Friday, December 15, 2017

(NEWZIMBABWE) Mnangagwa: sanctions crippling Zimbabwe

COMMENT - 'Targeted measures' is are weasel words, intended to imply that economic sanctions only extend to and therefore impact government ministers - they mean economic and financial sanctions, which are of course targeted at everyone. Sanctions like ZDERA that destroyed the Zimbabwe Dollar affected everyone. - MrK

MDC Alliance principals said they were for economic and social reforms, stabilization and international re-engagement that will give Zimbabweans a fighting chance in the crucial and landmark 2018 general elections.
They said a lot more than that.

(NEWZIMBABWE) Mnangagwa: sanctions crippling Zimbabwe

JUST two days after the US announced that sanctions imposed on Harare would remain in place until the new administration implements political and economic reforms, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has called for the lifting of the targeted measures.

Mnangagwa, speaking during the Central Committee meeting held in Harare on Thursday, said the sanctions were hampering economic development.

The US and the European Union nations imposed sanctions on former President Robert Mugabe’s government for gross human rights violations and electoral theft.

Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe is now ready to re-engage with the international community and start re-building the country’s economy which collapsed more than a decade ago.

The President re-affirmed his commitment to re-engage with new nations whilst keeping old friends who have given a hand to Zimbabwe during its trying moments (liberation struggle period).

Sanctions must fall ... President Emmerson Mnangagwa

“We call for the unconditional lifting of the political and economic sanctions which have crippled our national development. We realize that isolation is not splendid or viable as there is more to gain through solidarity, mutual beneficial partnerships which however, recognise our unique national interests.

“Government will thus pursue a robust re-engagement process to fully affirm our belonging to the family of nations. The re-engagement strategy will seek to create new relations whilst holding steadfast to those countries that stood by us during our darkest years.

“In this regard, measures will be put in place to attract foreign investment ensuring that Zimbabwe is a place where capital feels safe. It has already begun,” Mnangagwa said.

The US government on Tuesday told MDC Alliance principals who were visiting Washington that sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe two decades ago would stay whilst the country monitors Mnangagwa regarding reforms especially the electoral and economic reforms.

MDC Alliance principals said they were for economic and social reforms, stabilization and international re-engagement that will give Zimbabweans a fighting chance in the crucial and landmark 2018 general elections.

MDC-T Vice President Nelson Chamisa who is part of the delegation has denied accusations by Zimbabwean government that they have pressured the US not to remove the sanctions against Harare.


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Thursday, December 14, 2017

MDC Commits Treason In Washington DC

COMMENT - Real Zimbabweans see through the MDC and their rhodesian handlers like Peter Godwin. They are busy in Washington DC to call for more and continued sanctions against their own country and government, even under the new government of former VP and now President Mnangagwa. Why aren't they arrested for treason the second they set foot back in Zimbabwe? They are making foreign policy in a foreign country, testifying against their own country before foreign legislators, while they are the opposition? - MrK

(YOUTUBE) USA Wanted to Lift Zimbabwe Sanctions, WATCH Tsvangirai Delegation ask for more Pressure on Zim
TV7 Live Zim News and Buzz

(NEWZIMBABWE) MDC-T denies Trump sanctions appeal

THE opposition MDC Alliance has rubbished claims that it urged the United States (US) administration to maintain sanctions against Zimbabwe.

The allegation follows a diplomatic campaign by Alliance officials Nelson Chamisa and Tendai Biti who are in the US to canvass international support ahead of next year’s crunch elections.

MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu said although his party believes the new government should implement political reforms, it does not believe in using sanctions to pressure the Emmerson Mnangagwa-led Harare administration.

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(NEWZIMBABWE) Zim sanctions to remain, says US govt

THE Trump administration will maintain sanctions the United States imposed against Zimbabwe despite the change of leadership in Harare, a senior official has confirmed.

Washington imposed a raft of sanctions against Zimbabwe nearly two decades ago supposedly to force then president Robert Mugabe to change course amid allegations of gross human rights abuses and electoral fraud.

Mugabe rejected the allegations, maintaining instead that Harare was being punished for its controversial land reforms which were meant, he argued, to correct historical injustices in ownership of the key resource.

