The Central Bank in Zimbabwe has threatened the black farmers in the country with suspension of subsidies. The governor of the bank has said the farmers who were allocated lands in the past seven years should by now have enough experience to be self-financing.
Land reforms have been a political issue of seriuos nature in the former British colony of Zimbabwe. The land reform policies, aimed at distributing commercial farmlands to farmers of ethnic African origin have deprived the English land owners of their estates as the lands were mostly confiscated from them. The whites who made up about 1% of the population of this small land-locked country owned almost 70% of the cultivated land till the nineteen eighties.
The farms developed by the English colonial settlers produced commercial crops and provided work to the largely impoverished labourers. But, leaders like Robert Mugabe have used the land issue as a hot political policy to garner the support of the public and the voters during successive elections. Robert Mugabe, a firebrand political campaigner, has been ruling Zimbabwe ever since his first election victory in 1980.
The policy of land reforms was in fact a veiled form of nationalism, devised with political gains as the ultimate goal. But it can not be denied that the majority native black population in the country comprised of landless labourers. Kindling nationalistic fervour was one way of uniting and politically organizing the masses.
The hatred whipped up towards the white farmers has led to rioting and looting in the past. The whites had to abandon whatever they had and leave the country.
Political activism and good governance are two different things. The land reforms in zimbabwe have resulted in heavy losses as farm production has plummeted over the years. Proper management of the estates has become literally impossible. The present threat by the government to withdraw subsidies only reveals its failure to make good of the acquired lands.
