Andrew Kenny: SA must heed Zimbabwe’s lessons and stop sleepwalking onto its ruinous path - Biznews

 Andrew Kenny

The 2025 Expropriation Act has drawn attention to the question of land reform and in particular white ownership of farms in South Africa.

This is misleading, of course, since the intention of the Act is not “restitution” or “addressing the legacy of apartheid”. Its intention is to abolish private property, exactly in line with the ideology of the SA Communist Party and the ANC’s National Democratic Revolution (NDR) – and the EFF.

Ordinary black people will be hurt more than white people, since prosperity for all is impossible without private property. But the impression many commentators get, reinforced by ignorant remarks from President Trump, is that the Act is aimed at seizing farmland from white Afrikaners. This makes white ownership of farms a pressing question. And it so happened that I was last week strongly reminded of a similar question many decades ago, in Rhodesia.

What lessons can we learn from the fate of white farmers, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe? What did they do wrong? What should they have done? Were those who stayed in Zimbabwe and bought farms under Prime Minister Robert Mugabe right or wrong? Were those who emigrated, taking their money with them, right or wrong? Were the black people of Zimbabwe better off when most of the farms were white-owned or when most were black-owned?

Rhodesia’s Case
We have moved from Fish Hoek to Kleinmond, and I was trying to sort out my books and magazines. I came across various pamphlets. One was pink and moth-eaten. It was The Communist Manifesto, first published in London in 1848. Next to it was a thin green one. It was Rhodesia’s Case, published in Salisbury in 1970.

It is only nine pages long, so I read through it quickly. It makes a liberal like me blush, but the problem is that some of what it says is true and prophetic. Essentially, it says that Rhodesia then, under Prime Minister Ian Smith, was a lovely country, where “African living standards have steadily improved”, “African housing in Rhodesia is the best in the continent”, “We claim the highest African literacy rate in the continent”, “Africans enjoy the use of free land in tribal areas”, and “Visitors are astonished at the development in this country”.

“Rhodesia invites people of goodwill to participate in her development”. It cautions that “The experience of this era has taught Rhodesia that tribalism is a more potent and powerful factor than black nationalism”.

In 1970, Rhodesia, a country of just over five million black people, was ruled by just under a quarter of a million whites. In 1965, Ian Smith had passed the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain and was a rebel state. Rhodesia had been named after Cecil John Rhodes, the most notorious of all British imperialists, who had seized her by trickery and force. (He was also responsible for starting the Boer War.)

About 80% of the population, who live in the north, are Shona. About 16%, who live in the south, are Ndebele, an Nguni tribe. Rhodesia was racist and paternalistic, but quite relaxed and peaceful compared with South Africa. From the late 1960s, the white government was under attack from two liberation forces, ZAPU, (Ndebele), led by Joshua Nkomo, and ZANU, (Shona), led by Robert Mugabe. This led to civil war.

Essentially surrendered
In the end Smith, under pressure from John Vorster in South Africa, essentially surrendered, renounced UDI and allowed Britain to oversee a transition to majority rule. In 1980 there was a full democratic election. The voting was strictly tribal, just as Rhodesia’s Case had warned, and since the Shona were the majority, ZANU won easily, and Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

The first decade of Mugabe’s rule was considered peaceful and reconciliatory. The fact that Mugabe had ordered the slaughter of over 20,000 Ndebele under Operation Gukurahundi didn’t bother anybody apart from the victims, since ‘nobody cares when blacks kill blacks’. Most whites emigrated. (By 2000, over two-thirds had gone.) But those who remained were persuaded to trust Mugabe.

White farmers bought their farmlands under his government. I heard one Rhodie saying on the radio, “I’ve decided to emigrate – from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe!” The white farmers ploughed their money and their sweat into their farms and produced bountiful crops, easily feeding the Zimbabwean people and providing surpluses for export. Black people were well fed, and all those I saw working on the farms were treated quite well. (No doubt they weren’t all.) I visited a farm near Marondera where the farmer had given part of his land to the black workers and paid for the education of their children. (His farm was taken, and he lost everything.)

“War veterans”
In 2000, after he had lost a referendum (the last free vote in Zimbabwe) and after running into financial problems with his “war veterans”, Mugabe began the violent seizure of private farms, most white-owned. Fewer than twenty farmers were murdered, but about 780,000 black farm workers and their families were kicked out of their homes and their jobs, and into destitution. Some land was given to small black farmers, but most was taken by Mugabe’s cronies, making them exceedingly rich. Agriculture in Zimbabwe declined and collapsed. It couldn’t provide enough food to feed the people, let alone export anything.