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Tuesday, December 12, 2017

(THE ECONOMIST ASIA) For Asia, the path to prosperity starts with land reform

COMMENT - The Economist Magazine states the obvious, that land reform is extremely popular, and highly effective in fighting poverty. "And while smallholder agriculture is hugely labour-intensive, that makes sense when labour is abundant." I would add to that, that automation doesn't need to pass small farmers by. It just takes a different kind of machinery. What if UNZA had a department specializing in inventing/producing/patenting small farm tools? Example. - MrK

(THE ECONOMIST ASIA) For Asia, the path to prosperity starts with land reform
Countries that did it properly have grown fastest
Print edition | Asia
Oct 12th 2017

NEARLY as striking as Asia’s dynamism is how unevenly prosperity is spread—in contrast to Africa, Latin America or Europe. First-world Japan (with a GDP per person of $38,900) is in effect part of the same island chain as the Philippines ($2,950). Rich Singapore ($53,000) is little more than an hour’s flight from Myanmar ($1,275). On the Korean peninsula, the division is even starker. Two economies that started out in identical circumstances have diverged so wildly that South Koreans are between 3cm and 8cm taller than their North Korean counterparts on average, depending on their age, thanks to better nutrition.

A voluminous literature ponders the causes of the East Asian miracle, in which first Japan, then the four original “Asian tigers”—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—and then China sustained bounding growth for decades. Most studies point to market-friendly policies that encouraged exports of manufactures and the rapid accumulation of capital, including the human sort. Others emphasise the importance of institutions. Yet one crucial factor has been relatively underplayed: restructuring agriculture.

“Land reform” sounds innocuous but involves great upheaval: seizing land from those who have it and giving it to those who do not. Yet radical action may be necessary in countries with big, impoverished, rural populations. As Joe Studwell points out in “How Asia Works”, farm yields often stagnate in such places. As populations grow, making land scarce, landlords jack up rents and lend at extortionate rates. That leaves poor tenant farmers mired in debt, with no means to invest.

China provides a stark example. By the 1920s, a tenth of the population owned over seven-tenths of the arable land. Three-quarters of farming families had less than a hectare. Mao Zedong’s Communists reallocated land in every new territory they seized. After the defeat of the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1949, they rolled out land reform nationwide. Landlords, some with scarcely more land than most, were blamed for everything. In the decade after 1945 millions of them were beaten to death or shot, or left to starve. Revolution, Mao said, was not a dinner party.

The effect was immediate. Grain output leapt by perhaps 70% in the decade after the war. When farmers can capture most of the value of their land, they have a powerful incentive to produce. And while smallholder agriculture is hugely labour-intensive, that makes sense when labour is abundant. (Only a few years later the Communists embarked on the madness of collectivisation. China emerged from that disaster in 1978, after Mao died. North Korea is starting to do so only now.)

China’s early success challenged Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries, pressed by America to carry out land reform, showed that it does not require mass murder. By the war, half of Japan’s arable land was worked by tenant farmers, and rent was never less than half the crop. After the war, farm size was limited to three hectares. Land committees on which tenants outnumbered landlords oversaw a reapportionment that took land from 2m households and gave it to 4m others. Compensation fell short (and was gobbled up by inflation), but there was little violence among farmers. Perhaps it helped to be able to blame the occupiers when politely taking over someone’s paddy field. At any rate, agriculture boomed.

South Korea had the most unequal land ownership in the region, and resistance by the elites was strongest. Some landlords lost as much as 90% of their land. But Taiwan under the KMT shows the clearest benefits from land reform, which started with rent controls and reforms to tenancy. Sales of formerly Japanese-owned land followed. Then, in 1953, came appropriation. The share of land tilled by the owner rose from just over 30% in 1945 to 64% in 1960. Yields on sugar and rice leapt. New markets sprang up for exotic fruits and vegetables. Household farmers dominated early exports. Crucially, income inequality shrank thanks to the new farmer-capitalists. Less spent on imports of food, more money in Taiwanese pockets, a new entrepreneurialism: farming was the start of Taiwan’s economic miracle.

Cheap at half the price

Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand could have followed Taiwan’s example, but didn’t.
Their economies have done far worse. With between 25% (Malaysia) and 48% (Thailand) of their populations still living in the countryside, land distribution matters. The state favours agribusiness and plantations over small farmers. There is a yawning gap in income between countryside and city.

The situation is worse in the Philippines, which had a similar income per person to Taiwan’s just after the war. Before independence in 1946, America auctioned off the Catholic church’s huge estates. Only the local elites could afford them. These became the hacienda class that thrives today, forming the basis of many political dynasties. Admittedly, after the People Power revolution (led by Cory Aquino, from one landed family, who married into another), political pressure for land redistribution culminated in a reform law passed in 1988. Nearly 30 years on the law, replete with loopholes, is still being implemented. The operations of many big estates have hardly been affected, while household farmers still lack technical and financial support. Many of those given plots have had to lease them back cheaply to the big planters, becoming wage labourers on their own land.

There are political consequences too. In South Korea and Taiwan inclusive agricultural growth prefigured the inclusive politics of today’s thriving democracies. In South-East Asia, by contrast, cronyism and inertia are consequences of an economy that is unfair to those at the bottom. The Philippines and Thailand have most clearly paid a price, in the form of insurgencies and rural unrest, for keeping poor people down. When weighed against the costs, land reform, done well, starts to look cheap.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Land to the tiller"

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(BLACK AGENDA REPORT) Clearing the Smoke and Mirrors Around Zimbabwe

COMMENT - From Netfa Freeman.

