Valentine 0:00:00 Hello everyone. After a long hiatus, we are back again. It’s Zim Left Radio. And today I’m joined by Comrade Ian Bedders of the Zimbabwe Communist Party. Comrade Bedders, how are you doing?

Ian Beddowes 0:00:13 I’m very well, thank you. I’m now living in South Africa. And we’ve just recently had a land expropriation act which has been passed. But it’s not as radical as some people make you think in the press. Okay, sounds interesting.

Valentine 0:00:36 So have you been keeping in touch with developments in Zimbabwe? What’s going on in Zimbabwe, your northern neighbours?

Ian Beddowes 0:00:46 Well, what’s going on now is there’s a strong reaction, even within and without the ruling parties on the PF against the Muningagwa administration, more particularly because he wants to go for a third term of office. And at the same time, what we’ve seen from a class point of view is that the ruling elite has become more and more parasitic, even against capitalism, let alone against the working class and the peasants. They’ve been pushing back the results of the land reform of 2000 and after both some white farmers, but also the black elite have been taking land from the peasants. And it’s really very bad. In fact, from my point of view, the white farmers are genuine farmers and they are productive, although we wanted land reform. I think we have to go back if we go and look at Zimbabwe, because Zimbabwe land reform was the most famous. In Zimbabwe even now, about 70% of the people live in the rural areas. And many of them are peasant farmers and others are agricultural workers on commercial farms, others work in the mining sector. Now, when the liberation war happened, most of the fighters were peasants, although it did start with the working class. The core of the liberation struggle came from the working class in the cities. But when it came to the actual fighters, the peasants were more and they said, we want our land. Because what had happened when the white settlers came in, they started early on taking land for themselves, but especially 1930 was very important, because that was the major land act. And that land act divided the land of what was then southern Rhodesia between the white minority and the black majority. And roughly the whites got half and the blacks got half, roughly speaking, except that the whites were far, far fewer than the blacks. And in most cases, they received the best land and the black majority were forced onto marginal land. Now, after that, there were quite a number of other land acts, which would take a long time to go through them all. Some of the land acts actually gave concessions to the black majority, others over the years took more land away from them. So it was quite complex. But what was decided by the law of 1930 did not really change substantially.

Valentine 0:04:43 OK, so yes, I think it’s good that you’ve just started talking about the law of 1930, because I think before you go any further, I just wanted to, it’s a little bit of context and then, you know, ask you to resume after. Now, I will start by, I mean, this conversation obviously is going to be, you have already started talking about, to be more about land reform, land reform and the land question in Africa, really. Maybe we will specifically concentrate on Zimbabwe today, but it’s going to be about land reform in Africa. So I’m going to start by reading to you a very short paragraph from an article that was written by Roger Reider in 1980. This is this article appeared in a pamphlet entitled From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Behind and Beyond Lancaster House. And Reider wrote this article for the Catholic Institute for International Relations in London. And so I’m going to read just the first paragraph here. And he says he was actually citing someone else, a Kenyan writer, someone who wrote about land reform in Kenya. And this is what the court says. And I read now. The land scheme is political and it is designed to ensure stability at the time of independence. It seeks to do this by giving European farmers a sense of security so that they may be encouraged to stay in by removing the tension from the land problems. By providing settlement for those Africans who are suffering from most from pressure on their own lands, where many have no land or insufficient land. If this is not done, a very serious situation could arise in which Europeans would evacuate their farms and Africans walk in. As the economy is an agricultural one, that’s the Kenyan economy, one to which European farming provides not only the bulk of the exports and of the locally marketed crops, as well as of taxation, this could bring economic collapse in the country. It is therefore imperative to take all possible steps to prevent this and both to give assurances to European farms and a sense of security and also to settle next year or so many peasants as possible from the densely populated African areas. So Rijo quoted this from a book by G.U.A. Saman entitled Politics of Decolonization, Kenyan Europeans and the Land Issue. And this was a 1960, 1976 publication. OK, coming closer to home. Colin Stoneman is the last one, writing in just I think in 1979. And this is in a book entitled Zimbabwe’s Inheritance. And I think Stoneman wrote a whole article on agriculture. And I just want to concentrate on his last paragraph, which is which was this summary of how he was viewing the situation between, you know, in the time that Zimbabwe just recently got independent. So he says, to summarize the whole process, and that is the whole land process, black farmers were converted from successful enterprise and enterprising people, growing a surplus of food and preserving their independence from the demeaning status of working for whites in brackets, particularly white farmers, into impoverished subsistence farmers in overcrowded reserves, practicing supposedly traditional, but in fact, imposed an inefficient agricultural techniques and being obliged to work in large numbers for the white economy, and in particular, the appallingly badly paid agricultural sector thereof, which employed over a third of workers. The whites, meanwhile, developed from being subsistence farmers into a highly successful rural bourgeois with guaranteed markets and prices, government subsidies, a range of extension services, and a quite unjustified reputation for being essential to the future capacity of the country to feed itself. Plainly a record as damning as this had to be covered up and myths had to be propagated, justifying the policies which helped to preserve the unjust new order. So, yes, that’s Stoneman there for you. Right. So these two paragraphs, you want to react, Comrade?

