The Political Economy of Land Acquisition and Redistribution in Zimbabwe, 1990-1999

This article analyses the socio-economic and political implications of land acquisition in Zimbabwe in the 1990s generally, and particularly in 1997 when the government identified 1,471 farms for potential acquisition and redistribution to black smallholder farmers. The efforts to acquire land for redistribution occurred in the context of growing research interest in comparing land reform across southern Africa, despite the different historical experiences. The Zimbabwean case has been cast as an attempt to pursue a radical state-led approach to land redistribution through compulsory land acquisition, or as a failed bureaucratic and 'non-transparent' effort. In contrast, the South African experience came to be held up as a more democratic, transparent, community driven and less costly 'market assisted' approach. Stereotypes in the literature on land reform in southern Africa influence the process of resolving the land question. While the dominant trend seems to be an acceptance of market prescription from the donor community, the Zimbabwean state, in particular, has intervened in the so-called land market in a more radical way. Attempts to acquire land in 1997, six years after the formal adoption of the Structural Adjustment Programme, led the international community to believe that land reform was being used as a strategy to bolster an 'unpopular' regime. The overall conclusion of the article is that the dominant fear that state-led land reform will bring economic collapse is unfounded, given the social and political implications of a failure to address the land question.