Land, liberation and compromise in Southern Africa, by Chris Alden and Ward Anseeuw, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 272 pp., £57.50 (hardback), ISBN 9780230230842
This book brings a long-overdue regional perspective to the analysis of Southern Africa's unresolved land issues. Alden and Anseeuw explore the ramifications of Zimbabwe's controversial fast-track land reform, in particular how events in Zimbabwe have helped to reignite a debate that had long been forgotten by policy makers and donors. This is a compact book based on empirical research. It analyses the fundamental flaws of liberal constitutionalism and neoliberal macro-economic policies, and their impact on post-colonial state making in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia.
Through analysis of post-colonial state making, the book provides a fresh approach to how we can better understand the impact of liberal constitutionalism on the delivery of social reforms in the post-liberation era. The book analyses the crises of liberal constitutionalism, in particular how the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ concept, which governed land redistribution in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, failed to deliver land to the landless. It also highlights how events in Zimbabwe marked a turning point in the process towards a more radical land reform and the return to anti-imperialist discourses across the region and on international forums.
The book explores how the land-reform agenda gradually shifted from promises of giving ‘land to the tiller’ during the liberation struggle to the fundamental change towards a more liberal approach focusing on production rather than redistribution. This shift in the policy on land reform was reflected across the region. In South Africa for example, the elites of the African National Congress (ANC) initially supported broad-based social reforms including land and agrarian reform, under the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), but later shifted towards a liberal approach that supported agricultural production rather than redistribution. These changes reflected the influence of neoliberalism in macro-economic policy formulation during the Mbeki era.
The book's analysis of land-reform programmes across the Southern African region highlights the constraints imposed on redistributive land reform by market-based approaches. It shows how Robert Mugabe, facing a crisis of legitimacy after many years of failing to deliver the ‘promised land’ under the constraints of the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ approach, sought to challenge liberal constitutionalism by using the liberation narrative as a locus to reclaim legitimacy. This was achieved through a radical transformation of property ownership. Mugabe's fast-track land-reform programme, tinged with megaphone diplomacy and anti-imperialist rhetoric, resonated deeply with the dispossessed populations of Southern Africa. Many of these populations were still enduring the vagaries of colonial and apartheid dispossession. They saw in Mugabe's radical reforms a model that could be applied locally to reverse historical injustices related to land ownership.
The book further highlights the complexity of the geopolitics of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region, in particular the responses to Zimbabwe's controversial land-reform programme. While many countries in the region, including the regional ‘powerhouse’ South Africa, stood by Mugabe's anti-imperialist rhetoric, regional responses were far from uniform. Some countries while outwardly supporting Zimbabwe's fast-track model were beneficiaries of ‘foreign direct investment’ after offering evicted Zimbabwean commercial farmers incentives to invest in their respective countries.
An important contribution made by this book, which has been neglected by the literature, is that it points out the power of ‘liberation narratives’ in shaping post-colonial state making. The book explores the resurgence of these ‘narratives’ in response to the crisis of neoliberalism and how these have emerged as powerful tools in legitimising the rule of ‘revolutionary parties’. For example, in Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe was able to successfully depict the opposition as agents of imperialist forces seeking to undermine the gains of the liberation struggle. He was also able to challenge liberal constitutionalism by projecting it as an imperial project whose main aim was to protect the interests of mainly white commercial farmers. White farmers were depicted as the major beneficiaries of the negotiated transition to majority rule at the expense of Africans.
The book concludes by examining the challenges facing liberal constitutionalism across the region. It highlights how ‘liberation narratives' are helping to legitimise the rule of ‘revolutionary parties’ across the region. It suggests their enduring role in maintaining a tight grip on power, in the process undermining the consolidation of a democratic culture in the region.
This is a very important book that captures regional experiences with regards to post-colonial state making and the impact of liberal constitutionalism on redistributive land reform. However, it seems to have been rushed for publication with inadequate proofreading. The book contains many basic errors; names of individuals and events are incorrectly spelt. This is reflected in many chapters. For example, on page 40, the Rhodesian Maize Control Act of 1931 is mistakenly called the Maize Council Act. On page 44 the name of the late Zimbabwean nationalist Herbert Chitepo is mistakenly spelt Herbert ‘Chipote’. The name of another nationalist, Ndabaningi Sithole, is also mistakenly spelt ‘Ndabagning’. The late Zimbabwean War Veterans' leader Chenjerai Hunzvi's name is mistakenly spelt ‘Hunzi’. Zimbabwe's economic structural adjustment programme (ESAP) is wrongly called ESCAP. These spelling mistakes are also reflected in the bibliography where names of authors are incorrect. These basic errors undermine the book's credibility as a reliable resource for scholarly research. However, despite these shortcomings the book brings a fresh regional perspective on the land issue, which has been neglected in recent literature.