Ian Beddowes 0:09:31 Yes, I think that’s very interesting on the question of how productive the black farmers were before the whites, because one of the things in many parts of the country, the blacks, especially for instance in Matabeleland, had huge herds of cattle, and that was a very important part of the diet. And on the eastern side of the country, for those who don’t know, Matabeleland is in the west, it tends to be a drier area, better for cattle farming. On the eastern side of the country, especially in Matabeleland, which gets quite a bit of rain, there are quite a number of local crops which were grown. And the farming was actually quite good under the black majority before colonisation. It’s looked upon as poor, but in fact it was very extensive and quite good. They had their own farming techniques. They grew small grains instead of maize, which were actually healthier. So I just saw a report the other day, a quotation by the missionary, by Robert Moffett, saying that the Ndebele’s were very healthy, some of the healthiest people he’d ever met, and they had a diet of meat. They had sour milk and whole grains, and I think that that was not that different in the rest of the country, showing the splitting areas and other parts. I think they had a healthy diet, they had a healthy lifestyle, right across Zimbabwe because they were eating natural food. When the whites came, they stole the cattle. This is not generally understood. And in Kenya, you mentioned Kenya, I’ve just been looking at Kenya, and the narrative from the British until very recently was you had these terrible Mao Mao terrorists who murdered these white settlers. In fact, they did. They killed about 32 white settlers. But it doesn’t put it in context. Between 1890 and 1910, the British systematically destroyed villages, killing men, women and children in a large part of what were then known as the White Highlands of Kenya. They actually stripped the land of people before the white settlers came. The white settlers, some of them to be fair, didn’t know, said, oh look, all this land is empty. Yeah, because the army had emptied it. It had massacred thousands of Kenyans before the main group of white settlers came. So, there’s a lot of misinformation. So, yeah, it’s quite true that blacks then were good farmers. Now, one of the problems that we do get with the land reform, and this is because of the petty bourgeois attitudes that have crept in, these attitudes that is more about ownership than about production, actually undermines people’s confidence in land reform. And what’s very important, you see, if you look at land reform in the Soviet Union, time of Lenin and Stalin, if you look at the time of land reform in China and the Mao, if you look at land reform in Cuba and the Fidel Castro and underneath the communist parties, as much as it was important to redistribute land to the people or set up cooperatives, it wasn’t only about taking land from the rich and giving to the poor. It was also about production. And unfortunately, in Zimbabwe, that didn’t quite happen because, you see, the two leaders of the land reform, Chen Zhirai Hundry, the war veterans leader, and Borde Gezi, who was a local leader in Mashon, of the peasantry, those people understood something about production. The peasants knew something about production. But what unfortunately happened, both those men who led the thing from 2000, both of them died in the middle of 2001. That in itself is very suspicious, by the way, although we’re told they died. One died in accident, the other died of natural causes. What happened after they died was the black elite started to take land for themselves. Now, just one more thing. You talked about maintenance of production. You know, they were saying about didn’t want to remove the white farmers. At the very beginning, the war veterans did not say, we’re going to take away all the land from all the white farms and throw them out. That was not said. The war veterans, led by Chen Zhirai Hundry, recognized the need for continuity. What they said, because it’s commonly white farmers own three or four farms, with a commercial farm being an average of 1000 hectares, which if you’re in Britain, you talk about acres, that’s like two acres, a bit more than two acres. So, one farmer might own 4000 hectares. Now, not all the white farmers were using that land productively. They were only using a part of the land which they owned. And the war veterans understood that. The war veterans did not say, we want to get rid of the white farmers. What they said was, we’re going to leave every white farmer with one farm, not with multiple farms. And the rest of the land will be given to the people to maintain production. This is not properly understood. When these two leaders took over, as I say, the black elite, a lot of them living in Harare or Bulawayo or the cities, simply got the land, but they didn’t work it, and they put their poor relatives onto the land because they just wanted ownership, and they were not so concerned about production. And the reality is that after land reform was over, some of the land, the small units, were given to the peasants, and to those war veterans who were very serious about utilizing their land. And the smaller scale farmers actually did better than the black elite who were given farms but didn’t utilize it. So, there’s a class element there which we must recognize.

