Land reform in Zimbabwe began in 1980 under the Lancaster House Agreement following internationally recognised independence, aiming to redistribute land from white commercial farmers to black subsistence farmers. White farmers dominated the commercial agricultural sector, which accounted for a large share of exports and formal employment. Land hunger was a key issue during the Rhodesian Bush War. The Lancaster House framework, which ended the war, allowed land acquisition on a “willing buyer, willing seller” basis, with the United Kingdom funding half of the cost.
In the late 1990s, when British funding ended, the Zimbabwean government led by Robert Mugabe launched a “fast-track” land reform programme, involving the forcible seizure of white-owned farms. The programme was criticised for violence, contested boundaries, inadequate resettlement and compensation, and was followed by a sharp decline in agricultural production and exports. Land reform had a serious negative effect on the Zimbabwean economy during the 2000s. By 2013, almost all white-owned farms had been expropriated. Compulsory acquisition without compensation was formally discontinued in 2018 following the ousting of Mugabe, and later efforts focused on compensating dispossessed farmers.
Background
The foundation for the controversial land dispute in Zimbabwean society was laid at the beginning of European settlement of the region, which had long been the scene of mass movements by various Bantu peoples. In the sixteenth century, Portuguese explorers had successfully attempted to open up Zimbabwe for trading purposes, but the country was not permanently settled by European immigrants until three hundred years later. The Changamire Dynasty forcibly removed many Portuguese traders from their stations in Rozvi in 1693 to 1695 during a campaign against Mutapa. The Rozvi Empire remained in power until 1850 until they were destroyed by the Ngoni Kingdom and Ndebele tribes during Mfecane.
Most Shona cultures had a theoretically communal attitude towards land ownership; the later European concept of officiating individual property ownership was unheard of. Land was considered the collective property of all the residents in a given chiefdom, with the chief mediating disagreements and issues pertaining to its use. Nevertheless, male household heads frequently reserved personal tracts for their own cultivation, and allocated smaller tracts to each of their wives. Population growth frequently resulted in the over-utilisation of the existing land, which became greatly diminished both in terms of cultivation and grazing due to the larger number of people attempting to share the same acreage.
During the early nineteenth century, the Shona were conquered by the Northern Ndebele (also known as the Matabele), which began the process of commodifying Zimbabwe's land. Although the Ndebele elite were uninterested in cultivation, land ownership was considered one major source of an individual's wealth and power—the others being cattle and slaves. Ndebele monarchs acquired large swaths of land for themselves accordingly.
Legal situation in Southern Rhodesia
European settlement patterns
The first white colonists to settle in modern-day Zimbabwe arrived during the 19th century, primarily from the Cape Colony (modern-day South Africa), less than a century after the Ndebele invasions. This reflected a larger trend of permanent European settlement in the milder, drier regions of Southern Africa as opposed to the tropical and sub-tropical climates further north. In 1889 Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company (BSAC) introduced the earliest white settlers to Zimbabwe as prospectors, seeking concessions from the Ndebele for mineral rights. Collectively known as the Pioneer Column, the settlers established the city of Salisbury, now Harare. Rhodes hoped to discover gold and establish a mining colony, but the original intention had to be modified as neither the costs nor the returns on the overhead capital matched the original projections. Local gold deposits failed to yield the massive returns which the BSAC had promised its investors, and the military costs of the expedition had caused a deficit. An interim solution was the granting of land to the settlers in the hopes that they would develop productive farms and generate enough income to justify the colony's continued administrative costs. The region was demarcated as Southern Rhodesia after 1898.
Between 1890 and 1896, the BSAC granted an area encompassing 16 million acres—about one sixth the area of Southern Rhodesia—to European immigrants. By 1913 this had been extended to 21.5 million acres. However, these concessions were strictly regulated, and land was only offered to those individuals able to prove they had the necessary capital to develop it. Exceptions were made during the Ndebele and Shona insurrections against the BSAC in the mid-1890s, when land was promised to any European men willing to take up arms in defence of the colony, irrespective of their financial status. The settlers of the Pioneer Column were granted tracts of 3,150 acres apiece, with an option to purchase more land from the BSAC's holdings at relatively low prices (up to fifteen times cheaper than comparable land on the market in South Africa).
Creation of the Tribal Trust Lands
Friction soon arose between the settlers and the Ndebele and Shona peoples, both in terms of land apportionment and economic competition. In 1900, Southern Rhodesia's black population owned an estimated 55,000 head of cattle, while European residents owned fewer than 12,000. Most of the pastureland was being grazed by African-owned cattle, accordingly. However, in less than two decades the Ndebele and Shona came to own over a million head of cattle, with white farmers owning another million as well. As the amount of available pasture for the livestock quickly dwindled, accompanied by massive amounts of overgrazing and erosion, land competition between the three groups became intense. A number of successive land commissions were thus appointed to study the problem and apportion the land.
