Zimbabwe ReviewIssue 11/3 August 2011

ISSN 1362-3168

BRITAIN ZIMBABWE SOCIETY

Incorporating the Newsletter of the Britain Zimbabwe Society

Biti: It's long-sighted to invest in ZimbabweZimbabwe's Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, has been speaking about Zimbabwe's attractiveness as an investment destination, notwithstanding the political problems the country is embroiled in. In this June 9 interview with Africa Business News, accessed on YouTube, Minister Biti addresses the questions surrounding Zimbabwe's long-term security, and the prospects for increased foreign investment.Q. Many donor nations have been reticent coming into Zimbabwe, wanting to see very key political changes, for instance elections, probably even the exit of President Mugabe. That makes it a difficult negotiating environment.Well, firstly on the point you mentioned about those hard-line countries that are saying, first let there be political change, Mugabe must go, and so forth, I think that what these people are forgetting is that there are people who are hungry, ordinary people that have nothing to do with Mugabe, that have nothing to do with ZANU-PF, who have to be fed now, who have to go to school, who have to go to hospitals with medicine. So Zimbabwe has to be engaged now, Zimbabwe has to be assisted now. I think the African Development Bank

has seen through that, it's an African bank, and what they've done is, they've come to us, through a facility called the Fragile State Facility. They've provided us with about US$6 million which has gone into our economy. But more importantly, the bank has recognised that the key deficit in Zimbabwe is infrastructural deficit. So they've agreed to host what is known as Zim Fund, which is essentially an infrastructural fund which has received about US$70million from donors and this is largely going into infrastructure, US$30million of that is going into energy, and another $US10 million is going to go into water. I suspect the remainder will go into other sectors like the railways and so forth....Our biggest problem right now, apart from our politics, is our debt. Zimbabwe's sovereign debt is about US$7.1 billion...it's not a debt issue, it's a development issue because we've defaulted. Unless we have liquidated that debt, we can't access [funding from] the World Bank and the African Development Bank and the IMF. It's important that we go through a programme...to deal with this debt. Fortunately the African Development Bank has been one of those institutions that has been helping us to clear this issue.

Please turn to Page 2

'A System of Corruption from top to bottom'By Rev. Brian MacGarry, S.J. in Harare

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As the political obstacles to people's aspirations remain, even though they may be moving detectably at the time this is being written, the real question is ownership of the economy. In the hands of those who hold it now, that is only 'economic power' to do no more than destroy and

to hold on to enough power to prevent anyone from interfering with that. There can be no meaningful change in the country unless their stranglehold can be loosened. That grip is in an interdependent relationship with the corruption

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'A System of Corruption' (Continued from Page 1)

that permeates every level of society, but especially the public sector. It is not a question of dealing with a few corrupt individuals, but a system of corruption from top to bottom.

Reading all at once about the mountain of corrupt tricks that have become daily life for so many should be a depressing task, but in preparing this review I was struck, not only by the depth of cunning shown by our multiple economic parasites, but also the astuteness and dogged determination with which some of the new ministers in the 'inclusive' government

have unearthed details of so many rackets and with which they pursue their aim of root and branch

reform. Naming names would be invidious – at least in an introduction.

There has been some growth, after a decade of decline, but it has begun to slow for lack of the political will to make fundamental changes. Finance minister Tendai Biti has revised the country's growth prospects this year from 7 percent to 4.5 percent.

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Biti: It's long-sighted to invest in Zimbabwe (Continued from page 1)Q. What sort of timetable is Zimbabwe on, because certainly the IMF would be looking at fiscal reform, and we've seen many measures where you've just simply taken over control of the Central Bank to some extent. Those kind of things that are needed to get the country back on a level playing field.

I think that if you were to judge us from the traditional issues that are raised by the [IMF] in most staff-monitored programmes, we have actually complied with them even though there is no staff-monitored programme [in Zimbabwe]. We are even doing better than many countries were when they were at decision point or at completion point, so things like the exchange rate, they are not an issue in Zimbabwe because we have adopted multiple currencies. Things like the fiscal deficit we have attended to those. The unfortunate story of Zimbabwe is that we are getting judged on things that are not economics, things that are not related to

We're talking indigenisation in Zimbabwe right now where people are not even sure whether or not their businesses are going to be subject to very stringent conditions of local ownership. What do you have to say to somebody about bringing their investments into Zimbabwe and having those contracts respected, and the potential to create jobs, that outside potential being the centre of the focus?

Well I mean, look, for starters, if I was an investor in New York or London, I would look at the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and find over 80 companies which are largely foreign-owned that are operating in Zimbabwe, huge conglomerates, some with dual listing in Australia, in Toronto, in London, in Johannesburg. I would say why are they there [in Zimbabwe]? There must be something! If you look at the statistics, if you look at the returns, our growth rate this year is 9.3%. Mining will grow by 44%, agriculture by 23%. The returns per dollar have been huge even

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macro-economics. So it's Mugabe, it's ZANU-PF, it's elections, which are fair questions, but I think that they must separate the issue of economics from [other issues].

Q. The foreign investor watching this interview right now, asking why should I bring my money to Zimbabwe? You mentioned rule of law. Property rights?

during the hyper-inflationary period. So I would look at those things. But I would also look at the political problems, and I would adopt a long-term attitude towards Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is not going to be a short sprint. It's not a Usain Bolt territory. It's Gebrselassie. It's a marathon. If you want to invest in Africa, if you want to invest in Zimbabwe, you must adopt a long-term approach. ®

'A System of Corruption' (Continued from page 2)

The economy registered its first growth in a decade last year after President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's power-sharing government implemented measures, including the adoption of multiple currencies that doused hyperinflation. However economic experts as well as the IMF maintain that economic recovery remains fragile because of the government's heavy dependence on imports and increasing wage demands at a time when the

country's shaky economy, and especially the government budget, cannot satisfy these demands.

The IMF and other multi-lateral lenders have refused to provide fresh loans until Harare clears outstanding debts, while rich Western nations are also reluctant to provide soft loans and grants, insisting the government must first step up the pace of democratic reforms, and do more to uphold human rights and the rule of law.

Wages and cost of livingAverage wages as negotiated between trade unions and employers are shown in the table below.

Trade Union Average Wages (US$) 2010 2009

Tobacco 231.00 150.00Baking 213.00 127.00Agriculture 32.00 32.00Domestic 70.00 46.00ZEWU 315.00 315.00Food Processing 231.00 125.00Meat, Fish, Poultry & Abattoirs 160.00 133.00Soft Drinks Manufacturing 186.00 120.00Detergent, Edible Fats & Oils 240.00 101.50Catering 150.00 85.00Security 150.00 90.00Shoe & Leather 198.00 137.98Travel & Canvas 198.00 100.00Clothing 132.00 80.00Communication & Allied Services 200.00 150.00Textile 150.00 150.00Civil Service 122.00 100.00Plastics Manufacturing 197.00 144.00Engineering 200.00 150.00

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Trade Union Average Wages (US$) 2010 2009

Graphical 183.00 130.00Urban Council 301.29 301.29Construction 170.00 150.00RAYOS 282.79 282.79Commercial 200.00 150.00ZARWU 225.00 125.00Cement and Lime 220.00 125.00

Table 1: Wage and cost of living comparisons Source: LEDRIZIn most industries there has been an improvement in wages. The next table shows how minimum wages compare with the official poverty datum line. ZimStats and LEDRIZ

give a 'food poverty line' which seems arbitrarily chosen. It is included here but willbe discussed below.

Month Minimum Wage(US$)

CSO PDL(US$)

CSO FPL(US$)

Min. wage/PDL(%)

Min. wage/FPL(%)

Jan'10 183 453 134 40% 137%Feb'10 183 468 140 39% 131%Mar'10 183 463 141 40% 130%Apr'10 195 494 151 39% 129%May'10 195 503 154 39% 127%June'10 200 517 158 39% 127%July'10 200 462 154 43% 130%Aug'10 210 477 146 44% 144%Sept'10 210 482 142 44% 148%Oct'10 226 489 137 46% 165%Nov' 10 226 499 143 45% 158%Dec'10 226 500 144 45% 157%

Table 2 Minimum wage compared to cost of living, by month

The Poverty Reduction Forum1 published a November 2010 survey of the cost of a basic needs basket in ten Harare suburbs, which at US$482.64 averaged across Harare, agrees fairly well with the CSO figure above. The 'Food Poverty Line' above now looks as if it was calculated on the cost of food, which is an improvement on allocating it an arbitrary percentage of the whole basic needs basket. The Poverty Reduction Forum report with great concern that rent and municipal rates require a disproportionate 56% of the average family's expenditure. They hope to be able to produce updates regularly.

Cost of shopping has been forced up, especially for those who make smaller and more frequent purchases, by retailers' reluctance to handle coins.2 They are reluctant to trade US dollars for rand coins, although the banks had been importing and stockpiling the coins. Most formal sector retailers refused to accept the coins at face value (around R7 = $1 for most of the year) because they have got used to using a rate of 10:1. Informal traders and commuter omnibus operators switched happily to 8:1 as soon as the dollar dropped below that level.

1 Poverty Reduction Forum Trust, 59 Mendel Road, Avondale, Harare: Phone: +263 777 340 370; Email: prftresearch@gmail.com

2 Munyaradzi Mugowo/Tarisai Tahungai - Jul 23 2010

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Food & agricultureFinance Minister Biti said agricultural production was expected to have grown in 2010 by 18.8%, compared to 14.9% in 2009. This was mainly driven by tobacco, up to about 119 million kg from 55.6 million kg. 'Horticulture production in 2010 is projected to register growth, rising to 43,000 tonnes against last year's 35,000 tonnes. There is still much more investment to be undertaken before production levels rise to levels above 60,000 tonnes experienced previously,' Biti said.He said depressed prices and financing constraints in 2009 undermined cotton production, which decreased from 246,000 tonnes in 2009 to 172,000 tonnes in 2010. Sugar production during 2010 was also projected to decline below last year's levels.

Harassment of the estimated 400 remaining white commercial farmers continued. They are now so few that the impact on overall production may not be significant.