Valentine 0:18:22 Okay. Well, that’s a very interesting intervention with the comrades. So I think I want to take you back to what was inherited, right? Because I think you’ve gone into detail to talk about the idea that you argue that Wunji and Gezi, or at least the initial leaders of the land reform, recognized that there was need to maintain production. But I think for some of our listeners, we might not actually understand this history. Do you want to tell us, I think you had said, going into the history of peasants and going to the liberation struggle and the land apportionment act. And I think I was going to say as well that I think there was also, I would think, and I would imagine that, and I’ve read somewhere that some of the white farmers were resistant to these changes, even if they made like super, you know, reasonable changes.

Ian Beddowes 0:19:21 Oh, that’s very true.

Valentine 0:19:22 If you have a big plot of land, maybe you should share it with your black-owned neighbors. Some of them were resistant to that.

Ian Beddowes 0:19:29 That’s very true. The leadership, right, the leadership of the commercial farmers union, which was basically the white farmers, because they were resistant. There were some white farmers, there was a minority of white farmers who recognized the need for change. And I think we must recognize that those people were there. One interesting, very interesting person was Garfield Todd, who was the former prime minister of Southern Rhodesia. Now, Garfield Todd had been a liberal and had wanted to bring, you know, in those days, 1950s, some blacks into government. He wasn’t a revolutionary as such, but he was a liberal. But because he didn’t want to, but because he just wanted to give the blacks something, he recognized it couldn’t stay as it was. The white extremists forced him out, called him gaffer booty, which, to translate it into sort of English, is brother to a nigga. It’s really nasty, gaffer booty. So he was forced out, and he had a big farm in the Midlands. And during the liberation struggle, he became more and more radicalized, and he gave sanctuary to the guerrilla fighters of both Zanu and Zappu. That’s Zana and Zebra. He gave them sanctuary on his farm, because he was under more or less house arrest, but his farm was very big. They couldn’t monitor it all the time. And after the liberation of Zimbabwe, he gave a very large part of his farm to former guerrilla fighters. He actually gave it away, but that was an exception. He was an exception. What happened, you see, at Lancaster House, which was in 1980, in 1979, because of the land issue, the talks were held up. So there’s both Zappu and Zanu there. Actually, it was Zanu led by Mugabe who, in the end, conceded. Zappu and Gomo of Zappu said, no, we’ve got to fix the land issue. Anyway, after 1980, there were some farms where, because of the war, the white farmers had simply run away. Those farms, they were given to the peasants, and that was just around about 1980-82. And then after that, they just agreed to this willing buyer, willing seller nonsense. And then, even when government bought some land, they weren’t giving it to the peasants. They were giving it on hire. They were hiring it out to ministers, senior civil servants, army chiefs. And it didn’t go to the peasants. There again, in 1994, there was a move to take away land without compensation by the government. And the law was passed. But then that law was challenged in the Supreme Court, and the white farmers won. But then the whole thing was simmering, because as that other guy had said, I think the Catholic guy had said, that the discontent was simmering. The war veterans themselves were not happy. I think it was 1996, they hadn’t had pensions or anything. They were pushed out by the black elite. They were ignored. They took over the Zalno-PF headquarters, and the government, Robert Mugabe at the time was president, were forced to give them pensions. So they began to feel their strength. Now again, there was other pressure coming for a new constitution. I’m saying this because I know most of the power members are in