Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1979 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, an effort to more equitably distribute land between the historically disenfranchised blacks and the minority-whites who ruled Zimbabwe from 1890 to 1979. The government's land distribution is perhaps the most crucial and most bitterly contested political issue surrounding Zimbabwe. It can be divided into two periods: from 1979 to 2000, where a principle of willing buyer, willing seller was applied with economic help from Great Britain and secondly, beginning in 2000, the fast-track land reform program. Mugabe's targets have included black political opponents as well as white farmers.
Read more about Land Reform In Zimbabwe: Background, Lancaster House Agreement, 1980s, Economic Consequences
Famous quotes containing the words land and/or reform:
“His genius can cover all the land with gorgeous palaces, but the reader does not abide in them, but pitches his tent rather in the desert and on the mountain-peak.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a sound currency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (18221893)