Maize and grain supplyAs usual, the Commercial Farmers Union (voice of the remaining white farmers) and the mainly black Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union disagree over the size of the 2010 crop.3

The CFU President, Deon Theron, said the country would have to import 800,000 tonnes to meet national demand of about 2 million tonnes, at a cost of around US$136 million, as it was being imported at between US$160-US$180/t, Theron said. The ZCFU president, William Nyabonda, said at the annual congress their final maize and small grains estimate for the 2009/2010 season was 1.5 million tonnes, with maize contributing 1.2 million tonnes. Allowing for approximately 300,000 tonnes 'carried over from last season due to lack of reliable markets', he saw no real need for grain imports. 'What is required is to move grain from grain surplus areas to grain deficit areas

and therefore it is essential that the GMB buys this grain from farmers,' Nyabonda said.

In September last year, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation reported a slight increase in maize output from 1.2 million tonnes in the 2008/09 season to 1.3 million tonnes in 2009/10. Farmers said in October there was a mistaken belief that enough maize had been produced because of better than average rains. ZCFU blame the shortages of recent years on lack or late distribution of inputs. SeedCo said in mid-October they had distributed 10,000t of maize seed and had 14,000t in stock for the 2010/1 season. Government increased the maize producer price by US$10 to US$275/t with effect from April 1, 2010.4 Labour and Social Services Deputy Minister Mrs Tracy Mutinhiri5 said more than 1,3 million Zimbabweans would need food aid between January and March 2011, according to the May 2010 vulnerability assessment.

Wheat

This year’s national target planting was set at 60,000ha. The actual total was about 12,367ha. The greatest challenge farmers faced was unreliable power supply that seriously affected irrigation schedules. Also, most farmers do not have anything to offer as security and this is worsened by the liquidity problems affecting the country in general, said Theron. This year some farmers who had been producing wheat for years shifted to barley under contract farming because of the guarantee of early inputs and ready market. 6

Wheat farmers had by 18 July only collected a total of 84 tonnes of seed and 2,015t of compound D fertilizer provided by Government against available stocks of 720 tonnes of seed and 14,414t of compound D fertilizer.7

3 The Zimbabwean, 7 October 20104 Herald, 23 June, 2010 5 Herald, 11 October 20106 Herald, 19 July 20107 Herald, 11 June 2010

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In early September, government set the winter wheat producer price for this year’s marketing season at US$466 per tonne in a bid to stimulate more deliveries to the GMB. Last season’s price was US$400.8

Farmers complain of private hire combine harvester charges of US$85/ha, which they say are too high. The CFU predicted the 2010 winter cropping season would be a disaster with yields as low as 10,000 tonnes. From the available figures, the total crop was probably nearer to 30,000t, against a requirement of over 300,000t. GMB received 21,152t from farmers by the end of the year.9

Cotton

As the buying season approached, merchants were offering producers US 31c/kg, a price growers rejected. Growers withheld their crop, prompting Government to intervene, proposing minimum producer prices of 42 US cents for grade A cotton, US 39c for grade B, US36c for grade C and US33c for grade D. Farmers have however, rejected the price arguing that the crop should fetch more to cushion them against high production costs.

Government proposed new minimum cotton producer prices at the end of June: grade A being sold for at least US$0,50/kg, grade B US$0,46, grade C US$0,39, and grade D US$0,35 per kg.10 The cotton crop totalled only 176,000 tonnes of seed cotton down from 246,000t the previous season as farmers opted out due to low prices. Top cotton prices were US30c/kg in 2009.

The Cotton Ginners' Association raised concerns that Sino-Zimbabwe Cotton company were buying cotton from growers who already had contracts with other companies that had supplied their inputs on loan. They took their

complaints to court, but lost their appeal to block Sino-Zimbabwe Cotton from buying cotton seed from farmers contracted to them and to stop Sino-Zim from selling cotton seed both in Zimbabwe and abroad pending determination of the case. Judge President George Chiweshe on 30 July threw out the application to the High Court saying 'the applicant has brought its case to the wrong forum'.

Sino-Zim were able to pay higher cash prices because they had not invested in inputs. They were assisted by politically highly-placed people. Among those named in the CGAZ court papers were Minister of Indigenisation Saviour Kasukuwere, Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Nicholas Goche, ZANU-PF Mashonaland Central provincial chairman and MP for Mt Darwin North Dickson Mafios, and Police Assistant Commissioner Martin Kwainona.

CGAZ director-general Godfrey Burumbo-Buka said Sino-Zimbabwe Holdings was operating in Gokwe, Kadoma, Mhangura, Mount Darwin, Bindura, Guruve, Mutoko and Raffingora. An annexure to CGAZ court papers alleges that Sino-Zimbabwe Holdings 'invaded' Cotton Company of Zimbabwe's Bindura business unit on July 4 with the help of politicians.11

Cottco managing director David Machingaidze said in September preparations for the next production season were well advanced. He said that there was potential for an increase on yield on dry land cotton farming from about 800 kg/ha to 3000 kg. 'Contractors should play their part by providing a complete package of inputs to farmers timeously and [farmers] should . . shun side marketing,' he said.12

8 Herald, 10 September 20109 Herald, 31 December 201010 Herald, 30 June, 201011 Herald, 4 August 201012 Herald, 16 September 2010

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Tobacco

The bulk of the crop so far has been sold under contract system, where 78,689,429kg worth US$239,259,428 were sold. A total of 42,466,566kg were sold at the other two auction floors - the Tobacco Sales Floor and Zimbabwe Industry Tobacco Auction Centre.13

Growers are, however, concerned about the prices being offered at the auction floors, as they are low - averaging US$2,40/kg at the

auction floors compared to US$3/kg at the contract market.

According to official figures, over 40,000 small-scale black farmers produced 70% of the tobacco crop. The remainder was from large-scale commercial farmers.14 A total of 53,065 farmers had registered to grow tobacco in the 2010/11 season by the beginning of August, said the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, of which 25,051 were A1 farmers;.

Tobacco sold (million kg) By date: Earnings (US$ million)

contract auction total contract auction Total

35.4 29.9 65,3 10/06/10 112.25 87.01 199.26

46.6 34.4 81.06 24/06/10 146.05 96.6 242.7

55.4 36.8 92.2 12/07/10 172.4 101.4 273.8

100.81 21/07/10 297.11

116.9 28/08/10 341.01

Table 3: Progress of tobacco sales through the season:Sources: daily newspapers

15,488 communal; 5,969 small-scale; 3,428 A2; and 1,893 commercial farmers. Of these, 51,551 have registered to grow flue-cured tobacco; 659 for burley; 85 for Oriental; and 110 have opted for dark fire. Growers are concentrated mainly in Mashonaland West (16,385) and Central (15,251) and Manicaland (10,406). Only 17,000 farmers had registered to grow tobacco in the 2009-10 season by November. Agritex has said it projects next season’s tobacco output to reach 150 million kg.15

TIMB latest statistics show that by August 11 a total of 581,242g of tobacco seed had been sold, enough for 96,872ha, compared to the 349,165g sold by same period in 2009, enough to plant more than 58,000ha.

Tobacco looks like a success story, though there have been complaints of congestion at the auction floors, which the merchants blamed on farmers who arrived expecting to make a sale without booking. Some growers urge the buyers to decentralise, as cotton growers have done, not only providing inputs but going out to the growers and buying from them, freeing them from the burden of carrying their crop to a central market.

SugarHippo Valley Estates, said Zimbabwe's sugar output for April 2009 to March 2010 had fallen 13% from the previous year. "Cane yields for the period were adversely affected by the limited and delayed application of fertilisers and herbicides," Hippo Valley said.16

13 Herald 20 August, 201014 Herald 17 September, 201015 Herald, 10 August 201016 Reuters, 2 June 2010

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Hippo Valley said Zimbabwe had exported 146,000 tonnes of raw sugar to the EU and the United States under preferential market access, which the country enjoys. Many Lowveld A2 farmers under the Commercial Sugar Cane Farmers’ Association of Zimbabwe have pledged to donate over 3,500ha of land to Government for a winter maize project, which is planned to take 5,000ha.

Finance

Bank lending

Some banks resumed consumer lending at the end of the year, at an interest rate of 28%/year. Bank charges are still so high that most people shun the banks.

Government income and expenditure:

The civil service audit, promised by August 2010, appeared in February 2011. It reported that, out of 188,019 civil servants detected, 75,273 do not have the minimum qualifications for the posts they hold. The designations of another 17,088 do not appear in the Detailed Establishment Tables. About 1,315 are working without designation, and there is no information on the qualifications of another 8,723. No information at all could be found for 2,191. Thus, the position of half those on the civil service payroll is, to say the least, irregular. Among them are 10,000 'youth officers' posted to every district of the country 'in preparation for the elections', clearly members of the ZANU-PF militias. One ministry (unnamed) employed 6,861 new workers in one day.

Balancing the budget

The first problem facing the Minister of Finance is clear enough from the table below.

Revenue & grants

surplus (deficit) Need

Jan/10Feb/10Mar/10Apr/10

May/10

]]Total] 6 ]months] = 900

-250.0 400.0-250.0 400.0-250.0 400.0-250.0 400.0-250.0 400.0

Revenue & grants

surplus (deficit) Need

Jan/10Jun/10 ]

-250.0 400.0-250.0 400.0

Jul/10 183.1 -216.9 400.0Aug/10 144.4 -255.6 400.0

Table 5: government income & expenditure, January – August 2010

The depth of the problem appears on both sides of the “Micawber equation”: income and expenditure.

Income:

A lot of revenue is either not collected or goes astray. In July Biti said $30 million worth of diamonds had disappeared; early in 2011 he was talking about $300 million in government revenue not having been delivered. In both cases, he was met with denial by the ZANU-PF Mines Minister, Obert Mpofu.17 The army still control access to large areas of the Chiadzwa diamond fields and are brutalising the inhabitants;18 they are allegedly selling diamonds19 to buy arms, such as the mysterious shipment of several containers that passed through the border at Mutare in May 2011 under military guard and without Customs inspection.

