State Farm

Inside Newlands, a gated community in Blantyre, the largest city in the southern African nation of Malawi, it's as if the colonial era never ended. In a small cottage, elderly British couples-- the men in Out of Africa khaki short-shorts and knee socks--sip milky afternoon tea brought by Malawian attendants in white frocks. Most residents are retired farmers of tea, tobacco, and coffee, Malawi's traditional exports. During the colonial period, these commodities were grown on large estates owned by the British crown. When Malawi became independent in 1964, some estates stayed in the hands of British citizens, a tiny white land-owning minority in a country whose population has swelled to twelve million.One might think that Newlands residents would be worried. Over the past five years, as white landholders have been violently pushed off their farms in neighboring Zimbabwe, Malawian politicians have praised Robert Mugabe's land expropriation. Poor Malawian workers have begun encroaching on tea and coffee estates, sometimes even attacking farm managers. But no one at Newlands seems concerned that Malawi could come to resemble Zimbabwe. Dick Buckingham, a former tobacco estate manager who has lived in Malawi for 60 years, leans back in a porch chair, sipping whiskey on ice. "There are even some [white] Zimbabwean farmers who've come here to work," Buckingham says. "Only the extremists would like to see the estates closed down [in Malawi]." Outside the gated community, though, the situation is bleaker: Spotless Newlands cottages give way to Blantyre's tin-roofed shacks. Malawi has one of the highest population densities in Africa, and per capita income averages about $200 per year. Emaciated children wander the roads, begging drivers for five kwacha, less than a nickel. Outside Blantyre, in the rural Thyolo region, Malawians grow scraggly ears of maize or forage for food in the few remaining woodland areas, already almost completely denuded by scavengers. The crisis in Zimbabwe has focused media attention in southern Africa--in Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa--on the plight of white farmers like those from Newlands. But, in truth, it is poor blacks who most often are the victims of corrupt land reform. Indeed, in African countries undergoing land reform, the greatest threat may not be Mugabe-style expropriation of white farms, but a less understood part of the Mugabe strategy: stealing land from poor blacks and handing it to political elites, most of whom know little about farming, a situation that has led to a horrific famine in Zimbabwe. "I'm always highly suspicious of land reform acts that give more [connected] people the possibility of taking more land," says one land expert in Blantyre. Unfortunately, Malawi's land reform may do just that. Across southern Africa, where agriculture often remains the only viable occupation, land retains enormous economic and psychological value. Most southern African states are also young democracies, and, over the past decade, their governments have vowed to promote land reform--the process of handing over land to the landless. But, faced with numerous challenges--from holding free elections to combating HIV--most have stalled on land reform. In Malawi, major land reform did not begin until 2002. In South Africa, whites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the population, owned over 85 percent of farmland in 1994; yet, since then, the government has transferred less than 5 percent of it to new owners. The slow pace of reform, combined with high unemployment, has sparked populist outcries. In January 2004, Joseph Kauandenge, then- head of the National Unity Democratic Organization party in Namibia, announced that "silence over [land reform]" could prompt invasions of white- owned land. In November 2004, some 10,000 people marched on the offices of South Africa's largest commercial farming organization. One march leader told reporters, "Land must be returned to the people ... and the government must expropriate it if necessary." The foreign media has played up this tension: "mugabe `experts' spark fear of land grab in namibia," thundered one Guardian headline. But the media focus is misplaced--Namibia, South Africa, Malawi, and Zambia are unlikely to face a racial crisis anytime soon. Outside Zimbabwe, white farmers, backed by powerful commercial unions, have reached a reluctant accommodation with land reformers. "In Namibia, soon after independence [in 1990], there was a national conference on land reform that led to some consensus, and all stakeholders, blacks and whites, could give input," says Sakkie Coetzee, executive director of one of the country's large farming organizations. In fact, one head of Namibia's white farmers' union told members that they must "face reality" and proactively take part in the land reform process. What's more, most southern African nations are highly dependent on foreign investment and need to project an image of stability. "The Namibian government is concerned, aware of the country's international standing," says one Western diplomat posted in Windhoek, the capital. In South Africa, the continent's biggest draw for foreign companies, the government has repeatedly called on the police to evict squatters from white land. Ironically, when it comes to land held by poor blacks, or traditional black chiefs, many southern African governments have acted far differently. In the Thyolo region, southeast of Blantyre, rolling hills layered with palm fronds give way to steeper peaks covered in scrubby trees. On one local mountain, many families had built small huts and, for generations, raised corn and small animals to survive. Like most poor people in Africa, they had no title to their land, which was communal and overseen by traditional chiefs. Over the last five years, the