Minister of Foreign Affairs, Honourable Dr I S G Mudenge

ZIMBABWE: THE COLONIAL TRANSFER OF LAND AND ITS REVERSAL: A SUMMARY

1. INTRODUCTION

The challenges currently facing Zimbabwe cannot be fully understood without reference to the country's history, and, in particular the structure of land ownership in the country which has shaped that history. As in many other developing countries, land in Zimbabwe is one of the most important productive assets. Over 80 percent of the country's population earns its living directly from the land. Agricultural production contributes about 25 percent to GDP and provides close to 40 percent of wage employment. A considerable part of the manufacturing industry, most notably foodstuffs, drink and tobacco, textiles and wood and furniture, depends on the output of the agricultural sector. Hence, the unavailability of land and the rights exercised over it to a large extent seals a penurious destiny for the vast majority of the population.

Zimbabwe is currently characterized by a racially skewed land distribution and ownership pattern arising from policies and laws of successive colonial regimes, which systematically dispossessed Africans of their land between 1890 and 1980. The well-documented history of deliberate action and inaction aimed at transferring land from the indigenous Black majority to the White minority and keeping it there puts into perspective the persistent struggle of the indigenous people, a struggle which took various forms over the colonial century, and which has assumed an insistent urgency in the era of self-determination. The story that is told by the statistics is a dramatic one: over 70 percent of the country's best arable (high rainfall and fertile) land is owned and utilized by approximately 4 100 white farmers, mostly of British descent, while over 8 million black peasants were relegated to the remaining 30% of mostly worst arable (arid and infertile) land. At independence, the land distribution picture was as follows:

2. THE ALIENATION OF LAND IN COLONIAL TIMES

The arrival of colonial settlers marked the beginning of a managed process of land alienation in Zimbabwe. The Lippert Concession of 1891 was the first step in the evolution of a policy that fraudulently and systematically transferred Black lands into White hands and debarred, by law, any reversal of that transfer. By the manipulation of such concessions, the British Crown mandated the expropriation of Black-held land for mining purposes. This established the principle on the basis of which land inhabited by indigenous people would subsequently be expropriated for other purposes, chief among which was speculation. Indeed, capitalisation and other problems on the mining front inspired a diversion of focus from gold prospecting to land speculation, based on a systematic parcelling out of extravagant land concessions to companies and individuals whose contributions to mining efforts were considered to have been significant.

There was an explicit policy of encouraging speculative acquisition of African land as a hedge against losses in mining endeavours. This policy acquired dramatic energy in the wake of the collapse of mining share markets in 1892. In July 1893, Rhodes and Jameson recognized the speculative potential of a clash with Ndebele people near Fort Victoria, and moved to escalate the incident into a full scale war with Lobengula. The explicit objective was to raise the share price of the British South Africa Company (BSAC) through the expropriation of African land. For the purpose of this war of expropriation, Rhodes and Jameson recruited settler columns on the promise of land then inhabited by indigenous people.

The expropriation expedition indeed resulted in a phenomenal demand for BSAC shares, with a rash of hitherto unknown "development" companies injecting half a million pounds into the company in a matter of months. On the mining front, where it had been scientifically determined that there was more quartzite than gold to be had in much of Mashonaland and Matebeleland, the emphasis was on having land that could be mined; its rising value could only be assured as long as it remained untouched. This was to become the basis of the subsequent pattern of removing Africans from their land, planting a few acres for subsistence, and waiting speculatively for a rise in value in external markets. This pattern was to persist to the present day.

As mining share market value become increasingly irrelevant with time and discovery, the focus turned to a retroactive validation of the intrinsic value of land as a productive asset, an exercise that required the raising of the profile of the settler as the indispensable and sole guarantor of productivity, food security and development. To succeed, that exercise required further expropriations and the transformation of the African from owner to labourer, with no hope of reinstatement to his former status.

It is this deliberate policy to prescribe and circumscribe the economic options of the indigenous population that explains the assault on the natural economy of the Shonas and Ndebeles during this period, an assault that produced the present day inequity in the distribution of productive land. Within the twenty-nine months from October 1893 to March 1896, 200 000 cattle were forcibly transferred from African to European hands. An arbitrary and extra-legal regime of taxes on the African was imposed in 1893, and legitimized subsequently in 1894 by the British Crown. Personnel from the Native Department embarked on an aggressive campaign to exact heavy levies in the from of crop yields and livestock, in support of the strategy to drive the African off the land and into wage labour. Provincial labour bureaux set up in 1895 set about the task of creating a corps of cheap African labour, an effort that would be escalated in 1899 with the establishment of the Labour Board of Southern Rhodesia. The Native Department chipped in with a concerted forced labour regime.

