The political debates about the rights and wrongs of Zimbabwe’s land reform continue to occupy many. The tired, old obsession about how the land was taken and the associated focus on so-called ‘cronies’ persists, despite much evidence to suggest that the process was highly varied and that most land was occupied by land poor peasants and unemployed people from town, even if some high value land was captured by political elites.
A failure to grasp the complexity of land politics in Zimbabwe plagues policy debates, and the myths that we thought we had challenged in our book 14 years ago frustratingly still rear their head in discussions with donor officials, diplomats, journalists, foreign academics and many others.
This article is from Zimbabweland, a blog written by IDS Research Fellow Ian Scoones. Zimbabweland focuses on issues related to rural livelihoods and land reform in Zimbabwe.