11. Zimbabwe

Photo: Odd Andersen/AFP

In 1989 just 4,319 mostly white, but also black, commercial farmers were using 29% of the area of Zimbabwe. At the same time, some 52,000 poor families had been settled on about 2.8 million hectares of land acquired by the State for resettlement. By 2000 the number of beneficiary families had grown to 75,000, and the amount of land to 3.5 million hectares.

This acquisition of land was not a uniform process over time. In fact it was highly variable and more recently has been decelerating. Zimbabwe is a country of stark inequality. The structure of land tenure reflects racial divisions, with 6,000 white landowners holding 42% of the land in the country.

Historical Overview

The European colonization of Zimbabwe began late, in 1890, stimulated by the discovery of gold in nearby Rand, South Africa (now called Johannesburg). The British South Africa Company obtained a concession from the British Crown to explore for minerals in the region. However, the gold they found in Zimbabwe was sparse and difficult to extract profitably. Because it proved impossible to profit from gold exploration, the Company sought another way to make money, by sponsoring white farmer settlements. To make this work they had to drive Africans off most of the farmland, and turn them into forced labor for the settler estates.

The first African rebellion took place soon thereafter, in 1896. The Chimurenga rebels wanted to expel the whites from their territory, but they were defeated by European arms. In 1923, the colonists voted for separation from South Africa, and the territory became a new colony called Rhodesia, in homage to Cecil Rhodes, the first colonizer of the region. This was to be its name until 1980, when it became Zimbabwe.

The Land Appointment Act of 1930 divided up land along racial lines, both in terms of quantity and quality. 51% of the land was reserved for white settlers, with the bulk of it on the arable central highlands. The African population (the vast majority) was allocated 30% of the land, which was designated as African Reserve Areas (now known as communal areas). The remaining 20% of the land was either owned by commercial companies or by the colonial government (Crown Land).

From 1930 to 1980-the year in which Zimbabwe became independent-the area held by whites dropped from 51% to 41%, while the land available to Africans grew from 30% to 40%. However, due to the different population sizes (there are very few whites relative to Africans), the population densities in the African areas remain extremely high through the present day.

In 1951 the Native Land Husbandry Act was passed. Central to this legislation (and also common to many other British colonies in Africa at the time) was the limiting of livestock numbers and the introduction of soil and water conservation methods and technology.

Data from the 1960s should the high degree of segregation which the African population suffered. The whites had much more land, in the more fertile regions, and received state support for their agricultural development. The land belonging to black people remained abandoned by the state, receiving no support.

The great majority of the population of Zimbabwe is concentrated in the black areas, which have the least fertile soils. As these soils degrade rapidly, the residents of these zones soon have no choice but to become laborers on white estates.

In the mid-1970s the second Chimurenga rebellion erupted, lead by the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). Both liberation movements were committed to carrying out radical land redistribution if and when they took power.

The principal motive for the rebellion was to repossess lost lands-in other words, it was a struggle on the land and for land. Above all, it remained clear that the root of the land problem in Zimbabwe could be found in racial segregation.

The Agrarian Reform Program

The Land Reform and Resettlement Programme of the Zimbabwean government has had two phases: the first phase from 1980 to 1996, and the second commencing with the listing of 1,471 farms for compulsory acquisition in 1997.

From 1980-1996, land was purchased by the state from white sellers and redistributed to black beneficiaries to form settlements. The state could only buy land from those people who were willing to sell. There was pressure against this type of land reform that came from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as from the white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which encouraged white farmers to refuse to sell land to the government. As a result of these pressures, the government began cutting back on the funds allocated for the settlements.

The World Bank insisted on a market-based land reform, yet during the Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) period of 1991 to 1995, failed to mobilize the resources needed to support such an approach. The ESAP period thus saw an even slower pace of reform, generating land conflicts as well. The majority of the commercial farmers benefited from the new agroexport orientation. This created more demand for land and fuelled conflicts between black and white commercial farmers who were both competing for the same scarce resources. The ESAP also served to internationalize interests in Zimbabwe's land, introducing further conflict.

At this point the State started to adopt a more radical posture, using the police to repress spontaneous land occupations. At the same time, state commitment to full market compensation began to evaporate, placing the obligation for historical redress on the former colonial power, Great Britain.

The Amendment of 2000 to the Land Acquisition Act stipulated various factors to be taken into account in future indemnification. It freed the Zimbabwe government from the obligation to pay compensation for land expropriated for settlement, only requiring indemnification for improvements on the land. But this new process had minimal success, as it was soon tied up in judicial challenges by the landlords.

The result was the continuation of an intense process of land occupations throughout the country, which had begun in August 1997. The explicit objective of these actions was to redistribute land held by white estates to the landless and to veterans of the liberation war. These occupations came in waves, with just a few in 1997, but by 2000 they numbered more than a thousand.

The scale and the character of the occupations became the focus of a huge media and propaganda war in Zimbabwe, across southern Africa, and throughout the world. As a result it is now almost impossible to accurately judge the scale of the present phenomenon, with estimates of the number of estates being occupied ranging from 900 to 1,500.

Text based on LEBERT, Tom - Land reform and land occupation in Zimbabwe EBERT, Tom - Land reform and land occupation in Zimbabwe

12. Positions of Via Campesina

13. Bibliography

14. Table of Contents