The emergence of the phenomenon of settler farmers was largely accidental. At the turn of the century, records show that only some 200-odd settlers actually had "effective" occupation of land taken away from the indigenous people, as the trend was for settlers to hold land as a speculative nest-egg while pursuing trade and the transportation of commodities in ox-drawn carts. The outbreak of rinderpest and other cattle diseases between 1897 and 1902 imposed severe constraints on this line of business and forced those settlers who had already claimed land to consider using it, and those who had not as yet joined the expropriation exercise to do so in a determined manner. The South African War created a fortuitous incentive for non-farmers to try their hand at tilling a fraction of their vast lands, as the war eliminated competition from the South in the produce markets. The exploitation of this new opportunity required accelerated efforts in alienating productive land from the indigenous people, and by 1914, 2000 Europeans speculators had become commercial farmers, a ten-fold increase from just 200 farm settlers a few years earlier.

The relationship between the number of European settlers and that of African people displaced by that process was a factorial one, given the numbers, way of life and settlement patterns of the indigenous population. The land reform programme introduced in the 19th century and progressively accelerated through much of the 20th century based itself on the requirement that ownership of productive land be transferred from the indigeneous majority to the European minority which had initially come in search of minerals.

The BSAC adjusted to the new emphasis on the agrarian empowerment of Europeans by changing its governmental structures and culture of governance to better promote the interests of the newly-christened White farmer. The composition of the Legislative Council was changed so as to give more seats to representatives elected by the new settler class. The debate over whether the vast holdings of land companies expropriated for purely speculative purposes should be released for settler agriculture was resolved by the decision to mount a more concerted attack on indigenous holdings. This is the background against which the Gwaai and Shangani Native Reserves were created as barren sumps to hold jettisoned Africans.

This consistent approach to settler land-hunger was evident throughout British colonial presence in the country. During the period 1908-1915 alone, one million five hundred thousand acres of land were alienated from the indigenous Africans and given to European settlers. Of this figure, one million acres were transferred in a single year through the instrumentality of the Native Reserves Commission of 1914 - 1915.

On the ground, the guiding policy in deciding the location of Native Reserves was clear: the Reserve should being where good soils, good rainfall and convenient transportation for produce ended. The economics of the arrangement were that the native population should live far enough away from productive land to entrench them in the subsistence sector, but close enough to the emerging settler estates to provide cheap, migrant labour.

As might be expected, the indigenous people, shocked at the growing gap between what had been said and what was being done, took up arms to defend their heritage. While in terms of modern warfare their weaponry might not have been as sophisticated as that used against them by the settlers, so critical was the land to them that the settler force, on the verge of defeat, had to appeal for reinforcements from Britain.

In March 1896, the indigenous people launched spirited uprisings that gravely decimated settler might. With military humiliation in clear prospects, the settlers appealed to the Crown, and it was only the deployment of troops of the British Army in 1897 that averted outright defeat at that stage of a struggle to reverse the policy of land alienation. That struggle would take various forms and be suppressed through a combination of lynch law, extra-legal actions and legislation, sometimes in that sequence.

A depression in the mining industry at the beginning of the 1900s created a new urgency for the discouragement of black ownership and enterprise. In 1903, the Chartered Company's headquarters in London made the determination that native labour held the key to settler success. In line with that analysis, a renewed drive to remove Africans from the land through a combination of recruitment, expropriation and exclusion from produce markets was launched.

The principal criterion for declaring tracts of land to be suitable as Native Reserves was the marginal usefulness of such tracts. Archival evidence reflects an active preoccupation with pushing the natives to areas infested by baboons, where yields would be so hopeless that it would be better to offer one's labour for a pittance. For the settler to attain an unassailable position as the only viable commercial option in agriculture, it was important that all meaningful competition from African peasants be eliminated.

Indeed, it was important to the settlers that quarrels over land should not be over whether land belonged to the natives or to the settlers; the only quarrel should be over whether property rights inhered in the Chartered Company, which might give the settlers the short end of the stick in favour of organized capital OR such rights remained the prerogative of the Crown, which was inclined to bless a more durable entrenchment of colonial interests.
This is the psychological backdrop against which the Privy Council pronounced in 1918 that all land in Southern Rhodesia belonged to the British Crown. The Chartered administration, which had hoped that the verdict would confirm is title to the most critical asset, land, never recovered form that blow. The Native featured in neither the quarrel, nor in its resolution.

