Public Policy and Administration Review

A Failed Land Reform Strategy in Zimbabwe. The Willing Buyer Willing Seller
Simbarashe Moyo

Abstract
Land reform during the past few years in Zimbabwe has been at the forefrontof headlines in Southern Africa and other parts of the world. Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1979 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, in an effort to more equitably distribute land between the historically disenfranchised blacks and the minority-whites who ruled Southern Rhodesia from 1890 to 1979. For the first two decades following independence, Zimbabwe’s land reform policy had a low profile and to many it became a model of how land reform should be undertaken. It can be divided into two periods: from 1979 to 2000, where a principle of willing buyer, willing seller was applied with economic help from Britain and secondly, beginning in 2000, the fast-track land reform program. Since the mid-1990s, however, it became clear that the political currency of land, the demands of the landless, unlawful occupation of land and unfulfilled promises of land reform could soon develop a momentum that would be difficult to control. But however the purpose of this paper is to demystify and explain the factors contributing to the failure of the Willing Buyer Willing Seller principle as a land reform model in Zimbabwe.

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