In April 2000, I joined American insurer, AIG Zimbabwe Ltd in the farming claims department, less than two months before Robert Mugabe’s government had lost the constitutional referendum by 45% to 55% votes. I would have a front row seat in the chaos that followed the chaotic land reform. Many people do not know that Mugabe was forced by civil society in Zimbabwe to even embark on the constitution making position as he was content with the amended Lancaster House Constitution. I was there on a Saturday in 1998 when civil society in Zimbabwe came together at the Great Hall at the University of Zimbabwe campus to launch National Constitutional Assembly (NCA).
I remember that day, some of us who didn’t have cars were given free transport by Zimbabwe Council of Churches from town to Mount Pleasant and back to Harare CBD in their Toyota Coaster Minibuses. Speaker after speaker bemoaned the heavily amended Lancaster House Constitution as the source of our problems. We breaked for lunch into the university dining to this scrumptious meal of mainly chicken and this was quite handy for me as I was still a bachelor. We were told that Dr Edison Zvobgo then Zanu-PF secretary for legal affairs would address us that afternoon and he did not come. Morgan Tsvangirai was unanimously elected as the first leader of NCA. The following year, I also attended the launch of MDC at Rufaro Stadium in September 1999 where Tsvangirai was elected as president and Gibson Sibanda as his deputy.
Mugabe would later constitute the Constitutional Commission of Zimbabwe led by the then Judge President of the high court, Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku. The commission comprised all members of parliament who were almost all Zanu-PF members as well as some of the civil society members such as Lupi Mushayakarara and Professor Jonathan Moyo among others. I remember Chidyausiku apologising for a “moment of weakness” involving a fellow female commissioner. Lupi would later resign from the commission, I used to attend seminars organised by Lupi at Oasis Cresta Hotel that lady was fearless. I always warn people about trusting Jonathan Moyo in my view the man doesn’t have principles.
The consensus from those of us in NCA and MDC was that the draft constitution didn’t reflect the views of people and we resolved to vote NO. Mugabe decided to put a sweetener on the draft constitution in the form of expropriation of land without compensation. Land is an emotional issue in Africa. Our villages of Bokwe and Mugomeza in Murehwa where my mother and father come from respectively bordered the white commercial farmer. I never liked the way farmers treated villagers and their farm workers. Less than 2kms from our house in Yellow City Township in Marondera we had the first farm. I would study in the bush next to the farm but I never dared cross into the farmer’s farm as I knew the consequences. A few white farmers were prosperous and owned all this land whilst the majority of us natives leaved in squalor. I still voted NO because I knew Robert Mugabe was not being sincere and we needed new leadership.
After Mugabe lost the referendum in February 2000, in June 2000 we were going to have parliamentary elections and Zanu-PF faced defeat. Mugabe’s government went ahead and amended the constitution to expropriate land without compensation even though we had voted NO. Another law was passed to take away citizenship and the right to vote for people with foreign parentage. What this move did was was to remove from voters roll whites and blacks most of whom had come from Malawi, Mozambique and a few from Zambia. Overnight hundred of thousands Zimbabweans became stateless😢 hey Zanu-PF is evil guys.
There was farm invasions throughout Zimbabwe and there was violence against white farmers, black farmers not sympathetic to government and farm workers. Some farmers were murdered as well as their farm workers. No one was prosecuted for all these murders. Property on the farms was stolen and a lot of farm houses were burnt. The police were powerless to do anything. Farm invasions became a political issue that was too hot to handle for the police. Farmers approached courts and the police refused to enforce the court orders. Eventually Patrick Chinamasa then Zimbabwe’s Minister of Justice forced Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay from office and his replacement was the pliant Justice Chidyausiku ahead of more experienced Supreme Court judges such as the fiercely independent Wilson Sandura. Chidyausiku’s Supreme Court eventually reversed these rulings in favour of the Zanu-PF government.
