Zimbabwe after the Lancaster Constitution
Analyzing the “Willing-seller, willing-Buyer” clause of Lancaster
May 11, 2009
The Lancaster Constitution was the outcome of the Lancaster House Conference of September 1997. This conference was the first opportunity in which all parties involved in the Liberation Struggle came together for the purpose of ending a 15-year guerrilla war and to agree on a new future for Southern Rhodesia. It was very significant because earlier attempts at finding peace in Zimbabwe had all failed.
Prelude to the Lancaster Constitution
The Lancaster Conference of September 1979 was acceptance of compromise over conflict in Zimbabwe after a ferocious liberation struggle.. At the height of the Cold War, it was clear to the west that unless something was done (and urgently too) Southern Africa would fall into the grip of Russia and China. The years preceding the Lancaster Conference had been marked by failed western diplomacy in Rhodesia.
In 1976, US secretary of State Henry Kissinger designed a plan which in his view was aimed at granting majority rule to black Rhodesians. This plan was rejected by blacks. In, the same year, a conference was held in Geneva aimed at bringing peace to Southern Rhodesia. This also failed. The Andrew Young plan of 1977 met with little success as did the Internal Settlement of 1978 which was condemned by the Organization of African Unity.
The only conference that held a glimmer of hope for Southern Rhodesia was the Lusaka Conference of 1979. It was in this conference that Britain accepted her responsibility to decolonize Rhodesia, a call which had been echoed since the mid 1970s by the Frontline states and the Commonwealth. At the Lusaka Conference, a constitution was also drawn with safeguards for minorities. This conference also provided the basis for the Lancaster House Conference that marked the end of the transfer of power in Rhodesia.
The Lancaster House Conference
This conference opened on 10 September 1979 and was chaired by Lord Carrington, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. It ended on 15 Dec. 1979 after forty-seven plenary sessions. All political parties involved in the Rhodesian struggle were in attendance - ZANU, ZAPU, UANC and ZUPO. The UN, US, South Africa, the Frontline states, the Commonwealth and Ian Smith’s Republican Front (RF) also attended.
This multinational representation in Lancaster represented the level of international interest and concern for Rhodesia. Each group, country or party at the conference had an interest staked to the land.
As far as the Lancaster Constitution was concerned, the main area of controversy was the land. The British position was that “all property should be protected from compulsory acquisition and that any legal acquisition required immediate and adequate compensation remittable outside the country”. This view was not shared by the other parties.
The ZANU-ZAPU coalition (known as Patriotic Front), held that the war had been waged for the recovery of last lands of the people. It therefore stressed the need for the new government to reclaim the land that had been taken from the people without compensation.
The deadlock over the land was only broken when Britain and America gave assurances about a multinational effort to assist in land, agricultural and economic programs. Based on this agreement, the British government devised a “willing-seller, willing buyer” clause as the basis of its assistance in land reforms. This clause aimed at protecting the property and interests of white farmers.
In many debates about land reforms in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the Lancaster Constitution comes to the fore especially because of its controversial “willing-seller, willing buyer” clause. Mugabe later denounced this clause, accusing white farmers of selling unproductive land.
This constitution has also been blamed for merely postponing Zimbabwe’s land crisis and not solving it, and in this process trying to safeguard white interests. According to Zimbabwean diplomat Buzwani Mothobi, Britain was trying to protect white farmers by “building into the constitution a provision requiring that land be acquired on a ‘willing-seller, willing- buyer’ basis.”
Because of entrenched international interests in the Lancaster Constitution, it has come under several interpretations, reinterpretations and misinterpretations. This has earned it the label “root of all evil” in Zimbabwe. Though it was completely rejected by Mugabe during the period of radical land seizures, it still remains significant in that it was an object of unity and (later) disunity between Mugabe and Britain.
Sources:
Kariuki, Samuel M. Can negotiated land reforms deliver? A case of Kenya’s, South Africa’s and Zimbabwe's land reform policy debates, 2004.
Mothobi, Buzwani. “Whites must realize Rhodesia wasn’t forever,” The East African, 15 May 2000.
Richardson, Craig. Property Rights, land reform and the hidden Architecture of Capitalism, 2006.
Thompson, Alex. An Introduction to African Politics, 2000.
