Saturday 28 November 2015

The Land Question Is Zimbabwe's ONLY National Question


The condition of the black farm worker in Zimbabwe between 1893 - 2000
On this issue I cannot prevaricate as all academics do: a country's national question is that question which when resolved satisfactorily, will cause all other questions to resolve themselves. If you resolve the land question - once and for all - everything else will fall into place. Of course, when a crisis has gone on long enough, it's easy to forget the initial condition and thus mistake a concomitant question for the actual national question i.e. mistaking the shadow for the substance. It is also easy to - with hindsight - think there was a better way of doing things and, by so doing, revise history. 

Speaking at Oxford University, the Commander in Chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters of South Africa - Julius Malema - accused President Robert Mugabe of being an opportunist who only used the land issue as a way to hold on to power when he was falling out of favour in Zimbabwe. Julius Malema then went on to say that land reform could have been done through changing the constitution instead of the extra-legal and violent way it was conducted in Zimbabwe. In this postulation he revises history as, indeed, the legal means were tried (to no avail) and he also fails to realise that land law is not really a sovereign issue - by which I mean, outside forces can frustrate any attempts to enshrine land reform in national constitutions:

Video: Whose Land Is It Anyway



The condition of the black farm owner 2000 - present

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