Land reform in Zimbabwe

Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1980 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, to reverse the distribution of land that resulted from the colonial occupation of the country by white people. The colonial distribution that started in 1884, took land from black people, land the black people called home and used for habitation and production as subsistence farmers. The colonisers drove black people to dry and unproductive land while they shared prime and productive land amongst themselves resulting in a population of 3% (4,400 white people) owning 51% of the land while 4.3 million black people owned 42%, with the remainder being land for towns and other non-farming activities. The white people enjoyed superior political and economic status, but this was resisted, leading to war, and political independence in 1980. At independence, the Lancaster House Agreement was signed and it had a clause that prohibitted return of land, except where a white person had surrendered or offered it for sale. This did not return enough land until the accelerated land reform programme started in 2000. The programme altered the racial imbalance of land ownership.

The land return program has improved the social and economic standing of many people in the country and continues to do so into the future. For example, 237,858 households were resettled, translating to about 1.5 people considering that each household has 6 people on average. Production on the farms declined during the early years, but has since gone up to over 250 million kgs in 2020 as shown by tobacco figures Tobacco in Zimbabwe. In 1980, production was 125 million kgs (mainly by white Zimbabweans of European ancestry), in 1990 it was 130 million kgs (by the white farmers and few black farmers), in 2010 it fell 59 million kgs and in 2019 it rose to 258 million kgs (mainly by black farmers). Production has increased mainly because more families now have access to land to farm, and they have gained experience which was not there when the land reform programme started.

The government's land distribution and return is perhaps the most crucial and most bitterly contested political issue surrounding Zimbabwe. It has been criticised for the violence and intimidation which marred several expropriations, as well as the parallel collapse of domestic banks which held billions of dollars' worth of bonds on liquidated properties. The United Nations has identified several key shortcomings with the contemporary programme, namely failure to compensate ousted landowners as called for by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the poor handling of boundary disputes, and chronic shortages of material and personnel needed to carry out resettlement in an orderly manner. Seven farm owners and more farm workers have been killed during violent takeovers.

Land reform has had a serious negative effect on the Zimbabwean economy and is argued to have heavily contributed to its collapse in the 2000s. There has been a drop in total farm output which has led to instances of starvation and famine. Increasing poverty levels combined with the increased informality of farming operations amongst farmers who received redistributed land has led to an increase in the use of child labour especially in the growing of sugar cane.

As of 2011, 237,858 Zimbabwean households had been provided with access to land under the programme. A total of 10,816,886 hectares had been acquired since 2000, compared to the 3,498,444 purchased from voluntary sellers between 1980 and 1998. By 2013, every white-owned farm in Zimbabwe had been either expropriated or confirmed for future redistribution. The compulsory acquisition of farmland without compensation was discontinued in early 2018. In 2019, the Commercial Farmers Union stated that white farmers who had land expropriated under the fast track program had agreed to accept an interim compensation offer by the Zimbabwean government of RTGS$53 million (US$17 million) as part of the government effort to compensate dispossessed farmers. A year later, the Zimbabwean government announced that it would be compensating dispossessed white farmers for infrastructure investments in the land and had committed to pay out US$3.5 billion.