The night we all read Babu’s letter

By Emile Babu

MICHIGAN. It is quiet Friday night in the lobby between the long walls of the administration block at Wayne State University. I sit between two students, Mtishi, a Zimbabwean, and Sentongo, a Ugandan as we intently listen to VOA’s African news broadcast.

‘…In Harare, Hester Theron a 79-year old white widow and farm owner has been handed a suspended sentence for refusing to vacate her farm,’ the sound of the radio broadcast tears through the silence. Our eyes shift to Mtishi with curiosity - he faces down in awe.

‘Hester is accused of violating the Gazetted Land Act’, the radio blares on irrespective of the eerie silence.

There is a significant increase in violence against the country’s remaining white commercial farmers as the country fast-tracks enforcement of farm takeovers. Farm invasions have been taking place since 2000, but the latest round is more vicious than ever before.

Not so long ago things were very different – real growth between 1980 and 1981 exceeded 20% and in 1983 the country experienced a 30% jump in agricultural production. The country had one of the most stable economies on the continent - hinged on solid agricultural and industrial fundamentals.

Today, news from Zimbabwe is surprisingly easy to disregard – not because the country is the poster child for human rights abuse or because it is home to a fragile political coalition — but because the global news audience has more than had enough tragic news from Zimbabwe.

At 94% unemployment cannot possibly get worse, as for hyperinflation, there can be no report more damning than the indefinite suspension of the national currency. It seems like Zimbabwe has no more surprises in store – for its people and for the global news audience. But then again it never runs out of surprises.

Meanwhile, President Mugabe is one of the most educated presidents in the world, with two postgraduate and a staggering five undergraduate degrees – one of them from the prestigious University of Oxford.

‘Did he have no advisors, fellow professors, friends, mentors or ministers to offer him counsel?’ I can’t help but ask Mtishi if no one foresaw this. He stares back at me seemingly distressed by my curiosity.

He asks both of us to follow him to his tiny room several blocks away where he draws out copies of an open letter to President Mugabe dated May 1980. The letter is authored by Professor Abdul Rahman Mohammed Babu, a former leader of the anti-colonial struggle in Zimbabwe.

I am surprised to find a manuscript by the author that I have not already perused. It was written around the eve of the celebration of the country’s independence after decades of colonial rule under the British.

‘In the last five years since you took over ZANU, you have shown magnificent leadership, resolute qualities without being dogmatic, daring without being adventurist and flexible without being lax.’ Mtishi reads the preface as I envision the professor turn in his grave in bemusement of his early analysis.

‘Experience elsewhere has taught us that the taking over viable farms has invariably led to almost total collapse of agricultural production and has forced the countries concerned to incur heavy foreign debt and import food,’ the letter reads.

‘To expropriate white farmers will amount to economic disaster [and yet] allowing them to continue as before will amount to perpetuating national injustice. This is a serious dilemma.’

I can sense frustration in Mtishi’s voice as he goes on to read out Babu’s proposal to diffuse the foreseen dilemma.

‘Surround white settler farms with producer agricultural cooperatives and make it obligatory for white settler farms to share their facilities like farm implements, expertise, marketing and dispensary services with the newly-established cooperatives. This will help to develop viable cooperative farms at a minimum cost and resolve the gross income inequality without creating a crisis.’

At the dawn of independence in 1980, when the world was wobbling with optimism for Zimbabwe, Babu shared his honest and clear description of a series of events that have come to unravel almost thirty years down the road.

Unfortunately Mugabe never heeded his advice — and the results? There for everyone to see. In 1996, the professor died in London at 72 just in time to catch a glimpse of the economic and political nosedive Zimbabwe was about to take.

As for the three of us that night, well, we decided to retire early.

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