The legalisation of actions already taken to accommodate settler imperatives in the distribution of land was a necessary step to validate the non-consensual creation and transfer of title. In that vein, a Land Apportionment Act was promulgated in 1930 to legitimize the pattern of land distribution that had already been enforced. That Act reserved 51% of the fertile arable lands for the white minority setters and consigned the indigenous majority black population to Native Reserves, which constituted 30% of the poorest agricultural land. The Land Husbandry Act of 1951 and the Land Tenure Act of 1969 further entrenched this distribution pattern in a growing body of law.

By 1976, a total of 4,5 million Africans were crowded into the infertile and unproductive Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs). The net result was overstocking, over population, serious environmental damage, severely reduced agricultural productivity and increased poverty in the communal areas.

The imbalance created in this way constrained the settler state machinery to enforce a semblance of stability through various laws and practices that controlled movement between the TTLs and the lands alienated from the indigenous people. Belying this enforced veneer of clam was a seething-and growing-ferment of unrest that become increasingly difficult for state agencies to paper over.

2. THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE AS AN ASSERTION
OF SOVEREIGNTY OVER LAND

The growing discontent over the expropriation of land and the consequent marginalisation of the indigenous population watered the seeds of African nationalism and precipitated the phase of the liberation struggle that is still fresh in the minds of many. The popular Zimbabwe Nationalist slogan "mwana wevhu" (son of the soil) underlined the centrality of the land issue in the liberation struggle.

Indeed, the liberation struggle was nothing less than a principled, insistent and spirited demand by the indigenous people of Zimbabwe for the restoration of their sovereignty over their natural resources, the most important being their land. Throughout that struggle and right up to the negotiation of an independence constitution at Lancaster House, the clear and cardinal objective of the Second Chimurenga War was known by all: the reversal of the forcible transfer of African land into European hands during the 19th and 20th Centuries. As long as that primary objective remained unmet, causes of instability and conflict would remain.

4. COMMITMENTS ON LAND MADE AT LANCASTER HOUSE IN 1979

Given that land ranked highest among the grievances that motivated the indigenous people to launch and wage the Second Chimurenga War of liberation, the Land Question was inevitably central to any initiatives aimed at resolving the crisis in Rhodesia. Dr Henry Kissinger, as US Secretary of State, in 1969 viewed events in Rhodesia as a danger to his country's strategic interests. He concluded that the Smith regime's racist policies, as exemplified in its approach to land, would further aggravate the situation in the country and endanger US interests in Southern Africa. Kissinger's analysis correctly placed the land question at center stage in the political drama of Rhodesia.

After consultations with the British and South African Governments, Kissinger met with Ian Smith in September 1976, and persuaded the rebel Rhodesian leader to accept majority rule within two years. The clincher was an undertaking in Kissinger's five-point plan to create an international trust fund to help Rhodesia financially and to create a safety net for those whites who might be called upon to relinquish their holdings as part of a necessary reform of the skewed land distribution pattern. Whites in this category would be compensated from that fund.

It was recognized from the outset that a programme to reverse the pattern of land ownership entrenched during the colonial period would be a massive one which would call for substantial sums of money. Figures ranging from US$1,5 billion to US$2 billion were mentioned by key British and American players in the search for a figure that might approximate the financial requirements of the mammoth task at hand. Considering the outlay of $200 million made available for Kenya's land reform at independence, those figures were considered to be safe estimates, allowing for inflationary factors.

As might be expected, the land question featured prominently during the pre-independence negotiations held in Geneva, Malta and eventually at Lancaster House in London in 1979. The liberation Movements led by the Patriotic Front made it clear that land was at the heart of the matter. They also made it clear that they did not have the resources to buy their land from the white settlers, neither did they think it historically and morally correct to tax the colonially deprived and impoverished Zimbabwean population in order to raise such resources since the land was never bought from them in the first place. They stressed that the British government, as the former colonial power was, morally and legally, bound to compensate the white settler farmers for the land to be acquired for resettlement.

The Lancaster House Constitutional talks almost came to a premature end because of the differences over the land issue and were deadlocked for almost three weeks. The talks only resumed when certain promissory commitments were made by the British and American governments to assist the new Government of Zimbabwe in mobilizing the requisite resources to purchase land from white commercial farmers for resettlement.