In conjunction with agricultural decline, the rest of the economy went down too. Rhodesia’s budding little industries, her excellent infrastructure, her railways, roads, power stations and factories began to disintegrate. Zimbabwe is in a disastrous state now. The black people were far better off under Ian Smith in 1970 than they were under Robert Mugabe in 2010 or under Mnangagwa now. We know this because under white rule ordinary black people did not leave Rhodesia, but millions have left Zimbabwe under black rule. What can we South Africans learn from this?

The whites who emigrated from Zimbabwe early on have done very well, and are flourishing in South Africa, the UK, Australia and even Zambia. So should white South Africans emigrate now? The big difference is that some whites, Afrikaners in particular, have lived in South Africa long before whites lived in Rhodesia. In fact, Afrikaners lived in the Western Cape long before black Africans. White Rhodesians could ‘sort of’ regard Britain as a fatherland. The Afrikaners have no fatherland except South Africa.

Evicted
Some white Rhodesians chose to buy land and farm in Rhodesia. What should they have done differently? What could they have done differently? It seems that the better they treated their farm workers, the more likely they were to be evicted – because well-treated workers were inclined to join the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an opposition trade union party led by Morgan Tsvangirai. So, should the white farmers have treated their workers badly?

Would it have been better if Smith had conceded majority rule earlier? I think it might have been worse. The reverse question: since black people under black rule in Zimbabwe are much worse off than they were under white rule in Rhodesia, should white rule have continued? But this is a stupid question since it couldn’t have continued.

In South Africa, white rule could most certainly have continued after 1990, given the overwhelming strength of the white armed forces over anything the ANC used in opposition. But FW de Klerk chose not to continue it. I believe he was absolutely right, (in fact he is my hero for submitting to black majority rule) but some of the issues behind this confuse me and upset me, especially in the light of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe.

I think the only lesson we can learn from Zimbabwe is not to do the same thing here. It behoves us all to study Zimbabwe very carefully, to remember very clearly the promises and actions of the leading politicians there, to take full heed of the disintegration of the country and the atrocities, and to understand the reasons for both. Given the thunderous applause and standing ovations Mugabe got from the ANC whenever he visited South Africa, we have reason to believe SA might want to do here what he did there. The Expropriation Act 2025 just strengthens this belief, and gives cause for fear.

Enchanted
I first visited Zimbabwe in 1969, on a 1960 BMW R50 motorbike, from Cape Town, where I was studying at UCT. It was in some ways the greatest experience of my life. I was enchanted. I thought then, and I still think it now, that it was the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. I could think of nowhere else I’d rather live.

The scenery and wildlife were spectacular; the people, black and white, were friendly, charming and gifted. I rode from Beitbridge to Bulawayo, which I loved (more than Salisbury/Harare). I saw the amazing Matopo Hills.

I rode to the Victoria Falls, with an army escort for the last stretch, because guerrilla attacks were then beginning. The Falls surpassed all my expectations. Entrance was free then and they were open 24 hours a day. I went once at night, and by moonlight found the most magical spot I have ever seen, the bottom of the stone stairs at The Devil’s Cataract. The massive cascades of falling water thundered and glistened in the silver light; there was a sense of being surrounded by immense, haunting beauty.

On the way back, I went to see the little town of Wankie (now Hwange) and was seduced by it, and noticed its splendid coal power station, right next to an enormous coal field of high-quality coal (much better than our South African rubbish – although we are brilliant at burning it).

Zimbabwe is a treasure cove of minerals, good soil, good rainfalls, wonderful scenery, wonderful animal life, wonderful, gifted people. At UCT, in 1970 I think, I remember an earnest Rhodesian student saying to me, “Andrew, when this trouble is over, you’ll see Rhodesia boom as no country has ever boomed before.” I thought he might well be right.

When I returned from England in 1982, I really wanted to live in Zimbabwe rather than South Africa. I am a liberal and believe in full democracy, in majority rule. My dream job would have been working at the power station at Hwange. I visited Zimbabwe then and was charmed all over again. The strip roads fascinated me (especially since I was on a motorbike, not too sure if the oncoming car would give me the left lane – which it always did). I saw an elephant drinking in the swimming pool at the campsite at Chirundi and had a lovely boat trip across Lake Kariba. I didn’t know that the slaughter of Ndebele was happening in the south; I was unaware of coming calamity, of the horrible betrayal of the country of Zimbabwe and the people of Zimbabwe by murderous, malevolent political leaders. Then there was tragedy.

We must do everything we can to stop South Africa going the same way, because I fear there are powerful people here who would like her to do so.

Andrew Kenny is a writer, an engineer and a classical liberal

https://www.biznews.com/rational-perspective/2025/02/16/andrew-kenny-sa-heed-zimbabwes-lessons

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.