Forever Gained: Resettlement and Land Policy in the Context of National Development in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Opening ParagraphIn September 1980 the Government of Zimbabwe embarked upon a programme of agricultural resettlement which is modest in terms of the extent of the problems which it seeks to mitigate, but ambitious in terms of the capacity of a new administration to implement it. The target rates of resettlement designed into the original programme have subsequently been multiplied some ninefold by the addition of a second, parallel programme, which makes resettlement now and in the foreseeable future the major rural development activity in Zimbabwe; indeed, it is currently the only sustained public sector programme with the potential to affect fairly immediately and significantly the economic welfare of large numbers of rural dwellers.