the environment, and other people are going to listen. There was a movement within Zalno-PF to say, well, we don’t like the way things are going. This is becoming what they used to call a chefs party. This is a party for the elite. This should be a people’s party. So in 1999, at the Zalno-PF Congress, the corrupt man who was in charge of land reform, a guy called Kumbaray Kangaay, was removed. And Joseph Maseka, who was one of the original founders of the liberation struggle, and who later became vice president, he was put in charge of land. Now, there’s a further complication that happened at the time, and that is that in 1991, Zimbabwe had adopted a neoliberal program called the Economic Structure Adjustment Program. Before 1991, most of what you bought in Zimbabwe was made in Zimbabwe. But then they were encouraged to have free trade, so-called. And so they started getting imports, and a lot of Zimbabwean industry was destroyed. The workers now turned against that. And by the mid-90s, they said, we need a workers’ party instead of Zalno-PF. So the initial impetus for a workers’ party was good, it was progressive, and it was against the structural adjustment policies. But then, other things happened. Robert Mugabe sent troops to Congo. Robert Mugabe had been close to the West until 1998. But after sending troops to Congo, which was invaded by an American proxy war, it was another proxy war, just like Ukraine is at the moment. They armed Uganda and Rwanda to invade the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mugabe, who was chair of the Southern African Development Community at the time, sent troops in. And the mood changed against Mugabe because he was blocking the US plan to take over the minerals of Central Africa for the interests of US imperialism. So, after Mugabe sent troops in, the British and the Americans then turned against Mugabe and they said, what can we do? There was a workers’ movement without any money, and they said, let’s give money to the workers’ movement. And the white farmers, they also knew that their time was coming, so you had this very weird organization, which was then called the Movement for Democratic Change, which brought together the white farmers and the workers. And already, you see, Zalno PF had lost a lot of support, especially in the urban areas. And the third thing that happened was that there was push for a new constitution. And the new constitution, a draft constitution, was drawn up. One of the things in the draft constitution was that land should be taken without compensation. So, this court case that the white farmers had brought would not have lasted. So, this new constitution, the MPC, with money from the British, lied about it. And from the Americans, they said, no, no, no, this is going to give more power to the president, to Rob Mugabe, which was in fact untrue. The real issue was the land issue. And anyway, by a small majority, the new constitution of 2000 was defeated. And what happened, soon after the defeat, the war veterans were fed up. They’d waited for 20 years for their land. They said, that’s it. So, the war veterans were not sent on the land by Rob Mugabe, who was dithering, didn’t know what to do. It was the war veterans themselves who said, we’re going to take the land. And they did. And they did.

Valentine 0:30:54 That’s very true.

Ian Beddowes 0:30:56 So, Rob Mugabe had no choice, because they’d already rose up against Mugabe to get their pensions. They were very militant, and Rob Mugabe had to bow down to them and agree to land reform. But then, this is quite a complex issue, then the two leaders died just a year after it happened, and the black elite, who’d been pushed to the side, began to regain their power. And they even started to throw up almost all the white farmers. The war veterans never said, we must get rid of all the white farmers. They said, white farmers must be restricted in their number of farms. They can’t have multiple farms, whereas the peasants and the black majority are pushed onto marginal land. This was the reality, and this is a reality that most people do not understand.

