Zimbabwe is reeling under a legacy of a racially skewed pattern of land ownership and access. The injustice harks back to Cecil John Rhodes, whose British South African Company “successfully” shut blacks in “native reserves” and placed three-quarters of the land in the hands of white farmers.
At independence in 1980, 42% of the territory was owned by 6 000 white commercial farmers — less than 1% of the population. As Mugabe later remarked: “The land question was at the centre of the factors that propelled us to launch our war of national liberation.”
The country’s nationalists signed the 1979 Lancaster House deal, guaranteeing unassailable property rights to the white settlers. These farms produced about 80% of the nation’s harvest and 90% of formal marketed crops. They employed a third of the labour force.
Dr Samuel Mumbengegwi, an economist, suggests that the new state found itself reduced to the role of mediator between the conflicting interests of two races and agrarian classes — the white commercial farmers demanded continuity while the black peasants clamoured for change.
In the 1980s, Mugabe successfully kept the lid on the peasants and propped up the white farmers. For a while he became the West’s blue-eyed boy.
The proportion of white-controlled land shrivelled to 29% in 1990, with close to 3,5-million hectares passing into the hands of 75 000 black families by 2000. Racial conflict over land flared. “The biggest single problem yet to be resolved,” Mugabe declared in the 1990s, “is that of land distribution.”
The pace of land reform spiked after the government lost the February 2000 constitutional referendum. In the 2001/02 “fast-track” land reform programme, white commercial farmers lost more than 11million hectares. By 2002, only 600 to 800 of 4 500 white farmers remained on their land. “After three decades of independence,” said lawyer Bertus de Villiers, “Zimbabwe had reached a goal it envisaged during the liberation struggle.” By righting historical wrongs without proper planning and adequate resources, the elite acted like the proverbial fool who severed the branch on which he sat.
The dramatic collapse of commercial agriculture pushed the economy to the ropes. Unemployment soared to more than 80%, with more than three million, or a quarter of the country’s 12,2-million, people fleeing to exile.
Once the regional breadbasket, the country has lost the capacity to feed its population or to shield it from sporadic droughts.
A change of government is the logical starting point to restore land tenure. Efficient administration of records relating to land will help avoid disputes. New capital can provide seeds and fertilisers, and establish demonstration farms and other institutions.
External donors, such as the World Bank, the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom, should prepare plans to support land reform. Although the UK promised £75-million and the US promised $500-million to support land reform, only £30-million had been received by 2000. This is in stark contrast to Kenya, where £500-million was made available to aid the land restoration process.
An independent and professional national land commission will also need to be established to conduct a comprehensive inventory of land, and organise land tribunals.
Better governance of land tenure, including a property rights regime, is central to economic revival. The place of former white farmers in the post-transition order of things will remain a sticking issue. As one white farmer rightly observed, “There will never be a big pile of money to compensate those of our members who lost their land.”
Lessons can be learned from other countries. Mozambique successfully stabilised issues of post-war land tenure by promulgating a 1997 law that allowed the state to lease land to individuals for up to 100 years. Botswana also effectively used the land board as a regulatory mechanism, opening economic opportunities for its citizens in farming, tourism and hunting.
Conversely, Zimbabwe’s land “occupations” have had ripple effects across the region. In Namibia, tensions between Swapo war veterans, government technocrats, Germany and white commercial farmers suggest disconcerting echoes of its northern neighbour.
Zimbabwe is widely viewed as “a wake-up call” for South Africa. At the demise of apartheid, 87% of the land was in the hands of whites who comprise roughly 10% of the population. When Mbeki raised the toast to 10 years of democracy in 2004, only 3% of land had changed hands to blacks.
Land issues remain highly emotive, evoking the sensibilities of race even in international diplomacy. Race now colours all international responses to the problem of governance in Zimbabwe.
Only by depoliticising issues of land and streamlining the tenure system will it be possible to diffuse the risk of open conflict. This is the first condition for a peaceful transition and the prospects of economic recovery in Zimbabwe.
Dr Peter Kagwanja is a director in the democracy and governance research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. In 2004, he co-authored the International Crisis Group report, Blood and Soil: Land Politics and Conflict Prevention in Zimbabwe