Chabvonga said that even under the new plan to seize the land unilaterally, the government will compensate white farmers for improvements. Political stakes are high. For the first time in years, people are tired of what they perceive as Mugabi's incompetent rule, chafing at a high jobless rate and the cost of keeping an11,000-man army in the Congo, .and mounting a serious opposition campaign to remove him and his party in upcoming parliamentary elections. An agreement was reached on land reform in 1990, with funding from Great Britain for resettlement, but the government has not been able to raise the money to buy farms. Those waiting for land are impatient.
Whites still own half the fertile farms, including two million acres of uncultivated land.
Veterans of the independence war, who have expected land since the war ended in l980, are frustrated by the slow pace of land reform and have even threatened to take over the country if the opposition wins the election. Chabvonga insists the vets could not accomplish a takeover. Some white farmers have obtained agreements with the government to sell their farms, only to have the government renege for lack of funds. The opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has charged that the government has granted long-term leases to ruling party officials for 272 farms totalling a million acres last year. They are also concerned that agriculture, the strongest sector in the economy, might be disabled by inexperienced farmers taking over precipitously, further exacerbating Zimbabwe's dismal economic situation.