US embassy cable - 03HARARE2062

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HARARE 002062 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR AF/S 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR JFRAZER 
USDOC FOR 2037 DIEMOND 
PASS USTR FLORIZELLE LISER 
STATE PASS USAID FOR MARJORIE COPSON 
 
E. O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAGR, ECON, ETRD, EINV, PGOV, ZI, Land Reform 
SUBJECT: Will Land Reform Ever Work? 
 
Ref: Harare 2024 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: After the Presidential Land Review 
Committee's failure to prescribe solutions to land 
reform's shortcomings (ref), many on the ground are 
wondering if Zimbabwe will ever have a vibrant agrarian 
sector again.  There is still a certain measure of self- 
delusion - white farmers hoping to return to their farms, 
the Government hoping that productivity levels will 
return.  Yet with each passing month, the challenge of 
sorting out land reform becomes greater.  To date, 
neither the GOZ nor opposition MDC has articulated a 
strategy to make land reform work, perhaps a measure of 
how intractable the controversy has become.  End Summary. 
 
Pivotal Themes 
-------------- 
2. (SBU) There are three important issues that a serious 
land reform reappraisal would probably take into account, 
all skirted by the Land Review Committee: 
 
- Compensation for Dispossessed White Farmers.  While 
these 4,000 families are an insignificant constituency, 
we consider a compensation settlement the only path to 
reinstitution of title deed, and by extension, property 
rights and rule-of-law.  The GOZ's expropriation zeal has 
scared off all but a dribble of foreign direct 
investment.  Almost every donor country has some foreign 
nationals who suffered uncompensated and extra-judicial 
expropriation.  While no one expects white farmers to win 
full compensation, most farmers would probably settle for 
cents on the dollar, perhaps through future agricultural 
export revenue. 
 
- A Working Agrarian Model.  There are scattered success 
stories, but resettled farmers as a group are doing 
poorly.  In general, they lack funds for inputs and 
irrigation; occasionally, they lack commitment or skills. 
For the large-scale (A2) farmers, restoration of title 
deed would enable them to borrow against their land. 
Farms would exchange hands in the marketplace, eventually 
falling to the willing and able.  We have doubts that 
small-scale (A1) farmers will ever move far beyond 
subsistence levels, similar to those of farmers in 
traditional communal areas (42 percent of Zimbabwe's 
farmland) unless state ownership of land is revised. 
Furthermore, the head of irrigation at the Ministry of 
Agriculture's Agritex told us he has been unable to 
identify a model that would enable multiple resettled 
farmers to use collectively irrigation systems formerly 
owned by single farms.  In a sector where access to 
irrigation separates the productive from the dependent, 
this is a fatal flaw in the GOZ's redistribution scheme 
and one that would have to be rethought to make a working 
model.  The GOZ may have to create incentives for small- 
scale farmers to relocate -- with better support -- to 
unused lands, leaving fewer settlers on former commercial 
farms. 
 
- Elite Abuses.  Here we refer only to so-called VIP 
beneficiaries -- those who wielded political clout to 
seize houses and land, a moral and accountability issue 
for a future government.  (The GOZ's preliminary and 
unpublished audit of VIP abuses at 
www.zwnews.com/audit.doc cites numerous examples.) 
 
Comment 
------- 
3. (SBU) These are tough matters for any government. 
Even land reform's staunch critics will find it easier to 
be descriptive than prescriptive at this stage.  For its 
part, the opposition MDC has not articulated a plan to 
address compensation, competence and cronyism in land 
reform.  In its not yet released "Restart" blueprint, the 
MDC stresses that courts must religiously uphold the 
rights of existing titleholders (i.e., the white and 
other farmers) but calls it "unacceptable" that "the 
commercial white community owns the majority of the 
land."  How to reconcile the contradiction?  A new "Land 
Commission" would redistribute, or return to white 
farmers, the seized land - no discussion of how to set 
criteria, compensate former owners, establish a 
sustainable business model, etc.  On paper, not much of 
an alternative to the "National Land Board" that 
President Mugabe's Land Review Committee envisions. 
4. (SBU) The chaotic and unproductive results of the land 
redistribution exercise deprive Mugabe of a desperately- 
sought crowning achievement for his presidency, one 
reason he appealed to the United Nations Secretary 
General last week for land reform assistance.  For the 
U.S., the bungled experiment means Zimbabweans' 
dependence on our food donations continues - while arable 
land, irrigation equipment and farming skills are wasted. 
This may be land reform's greatest tragedy.  The donor 
community could have erected irrigation systems for 
240,000 hectares solely by redirecting 2002's food 
assistance.  That would equal the amount of farmland put 
under irrigation throughout Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's entire 
history.  With a working land reform model in place, this 
country could once again feed itself. 
 
Sullivan