Valentine 0:31:58 Yes, I mean, there are so many myths and many lies told about the whole story of land reform in Zimbabwe, and thank you so much for clarifying that. But before, I have got two questions for you, and I think two additional questions for you to follow up on what you just said. Now, one thing that I think Robert Mugabe said, and which I agreed with him, and which was factually correct, is that when the discussions at Lancaster House were taking place, the impasse that you’ve already alluded to was over the land question. And I think the negotiations had almost collapsed until I think it was Henry Kissinger or someone from the American side who said, well, the United States came in and said, because obviously Britain had lost its small jaw, its position as the global empire, and the Americans were now in charge. And the Americans then said to break the impasse, the Americans came in and said, okay, we will underwrite this agreement. And how true is that? Because, you know, there was, I think I read somewhere that, look, the talks in Lancaster House had almost collapsed, but the Americans, and they said, okay, if the British don’t do it, then we will definitely be providing you with resources to, you know, to bankroll your land reform program. And then I think those resources never came. I think there was a donor conference that was kind of organized after, some sort of idea of a Marshall Plan, they called it a Zimbabwe conference. Exactly. Can you go into some detail on that?

Ian Beddowes 0:33:40 The promise was made, but it was never fulfilled. And I think the main reason was that Ronald Reagan took over in 1981. And Ronald Reagan was a hard line. So, Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, and then Ronald Reagan became US President in 1981. And therefore, all these kinds of things were scrapped. The British, under Thatcher as well, had agreed to help with land reform, but they never were not really bothered. They just want to make an agreement, take it off their hands. They were happy for Mugabe to be there rather than in Colmore, because in Colmore it was backed by the Soviets, was in league with the ANC. So, they were happy to have Zaunu rather than Zappu in control, because it was the Cold War at that time. So, that’s actually what happened. But within Zimbabwe, there was this thing of people wanting land. Now, one thing where I don’t agree with Mugabe, and yes, not everything he said was wrong by any means, but when he said about kith and kin all the time, yes, there was a right-wing grouping within the British establishment which had the kith and kin argument. Thatcher, by the way, who negotiated for Zimbabwean independence, actually told some of her right-wingers Julian Avery. She told them to shut up, because they knew what they were doing. So, what they wanted, and it’s there, and the American diplomat Andrew Young actually said it in 1980, he said the victory of Robert Mugabe is a victory for Western diplomacy. There’s an essay where he says this, it’s a victory for Western diplomacy, because it stopped the Soviet advance through Africa. And remember, you’ve got governments, especially in Angola, but also Mozambique, which had been backed by the Soviets, they were very worried about it. It stopped the Soviet advance through Africa. So, although they may not have liked Zannou and Robert Mugabe 100%, to them, he was better than Ngonu and Zappu and those guys who were linked to the African National Congress. The African National Congress was being led by the South African Communist Party at the time and was linked to the Soviets. So, for them, it was the better option. So, all these things are interlinked. And by the way, what I should have mentioned earlier was, as much as for the ordinary people, it’s a question of agricultural land in most of Africa. Like I said, Zimbabwe is 70% rural. For the people outside and for the country as a whole, the real question is not what is on top of the land, it’s what is underneath the land. So, when we talk about land reform, we should also be talking about the minerals, because Africa is wanted for its minerals. The war that’s been going on in DRC, actually almost continuously since 1960 with a few breaks, has been over minerals. The ownership of minerals and the fact that major foreign companies want the mineral resources of Africa. And Democratic Republic of Congo, which I mentioned already, is the richest country in Africa in minerals. So, when we talk about land reform in Africa, as I say, the ordinary people think about it in terms of farming, because they mostly come from peasant backgrounds, even if they now work in the towns. Everybody wants a piece of land, a few cattle. But the real issue is who owns what’s underneath the land. I can’t emphasize that too strongly. So, the big picture is the ownership of minerals. And some countries, okay, you can say then, do African countries have the ability to mine those minerals? Well, some countries, like Botswana for instance, which in some ways is not the right wing government, but we know Botswana for diamonds. But one thing which they did, which to me was quite progressive, in the early stages of independence, they made a deal with the Beers over the diamonds of Botswana. And the idea was that the Beers got 49% of the diamond profits, and the Botswana government got 51%, which allowed Botswana, which was very, very underdeveloped, to develop. So, those kinds of 50-50 agreements can be looked into. And the other thing the Botswana government did, which was very good, having got money from the diamonds, they bought another 20% share into the Beers on the open market. So, that shows you what can be done. Right now, we’re seeing in Burkina Faso that they’ve taken control of their gold. In Niger, these are very poor countries, they’ve taken control of their uranium. So, we can take control of our resources. If we need the technology, we don’t have technology, we can then do a deal with a foreign company or a foreign country, but knowing that the minerals which are being mined belong to us in Africa, and they’re working as contractors for which they must be paid. But they cannot come in and own our minerals and just mine them and leave big holes in the ground and displace our people. And we’ve got to agree to that. That’s what we have to do.