In this context, the British Government gave an undertaking to make available an initial GBP 75 million, and to work with the international community to mobilize additional funding. It was on this basis that the Patriotic Front agreed to the Lancaster House Constitution, which provided for an adequately funded redistribution of land in Zimbabwe, initially on the principle of willing seller - willing buyer.

5. LAND REFORM AND RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME,
1980-1998

At independence, therefore, the Land Question was the most important issue for the new government, setting the agenda for correcting an historical injustice which had caused the war in the first place; meeting the huge land need within the country, thereby de-congesting the communal sub-sector; settling the war displaced and the ever growing population of squatters; tackling rural poverty by improving food security among rural households; and improving and modernizing agriculture.

Commenting on the challenges facing the new Government, a joint UNDP/UNCTAD project, PAF/78/010 that was conducted in 1980 concluded that "the manner in which the land question is settled would affect decisively the pattern of economic and social development in an independent Zimbabwe. The concentration of control over land is a source of political power, and land reform inevitably threatens this power base. The corollary to this is that ambitious programmes of land reform are extremely difficult to execute without a genuine shift in political sentiment, political power and social institutions."

At the same time, the Government's Commission of Inquiry into Incomes, Prices and Conditions of Services of 1981 concluded that the first requirement for raising production and incomes in the peasant sector was to ensure that those who depended solely on agriculture for a living were provided with adequate land. The Commission recommended that new areas of land be acquired to absorb the population that was in excess of the safe carrying capacity of the peasant sector while strengthening the productive capacity of the peasant sector while strengthening the productive capacity of the commercial farming sector.

Land reforms at independence, through the intensive and accelerated resettlement programmes, were largely rehabiliative and focused on refugees and internally displaced Zimbabweans, the landless in overcrowded communal areas and those with insufficient land to maintain themselves and their families. In 1985 government adopted an integrated approach to land reforms, which focused both on translocating identified settlers while at the same time undertaking re-organisation in communal areas so the benefits of decongestion would quickly show.

The year 1990 saw a further evolution in the National Land Policy. The new policy sought to increase the resettlement acreage to 8,3 million hectares (including 3.3 million hectares settled in the first phase) to benefit about 162 000 communal families. This land would be acquired from the large-scale commercial sub-sector and would seek to emphasise master farmer settlement. Except for these two sectors, the rest would remain as they were at independence.

• Derelict land;
  Underutilised land;
  Land belonging to absentee landlords;
  Land belonging to farmers or concerns with more than one farm;
  Land in excess of standard farm sizes, which vary by agro-ecological region and rainfall pattern; and
  Land that is contiguous to communal areas.

The Government's Land Policy specifically excludes from acquisition:

• Plantation Farms;
  Agro-industrial properties;
  Properties with Export Processing Zone and Zimbabwe Investment Centre permits;
  Farms belonging to church organizations;
  Farms protected by Bilateral Investment Protection Agreements; and
  Approved wildlife conservancies.

The Government made it abundantly clear that no commercial farmer with a genuine desire to farm would be taken off the land. Consequently those commercial farmers who owned one farm and fully utilized their land were not the focus of the programme.

The beneficiaries of the Land Settlement Programme were identified as:

• People selected from over-populated villages including ex-farm workers, ex-mine workers and ex-combatants;
  People with practical competency in agriculture or a demonstrated capacity in farming such as master farmers and graduates from agricultural colleges;
  Retrenched civil servants; and
  Special groups such as women who constitute 51% of the population.

The Lancaster House Constitution under which Zimbabwe was granted its independence in 1980 entrenched a willing-seller, willing buyer clause for a period of ten years under which all land purchases had to be predicated on willingness on both sides of the transaction and had to be accompanied by prompt and adequate compensation by the acquiring authority. Essentially, this meant resettlement could not be determined by the State, which had to find willing farmers and allocate funds for acquisition from its meager budget. This slowed down the pace of land delivery, generating enormous frustration both to the landless and to the Government.

The legal encumbrance of the Lancaster Constitution fell away in 1990 when government started working on a new legal instrument to speed up land reforms. Thus came the Constitutional Amendment (Act II) in 1991 and the Land Acquisition Act of 1992, which freed government from the willing-seller, willing buyer requirement and empowered it to compulsorily acquire land while providing "adequate compensation". It also gave the government the right of first refusal in all land transactions, as well as the leeway to acquire derelict land without paying compensation.