Interview with Jared Ball.

(BLACK AGENDA REPORT) Clearing the Smoke and Mirrors Around Zimbabwe
Netfa Freeman 29 Nov 2017

“The West, led by Britain and the U.S., have been engaged in a regime policy against the Southern African nation for the last 18 years.”

Reasons for examining what is happening in Zimbabwe are many but few to none can be found in accounts by major news media or from liberal progressive pundits. Such accounts are busy reinforcing the over simplified and misinforming narrative that forcing out former 93 year-old president Robert Mugabe marks the end of 37 years of brutal dictatorship that has driven the country into economic disaster.

The over simplified version being fed to the general public is that everything kicked off after Mugabe fired a disagreeable vice-President. Zimbabwe is to be seen as just another African country with a long reigning dictator who presides over the repression and impoverishment of his own people who really are unable to govern themselves without the aid of the benevolent West.

Since the November 14th reports that Zimbabwean army tanks were seen heading towards the capital Harare in the middle of rising tensions between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and the military, led by one of Zimbabwe’s Vice-Presidents, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the ultimate political outcome is still unfolding. In short, the story has seen Mugabe first put under house arrest by the military, many of his high level supporters arrested, and eventually, after initially appearing to refuse, Mugabe was pressured into resigning to be replaced by Mnangagwa who was sworn into office last Friday.

“Greg Elich also challenges the portrayal that ‘All Zimbabweans… are happy at the turn of events.”

Unsurprisingly, these new political developments reawakened the Western news media’s fixation with Zimbabwe because the West, led by Britain and the U.S., have been engaged in a regime policy against the Southern African nation for the last 18 years. The accompanying media campaign makes it necessary to look for an honest examination of “What’s Behind the Military Coup in Zimbabwe ” -- as in the recent CounterPunch.org article by Greg Elich. Using an assortment of sources that include a September Reuters report claiming to have obtained hundreds of internal documents from Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization, Elich dispels distracting narratives like the claim that the coup was to prevent maneuvers by Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace from becoming his successor. Elich also challenges the portrayal that “All Zimbabweans… are happy at the turn of events,” explaining why photos and footage mainly showing demonstrations in the capital Harare “aren’t necessarily reliable. Opposition backers predominate in the cities, whereas Mugabe’s support is heavily concentrated in rural areas, where it can have little political effect.”

The rural areas are also where Zimbabweans have most benefited from the fast track land redistribution policy initiated in 2000.

Liberal progressives like activist Bill Fletcher , who also hosts and produces the Washington DC based radio show ARISE, gives progressive cover to old and misinformation and falsehoods about Zimbabwe. In these portrayals it is acknowledged that Mugabe and many of the ZANU-PF leadership are not your typical “African dictator” variety and instead arose from the liberation struggle. But on the November 24th show of ARISE Fletcher buttressed old and refuted lines straight from imperialism’s talking points.

Among these points are the claims that ZANU-PF’s 2000 fast track land reclamation was a failure and only benefited cronies of the party and President Mugabe; that the political and economic mission of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is unclear; and that the dire economic conditions of the country are due solely to the corruption, irresponsibility, and mismanagement of Mugabe.

“Bill Fletcher buttressed old and refuted lines straight from imperialism’s talking points.”

It would have been difficult for the show to feature any other angle, given that one of the guests was Scott Taylor, professor at Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service, whose credentials include serving as a consultant for USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the African Development Bank, and the World Bank.

Flecther’s other guest was Nii Akuetteh, founding Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), an arm of George Soros’ “network of foundations."

Much of the misinforming propaganda being resurrected by Western media and reinforced by liberal progressives has been refuted in the 2010 major study, Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities , by Institute of Development Studies Fellow Ian Scoones, with Zimbabwean colleagues Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba, Jacob Mahenehene and Chrispen Sukume. The book challenges five myths through a detailed examination of field data:

Myth 1 - Land reform has been a total failure

Myth 2 - The beneficiaries have been largely political 'cronies'

Myth 3 - There is no investment in the new resettlements

Myth 4 - Agriculture is in complete ruins creating chronic food insecurity

Myth 5 - The rural economy has collapsed

The book uses evidence to argue that the land reform program may well be the foundation needed for broad based economic efficiency and new livelihoods in the fight against poverty.

The study finds that while production crops for export declined, other crops “such as small grains, edible beans and cotton” for domestic use increased or remained steady. “A core group of 'middle farmers' -- around half of the population in the Masvingo study areas -- are generating surpluses from farming.”

