The Land Crisis in Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond the Myopic Focus Upon Black & White

Abstract

This article deconstructs the role that race played in the land crisis in Zimbabwe that occurred in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and earls 2000s. The article makes it clear that the government of Zimbabwe did not extend robust property rights to its black majority population for the most part even as it took land from large white landowners. This is revealing given that the government's primary justification for taking land from large white landowners was that the black majority unjustly owned little property in Zimbabwe as a result of colonialist and neocolonialist, discriminatory polices.

Keywords: land reform, property rights, colonialism, Zimbabwe, race, landowners, land ownership, corruption, land tenure, insecurity, inequality, distribution

JEL Classification: K33; Q15