First Phase - 1980 - 1996

In the First Phase of the programme which ended in 1996, about 13 000 families were resettled on about 3.5 million hectares of land acquired by government from the large-scale commercial farming sector largely under the willing-seller, willing-buyer basis, and for which full compensation was provided from donor funds, which then dried up. The predication of the programme on the willingness of the seller to sell at a price determined by the seller's inclinations constituted a serious retardant, and the combination of this with the increasing elusiveness of the principal donors created a crisis that grew more and more untenable as the years went by and the people of Zimbabwe waited for redress.

This is the background to the wave of dramatic land occupations that have gained prominence since 1998, and were used by land hungry peasants, with the active support of veterans of the Liberation War, to put pressure on the Government to implement a robust, urgent and people-oriented land redistribution programme. The demonstrators were quite clear-minded and articulate in their demand that the colonial programme which had been implemented in a short time to empower white settlers through the expropriation of indigenous land holdings should be reversed in a short time through the restoration of those holdings to the rightful owners.

The concept of compensation-albeit for improvements only - is one that the Government has proceeded with in the full knowledge that it cannot be explained satisfactorily to the people, who consider the programme to be a simple restoration of stolen property. The fact that the thief proceeded to make improvements on stolen land is considered to be a compounding of injury through the addition of insult.

Given the fact that financial aid for the land resettlement programme from the former colonial master, Britain, reduced to a trickle in the mid-1990s, and had virtually stopped by 1997, the Government of Zimbabwe had to face the impossible challenge of financing the Land Reform Programme alone. While various figures (sometimes GBP 47 million, sometimes 45 million, sometimes 30 million) have been mentioned as the total disbursed to date by the United Kingdom towards meeting its obligations as the former colonial power, the estimated requirement of GBP 2 billion, a figure proposed by the British and American Governments in the planning for Zimbabwe's independence, illustrates the gap between what is required and what was provided.

For the Government of Zimbabwe, letting things be was not an option, given the critical nature of the land question in creating a sustainable social, economic and political future for Zimbabwe. While Britain considered whether to fulfil its obligations and other donors considered how they might help it was imperative that urgent work be done to address land hunger through the reversal of the colonial pattern of agrarian empowerment, using what resources and mechanisms were in hand.

Second Phase

In 1998 the government embarked on the Second Phase of the Land Resettlement Programme through which it would acquire the remaining 5 million of the 8.3 million hectares earmarked for resettlement in the government's 1990 Land Policy. The goals and objectives of the Second
Phase were:

¢ To restore balance in land ownership by removing the racial inequalities created by colonialism, and to empower indigenous people;

¢ To decongest over-crowded communal areas whose economic and environmental value was in continuous and rapid decline;

¢ To tackle rural poverty and improve food security at national and household levels;

¢ To increase the contribution of the agricultural sector to GDP;

¢ To promote environmentally sustainable utilisation of land;

¢ To develop commercial agriculture within the indigenous community; and

¢ To create conditions for sustainable economic, political and social stability.

The Second Phase of Land Reforms is intended to benefit:

¢ Landless communal people who make up the majority of people in Zimbabwe;

¢ Congested communal families;

¢ Retrenched civil servants;

¢ War veterans, former liberation war collaborators and former liberation war detainees; and

¢ Resourced indigenous farmers aspiring to become large-scale commercial farmers.

1998 Donor Conference

In September 1998, Government convened a Donors' Conference meant to enlist international participation and support for the Land Reform Programme. Out of the conference emerged a two-year Inception Phase located within the Second Phase, which envisaged a donor-supported yearly acquisition of 1 million hectares of land for settlement over 5 years. This would begin with the 804 farms, measuring about 2.1 million hectares, which Government had designated the previous year and which had subsequently been gazetted for acquisition. The remaining three million hectares would be similarly identified, designated and acquired in the subsequent three years, making the Second Phase a five-year, donor supported programme.

Virtually no progress was registered in 1999 on the Inception Phase, with the modest resettlement programme undertaken that year being financed solely by the Government of Zimbabwe. The lack of progress was a result of:

¢ The reluctance of donors to make good pledges made at the September Conference;

¢ The resistance of commercial farmers to land reforms expressed through legal challenge to the acquisition of almost all the 804 farms that government had gazetted and sought to acquire, forcing government to abandon the whole process;

¢ An unhelpful British stance on land reform in Zimbabwe, which had the effect of discouraging donors from participating in any practical manner.

Against this backdrop of donor reluctance, diminishing resource and a restive people keenly awaiting restitution of their land, Government had to find alternative ways to carry forward the imperative of land reform.