Zimbabwe's generals are accumulating a secret slush fund from diamond sales, Global Witness campaign group claims. The military's control over the Marange fields - the source of a quarter of the world's diamonds - has become an important factor in the future of Zimbabwe. The Joint Operations Command earns revenues from the mines through the control of companies. Among those alleged to have earned many millions from diamond sales are factions headed by the Defence Minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and Solomon Mujuru, the ex-army commander and husband to Vice-President Joice Mujuru.Alan Martin, who compiled a report on the military's role in Marange for the pressure group Partnership Africa Canada, said Mujuru and Mnangagwa, were preparing for Mugabe's death. 'Undoubtedly, they are building up their

17 Zimonline, 10 August 201018 Daily News, 26 May 201119 http://www.smh.com.au/ & Daily Telegraph, London, 21 September 2010

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war chests,' he said. 'None of them will make a move until he dies but there will be a succession fight after his death.'

Zimbabwe has stockpiled more than 4.5 million carats of rough diamonds between January and August 2010, which officials say could fetch the country up to $1.7 billion, nearly 80% of government's $2.2 billion budget for the year.20

Revenue due to Zimbabwe's inland revenue agency, ZIMRA, from the state-owned National Oil Company pf Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) has, at best, been tardily transferred.Expenditure:

Parastatals and district councils are paying their executives $11-15,000/month or more while ordinary workers get no more than $170. The rule that 70% of district council revenues should go to providing services and no more than 30% to paying staff is a dead letter. Salaries often take 70% of income.

The Ministry of State Enterprises and Parastatals, in a joint operation with ZIMRA, began investigating reports that some parastatals have two payrolls which they are using to siphon public funds amid a growing furore over the staggering salaries being paid to bosses of the bankrupt state companies.21

Members of Parliament, given cars by the Reserve Bank in 2008, are holding on to them although they now have other vehicles under a parliamentary loan scheme.22

Harare City Council in December 2009 announced plans to conduct a human resources audit to flush out ghost workers and unqualified employees who were employed illegally during the era of commissions led by ZANU-PF sympathisers. Local Government

minister Ignatious Chombo interfered with the audit processes and twice halted the exercise. In September Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda announced the audit was complete and added that council would hire professionals to validate the exercise. The audit established that Harare employed 9,500 workers and an additional 500 casual labourers. Council did not say how many were irregularly appointed. Masunda said council would not be retrenching anyone but would instead rely on death and retirement to rationalise its workforce.23

The longer COPAC, the parliamentary committee on the constitution, sits, the more money it eats up for allowances, accommodation in expensive hotels and much else. By May 2011, senior MDC and ZANU-PF members of COPAC were complaining that progress was so slow they were being paid for doing nothing. If an election were to be held in 2011, which now seems mercifully unlikely, Biti told journalists on 31 August it would cost $200 million: $100 million each for presidential and parliamentary polls.24

About 30% of the nation's schoolteachers could not be paid in September. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot maintain all its embassies and consulates. An outstanding example is the Cape Town consulate, taken over by that city council for persistent non-payment of rates.Frequent overseas trips by Mugabe and his family, which can involve diverting a long-distance airliner from its scheduled flight, carry much of the blame for the near-bankruptcy of Air Zimbabwe.25 Police bribes and foreign currency allocations to officials sold for private profit add to the leakage.

20 http://www.zimonline.co.za/ 10 August 201021 http://www.theindependent.co.zw/ 5 August 201022 The Herald, 9 September 201023 http://www.thestandard.co.zw/, 22 August 201024 The Herald, 1 September, 201125 Clifford Chitupa Mashiri, London, zimanalysis2009@gmail.com,

in The Zimbabwean 19 September 2010

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Toll-gate funds

The largest amounts of money from toll-gate fees collected nationwide, went to where Mugabe and his closest cronies hail from. Most of the money disbursed by the Zimbabwe National Road Authority (ZINARA) by July to different districts for the maintenance of the country’s road network went to Mashonaland West and Mashonaland Central. Zvimba and Bindura got the highest sums disbursed.26

The top six beneficiary districts for the US$15 million paid out were:Bindura (Mashonaland Central)with US$2,6 million; Zvimba (Mashonaland West) slightly more than US$2 million; Mhondoro-Ngezi (Mashonaland West), US$1,8 million; Chaminuka (Mashonaland East)US$510,000;Mazowe (Mashonaland Central) US$190,000; and and Pfura (Mashonaland Central) US$137,655.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)

RBZ is retrenching 85% of its 2,000-plus staff.27 Finance minister Biti is demanding accountability for the RBZ debt before a settlement plan is executed. Speaking at the inaugural Independent Dialogue on 8 September, he said some ministers were opposed to his push for an inquiry into the central bank debt. He said the proposed RBZ debt settlement plan had torn cabinet apart, with ministers divided on how to pay the debts incurred by RBZ governor Gideon Gono's quasi-fiscal activities. Gono in July 2010 said RBZ contributed US$1,2 billion of the country's US$6,4 billion external debt and payment arrears.

Biti proposed creating a special purpose vehicle able to take all the debt and also to its credit take the quasi-fiscal assets of the bank. This was blocked by some ministers who wanted government to take over this debt without asking any questions. Biti insisted government should follow due process that

determines the amount of debt and requires another 'legal instrument' to legitimise the central bank debt. Biti said government should appoint an administrator who can 'prove and approve' claims made by central bank debtors for government to inject funds into this vehicle. The debtors, Biti said, will be rated accordingly. 'I would reckon that class A would be your sovereign creditors like Afrexim Bank, PTA Bank. Class B could be domestic creditors - people who woke up in the morning and found their monies gone. Class C could be risk-takers - those who took a risk with the bank and took quasi-fiscal activities, not having read the provisions of the Reserve Bank Act,' said Biti.The Reserve Bank debts arising from quasi-fiscal activities include:

Owed to Amount (US$)

Statutory Reserves 83mCorporations 80mNGOs 20mEquatorial Guinea (for oil) 222mReserve Bank of SA 10mMalawi central bank 20mCFU 20m

Table 6

In addition, RBZ repaid $184 million arrears to the IMF and gave $200 million in farm mechanisation loans that have mostly not been repaid.28 Some of the corporate debtors are Zimplats (US$34 million), the CFU, and other mining companies that were at year-end yet to benefit from an underfunded special bond set up in April to settle the debt.

Carslone Enterprises, a subsidiary of the RBZ, entered into a joint venture for extraction and processing of diamonds and gold with Gweru farmer Magiel Casper Jovner, who owns Kleimpton Farm, in 2007 to carry out mining activities at his Mangwe Mine claim 24 for a

26 The Zimbabwean, 22 July 201127 http://www.monstersandcritics.com/,

29 August, 201028 http://www.newzimbabwe.com, 30 December, 2010

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three year period up to June 2010. The deal turned sour and the matter is now before the courts.29

To help settle the RBZ debt, the Reserve Bank apparently, through its investment vehicle Finance Trust of Zimbabwe, was aiming to sell its 64% shareholding in Cairns, 65% interest in Astra and 62% stake in Tractive Power.30 The Zimbabwe Farmers Union was compiling in September a list of its members whose money is with the RBZ under the foreign currency retention facility of the 2007/8 seasons. In 2007, tobacco growers were entitled to 20% of their sales proceeds in foreign currency. The retention levels were increased to 25% during the 2008 selling season. By April 2009, the central bank owed tobacco growers US$18 million and many said they were still to be paid.

Government has already categorised public entities into three broad categories - those to be commercialised, those to be privatised, and those to be restructured - although it remains tight-lipped on which enterprises would be affected.31 Minister Biti said the focus of the budget would be to refine and define the refocusing, regeneration, and rebuilding of the economy within the context of all factors required to achieve a developmental state.32

External debt at 31 December 2010 was US$6,929 million, of which 57% was owed by government, 35% by parastatals, and 8% by private companies. This total debt compares with a government budget of $2,700 million and amounts to 103% of GDP (however that may be estimated). At the end of June, Zimbabwe's total debt to the IMF, the African Development Bank and the World Bank was $1.4 billion. In September, debt to AfDB was $400 million and to the IMF $134.85 million, leaving the WB debt at about $865 million. Repayments during the year were negligible, but Zimbabwe's payments to the IMF in January-September 2010 of $1.3 million exceeded new obligations due for the period and the authorities' commitment to quarterly payments to the Fund of about US$100,000. In February this year the country's IMF voting rights were restored. Biti reported that Zimbabwe's debt was accruing US$300m interest annually.

In the 2010 budget, Government was expecting about US$810 million from donors. But just under US$250 million found its way into the country.

Employment

Between January and June, government authorised companies to retrench nearly 3,000 employees, with the banking and textile sectors mostly affected. Activity in the informal sector has picked up during the year.

Stock exchange

By mid-February 2011 trade on the ZSE was between $1 and $2 million per day. This is low, which could exaggerate price fluctuations in the table opposite. ZSE has lost about a billion dollars in value between March and August, due to fears raised by the indigenisation regulations, out of a total capitalisation of about $4 billion.

29 The Herald, 30 December 201030 http://www.theindependent.co.zw/, 20 August 201031 The Herald, 1 September 201032 http://news.radiovop.com, 27 July, 2010

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Industry

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Zimbabwe totalled US$60 million in 2009, an increase of $8 million from the $52 million recorded last year, according to the World Investment Report released by UNCTAD on 22 July 2010. Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister, Tapiwa Mashakada, said government was considering a new Investment Promotion and Protection Act. Prospects seem doubtful while indigenisation Minister Kasukuwere sings a different tune – loudly. By 27 July The Zimbabwe Investment Authority has approved projects worth US$120 million.33 The Herald reported on 27 September that 51 Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPPAs) were at various stages of completion. Zimbabwe has ratified agreements with China, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Swiss Federation, and South Africa. Agreements with Iran, India, Kuwait, OPEC Fund, and Singapore are in line for ratification.A Zimbabwe/Botswana BIPPA was said to be at an advanced stage of negotiation, but in June the Zimbabwe Independent reported this was stalled as Botswana negotiators could not see how it squared with the indigenisation regulations

Industrial Mining06/01/10 142.88 185.7213/01/10 166.95 201.2820/01/10 159.09 208.3203/03/10 133.37 172.5517/03/10 131.51 138.4424/03/10 155.73 161.1721/04/10 133.19 185.1312/05/10 139.57 164.5007/07/10 122.91 132.3614/07/10 121.29 132.6304/08/10 132.16 139.3401/09/10 132.67 132.2808/09/10 132.89 134.3215/09/10 130.24 142.8722/09/10 131.33 170.8906/10/10 135.73 157.76

Industrial Mining17/11/10 157.13 223.9708/12/10 149.46 233.6915/12/10 147.77 223.4929/12/10 148.84 207.25

Table 7: Stock market indexes 2010Source: ZimInd

Manufacturing productionProblems constraining production, estimated by the Minister at 15% of GDP in July, include shortage of capital, frequent electric power cuts, and uncertainty caused by ZANU-PF's rhetoric about indigenisation and what that might mean in practice.

