Zimbabwe to Nationalize All Farmland

Just when it seems the misrule of formerly wealthy Zimbabwe could not grow any worse, the government of President Robert Mugabe comes out with even more ways of making his people suffer. This time, the private ownership of land is going to end. When Stalin did this, millions starved.

The new plan calls for the replacement of all title deeds with 99-year leases, which amounts to confiscation since there is no guarantee that the current owner will be the leaseholder. John Nkomo, the minister responsible for this bone-headed move, said, "Ultimately, all land shall be resettled as state property. It will now be the state which will enable the utilization of the land for national prosperity." He could just as easily have said, "Comrades, we shall all be equal in our hunger." However, since well-connected bureaucrats and their families got the best land under the last "reform" effort, some will be more equal than others.

The Mugabe regime is insistent that the food shortages, inflation and unemployment that the nation suffers is the result of colonial oppression. This is odd, since he has been the one-man with the one-vote in Zimbabwe since the country ceased being (food exporting) Rhodesia in 1980. Either he is wrong, or he is truly an inept freedom fighter.

This is no doubt that land-reform was needed at independence and that there was a large component of the white farming population that was going to lose out when this happened. More than two decades later, it is clear that the approaches used thus far have failed. Something new does need to be tried.

What is difficult to believe is that the government truly believes that having a nation of tenant farmers is going to be better than a nation of farmers who own their own land. It is not an ideological argument; it is a matter of history. Zimbabwe is already short of food, and the UN predicts that it will grow far less this year than it needs. Mr. Mugabe has sent the UN crop assessment mission home, and he has predicted a huge crop for the year. The famine is on its way, and it could have been prevented with a sensible agricultural policy.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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