The Land Question, Economic Collapse and the Right to Development in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The latter part of the post-colonial period in Zimbabwe – from the late 1990s to the late 2000s – witnessed the collapse of the economy, with dire consequences for the livelihoods of the majority of the impoverished and distressed black population. The context necessitates, from a right to development point of view, an enquiry into the entitlement to redistributive justice with respect to the guarantee for the equal enjoyment of the common heritage for the attainment of socio-economic freedom. This article revisits two decades of recession in Zimbabwe, to unearth the core and peripheral causes thereof, which centred on the deeply antagonistic land question that was ignored, and the blame shifted to political leadership as the cause of the country’s decline into a failed state. While the radicalism that accompanied the land repossession left severe socio-economic repercussions, it is argued that even in the absence of the repossession exercise, the economy was programmed to crash in the face of competing interests. The planned crash of the Zimbabwean economy was a means of under[1]mining the independence project and thwarting the land restitution claim that constituted the basis of the Lancaster House settlement that ended the liberation struggle against oppressive white minority rule. With the economy steadily recovering as a result of the productive use of the land by the black population, we argue that the land repossession in Zimbabwe fulfilled a legitimate right to development expectation.