The trajectory of land reform in Zimbabwe: post-independence era 1980-2000

Abstract

There is a general consensus that land reform in post settler colonies fits like a glove. Since extensive land alienation occurred in Zimbabwe, which resulted in the occupation of larger, more fertile, arable healthy pieces of land by minority whites and occupation of the unproductive, crowded, marginal and deteriorating lands by blacks, independence has given the land question a new force. Going through available literature on Zimbabwe’s land reform progress, there is the impression that, during the liberation struggle, the land question was more of a political issue than anything else. It was about fighting exploitative governmental agrarian policies, fighting for ancestral land, fighting for the power with which land ownership came. With the advent of independence, the land question, as Moyo opines, has been popularized within the “growth with equity” parameters set out by the new regime allowing for a significant amount of land redistribution.3 Thus, through reading library sources and literature in private collections, as well as carrying out interviews, this article seeks to demonstrate the essentiality and centrality of the land question in post independence Zimbabwe. Also to register that the land question presently has grown bigger and wider to entail, among other things, land redistribution, solutions to promote rural development of communal lands, political stability of a nation as well as the economics that goes with land utilization, land tenure, grazing schemes, population control, restitution, gender issues and the list goes on.