The colonial government in Southern Rhodesia delineated the country into five distinct farming regions which corresponded roughly to rainfall patterns. Region I comprised an area in the eastern highlands with markedly higher rainfall best suited to the cultivation of diversified cash crops such as coffee and tea. Region II was highveld, also in the east, where the land could be used intensively for grain cultivation such as maize, tobacco, and wheat. Region III and Region IV endured periodic drought and were regarded as suitable for livestock, in addition to crops which required little rainfall. Region V was lowveld and unsuitable for crop cultivation due to its dry nature; however, limited livestock farming was still viable. Land ownership in these regions was determined by race under the terms of the Southern Rhodesian Land Apportionment Act, passed in 1930, which reserved Regions I, II, and III for white settlement. Region V and a segment of Region II which possessed greater rainfall variability were organised into the Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs), reserved solely for black African ownership and use. This created two new problems: firstly, in the areas reserved for whites, the ratio of land to population was so high that many farms could not be exploited to their fullest potential, and some prime white-owned farmland was lying idle. Secondly, the legislation resulted in enforced overuse of the land in the TTLs due to overpopulation there.
The Southern Rhodesian Land Apportionment Act reserved 49 million acres for white ownership and left 17.7 million acres of land unassigned to either the white preserve or the TTLs. While a survey undertaken by the colony's Land Commission in concert with the British government in 1925 found that the vast majority of black Rhodesians supported some form of geographic segregation, including the reservation of land exclusively for their use, many were disillusioned by the manner in which the legislation was implemented in explicit favour of whites. The overcrowded conditions in the TTLs compelled large numbers of Shona and Ndebele alike to abandon their rural livelihoods and seek wage employment in the cities or on white commercial farms. Those who remained on tracts in the TTLs found themselves having to cope with topsoil depletion due to overuse; large amounts of topsoil were stripped of their vegetation cover and rendered unproductive as a consequence. To control the rate of erosion, colonial authorities introduced voluntary destocking initiatives for livestock. When these met with little success, the destocking programme became mandatory in 1941, forcing all residents of the TTLs to sell or slaughter animals declared surplus. Another 7.2 million acres were also set aside for sale to black farmers, known as the Native Purchase Areas.
During the early 1950s, Southern Rhodesia passed the African Land Husbandry Act, which attempted to reform the communal system in the TTLs by giving black Africans the right to apply for formal title deeds to specific tracts. This legislation proved so unpopular and difficult to enforce that incoming Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith ordered its suspension in the mid-1960s. Smith's administration subsequently recognised the traditional leaders of each chiefdom as the final authority on land allocation in the TTLs.
Following Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, land legislation was again amended with the Rhodesian Land Tenure Act of 1969. The Land Tenure Act upended the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and was designed to rectify the issue of insufficient land available to the rapidly expanding black population. It reduced the amount of land reserved for white ownership to 45 million acres and reserved another 45 million acres for black ownership, introducing parity in theory; however, the most fertile farmland in Regions I, II, and III continued to be included in the white enclave. Abuses of the system continued to abound; some white farmers took advantage of the legislation to shift their property boundaries into land formerly designated for black settlement, often without notifying the other landowners. A related phenomenon was the existence of black communities, especially those congregated around missions, which were oblivious to the legislation and unwittingly squatting on land redesignated for white ownership. The land would be sold in the meantime, and the government obliged to evict the preexisting occupants. These incidents and others were instrumental in eliciting sympathy among Rhodesia's black population for nationalist movements such as the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), which sought to overthrow the Rhodesian government by force of arms.
Bush War and Lancaster House
The escalation of the Rhodesian Bush War in the 1970s led to a significant amount of rural displacement and interrupted agricultural activity. The disruption of veterinary services resulted in massive livestock losses, and the cultivation of cash crops was hampered by guerrilla raids. The murder of about three hundred white farmers during the war, as well as the conscription of hundreds of others into the Rhodesian Security Forces, also led to a drop in the volume of agricultural production. Between 1975 and 1976 Rhodesia's urban population doubled as thousands of rural dwellers, mostly from TTLs, fled to the cities to escape the fighting. A campaign of systematic villagisation followed as the Rhodesian Army shifted segments of the black population into guarded settlements to prevent their subversion by the insurgents.
In 1977, the Land Tenure Act was amended by the Rhodesian parliament, which further reduced the amount of land reserved for white ownership to 200,000 hectares, or 500,000 acres. Over 15 million hectares were thus opened to purchase by persons of any race. Two years later, as part of the Internal Settlement, Zimbabwe Rhodesia's incoming biracial government under Bishop Abel Muzorewa abolished the reservation of land according to race. White farmers continued to own 73.8% of the most fertile land suited for intensive cash crop cultivation and livestock grazing, in addition to generating 80% of the country's total agricultural output. This was a vital contribution to the economy, which was still underpinned by its agricultural exports.