A Precarious Balance

This is an account of Zimbabwe's controversial fast-track land reform programme.It highlights the successes and failures of land reform efforts by the Zimbabwean government from independence in 1980 to 1998 when the fast-track land reform programme was conceived. The context for fast-track land reform includes the rise of Zimbabwe's Liberation War Veterans as a formidable force and the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change as a significant political challenge to the ruling Zanu-PF and its policies. The consequences of fast-track land reform are analysed in terms of stalled development and the plight of Zimbabwe's farm workers; the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of farm workers, white commercial farmers and others in Zimbabwe's countryside. The case study is illustrative of how fast-track land reform was implemented and its socio-economic impact on the country's poor and marginalised groups, for instance, female and foreign farm workers. The case study offers some insights into the survival strategies which ordinary people adopted to cope with their new circumstances in a radically altered physical and social environment following the land reform exercise.