My mother informed me that her cousin sekuru Givemore Muwoni Katsande had been arrested for murder after he had led war veterans at a farm belonging to prominent farmer Mr Ian Kay who was also an MDC supporter. Sekuru Katsande died on death row waiting for Mugabe’s pardon. I would stumble on the assessment report in the office as we insured the farm. No one in the office knew that I was related to Sekuru Katsande. What happened is that the farmer had called in the police again after more violence at the farm. Mr Ian Kay was critically injured on that day. A police constable had responded and he came wearing his home clothes and tried to restrain war veterans. I don’t know if Sekuru Katsande didn’t know that he was a police officer and he had proceeded to shoot the police officer and he died. I am not sure if he had killed a farm worker or the farmer if he would have been arrested? Mugabe called farm invasions Chimurenga (war), my suspicion is that my uncle believed that he was following orders hence he was hopeful for a pardon from Mugabe, Mugabe had pardoned people for attempted murder against opposition figures. During the ensuing violence overseas managers at our company flew into Zimbabwe and they crunched the numbers and after a few days our company stopped insuring farmers altogether and about 40% of the staff was retrenched. Around 2005 AIG Zimbabwe closed their Zimbabwean offices.
I first met Sekuru Katsande in 1990 when my father was transferred to Marondera. My maternal grandmother vaSoko is from the Katsande family in Mutoko. Sekuru Givemore Katsande father is brother to my grandmother. Growing up around my grandmother vaSoko everytime there was a mishap she would say ,”baba vangu Muwoni iwe”(shame my father Muwoni). Sekuru Givemore Katsande was given his grandfather’s name Muwoni. Sekuru Katsande was a war veteran and walked with a limp and I gathered he was injured during the war. He was working in the Zimbabwe National Army as a captain, it seems by the time he took voluntary retrenchment he was now a major.
Around 1990, the Zimbabwean government embarked on the Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) as part of accessing foreign currency and financing from IMF. It entailed the government bringing down its spending. This involved the government retrenching tens of thousands of workers. Sekuru Katsande was going to take that voluntary retrenchment package and he prepared for life as a civilian. By the time I started O’Level in 1992, we started studying together. The army was providing lessons to him and his fellow soldiers and he had a lot of books that he shared with me.
One of the set books we read in O’Level Shona was ‘Zvairwadza Vasara’ which documents the war experience during Zimbabwe’s war of liberation and I was curious to know more about the war. One day I asked him about his war experience, he never answered me and I could see it traumatized him. From that day onwards I never asked anyone about their war experience. I later learnt that Sekuru Givemore has resigned from the army and he had opened a supermarket in Mabvuku/Tafara Townships of Harare. In 1996 I also left home as I started working.
I would visit him at his new home less frequently. Many people especially in South Africa thinks the farm invasions in Zimbabwe were spontaneous and this is not correct. Farm invasions were planned and orchestrated by Zimbabwe National Army which most likely armed the war veterans. The department of war veterans in Zimbabwe falls directly under the ministry of defence. From 2001 to 2008, I ran 5 shops in former commercial farming areas of Virginia, Macheke at every farm people who called the shots were war veterans. Many of us still remember the bizarre press conference by senior military officers led by Defence forces Commander Gen Vitalis Zvinavashe to say they would not salute a person who didn’t fight in the war an indirect reference to Morgan Tsvangirai. Incidentally my late brother in law who was married to my cousin was the aide/bodyguard to General Zvinavashe.
Senior military personnel has always been involved in the management of elections in Zimbabwe and even as we speak the current chief elections officer is Major Utoile Silaigwana a military man. Many people believe the the 2002 election was engineered to deny victory to Morgan Tsvangirai, for an independent report on how flawed that election was you have to read the report compiled by South Africa’s justices Sisi Kamphepe and Dikgang Moseneke. The 2005 Operation Murambatsvina is most likely have been sanctioned by the army as an effort to decongest the urban population to rural areas in order to have more citizens in rural areas where people are easier to control to benefit Zanu-PF in future elections.
In 2008 after Mugabe lost the first round presidential election, it was the army which deployed senior officers to oversee the violence against ordinary citizens which saw the murder of over 200 MDC supporters and thousands more were raped, injured and displaced from their homes. The judge who sat on the March 2008 election results for more than a month and was the man in charge of that elections is Justice George Chiweshe himself a war veteran and also a military man. We saw it again in November 2017, the army intervened to save Zanu-PF. I am interested to know what many war veterans and army personnel including those who retired thinks about the latest moves to give back land to white farmers. I think we need proper land reform audits, we need to provide land to all deserving Zimbabweans regardless of race. I fear that this latest move will be opposed vigorously and we might be about to see another coup in Zimbabwe. Many of my relatives and friends are beneficiaries of land reform.
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