Malawian government seized the land and handed it to supporters of former President Bakili Muluzi, who remains powerful. "Local communities were just pushed off their land," says one person who followed the Thyolo incident. "When I asked one minister why ... he just mumbled something." This type of expropriation is all too common. In Zimbabwe, "the biggest losers of the land program have been black Zimbabweans," International Crisis Group special adviser John Norris told reporters in 2004. In Malawi, the new land reform policy, approved in 2002, concentrates an extraordinary amount of discretion in the hands of the land minister and other top bureaucrats and allows the government to take communal land--where the poorest live--without consulting traditional leaders. Meanwhile, in Namibia, leading ministers have become gentleman farmers, traveling to the farms they have obtained on weekends and using them as status symbols. "Big politicians already have affirmative action loans to buy farms ... and government will just keep subsidizing those big politicians," says Robin Sherbourne, a Namibian land reform expert. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe has seized nearly eleven million hectares of land, much of which has gone to his political supporters. One study of Malawian land reform shows that some 28 percent of the nation's total land area currently lies idle, suggesting that the arable land is being taken by wealthier interests who don't know how to use it or don't want to. Unlike white farmers, poor blacks have few unions to protect them, matter little to foreign investors, often don't understand the judicial process, and receive far less press coverage. "Average people don't know about land reform... . When you go out to communities, they'll tell you they don't know about the policy," says one Malawian land expert who works closely with the poor. Strong opposition parties might expose the corruption inherent in many land reform policies. Yet, even in South Africa, no opposition party garners more than 13 percent of the vote. Southern Africa also hasn't yet developed a vibrant nonprofit culture. "Without NGO pressure, you have a greater chance of land just going to politically connected people," says Oxfam's Robin Palmer. Across Blantyre from Newlands, in the gritty industrial suburb of Limbe, Robert White is hardly as relaxed as the old British farmers. The advocacy director for Oxfam's project in Malawi, White is an idealistic young Malawian with a long face and a slick, shaved head. His eyelids droop, and, at times, he seems ready to collapse at his desk. He has reason to be tired: Oxfam Malawi is one of the few organizations battling for the poor's land rights in a society where colonial rule, followed by post-independence dictatorship, eviscerated civil society. He is essentially alone. "Oxfam basically pushes ... the government to listen more to the people in the process of land reform," says White, noting that he hasn't found many allies. Donors, who contribute mightily to government budgets, can exert pressure to ensure that land is not given to political elites. (In Malawi, aid money accounts for nearly half the state budget.) Unfortunately, many donors aren't stepping up to the plate. For instance, the German government, still the largest aid donor to Namibia (its former colony), seems to be stalling on playing a financial and advisory role in that country's land reform, says Rogier van den Brink, of the World Bank in Pretoria. The result of these land grabs is disaster. Handing land to people who don't know how best to farm it decreases crop production in an already famine-prone region. In Malawi, after the land in Thyolo was handed to the new inhabitants, many couldn't farm the rough soil, contributing to serious hunger and violent unrest in the area. "It's been a disaster," admits one land reform specialist. Across Malawi, a combination of poor weather and ill-trained farmers taking over land has led to the worst maize harvest in more than a decade. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that 40 percent of Malawians, some five million people, may be at serious risk of hunger this year; the World Food Programme has issued an emergency report and an appeal for aid to Malawi. In Namibia, meanwhile, Jane's Intelligence Review reports that the handing over of former commercial farms has been disastrous, with land "degenerating back to subsistence existence." The worst-case scenario can be outright famine. In Zimbabwe, large tracts of land were handed to so-called "cell phone farmers"--members of Mugabe's party who continued to live in the capital. The handover to these new, unskilled landlords cost some 90,000 Zimbabwean farm workers and small-scale farmers their jobs and ruined what was once Africa's breadbasket. Since the land-grabs began, the amount of land under cultivation in Zimbabwe has fallen by half, and the United Nations has warned that, during Zimbabwe's bleakest periods, some seven million people in the country are susceptible to famine. Now, even Mugabe's government admits it will have to import more than one million tons of grain this year. And Zimbabwe's famine could destabilize the rest of the region. Two million Zimbabwean migrants have already poured into South Africa, and Zimbabwe's famine adds to a regional food crisis that is severely stretching donor resources. Even these statistics don't tell the whole story on the ground. As one BBC reporter found in Zimbabwe, "Hungry people queue for the meager rations offered by church workers, their children's hair already changing color from malnutrition ... [S]ome compete with wild animals for what they can scavenge." This, not the end of the white farming culture embodied in places like Newlands, is the real harvest of land reform in southern Africa.

By joshua kurlantzick