The Observer Land has been one of the most controversial issues in Zimbabwe for the past 100 years. The war to end white-ruled Rhodesia was fought largely over land. Robert Mugabe's guerrilla fighters, and the peasants who supported them, battled to regain the land seized from them by British colonists. The Rhodesian regime systematically stripped the African population of the country's best land without paying any compensation. The Africans were confined to arid, marginal land, where the majority of Zimbabwe's people remain today.
All sides agree Zimbabwe needs thorough land reform, redistribution and redevelopment.
Land was the most contentious issue at the Lancaster House talks of 1979, which brought Zimbabwe to independence. In 1980 Mugabe started off with ambitious plans to resettle 600,000 families in five years. To date about 65,000 families have been resettled. The majority of those resettlement projects have not succeeded, largely because they have not received adequate follow-up support to redevelop the plots and because they were not granted tenure to the land. Since 1990 the government's new resettlement projects have virtually ground to a halt.