SteelThe search for an investor to revive ZISCOsteel seems not to have reached a conclusion. ZANU-PF had wanted a Chinese or south-east Asian firm, but one Chinese investor has already pulled out of a prospective deal citing interference by government officials. After Jindal Steel of India and South Africa's Arcelor-Mittal were rejected, another Indian company came forward but seem to have withdrawn from the deal.

Electricity

Generators at Hwange and Kariba have been refurbished, but mining and timber companies are trying to import electricity directly. ZESA is trying to involve private investors in reviving the small thermal stations in Harare, Bulawayo and Munyati and talking of small private hydro plants that could add 200Mw to total power generation.

Zimbabwe is currently importing between 50MW and 300MW. Financial constraints at ZESA mean the local power utility cannot secure supply contracts from the Southern Africa Power Pool surplus of 900MW.

Other energy Stoat Mining, a subsidiary of the BMC Engineering Group, has commissioned the second unit of its coke oven battery in Hwange,

33 Sunday Mail, 6 June, 2010

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under a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (Boot) agreement with China’s Taiyuan Sanxing Coal Gasification Company and Hwange Colliery Company. BMC chairman Dr Cephas Msipa Jnr said in June the plant, being built at a cost of US$150 million, would produce 40,000 tonnes of coking coal per month once complete and fully operational.34

We hear talk of a Chisumbanje ethanol-for-fuel project, but no mention is made of the earlier Triangle plant. A bio-diesel project using jatropha as feed stuff, a brainchild of Gideon Gono, has gone the way of most of his schemes.

Transport

Air Zimbabwe has suffered an on-off pilots' strike on top of near-bankruptcy from Mugabe's habit of commandeering planes. When it was announced that they were trying to buy two new long-haul Airbus planes for $400 million, the only conclusion was that someone was trying to get the usual kickbacks on such sales.35 The National Railways of Zimbabwe is run down, with most of its locomotives out of action and extensive theft of cables on the electrified Harare-Gweru stretch of track. Sub-Sahara Africa Buses, a new local company, has begun assembling buses, with a capacity of 15-20 buses a month.

Telecommunications

Mobile phone ownership has increased from 30 per 100 of population in January to 49 in September, according to POTRAZ. Other observers put the number of lines higher; 3 million lines were suspended for non-registration, but even if these were not quickly registered, there are probably about 6 million lines in use, providing one of the requirements for economic growth.

Mining

The Herald, on 28 June, 2010, reported data released by the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe, responsible for marketing all minerals except gold and silver: a total of 426,359 tonnes of various minerals valued at about US$403 million were exported in the first five months of 2010, up from US$191,9 million during the same period of the previous year.

Mineral Production (t) Value US$mn2009 2010 increase 2009 2010

platinum 7 8.6 26% 409gold 4.9 9.6 96% 157 380ferrochrome 72,223 154,336 114% 135coal 1,662,500 2,660,000 60% 97nickel 4,858 6,133 26%ALL MINERALS 672 1380

Table 8: production of major minerals, 2009-10Source: Chamber of Mines

The table above shows a rise in the rest of the year, that is modest and credible, allowing that MMCZ figures do not include gold. Power cuts, labour disputes, loss of skilled workers,

and inadequate working capital are among factors that slowed the growth of the mining industry. The uncertainty has also been

34 Daily News, 23 May 2011 35 The Herald, 2 August 2010

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worsened by the promulgation of the indigenisation law.

Gold

Production may be higher than recorded here, as this year's biggest export, for the second year running, is 'Stamp-impressed paper, banknotes, and bond certificates', which is unlikely but could plausibly conceal gold exports. However you reckon it, this 'paper' and recorded gold exports amount to more than the 10t/year needed to restore our membership of the London Bullion Market Association, so one wonders what the problem is there.

PlatinumAnglo Platinum's Unki mine shipped its first consignment of concentrates at the end of March 2011.

DiamondsGovernment revenue from diamonds was US$35 million, which does not fairly represent the volume of either production or exports. Minister Biti claims it should have been $300 million more. The disputed Kimberley Process certification allowed two semi-private sales of diamonds before the end of the year. Before that, RioZim Murowa Mines and River Ranch

already had Kimberly process clearance, but Government suspended diamond exports arguing it was in accordance with the WTO rules on non-discrimination in trade because the other mining houses were awaiting Kimberly Process export clearance. Focus has also shifted to diamonds from Chiadzwa. Zimbabwean has stock piles of more than six million carats worth about US$2 billion.LonZim is investing $300 million in a diamond processing plant at Marowa and one of the companies brought into Marange, Canadile is also building processing capacity.

AsbestosAsbestos has disappeared off the screen since control of Shabanie Mashaba Mines was seized from Mutumwa Mawere. Workers are not being paid, production is at a standstill, but senior executives are still paying themselves fat salaries. Shabanie posted a loss of US$18.6 million last year. It is said to have reserves enough for 17 years' production.

Trade

Zimbabwe's official imports totalled $3,754,314,461 and exports amounted to $1,946,390,609, giving a balance of -$1,807,923,852

Trade by principal countries:

Imports Exports balance exp/imp,% Export rankZA South Africa 2,041,956,480 1,450,797,339 -591,159,141 71.0% 1KW Kuwait 251,938,851 0 -251938851 0.0% -China 228,590,322 166,940,137 -61,650,185 73.0% 3AE United Arab Emirates 136,853,084 276,645,797 139,792,713 202.1% 2GB United Kingdom 97,928,244 72,520,876 -25,407,368 74.1% 6BW Botswana 93,853,515 102,529,860 8,676,345 109.2% 5MZ Mozambique 91,796,373 71,130,466 -20,665,907 77.5% 7ZM Zambia 90,576,168 125,348,970 34,772,802 138.4% 4MU Mauritius 59,247,974 3,821,547 -55,426,427 6.5% 33IN India 47,266,040 2,553,265 -44,712,775 5.4% 38

Table 9: 2010 Imports; 10 biggest suppliers of imports (US$), all products: Source: ZimTrade/Zimstats

imports exports balance Exp/imp,% Import rank

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IT Italy 15,731,866 61,304,441 45,572,575 389.7% 26 DE Germany FDR 43,564,330 38,015,297 -5,549,033 87.3% 12BE Belgium 12,951,800 35,739,642 22,787,842 275.9% 28

The top 10 markets for for Zimbabwe's exports included these not shown in the table above:Source: ZimTrade/Zimstats

HS4 Imports

2710 PETROLEUM OILS & OILS OBTAINED FROM BITUMINOUS MINERALS,OTHE 781,373,093

8517 ELECTRICAL APPARATUS FOR LINE TELEPHONY OR LINE TELEGRAPHY 192,649,383

1001 WHEAT AND MESLIN 165,751,5818704 MOTOR VEHICLES FOR THE TRANSPORT OF GOODS 105,093,857, 2203 BEER MADE FROM MALT 100,253,748

1512 SUNFLOWER-SEED, SAFFLOWER OR COTTON-SEED OIL AND THEIR FRACT 86,463,788

7501 NICKEL MATTES, OXIDE SINTERS AND OTHER PRODUCTS OF NICKEL ME 68,851,338

1101 WHEAT OR MESLIN FLOUR 67,348,9543102 MINERAL OR CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS, NITROGENOUS 64,293,896

3401 SOAP; ORGANIC SURFACE-ACTIVE PRODUCTS IN BARS, ETC; PAPER WI 57,735,929

. - accounting for 38.9% of import value

Table 10: Principal Zimbabwe imports, by category:Source: ZimTrade/Zimstats

Mining has picked up and the imports of electrical equipment, mostly for mobile phone networks, shows there is growth, mainly of infrastructure for further growth. However, large imports of vegetable oil, soaps and clear beer point to the weakness of agriculture. Local fertiliser production remains inadequate for even the low demand of recent years.

Imports of unprocessed or partly-processed nickel ore suggest that it undergoes some processing in Zimbabwe. The large amount of nickel ores and mattes exported (see table below) show that we need to do more processing of our minerals.

Table 11: Principal exports, by category:HS4 Exports

4907 UNUSED POSTAGE,REVENUE....; STAMP-IMPRESSED PAPER; CHEQUE FO 521,877,202

7501 NICKEL MATTES, OXIDE SINTERS AND OTHER PRODUCTS OF NICKEL ME 407,709,914

2401 UNMANUFACTURED TOBACCO; TOBACCO REFUSE 385,927,5557102 DIAMONDS, NOT MOUNTED OR SET 323,088,643

7108 GOLD, UNWROUGHT OR IN SEMI-MANUFACTURED FORMS, OR IN POWDER 303,441,511

2604 NICKEL ORES AND CONCENTRATES 244,513,3837202 FERRO-ALLOYS 183,664,868

2523 PORTLAND CEMENT, ALUMINOUS CEMENT, PERSULPHATE CEMENT, ETC 157,960,920

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HS4 Exports5201 COTTON, NOT CARDED OR COMBED 123,962,9152610 CHROMIUM ORES AND CONCENTRATES 42,233,456-accounting for 81.9% of export value. Source: ZimTrade/Zimstats

Tourism

Tourist figures reported a three percent growth in 2009, the first in a decade. In Victoria Falls, tourism reportedly grew by 70% in the first quarter of 2010. This probably indicates that visiting the country is considered less of a security risk than it seemed a few years ago.

