Zimbabwe Gives Land Back to White Farmers After Wrecking Economy

There should have been intelligent action to redress injustice, not action based on revenge that was bound to hurt everybody.

Godfrey Marawanyika and Antony Sguazzin
,Bloomberg•March 13, 2020

Two decades after President Robert Mugabe wrecked Zimbabwe’s economy by urging black subsistence farmers to violently force white commercial farmers and their workers off their land, his successor has thrown in the towel.

Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has proposed settling all outstanding claims against it by farmers by offering them land.

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The seizures that began in 2000 were ratified by the government, which said they were needed to redress colonial imbalances. A vibrant agricultural industry that exported tobacco and roses and grew most of the food the nation needed collapsed. Periodic food shortages ensued, inflation became the world’s highest and the manufacturing industry was decimated. What was one of Africa’s richest countries became one of its poorest.

Almost 4,500 white-owned properties and others protected under government-to-government agreements were affected by the program.

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