Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 79, Spring 2000, p. 8-9
In 1998, the Government of Zimbabwe convened a donors’ conference to promote assistance for Phase II of its land reform. In spite of some land redistribution in the 1970s, large areas of the best land in Zimbabwe still remain in the hands of white commercial farmers. Government accepts the continued existence of a commercial farming sector in which white landowners play a major role, and indeed that sector has been critical in production of Zimbabwe’s agricultural exports, including tobacco.
The Mugabe government has been anxious to redistribute some of the land to black peasant farmers from crowded communal areas. It seems possible to do this without major reductions in production because on most white-owned farms there are substantial areas that are not utilized, or not utilized intensively, and a reform that targets these areas would be production-enhancing.
The issue has been whether compensation will be paid for the land to be acquired and resettled, and by whom. While special protections of whites’ landholdings built into the independence constitution have expired, the understanding that emerged from the donors’ conference was that compensation would be paid for land as well as improvements. White farmers argue that many of today’s holders paid for the land rather than receiving it gratis from colonial government, and so fairness requires such compensation. Earlier this year President Mugabe asked for a national referendum to approve farm confiscation, but it failed, perhaps because people treated the referendum as an opportunity to comment on what is broadly perceived to be serious economic mismanagement by the Mugabe government.
USAID/Zimbabwe had asked the Land Tenure Center to work with it on its stance in the run-up to the donors’ conferences, and afterward requested the Center to provide technical assistance, policy studies, research, and capacity-building. The cooperative agreement signed between USAID/Zimbabwe and the University of Wisconsin is for a three-year program involving a little over $1 million. John Bruce is the project manager, and UW faculty and staff involved in the project include Michael Roth, Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel, Peter Bloch, and Thomas Mitchell. The Center has subcontracted with the Center for Applied Social Sciences of the University of Zimbabwe as its counterpart and has begun working with both the Technical Support Unit for the land reform in the Cabinet Office and the Lands Department of the Ministry of Lands, Water, and Natural Resources. Study teams and research programs have been developed, and the first graduate student under the program, Kizito Mazvimavi, arrived in the fall of 1999 to begin the Center’s Ph.D. in Development Program.
But only a few months into the project, in April, people organized by the war veterans’ association began invading white-owned farms, sometimes beating the white farmers and their farm workers. One farmer and two political opposition activists have been killed. President Mugabe refused to condemn the farm occupations and is trying to use the occupations to build support for his party around the land reform issue in the lead-up to parliamentary elections. The implicit support of the occupations is clearly a breach of the understanding with the donor community, and donors have suspended projects with government in support of the land reform.
The LTC project has not been formally suspended since the funds do not go through the government, yet it is now operating under three limitations imposed by USAID: (1) limited interaction with government, with activities instead to be focused on the NGO community; (2) no high-profile activities of any kind; and (3) no new long-term commitments. This last point has serious implications for project management; LTC will not for now be able to hire the anticipated resident advisor. USAID does not want things to come to a complete halt or for momentum to be lost entirely, but it also wants to send a clear signal to government of its disappointment.
The future of the land reform is now very much in question. The reform cannot move forward in a productive fashion without the donor funding needed to cover major resettlement costs, including costs for both productive investments and services. The economic situation of the country is desperate, with inflation moving out of control. It is unclear whether the elections will in fact be held. One hears discussion of declaration of a state of emergency. The fate of the land reform, and of the LTC project, depends upon the general political outcome and, that outcome permitting, a resolution of the problem posed by the farm occupiers.
Copyright © 2000 by Land Tenure Center and Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
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