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
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