Continuing poaching by people who seem to enjoy impunity still affects wildlife as an

advertisable tourist attraction adversely. So would the much publicised dispute over the construction of a restaurant in the small and ecologically-sensitive Victoria Falls rain forest. Some detected cases showed that there are still 'hunting safaris' that exceed sustainable levels. This makes a few fat pockets fatter now at the expense of the whole community and future generations. That is how Zimbabwe is today.

ConclusionThe overall picture indicates a moderate revival of mining and agriculture. The prospects for a restoration of the industrial base the country still had 20 years ago are less certain. World trends, including the rise of new industrial and commercial powers, China in particular, are likely to leave us condemned to being a consumer market for manufactures and a

producer of valuable primary products at low cost. The continuing existence of a ruling clique with very limited understanding of, or interest in how a productive economy might work, makes that gloomy prospect more certain, and shaking their grip is going to be a far bigger job than getting a few signed agreements and a free election.

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The choices that faced Tsvangirai and the MDCBy Senator David Coltart, MDC Senator for Khumalo and Minister of Education, Sport, and Arts.I have had a quick read of the lead article in the April edition of the Zimbabwe Review, written by Clayton Peel, which attempted to provide a critique of the Government of National Unity and the performance of the parties which constituted it. Virtually all of the article is fair comment.

My own suggestion is that you consider and debate what the alternatives are. Everyone has been very quick to criticise Morgan Tsvangirai for his decision to go into the GNU, and to speak and write disparagingly about the combined performance of the MDC formations since then – but few have spent time taking a realistic view of what the alternatives were in September 2008 and what the alternatives are now. I find that commentators often make glib suggestions – for example I read one just this morning from someone who suggested that Mugabe should be impeached and that many ZANU-PF Members of Parliament would go along with that, given the secret ballot. Comments like that betray complete ignorance of the situation on the ground.

Furthermore I believe that Dr Peel's article could have spent a bit of time mentioning what the GNU has achieved – stabilisation of the economy, end of hyperinflation, end of cholera, reopening of schools, tentative and

slow process of constitutional reform, changes to the Electoral Act, repair of roads, completion of airports, etc. Whilst these are not dramatic, and could easily be reversed, they are objective improvements which would not have taken place without the GNU, and the Global Political Agreement which birthed it. Indeed my view is that but for the GPA, for example, the education system would have collapsed completely and we may never have been able to recover it for this generation.

As things stand, the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Board, ZIMSEC, is improving, pass rates are going up, etc. For me the great debate is not so much whether the GPA has been a success to date but rather - 'how do we ensure that the gains we have achieved through it are not lost henceforth?''

If you think I am overly optimistic I think you should analyse why it is that ZANU-PF wants to bring the GPA to and end. My view is that it is mainly because the GPA ironically has been so successful and has exposed ZANU-PF's misrule. I have no doubt that their shrill anti-sanctions line is designed solely to excuse their misrule for the last 20 years or so – because in the mind of the public the difference between their misrule and what has been achieved in just two years is so stark.

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Of the making of books about Zimbabwe,There is no endBy Prof. Terence Ranger, Emeritus Professor of African Studies, University of Oxford

Of the making of books about Zimbabwe there seems to be no end. I am commenting on 13 of them in this review. It could easily have been twice that number if I had included all the journalist quick fixes, the inexplicably popular white Zimbabwean memoirs, and the necessary but short-lived accounts of the brutal violence of 2008. These will not be read for long but all the books I am reviewing are likely to have a long shelf-life.

Indeed they are diamonds which need no international licence to be traded and consumed. They fall neatly into clusters and taken together address all the dominant issues in Zimbabwe. Two of them – Ian Scoones’s edited collection and Wilbert Sadomba’s book about the occupation of land in the Mazowe Valley – deal with the process and results of fast-track land re-settlement. Two of them – Timothy Scarnecchia’s book about the politics of the Salisbury African townships between 1940 and 1964, and Deborah Potts’s book about the fragility of African livelihoods in contemporary Harare – deal with the problem of the towns. (I shall invoke for comparative

purposes but of course cannot review my own recent book on Bulawayo and its townships, 1893 to 1960). Potts’s book interacts with a cluster about migration into and out of Zimbabwe – Josiah Brownell’s study of the demographic collapse of Rhodesia, Jonathan Crush and Daniel Tevera’s collection on the Zimbabwean diaspora, and JoAnn McGregor’s collection on Zimbabwean expatriates.

Then there is looser cluster about white identities and landscapes – a good deal in Brownell; David Hughes’s study of white Rhodesian identification with the land; Katja Uusihakala’s study of the continued significance of Rhodesian landscapes in the white expatriate South African community, and JoAnn McGregor’s book about the politics of landscape in the Zambezi Valley. And if this cluster brings out all the uncertainties of Rhodesian identity, the final pairing does this for black Zimbabweans. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni even questions their very existence; Miles Tendi examines their struggle for anational history

Land

Among all these, the book which has been launched with the greatest fanfare is undoubtedly Ian Scoones, et al, Zimbabwe’s Land Reforms. Myth and Realities. It has been serialized in The Zimbabwean newspaper; taken up by the BBC Africa Service; blessed by the Royal Africa Society. Scoones has challenged all comers to a debate based on fact rather than legend. And there is no doubt that this is a very good book.After an excellent review of land reform since 1980, it deals with jambanja land resettlement in Masvingo Province. Drawing on some 120 interviews, it looks in turn at who the new settlers are; at their levels of investment; at

their development of agricultural and livestock production; at their use of labour; at the emergence of new markets; at off-farm income and migration; and at ‘territory, authority, and social dynamics’. (Discussion of chiefs, headmen, and spirit mediums is more or less confined to this chapter). Patterns emerge but the book pays admirable attention to variation and variety. Nevertheless the by now famous conclusions are reached and presented as factual corrections to prevailing myths.

Contrary to myth, Zimbabwe’s land reform has not been a total failure. ‘Around half of the households in the sample are on an upwards

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livelihood trajectory. Through a combination of agricultural production and off-farm activities, there is a strong dynamic of accumulation from below. A new agrarian structure is fast emerging’. The beneficiaries of land reform have not been mainly ‘cronies’ – nearly 70% of those surveyed are ‘ordinary’ people. There has been investment ‘generated through local accumulation from below’. Agriculture is not in complete ruins – the output of export crops has crashed but most households are self-sufficient in maize and ‘some crops, such as edible beans, have boomed’. The rural economy has not collapsed though it has been transformed. ‘The informal rural economy has been adapting fast, even while the formal economy has been in dire straits… new players are involved, benefits are being more widely distributed, and economic linkages are more embedded in the local economy’ (pp.238-240). All this has been achieved despite drought and the absence of inputs.

Obviously these are important findings, and very gratifying to someone like myself who has always advocated small-holder agriculture. But the book cannot be as important as it has been proclaimed as being. (It begins with no less than 15 glowing recommendations from leading scholars in the field). This is because Masvingo is just one province. Hendrick Oliver, Director of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union, has a point when he welcomes discussion of these findings but adds: ‘Most of Masvingo Province is very dry and it’s a cattle and wildlife area, and not all cronies fancy that at all. They like land that is close to the city centres’. And they like land in the rich soil zones. Scoones seeks to deal with this objection in his book –yes, it will be a different picture on the rich soils. But most of Zimbabwe is on less good soils and those areas will turn out to be like Masvingo.

Yet I doubt this. The many district studies made by historians, ethnographers, and political scientists in the 1980s and 1990s – to which no reference is made in this book or in any of the other recent literature on the peasantry – revealed extraordinary variety. For Manicaland Province alone those district

studies – Jocelyn Alexander on Chimanimani, Norma Krieger on Mutoko, David Maxwell on Katerere, Donald Moore on Gaerezi, Terence Ranger on Makoni, Heike Schmidt on the Honde Valley – described a remarkable range of distinct environments, political systems, relations with commercial farmers, and possibilities of ‘the peasant option’. Things may have been transformed in the last decade in these areas as well as in Masvingo but it is hard to believe that all these past differences will have been dissolved into ‘a Masvingo solution’. In short, this book is not the end but very much the beginning of a discussion. We need many more like it for other parts of Zimbabwe, and one hopes for some surveys whose ‘longtitudinal study’ (p.6) goes back before 1980 and makes a connection with the earlier literature.

This is the importance of Wilbert Sadomba’s book. On the ground academic research would have been almost impossible during the last ten years in the rich and contested Mazowe Valley. But Sadomba is an academic who has been a guerrilla; who participated in the land occupations in Mazowe as a veteran; and who transmuted his experiences into first a thesis and now a book. Though born in the Honde Valley, he chose Mazowe as his area of participation and study because he was deployed there during the guerrilla war. War veterans barely figure in Scones et al, who do not concentrate on how the land was seized but on who is on it now and what they do with it. For Sadomba veterans are crucial. He offers a long history of the war and of veteran organizations and their relations with the Mugabe regime since 1980. He even makes reference to some of the earlier district studies, though he does so in order to document instances of peasant radicalism. He believes that radical peasants and spirit mediums, rallied by the leadership of war veterans, initiated and carried through the land occupations. These he divides into the earlier occupations, between 1998 and 2000, which were genuinely powered by the people, and the later occupations, from 2000 onwards, which became the business of the state. His is a story of betrayal of radical

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peasants and spirit mediums and guerrillas by bureaucrats and cronies.

In Mazowe several women mediums of the great spirit, Nehanda, moved with their people on to land associated with Nehanda’s 1896 medium, Charwe. Peasants spilt out into the white farms. Sadomba and other veterans

obtained a large area which they began to develop as an experimental farm, specializing particularly in cattle. And then the state moved in. The Nehanda mediums were driven out by armed police. Sadomba’s farm was given to cronies. A genuine popular revolution was aborted.

Towns

Both Scoones at al and Sadomba relate the land occupations to changes in the relationship of the Zimbabwean countryside and the towns. Scoones says that ‘the classic pattern of rural-urban migration has changed and new migration pathways have emerged ... There has been a substantial shift in economic relationships between town and countryside’. While in the past luxury crops were sent to urban markets, in the past decade basic food crops have been sent from re-settled areas to feed the urban poor. Sadomba re-interprets the Murambatsvina demolitions of 2005, seeing them not as an attack on disloyal townsmen but as punishment for war veterans and others involved in popular land seizure. The worst affected areas, he says, were peri-urban squatter camps set up by veterans. The demolitions coincided with violence against radical peasants. In his eyes they were the work of state elites determined to break the challenge from the poor.

