The Southern African Region Historical Policies and the Land Redistribution Crisis in Zimbabwe

On the achievement of majority rule, the landless expected the government to redistribute land in their favour while the commercial farmers expected the post-colonial governments to redistribute underutilized land. In the case of Zimbabwe, the Independence Constitution had a clause granting freedom from deprivation of property. Based on lessons learnt from the Zimbabwe land redistribution programme which ended up in violent commercial farm invasions and illegal occupations sometimes resulting in the lose of innocent lives, the South African and Namibian governments should plan for economically viable land redistribution programmes.