There is substantial agricultural production on small farm holders, with the majority producing enough to feed their families and sell to local markets in good rainfall years.

“Significant investment in the new land has included plot clearings, well digging and home building. In addition, schools have been built, roads cut and dams dug. New market connections are being forged, unleashing a dynamic entrepreneurship in the rural areas.”

“A core group of 'middle farmers' -- around half of the population in the Masvingo study areas -- are generating surpluses from farming.”

We can be sure that the major factor impacting the Zimbabwean economy was not the shopping habits of First Lady Grace Mugabe. This is not to say there was no mismanagement of the economy on the part what is a parliamentary government. The major factor responsible for the spiraling inflation is, however never mentioned by the major media. That would be the pervasive EU and US sanctions against Zimbabwe -- a type of warfare without guns and bombs. The hypocritically entitled “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001,” a.k.a. ZIDERA, is the U.S. sanctions legislation that explicitly designed to damage the economy by denying any extension of credit and loans to the government or any balance of payment assistance by international financial institutions. They also actively dissuade investments in, or trade with the country. This has had devastating effects on the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe in multitude of ways, a fact that Western media and liberal progressive pundits never fail to ignore.

The symptoms of these sanctions are pinned on “Mugabe’s economic mismanagement.” Rarely does anyone ask scrutinizing questions like those of Ugandan journalist, Timothy Kalyegira: “Before the Mugabe Government started uprooting the white farmers in 2000, his Government kept inflation at 5 percent, 8 percent (or 11 percent in difficult years.) How, then, does a country with all the same factors and leaders from 1980 to 2000 suddenly (because the white commercial farmers have been uprooted) see inflation soar to world record levels in a space of just six years starting in 2000? And how is it that a stable Zimbabwe has an inflation rate 1500 times higher than Somalia, a country without a government since 1991?”

“The major factor responsible for the spiraling inflation is the pervasive EU and US sanctions against Zimbabwe -- a type of warfare without guns and bombs.”

The Western press is notorious for largely ignoring Africa. So we should ask why Zimbabwe so easily makes breaking news and headlines when the repression and rape of countries ruled by U.S.-allied leaders like Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo goes virtually unnoticed.

The renewed attention is because imperialism’s protracted strategy is apparently bearing fruit. Unable for a host of internal reasons to raise its hegemony through the opposition party MDC, which they literally created and poised to usher in a neo-liberal agenda, current developments seem to bare out the assertion of former U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell who in 2007 wrote in a leaked Wikileaks cable , “Our policy is working and it’s helping drive changes here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation…”

We now seem to be witnessing a “say it ain’t so” moment. Since the resigning of Mugabe and the instatement of Mnangagwa as Zimbabwe’s President, a number of foreign officials have paid “courtesy calls” to the new president, including Britain’s Africa Minister Rory Stewart, who pledged that Britain is ready to strengthen its relations with Zimbabwe and, “On sanctions, I have to be clear, there are now very few sanctions on Zimbabwe. Sanctions are left on a few individuals. The only outstanding question here is of international financial assistance from organizations like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but we have already begun discussions to have the embargo lifted.”

Imperialism would hardly make such a commitment unless they were certain their economic interests were secured.

“We should ask why Zimbabwe so easily makes breaking news when the repression and rape of countries ruled by U.S.-allied leaders like Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo goes virtually unnoticed.”

Amid rumors that that land would be returned to large-scale white farmers, Emmerson Mnangagwa declared to the contrary that “the land reform program was unavoidable and shall not be reversed.” But he promised that those white farmers who lost property would receive compensation.

At the moment it looks as if one of only two of Africa’s remaining hold outs from imperialism’s world domination has succumbed to pressure. But there is much more to unpack and the people’s struggle is a story that never ends.

The lessons for the international struggle for self-determination, justice and against capitalist imperialism are always more complicated than we can get from the most readily available sources.

The people of Zimbabwe and the whole of Africa must find a way to forge an expressly anti-capitalist mass movement toward processes of participatory democracy where the people can devise and implement their own social programs that benefit the most disenfranchised classes. Much like the movements that emerged in Latin America and were attempted in Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara. It would seem this is best safeguard against the aggressions of imperialism. We must concede that the land reform and "indigenization acts" were inadequate measures toward economic empowerment that kept capitalism and imperialism intact. We hope we’re wrong, but the neo-liberalism that now appears to be on the horizon has always in the long run ended in deeper and more sustained misery for the working class and rural poor populations of Africa and the world.

Netfa Freeman is an Analyst and Events Coordinator for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a longtime organizer in the Pan-African and international human rights movement, and former Liaison for the Ujamma Youth Farming Project in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He also hosts and produces the radio show Voices With Vision on WPFW 89.3 FM.


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