Valentine 0:41:31 Yeah, good point there. Although I’ve written an article in the past, I think, a very old article on Botswana. And I mean, whilst on the face of it, the De Beers-Botswana Pact appears as if it’s a very progressive deal. My reservations for it is that although, relatively speaking, one could argue and say Botswana is a developed country in Africa, there has not been any, there’s no industry to talk about in Botswana. It still remains a resource dependent country. And I think for me, the development that I think is what we need in Africa is not necessarily like, make of course the minerals, we would need the revenues to do what but it seems to actually industrialize. And if there’s no industrialization, I’m not sure that we would have reached the final destination, but we can talk about Botswana some other time.

Ian Beddowes 0:42:29 We’re not in disagreement there. And I’m very pleased about the new government in Botswana, which is actually talking about industrialization. But when you’ve got minerals, and no one is mining them, or they’re being mined, but everything is going out to the country, the first stage before you could even use those minerals is to make sure that they’re not being used. That the country gets at least the lion’s share of the profit from those minerals. And the next stage is to use that profit to build your local industry. And I think that’s now what’s happening in Botswana with the new government and the new president. So that’s a very important point. But at the moment, in Zimbabwe even, minerals are being dug, but we’re not developing our industry. And in most African countries, I was speaking the other day to Buka Omoole, who is the leader of the Communist Party Marxist of Kenya. I had a long talk with him the other day. And yeah, Kenya, there’s no industrialization. And yet it’s one of the richest countries in Africa. So there’s two stages. First of all, we have to build our infrastructure. We need to make profit from our minerals, and even from our agricultural produce, but we cannot stay there. We then have to develop industry. And I think that’s most, most important. And coming back to the land issue, we can do that when we own our resources, not some foreign country or foreign people. Or even our own elite who just want to put money into their own pockets. So the money, the profit has to come from our agricultural produce, from our minerals, must be plowed back into industrialization. And it must benefit the whole people, not just a small minority, which now is involved in showing off with all their expensive things. You know, this Ling mentality. No, we cannot allow that. Valentine 0:45:29 I couldn’t agree with you more, Comrade. You know, one thing I wanted to just going back to the question of land reform. So I’ve often been involved in debates. So my point or my take is that notwithstanding whatever happened, Zimbabwe’s land reform program was the most progressive thing that ever happened, actually. Yes. In the whole of the African continent, it had to be done. Now, how you and I could debate how this was supposed to be done and all the nuances of it, but I’m absolutely of the view that, you know, given how the land was taken, you know, the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 or 1934 was a horrific and, you know, dispossession and the violence that was involved. And taking away this land is nowhere near what we saw in the 2000s. But this is not to compare and say there’s a bit of violence or there’s a less bit of violence. But I think I think that land reform program had to be done now. Whenever I put forward that argument.