Tim Scarnecchia’s book is about the black townships of Salisbury in the earlier period of the 1940s and 1950s, when they were the home of all urban Africans – with no bureaucrats and professionals living in the low density areas of the city and before the development of the liberation war. He describes years in which black township politics were about urban rather than national citizenship and in which Africans were proud of their role in developing an urban culture despite poverty and over-crowding. His hero is Charles Mzingeli, leader of the Reformed Industrial and Commercial Workers Union, whom he sees not as a proto-nationalist nor, indeed, as trade unionist but as a coordinator of township interest groups, particularly including women. He contrasts

Mzingeli’s inclusive populism with the exclusive rhetoric of black nationalists from the late 1950s onwards which led not only to Mzingeli’s own downfall but also to violent clashes between the youth leagues of the rival nationalist parties. Given the large contrasts between Salisbury and Bulawayo, his picture is not all that different from my own in my social history of Bulawayo up to 1960. My hero is Sipambaniso Manyoba Khumalo, who brought together in his own person most of the interests of Bulawayo’s resident black population. I too see the coherence of township politics destroyed in the riots of 1960 from which emerged a more radical nationalism. Both Scarnecchia and I see township culture as something to be proud of and worth defending.

Our books contrast sharply with Deborah Potts’ portrayal of Harare fifty years later. As her back jacket puts it: ‘The political and economic changes in Zimbabwe since the 1980s transformed Harare from one of the best African cities to live in over this period to one of the worst. Harare’s citizens’ livelihoods exemplify, in microcosm, the central theme of the book: the re-invention throughout sub-Saharan Africa of circulation and rural-urban links in response to economic change’. Potts could find hardly anybody who was proud of Harare and of their part in making it. Instead she found large numbers of citizens determined to leave the capital. This fits with her conclusions from a review of towns in sub-Saharan Africa. On the whole these have not continued to grow through a process of flight from the countryside. Indeed she finds ‘counter-urbanization’ in Zambia and Mozambique as well as in Harare.

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Turning to a detailed examination of Harare, Potts claimed that in the 1980s the city ‘worked in various senses of this word. The majority of household heads in both rich and poor parts of the city had formal employment … They could also send their children to school which was basically free and get access to free or cheap health facilities … Water and electricity were nearly always working and were maintained’ (p84). ‘At the end of the decade Zimbabwe’s urban population was probably less poor and generally more economically and socially secure than any other sub-Saharan African urban population’ (p86). But urban poverty increased with Structural Adjustment in the 1990s. ‘The country de-industrialized quite rapidly’. Services collapsed or became expensive. By 1995 surveys were finding that ‘the proportion of the “very poor” was highest in the towns’ (p88). And then from 1997 Zimbabwe’s economic collapse began. Urban livelihoods were in free fall.

For Potts Murambatsvina in 2005 was clearly ‘a terrible anti-urban campaign. It destroyed virtually all informal houses in every town and undermined informal jobs. This greatly exacerbated the already very serious urban poverty and poor housing conditions in all the

towns’ (p91). Harare, ‘from being a pole of attraction was now shedding population' (p98).

Potts’ last survey of urban attitudes dates from 2001 and so shows little effect of land seizure and resettlement. She does emphasize, however, both the importance of access to land for decisions on whether and when to leave Harare and the foreclosing of this option for many urban residents if formal title to land is established. Her concluding summary runs: ‘The decline in Zimbabwe’s urban livelihoods probably reached its nadir in 2008 to early 2009 and the emergence of the GNU allowed some stabilization and improvement. However, general levels of urban poverty and livelihood vulnerability were still exceedingly serious … The highly ambiguous and often outright negative attitudes towards the city revealed by the later surveys described in this book … are unlikely to have improved’ (p253).

There has been something of a renaissance of Zimbabwean urban studies. What we need now is a social history of Harare which will link Scarnechia’s book with Potts’s and a social history of Bulawayo which will carry on my history of that city from 1960 to the present.

Emigration and Immigration

I have focused on Potts’s discussion of Harare but her book is really a study of ‘circular migration’. Scoones et al also emphasise new trans-border migration routes. And in one way and another the topic comes up in many of the other books under review.

A very long column in the Herald of 11 December 2010 by Nathaniel Manheru – who is thought to be Mugabe’s press secretary, George Charamba – maintains that ‘throughout history Zimbabweans have been a footloose people … We are an immigrant nation … We have travelled vast distances …'… We are a people of hot feet, a people afflicted by a wandering curse’. Zimbabweans became tied to a territory only when other migrants – the whites – conquered them. And even then Zimbabweans remained ‘an itinerant

people … We trekked down south’ for work and for skills. ‘We have moved. Yes, we did so in the context of a hard war, the war of liberation. We went to Botswana … We went to Zambia … We were in Tanzania … We roamed the world looking for our lost freedom.’

Josiah Brownell’s excellent book reminds us how ‘footloose’ Rhodesian whites were as well. It deals with the Rhodesian regime’s failure to increase white numbers or to limit black ones. The regime only wanted some sorts of white and many of the whites who did arrive in Rhodesia moved on. ‘At no time in its 90- year history could the settler state ever attain a sizeable or stable white population’. Rhodesians were ‘a transient white population with only shallow national loyalties’. Brownell

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notes that ‘high rates of white emigration were a longstanding phenomenon in Rhodesia’ but that ‘white immigration numbers normally masked the outflow such that an illusion of population continuity remained’. However, in the early 1960s there was a ‘precipitous drop in immigration numbers’ and the effects of continued emigration became ominously obvious (p23). In response Ian Smith relaxed the old criteria for white immigrants. ‘There were marked differences between those who left and those who came to replace them’. In Smith’s war to preserve an essential Rhodesia an increasing number of Rhodesians had no sense of a Rhodesian historical heritage.

Towards the end of his book Brownell asks who UDI was for. ‘If Rhodesia’s white population, in whose name the rebellion was declared, was at best mildly committed to Rhodesia, then what forces were committed to the act of rebellion and the resultant war?’ He answers that there was ‘a small core of whites within Rhodesia whose commitment to Rhodesia was deeper than the large transient population’. This core was ‘more rural and more rooted’; a large percentage had been born in South Africa. 14% of them had been born in Rhodesia itself (p175). ‘White Rhodesia was perhaps, in the final analysis, a state in desperate search of a nation’ (177).

Back, though, to Nathaniel Manheru and his footloose Africans. As we have seen he is prepared to accept many wanderers as Zimbabwean. But what about ‘the fraction we can’t name’ – the Zimbabwean diaspora in Britain and South Africa. (There is, of course, a Rhodesian disapora too about whom we shall hear more later in this review). ‘The diaspora are hard done by, virtually turned into stateless people’. ‘Those in the diaspora are Zimbabwe’s floating population which, kite-like, can be blown towards any cause’. ‘The empire now poses as saviour’ and Zimbabwe is incapable of challenging this because ‘we have not ourselves situated our other fraction that lives in foreign lands. We cannot describe those who have left the country. Are they good for the country, or are they bad? Are they lost, or have they escaped? And what do we call the

Zimbabwe they have left behind? … Those who have gone, can they still be patriots? We behave as if all the experience of movement – our movement – has not given us the idiom, the vocabulary, for describing our expanding situations and horizons in a globalized world. Yet we have wandered before … We have gone places but we have also come back … creaking under the weight of new and novel acquisitions’.

A new academic industry is arising with answers to some of these questions. Of the two books under review here Crush and Tevera’s Zimbabwe’s Exodus deals mainly with the diaspora in South Africa, the topic of seven of its seventeen chapters. McGregor and Primorac’s Zimbabwe’s New Diaspora devotes four of its twelve chapters to South Africa; the rest relate to the diaspora in Britain. There is some overlap. Crush and Tevera include chapters by Deborah Potts and JoAnn McGregor. Zimbabwe’s Exodus is another myth-breaking book. A brief foreword by Lauchlan Munro remarks that ‘stories about migration are full of stereotypes and over- simplification … A grain of truth is most often enveloped and over-powered by myths, exaggerations and selective use of evidence. Both pro and anti-migration orthodoxies suffer from these faults.’ Zimbabwe’s Exodus, he says, is both easy and challenging to read. ‘It is challenging precisely for the reasons that make it a successful and important book because it dissects myths, analyses stereotypes, and reveals the complexities and ambiguities of the very difficult questions it addressed’ (ix).

One of the myths it addresses is that of the recentness of Zimbabwean migration and in particular, the notion that it has been primarily powered by the land seizures. The editors comment on the rich classic literature on migration in southern Africa, and unlike Scoones et al, make an immediate connection with it in an excellent chapter by Alois Mlambo – ‘A History of Zimbabwean Migration to 1990’. Nevertheless, of course, the rate of migration has increased greatly since 1990. Crush and Tevera offer a chronology very similar to that of Deborah

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Potts. ‘Zimbabwe made major social and economic gains in the 1980s. After 1990, however, the accelerating social, political and economic unraveling of the country led to a rush for the exits. An economy in free-fall, soaring inflation and unemployment, the collapse of public services, political oppression and deepening poverty proved to be powerful, virtually irresistible, push factors for many Zimbabweans’. For them Zimbabwe’s is a ‘crisis-driven’ migration (p1).

But they argue that one ought not to over-state the size of the diaspora. They write of ‘hundreds of thousands’ rather than of millions. They emphasise that ‘although large numbers have left, the majority remain’. Perhaps the most important question is not why so many Zimbabweans have left but why – and how – so many have stayed. And here is a paradox. Zimbabwean migration is not like the leakage of whites which Brownell has shown so fatally wounded Smith’s Rhodesia. Those whites just left; Zimbabwean migrants send back remittances. The scale of the migration means a loss of skills and services but it also enables very many in Zimbabwe to survive. For this is a real diaspora and not just a dispersal. The very great majority of Zimbabweans in South Africa and in Britain maintain very close contacts with families, churches, and old school associations, and profess their intention to return. ‘Every Zimbabwean working in South Africa supports an average of five people at home. But for migration there would be a great deal more migration than there has been’(p3).

