like
everyone else. Additionally the government has
legislated a process for making sure that the
commercial farms remain <a
href="http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=12916&pubdate=2002-08-06">productive</a>.


Without looking at the divisive politics within the
country, the question of land resettlement has grabbed
international attention. The rhetoric of the
controversy surrounds democracy and economic
stability, but the reality of the situation is the <a
href="http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0813-02.htm">livelihood
</a>of displaced Africans. This reality - both black
and white - has been captured in a <a
href="http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=16707">documentary</a>
by Tsitsi Dangarembga showing at the Seattle IMC on
Friday, August 23rd..


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