Ian Beddowes 0:46:38 I fully agree with you. I fully agree with you. By the way, I worked personally with Chen Zhui Hunzhi. My name was in the papers in Zimbabwe and even in South Africa is this strange white man who supported the war veterans. Yes. And we have had a lot of people benefit from it. That had to be done. What I don’t like is the way that sections of the black elite have sort of have tried to take over. And what was very alarming was last year, it came out in the Zimbabwe papers that the daughter of Robin Mugabe, Bonin Mugabe, you know, when she was divorced from her husband, and it was shown that she owned 21 farms. Now that was not what we fought for. But nevertheless, I know a number of people who have benefited from land reform. And the whole attitude, even from white farmers who have returned, is we cannot carry on in the old way. So you’ve got some white farmers who’ve returned, and you find that most of those who return get on well with the local people. They speak Shona or Ndebele, and they’ve now become part of the system, not part of the opposition. They’re being integrated into Zimbabwe as Zimbabweans who happen to be white. And the back has been broken to a large extent of this Rhodesian mentality that we’re something different, that we’re a superior race. This thing has largely died a death, not completely. But compared to what it was, you know, you have to look compare with what we got now. Yeah, that has gone, that was reduced considerably. So yeah, I think.

Valentine 0:49:05 Let me take you down to more recent times. In the last, I think it should be the last two, three years or so, at least since in Zimbabwe, since Emasum Nangagau came into power, President Nangagau came into power, there has been much talk about, in fact, we heard, I think I must have read somewhere, and it was written, discussed widely in the newspapers, that the Zimbabwean government is now ready to go. And they are raising funds to compensate the former white farmers whose land was repossessed during the land reform programme. Can you tell us more about that? What are the class dynamics of this announcement?

Ian Beddowes 0:49:51 To me, it is ridiculous. As much as I was not in favour of removing all the white farmers, of reducing farmers to one farm, they were nevertheless producing for the interest of the country. But once they’ve left, and they’re not even interested in coming back, why give them money? They’ve benefited all these years from the labour of the black majority, and from having a privileged position. Why must we repay that money? I’m totally against that. Ourselves and the Communist Party, we’re opposed to compensation to white farmers. They’ve gone, they’ve gone. In some cases, where we need the skills of some of the white farmers, I don’t mind not pushing peasants off the land, here and there, giving them land, which they will work on. But to compensate those people who are not working or living in Zimbabwe anymore, I think to me, it’s totally ridiculous. And it reminds me of the time during, I think, the 1830s, when the slaves in the West Indies were released from slavery. And the government compensated the slave owners. So to me, it’s a similar thing. So no, I’m not in favour at all of compensating any white farmers. I was a member of Zarnupiev at the time of the land reform. But I think all the progressive people in Zarnupiev have now either died or they’ve left that party. And Zarnupiev today has become purely a party of the black elite who are looking after their own interests. And what’s also happening is they’re not interested in developing production inside their own country. And this is true for most of Africa. They just want to make themselves, they don’t want to stir the water. They just want to make peace, especially with the Western countries. So they can say, look, we’re good boys, and get recognition from the West. They don’t want to, as long, all they’re interested in is their interest in making their percentage. A foreign company comes in and they do everything they want their percentage. But they’re not interested, they’re not even capable, the majority of them are not even capable of capitalist organisation. A real capitalist does organised production as much as the real capitalist is exploitative of labour. But these guys don’t even know how to do that. Someone else will do the work of the capitalist and they just take their percentage. They just make a rent for whatever’s happening. They’re completely parasyte. Even in terms of the capitalist system, they’re parasitic.

Valentine 0:54:26 I think it’s also kind of a sign, or actually that’s the whole situation with this stage of capitalism that we are in. I think even in the most developed countries, or at least most capitalist developed countries, they tend towards parasyteism. I think Lenin already started to tell us about this in his The system just becomes so parasitic. I think it’s even worse in the United States. I think it’s even worse in the United States. I think it’s even worse in the United States. I think it’s even worse in the United States. I think it’s even worse in the United States. I think it’s even worse in the United States. In South Africa right now, I think when Donald Trump came into power, he has been talking a lot about how whites are being dispossessed. There’s a section of the ANC that is supportive of rent. I think rent distribution without compensation. Did you want to tell us the question to be more direct? I wanted you to tell us about the situation in South Africa and what lessons can be learned from it.

