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The farm on their land-The synopsis of the story

12 years ago | 4548 Views

For decades the land question remained a topical issue in Zimbabwe. Two decades after independence in 1980, discontent was now constantly and increasingly expressed against the Government by the rural population and war veterans who were staging demonstrations demanding the fulfillment of the promises made during the liberation war of taking the land from the mainly white commercial farmers and returning it back to its rightful owners, the black majority. Inevitably, contradictions in the Zimbabwean society were coming to a head. For ten years the Lancaster House agreement had barred the Government from unilaterally redistributing the land.

Then at the turn of the twenty first century, came the “Jambanja” era, heralding a landmark in Zimbabwe’s struggle to reclaim its stolen birthright. It was the beginning of the last but most decisive phase of the straggle, the "Do or Die" stage. The old order was being replaced by the new order and inevitably some violent skirmishes became part of the “Jambanja”. This was premised on the fact that reclaiming the land from the white minority was a matter of national interest worth fighting for and those who challenged it provoked a fight as what unfortunately often happens in all such situations.

The British Crown and its Western allies were up in arms against the Government of Zimbabwe. The government was never to be forgiven for daring to take the land from the white minority and giving it back to the people of Svosve. Sanctions were visited upon the people of Svosve by the British Crown and its allies. The western sanctions simply implied that their proponents did not care whether or not the black majority exercised their freedom of choice, independence, right to self-determination, right to their land, right to their economic resources and right to becoming masters of their own destiny. To them, so long as the white minority remained on the land justice was being served. The sanctions broke the will and determination of many a people in those days.

The strategy employed by the advocates of the sanctions was never to publicly lament the seizure of farms belonging to the white minority as that would reveal the hand of the British Crown and its Allies in the scheme of things. But for the people of Svosve, regaining the ownership of their land was of historic national importance as it went to define conditions for peace or no peace and violence or no violence in the country. They decreed the constants, the non-negotiable and the fixed position of vital national interest that the Second Chimurenga had already subscribed to. In this regard, anyone working against that national interest was an enemy of the nation.

Will history deservedly, condemn or honour for all times the people of Svosve who opened the first battle front for the Third Chimurenga and soldiered on to the bitterest end regardless of the obvious hazards and tribulations that lay ahead? If opening the battle front was a mare beginning, were the people of Svosve capable of undertaking the most difficult work that was yet to come, the rebuilding of the nation’s agricultural based economy? Were the land reform beneficiaries able to confound all predictions and accomplish what was deemed impossible? The people of Svosve had no doubt aroused hopes in the eyes of the disposed majority, but were the consequences worth the trouble?

http://www.authorhouse.co.uk/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?Book=368270

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