In view of the British Government's reluctance to support land reforms and the fact that successive colonial governments simply grabbed land the indigenous people without paying any compensation, Government found it morally reprehensible to have to tax the African victims of colonialism to buy back their own land. To do this would have amounted to rewarding a colonial injustice by penalising the injured party. Yet the British had built a full-compensation clause into the Lancaster House Constitution to protect their interests in Zimbabwe. To remove that legal hurdle on 6 April 2000, in Zimbabwe's Fourth Parliament effected the Constitution Amendment Act (No. 2) of 2000 which;

¢ Empowered the Government to compulsorily acquire agricultural land for resettlement purposes.

¢ Placed the responsibility of paying for land acquired for purposes of resettlement firmly into the hands of the former colonial power, Britain; and

¢ Obligated Government to pay full compensation for any improvements on acquired properties.

Since independence in 1980, therefore, land acquisition and resettlement has been one of the major goals of the Zimbabwe Government. The clearly stated policy objectives include redressing historical imbalances created by decades of colonial and settler racism, alleviating poverty and deepening the economic empowerment of the disadvantaged indigenous majority, who remained marginalized in congested and largely infertile communal areas, while a tiny minority of about 4 000 white commercial farmers owned 75 percent of the best arable land in the high rainfall ecological zones.

Commercial Farm Settlement Scheme (CFSS)

Distortions by sections of the press have promoted the impression that Government's land reform efforts in the past were based on favouritism, as they targeted educated elites. Such an impression results from confusing the programme to resettle landless indigenous people on land acquired for the purpose with the Commercial Farm Settlement Scheme, a selective exercise that integrates resourceful and skilled indigenous farmers into the mainstream of commercial agriculture. Through this instrumentality, which predated Zimbabwe's independence, indigenous Zimbabweans are incorporated into a scheme from which they were excluded in the past.

Successive colonial government in the then Rhodesia used this Scheme to empower selected members of the white community who showed potential for agriculture. White veterans of the two world wars, senior civil servants, and members of the uniformed forces used to be allocated large farms on long leases for a nominal charge as rewards for good service. This scheme, which was heavily subsidized by the state, elevated many white personalities to the level they are today.

At independence, the Zimbabwean Government continued with the same instrument but now to empower blacks who had potential for commercial agriculture to produce for the marketplace alongside their white counterparts, who had been given a head's start by the arrangements of the past. Land used for CFSS is state land held on a lease - hold basis, and is different from land acquired for resettlement.

The selection criteria for the CFSS are stringent and competitive. The land set aside for the CFSS is demarcated and advertised in the press. Applicants are shortlisted, interviewed and approved for allocation of land. In general, beneficiaries have to be Zimbabwean citizens, aged 25 years and above with a minimum of two years secondary schooling, competent in agriculture, be able to raise financial resources and generally agree to reside on the farm or engage a qualified manager to manage the agricultural operations. The tenural system of the CFSS is based on a renewable five - year lease with an option to buy.

On being allocated the land, the CFSS settler farmers are monitored and taken off the land if they do not perform in terms of land utilisation and production. The basis on which each farmer is monitored is the potential of the land for crop or livestock production and his or her performance against a five-year development plan submitted by the applicant farmer.

The CFSS is extended to any qualifying indigenous Zimbabwean. The list of beneficiaries of this scheme includes members of both the private and public sectors with diverse political backgrounds, among them the Secretary General of the MDC, an opposition party.

6. IMPACT OF THE LAND REFORM AND RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME ON PRODUCTIVE POTENTIAL

Statistics on national production of major crops such as maize, millet, cotton, groundnuts, sorghum and sunflowers show that in spite of utilising the poorest land, the communal farming sector has had higher production levels than the large scale commercial farmers as shown in the following table:

It is expected that, with more Zimbabweans on productive land, much of which has lain fallow since it was expropriated for speculative purposes in the 1890s, agricultural output will increase exponentially. It needs to be recalled that, in the wake of the drought of 1922, it was the energy of the dispossessed peasant sector that effectively addressed the subsequent grain crisis, releasing some 200 000 bags of maize into the market in 1929.

The Maize Control Acts of 1931 and 1934 were promulgated to protect settler agriculture from competition from the indigenous peasant sector through pricing disincentives. A bag of maize offered at market by a European settler fetched seven times more than a bag of maize offered by a dispossessed African peasant in the same market.

It is this sector to which the bulk of productive land is being restored under somewhat more modern conditions.