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On the eve of independence form white settler rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, great compromises were reached among the parties in conflict that resulted in the maintenance of white economic privilege, including the right to maintain control over the most productive agricultural land in the country. The majority African population in all three countries had great expectations that the land they had been dispossessed of during white-settler rule would be returned under newly elected majority rule governments. Land reform, however, became a cumbersome and highly politicised process and therefore was not a priority of the post-independence governments. This changed however, in 2000, when President Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) amended the constitution to allow for the expropriation of white farmland without compensation for redistribution to the landless and poor of the country. This book is primarily about the events that gave rise to the fast-track land resettlement programme in Zimbabwe, the resultant political and economic crisis and the impact the crisis has had on the region of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
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