The historical connections with the ‘footloose’ past are important but nevertheless there are important differences. Zimbabwe used to be a country of in-migration and out-migration, with in-migration predominating. Now there is no in-migration. As Josephine Nhongo Simbanegavi has shown, there have always been women migrants to South Africa. But ‘traditionally, in Southern Africa, outbound migration streams were dominated by young, single, unskilled males’. Now in South Africa ‘there are almost as many [Zimbabwean] women migrants as men; there are migrants of

all ages; they are from all rungs of the occupational and socio-economic ladder; they are highly-read and illiterate, professionals and paupers, doctors and ditch-diggers’(p9). (The composition of the Zimbabwean diaspora in Britain is, of course, much less variegated).

This is a rich collection of uniformly high standard and interspersed with very revealing interviews with migrants. Everyone will have their own favourite chapters. Mine are Dominic Pasura’s ‘Regendering the Zimbabwean Disapora in Britain’ and Kate Lefko-Everett’s ‘The Voices of Migrant Zimbabwean Women in South Africa’. Lefko-Everett quotes from many very frank and moving oral testimonies from women migrants. They reveal a complex balance of profit and loss. On the one hand, the women have to survive the violence of the brigands and smugglers who infest the Zimbabwean side of the frontier and the sexual demands of South African immigration officials. On the other hand women who get through find themselves with some economic independence. It is something of the same story in Pasura’s Britain. Immigration officials at Gatwick and Heathrow don’t make sexual demands though there are plenty of other humiliations to endure – including sometimes detention with one’s children. But Pasura’s subject is the tensions that arise between Zimbabwean husbands and wives when the wife becomes the main bread-winner. Zimbabwean men find themselves child and house-minding and filling roles regarded as unmanly in Zimbabwe. Where the marriage survives, the men assume that things will revert to ‘normal’ when they return to Zimbabwe. The women have other ideas. Zimbabwean gender relations in Britain are very fraught.

McGregor and Primorac’s collection is equally path-breaking and equally rich. It is hailed by Professor Pnina Werbner as ‘a diverse and complex picture of this new African diaspora’s dispersal within Southern Africa and the West. The book dispels the view that modern diasporas are no longer sites of suffering, exclusion and discrimination, or that their members no longer yearn for a lost homeland’. It differs from Crush and Tevera in the greater

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attention it pays to Britain and in its emphasis on culture. Four chapters – including another excellent one by Pasura – deal with ‘The Cultural Politics of Survival in Britain’; four chapters deal with ‘Diasporic Identities and Transnational Media’. Dr Clayton Peel discusses ‘Exile and the Internet’, taking an optimistic view of the often intemperate

language of Ndebele, Coloured and other minority web-sites. Ranka Primorac introduces a diasporic Zimbabwean novelist, Brian Chikwava. And she also has a chapter called ‘Rhodesians Never Die? The Zimbabwe Crisis and the Revival of Rhodesian Discourse’.

White Identities and Landscape

And herein lies a dilemma. If Brownell is right about the shallowness of Rhodesian identity why should there be such a persistent ‘virtual’ Rhodesia on the web? Two recent books explore this question of white Rhodesian identity. One is David Hughes’s Whiteness in Zimbabwe. Hughes lays emphasis on ‘landscape and the problem of belonging’.

Until the publication of this book there was a sharp divide between South African and Zimbabwean discourse on landscape. The South African literature emphasizes ‘landscape’ as a vision imposed – and often created – by whites from above. The Zimbabwean literature balances white perceptions with black readings of the environment. The iconic book for South Africa is Jeremy Foster’s Washed With Sun. Landscape and the Making of White South Africa (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). The iconic book for Zimbabwe is JoAnn McGregor’s marvelous 2009 book, Crossing the Zambezi. The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier. Hughes includes both in his bibliography but his is a book in the Foster rather than the McGregor tradition, even though he overlaps with McGregor in his treatment of the Kariba dam.

McGregor’s book, focusing as it does on a river, is watery. And Hughes very much emphasizes water – or the lack of it – in his account of white perceptions of the Rhodesian landscape. What the bush lacked to make it a landscape in the European sense was lakes. So white Rhodesians, though finding it much easier to relate to the land than to its African occupiers, longed for bodies of standing water. Though Hughes does not mention it, one of

Cecil Rhodes’s first actions in the 1890s on his extensive estates outside Bulawayo, was to build a dam. Hughes focuses on the Kariba Dam which certainly was an intervention on the South African scale. Of course, it was not constructed as landscape and its first impact on nature was disastrous – a much publicized threat to wild animals and a much less publicized threat to the Tonga. What Hughes is concerned with it how this arbitrary and raw construction became not only landscape but wilderness in the minds of white Rhodesians. His account of Kariba suffers badly by contrast with McGregor’s nuanced and humane discussion.

Much more original is the second half of his book which deals with dam building by white farmers after Zimbabwean independence in 1980. (When Julius Nyerere made a state visit to the newly independent state he was taken on a flight by Nathan Shamuyarira, then Minister of Information. Shamuyarira was anxious to point out the disparity between barren Tribal Trust Lands and lush commercial farms but what caught Nyerere’s eye was the abundance of dams). We know that hardly any of Hughes’s informants are still on their farms and this robs this part of the book of the triumphalism which sometimes disfigures a South African approach to landscape.

Hughes includes in his bibliography an early article by the Finnish anthropologist, Katja Uusihakala, on her work in Kenya. But oddly he does not include her delightful 2008 book about the landscape perceptions of white Rhodesian exiles in South Africa, Memory Meanders. Hughes has a passage where he contrasts his shabby, vernacular appearance as

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a researcher among African peasants for his earlier work with his re-presentation as white man for his work among farmers. Uusihakala too worked and lived with her Rhodesian informants, establishing relations of friendship and even love. This gives her book a wonderful empathy. As well as an insightful discussion of the landscape literature, her book is full of interviews with white Rhodesians about the land they have lost. Land remembered, she says, takes on a spiritual quality. She shows how ex-Rhodesians can drive through the South African bush unseeing but so soon as they cross the Limpopo every shrub becomes meaningful. Brownell’s rural minority Rhodesian identity seems to have become generalized.

The climax of her book is a re-construction of the north Transvaal bush resort at Tshipise as ‘Rhodesianaland’ to mark the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Pioneer

Column at Fort Salisbury in 1890. Participants were issued with Rhodesianaland passports as they went through ‘Immigration and Customs’; a newspaper Rhodesianaland Herald was published every morning; Janet and Ian Smith arrived for a Victorian dinner. ‘We were now into country that reminded us’, wrote one participant, ‘with great nostalgia of the Rhodesian countryside – with Mopani trees in their winter colours, hornbills and monkeys’ (p190).

Uusikahala describes the re-enactment of the 1890 flag raising ceremony – ‘led by the Column commanders the men strode through the dry white grass … and took their positions in front of the flagstaff made of a mopane tree (because, unfortunately, the msasas do not grow south of the Limpopo River)’ (p195). There was not a dam or a lake in sight – but there was that great symbol of Rhodesia: awhites-only swimming pool.

Zimbabwean identities

The black Zimbabwean diaspora does not seem to be nostalgic for particular events or landscapes. (Though in Zimbabwe itself I have come across grandiose plans for landscape reconstruction on a South African scale – a new black landowner in Nyanga aiming to uproot all the pines planted by the whites and replace them with vernacular trees). Nor has there been a consolidation of a single Zimbabwean identity. The minority interests expressed on Clayton Peel’s websites are too strong for that. The two books by Zimbabwean scholars with which I conclude this review are both about the uncertainty of Zimbabwean identity and of Zimbabwe’s historical legacy.

A territorial nation was not an obvious aim of anti-colonial protest. In the 1940s, for instance, Reverend Thompson Samkange, though he was President of the Southern Rhodesia Bantu National Congress, wanted an alliance of Congresses which could produce a black nation-state that combined South and Central Africa and even, for a time, persuaded Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi's first president, of this pan-Bantu ideal. It was

political necessity rather than a strong sense of historical identity which resulted in movements restricted to the boundaries of the colonial territories. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni does not consider this shrinking of Africanist aspiration, though he does emphasise that very few Zimbabweans have any idea where the name ‘Zimbabwe’ comes from, some believing that it was the name of a pre-colonial empire and others that it was given to the people by the medium of the great Nehanda spirit who was executed by the whites in 1897.

His main focus is on the confusion of nationalism and ethnicity which resulted in movements produced by one Zimbabwean language group being conflated with anti-colonial revolt as a whole. He sees the development of a ‘Zimbabwean’ nationalism not as a narrowing down but as a widening out. It could only be achieved by an authoritarianism which subordinated all other interests and identities – as Scarnecchia has argued for the Salisbury townships. Ndlovu-Gatsheni combines a discussion of ‘empiricist’ historical work on Zimbabwean nationalism

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with a wide theoretical debate. He is particularly concerned with the national project after independence in 1980. He argues that consensus for a Zimbabwean nation could not be achieved by violent repression – as in Matabeleland in the 1980s – nor by the invention of ‘patriotic history’, with its emphasis on the continuity of revolution and its division of Zimbabweans into heroes and sell-outs. (Perhaps Manheru’s picture of the constant movement of a ‘footloose’ people, only bottled into their present territory by colonial conquest, suggests a different history, in which there have been ‘Zimbabweans’ but not ‘Zimbabwe’)

Ndlovu-Gatsheni concludes with a call for pluralism: ‘One fundamental condition for African renewal of the national project’, he writes, ‘ is to first of all place it in the hands of a committed and visionary leadership with the ability to articulate the African development issues without falling into an emotional neurosis of victimhood. Africans can only manage to choose such a capable leadership if there is competitive political space … This is currently not the case, particularly in Zimbabwe’ (365).

Blessing-Miles Tendi’s book is a detailed analysis of ‘the role of politicians and public

intellectuals in media, civil society and the academy in producing and disseminating a political usable historical narrative concerning ideas about patriotism, race, land, human rights and sovereignty’. He insists that the Zimbabwe crisis is ‘a struggle over ideas’. Tendi has talked with a very wide range of public intellectuals and he takes discussion of ‘patriotic history’ far beyond my own initial definition and description of it. There is a large contrast here between Zimbabwe and Rhodesia. Rhodesia was not a country of intellectuals or ideas. Zimbabwe is.

