4. Zimbabwe III: The Fight for Land

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Squatters occupy a farm in Zimbabwe

About 4,500 white farmers own 11 million hectares of Zimbabwe's prime agricultural land. About one million blacks own 16 million hectares, often in drought regions. This situation was created in colonial times when blacks were forced off their ancestral lands.

"The Land Question" was a major cause of the guerilla war which led to Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. Twenty years later very little has changed. Land reform is expensive. Farmers have to be compensated and a whole infrastructure that includes roads, schools and training has to be provided to those who get the land. Mugabe says that the ex-colonialists, Britain, should pay as they caused the problem. Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, responds that £44 million pounds has already been provided and that much of the redistributed land has already ended up in the hands of cabinet ministers and government officials.

Mugabe is now saying if there is no money he will take the land anyway and ignore the courts and the constitution. Thousands of his supporters have occupied white farms. Some farmers have been killed and others have been forced to sign over their land. About 600 white-owned farms are currently occupied by a mixture of war veterans, unemployed urban youths and peasants. The leader of the war veterans is Chenjerai Hunzvi who is nick-named Hitler (pictured right). He has compared himself to revolutionary figures like Che Guevara, Napolean Bonaparte and even Jesus Christ. "All revolutions require violence. No-one can stop the revolution we have started," he has boasted.