Ian Beddowes 0:56:28 Building housing, for building infrastructure, and because farmers have put up the prices of their land. This is about them being able to fix the price of land. If they want to build a dam, a power station, a housing development, this is for government. This is not about redistribution of agricultural land to the people. Not at all. It’s been exaggerated. In fact, it replaces another similar act of 1975 made during the party. Talking to the South African Communist Party, which is in alliance with the African National Congress, but has become more and more critical, the communists in South Africa are supporting this act. Trump, as an extremist, has got hold of the wrong edge of the stick. It is true that isolated Afrikaner farmers have been killed. There’s no question about that. They are killed by gangsters, basically. We’ve got high unemployment in South Africa, about 42% in the foremost sector. There has been gangsterism and there have been white farmers killed. But what we also must remember is that many of the white farmers in South Africa have got a very hard-line attitude and they don’t treat the workers any better than they did under apartheid. In some cases, there’s been hatred against the white farmers because of the way they treat the black majority. There was a case that came up in the courts quite recently of a white farmer who ran over a little boy and killed him because he was stealing oranges.

Valentine 0:58:51 Oh dear, that’s really sad.

Ian Beddowes 0:58:54 So you’ve had other cases of white farmers savagely against local black people. It looks like the majority of Afrikaners don’t want to go to the United States. As far as I’m concerned, if they want to go, bye-bye. Let them enjoy the collapsing economy of the United States. So South Africa is in an interesting position because I would say that the president of South Africa, Ramaphosa, is still trying to play both sides. South Africa belongs to BRICS, which I’m very happy about because BRICS is the immediate future for Africa, for the world, against the complete dominance of the United States. It’s satellites, but they still want to play. There again, they’ve got special trade relationships with the United States and they’re trying to lose it. But even in the last budget, what we haven’t seen, and we’ve got this across Africa, is that African governments are always looking for money. Not production for money, outside production. So it’s partly because of the way that African leaders have come into power, which was described as early as 1961 by Frantz Fanon, that they don’t really understand production, number one. Number two is this whole thing which we had, as I said, since 1981, the neoliberalism which encourages money above production and which has now created the problem for the United States. See, Trump, in his crude way, has recognised that America needs production. So he’s putting tariffs on everybody, hoping that the US industry will pick up. But he’s done it in such a rough fashion that he’s upset all his allies. But within that roughness, there’s a recognition of something genuine. He’s also recognised that you can’t keep throwing money away on a wall, which they will lose, because the Russians will never give way to their territory being threatened. They went through the Second World War, they went before the Second World War, to the Civil War, which was really a war of independence as well, just after the First World War. So they don’t give way to anybody. So he’s realised that, at least he’s sensibly realised, you cannot win a war against Russia. So he’s pulled out of there. But he’s still trying to dominate other countries. But one thing he’s recognised is that production should become before money. If you look at China, the major banks are all state-owned. There is capitalism in China and outside China, as we know in Africa. We’ve got various Chinese companies. But they’re productive. We can complain about the way they operate in Africa, but they produce something. Now, in the USA, the whole question has been buying and selling money on these money markets. And unfortunately, we did this in Zimbabwe. We opened at the very time after ESAP in 1991, that for instance the cotton industry was collapsing. We developed all these so-called indigenous banks, most of which collapsed, because money without production. And you mentioned Lenin. Engels, in a note in Marx’s second volume of Capital, in addition to Marx’s writing, he puts that at some stage in history, countries will try and make money without production. And this was written somewhere about 1890. So this is what the Westerners tried to do. They’ve been trying to make money without production, or where production is secondary to printing money. And they’re falling apart because of it. And now Africa has followed suit. And South Africa has still not got it to its head that we have to have infrastructure and production. Zimbabwe the same, Kenya the same, and most other countries. The countries which have recognized the need for production are the Sahel countries. These previously very backward countries, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and now Senegal is coming into the mix. Ghana is coming into it. Torgul. So West Africa is now taking over as the center for African development. They now take the lead in Africa. And it’s interesting that Burkina Faso is now producing its own electric car.

Valentine 1:05:31 Yeah, well, that’s also a good point for us to stop today’s conversation. I think we’ve covered a lot of ground and discussed a lot of topics, although we focus a lot on land reform.