Much to his own chagrin, Tendi’s book has been taken up and praised by the state press in Zimbabwe. This is because it is critical of the inability of the MDC to offer any sort of effective alternative historical vision. (The fact that it is even more critical of the regime’s hegemonic historiography has been conveniently elided). Nor has the diaspora made much of a contribution except for web-sites which offer a glorification of Ndebele kingship and call on Britain to renounce the concessions made by Lobengula so as to ‘restore sovereignty’. Tendi sets out the questions which need to be answered. It is up to what Ndlovu-Gatsheni calls ‘an active citizenry’ to answer them.

Conclusion

As a Zimbabweanist I rejoice in this abundance of books and hope it will continue. As a historian I hope there will be more books which make a deep connection between the present and the past. I think the time has come for Zimbabwean scholars to move from historiography to history, even if it is sometimes ‘empiricist’. Meanwhile we can look forward in the next two years to Jocelyn Alexander’s study of imprisonment and restriction in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe; to Joost Fontein’s monograph on the Africanisation of a European landscape at Lake Kyle; to a revision

of Gerald Mazarire’s masterly doctoral thesis on the imagined landscape of Chisanga, which is a landmark in pre-colonial history; to Busani Mpofu’s history of Bulawayo from 1960 to the present; probably to several works by the prolific Ndlovu-Gatsheni; to Wendy Urban Mead’s history of the quietist Brethren in Christ church in Matabeleland; to Ken Wilson et al’s combination of agrarian, social and religious history. There are many more diamonds to be found in the scholarly soil of Zimbabwe.

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Book Review

Lozikeyi Dlodlo, Queen of the NdebeleLOZIKEYI DLODLO, QUEEN OF THE NDEBELE (published by Amagugu Publishers, 310 pages) narrates the determination of Lobengula’s senior wife, who was trained to succeed and lead the Ndebele people after the king’s disappearance and presumed death in 1893. The book is a well researched text with sound and well tabulated information sources.

Queen Lozikeyi Dlodlo was not just any other queen. Her name lives on. One of the oldest schools in the Mzilikazi suburb of Bulawayo is named after her; among the many others named after the kings and chiefs of that time. She stands tall and awesome in the hall of fame of the Ndebele great people. Thanks to Marieke Faber Clarke and Pathisa Nyathi, we now have a great literary exposition: Lozikeyi Dlodlo is a must for all Zimbabweans interested in the history of the nation.

The title, Lozikeyi Dlodlo, Queen of the Ndebele is strange to many people, including the Ndebeles themselves, especially those born after the mid-twentieth century. Her name has not been highlighted in previous histories. Zimbabweans are familiar with the names of King Mzilikazi and King Lobengula, as well as the many indunas (chiefs). What further whets the appetite of the reader is the subtitle, ‘A very dangerous and intriguing woman’. Normally, in African communities, a queen is associated with motherliness, kindliness, a loving and compassionate disposition. A queen would not be associated with being dangerous. Intrigues also are usually associated with criminal or clandestine activities; not a woman, let alone a queen. The title therefore grips the reader’s imagination.

This book has been authored by passionate historians in Clarke and Nyathi. It is amazing that it has taken almost a century to document the important role played by Lozikeyi Dlodlo in trying to keep the Ndebele people together

after the terrible loss experienced during the 1993/4 war that dissipated the nation. Numerous histories have been written before on the Ndebele uprising against the cruel and exploitative settlers in the late nineteenth century. The indunas who led the Ndebele armies have been noted. But, the role that the Regent Queen Lozikeyi played has not been hinted at. Maybe it had to take a woman’s resolve to dig into that history and unravel this hidden information for posterity. We salute the author, Clarke, for this task, as it does not only provide insightful reading, but it also provides much needed leadership empowerment and mentorship for women of action.

There is a lot to learn from Lozikeyi Dlodlo, Queen of the Ndebele. I will list some points:

Upliftment of husband’s positionThe Regent Queen Lozikeyi exuded confidence borne out of the position she held. She trusted herself and was greatly respected by her subjects to the very end. She hailed from Nguni royalty; the Dlodlos who are descendants from kings in KwaZulu, South Africa. It was quite a revelation that Lozikeyi was married to King Lobengula to uplift his shaky claim to the throne as he was not mothered by royalty, but by a ‘somthanyelwana’, a maid (p.15). Her status uplifted that of the king. Though Lobengula had numerous wives, Lozikeyi was the favourite and senior queen due to her status. She quietly assumed the leadership role after her husband had disappeared.

Power and quiet diplomacy There are many women who are born into affluence, or who have positions thrust upon them either by marriage or other association, who do not aspire higher than showing their prestige, abusing their power and authority along the way, and who flagrantly exploit their subordinates. It was not so with Lozikeyi. She truly was as powerful as any monarch, but kind

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to her loyal subjects, and humorous. She planned and plotted with her various male izinduna and empowered them to go and fight the enemy settlers. Many battles were won in the 1896 uprising under her guidance and counsel. Lozikeyi did not flaunt her power. Her plans were executed with discreet wisdom. While many chiefs conceded defeat, Lozikeyi ‘proudly maintained her independence of white men and the new rulers did not realize the full extent of her authority’ (p.184). The dangerous and intriguing Lozikeyi comes to the fore as we witness her conspiracy with Mvelani Khumalo in crafting deceptive plots against the whites (p.187). The author says it was a very high-risk game that revealed Lozikeyi Dlodlo at her most artful (p.187). Such astute planning is and has been a rare phenomenon among the indigenous Zimbabwean culture of yesteryear and even today. I dare say it may have been witnessed in the same period among such as Mbuya Nehanda, a spirit medium in the north east, who was executed by the settlers for influencing a revolt against the white settlers. We also note Queen Nyembezana Thebe being approached and implored to seek izindunas’ agreement towards making peace (p.160). It is realisation of women’s persuasive power that made the settlers approach this old woman rather than a man. We see Mollie Collenbrander also playing a crucial role by persuading Bhabhanyana Masuku to try and broker peace and pacify the radical and most volatile young warriors such as Mvelani Khumalo who displayed rage in their protests against atrocious settler treatment.

It is amazing that the rest of Africa, including Zimbabwe, is still striving for gender equity. There was a big conference in Nairobi, Kenya, to celebrate the launch of ‘The African Women’s decade Theme: Gender Equality And Women’s Empowerment’ (GEWE) 2010 – 2020, from 10th – 15th October 2010. Greater strides still need to be witnessed in having more women in decision making positions. It is therefore intriguing to note that women’s power existed in the early twentieth century. When Lozikeyi died in 1919, she bequeathed 130 cattle to her daughter, Princess Sidambe, who had already brought 75 cattle to her

marriage. Princess Sidambe also left numerous cattle to her own daughter, Pombo. In this manner, Queen Lozikeyi strengthened women’s capacity to own the most important source of wealth in Ndebele society (p.117).

EducationIn her later years, we see Lozikeyi promoting western style education among her people. The London Missionary Society established many schools with permission from Lozikeyi in her area of Nkosikazi. Not only did such institutions foster African leadership, but women’s potential was well recognized at that time. We see Mrs Susana Rees, a lay preacher; Mhlango, a woman convert; and Eli Ndlovu, wife of evangelist Mathambo Ndlovu, stepping in to preach when there was no male. They were able to do that because they had attained a certain amount of education which boosted their self-confidence in a patriarchal society. Education tends to unlock closed doors. Today we talk of girl child education and women’s literacy in a quest to combat ignorance and lack of confidence. If education had come earlier, the Ndebele people would have realized the folly of allowing a safe passage in the hope that settlers would leave their land through that way. They would have realized that the access makes possible communication of the enemy with the outside allies, who then would provide help. Knowledge is power.

Other insightsHelemu school in Bulawayo is named after Charles Helm, a senior missionary at Hope Fountain. There always was and is great respect given to the men of cloth. It is disappointing and disconcerting that Helm was the translator of the Rudd Concession, and he did not fully explain the implications of the Concession to Lobengula. Does he deserve that recognition accorded him? John Moffat, son of great missionary Robert Moffat was equally won over. Only the missionaries at Inyathi refused to accept Rhodes’ bribe (p.62). Some congregations also came into the country to bring the gospel in the company of exploiters. It is no wonder that extremists in political circles tend to generalize bitterly and say all missionaries came to exploit rather than to

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bring the gospel of love. In SiNdebele, we have a proverb that says, Zonelwa mvu nye. Literally, one sheep spoils it for all. If one sheep goes into someone’s field to graze, all follow suit. Again, this action points to the

importance of book education, and the ability to fully understand by oneself what the written word denotes, rather than depending on dishonest translators and interpreters.

ConclusionThis book, Lozikeyi Dlodlo, will go a long way in empowering people about their history. There are a number of women I commune with who, like I, are captivated by this text and greatly feel honoured and empowered; yet ashamed somewhat that it has taken a caring and passionate white woman to laboriously put together this text for posterity. Where are we? What are we doing about the many other women who have excelled in their fields of gifting? Their works need to be recorded as a legacy for generations to come. One of my daughters grabbed the first copy of the text I bought and read it through. She found Lozikeyi awesome. Her words challenged me when she said:

'Where do we fit in in all this?''We are not royalty, and though your

forefathers may have fought in these battles, nobody noted their noble deeds. But you can start tabulating the history of your people.'

'Sure,' she said. 'There are numerous notable achievements that would make interesting reading'.

Indeed! My hope is that young readers in particular may be prodded into recording their personal family histories. That would create a new order where we stand tall with the dignity that God bestowed upon all His children.

Prepared by Barbara C Nkala, former teacher, author and publisher

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The Zimbabwe Review is published by the Britain Zimbabwe Society, c/o The Editor (Email: capeel@ocms.ac.uk). Views expressed in BZS publications are their authors’ and not necessarily those of BZS. The Editor welcomes, without obligation to publish, material submitted by readers and members. If used, material may be edited for length and clarity.

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