“The Land Reform and Resettlement Programme of the Zimbabwean government can be seen as comprising two phases. In the first phase, from 1980 to 1996, the dominant approach to land redistribution and acquisition may be characterised as “a state-centred market-based approach”. Accordingly, “land was purchased by the state from willing sellers and redistributed to beneficiaries”. Between 1980 and 1996, land was purchased by the State from white sellers and redistributed
to black beneficiaries to form settlements. However, as will be explained below, the government was unable to redistribute land on any significant scale. The state could buy land only from those people who were willing to sell. There was pressure against this type of land reform that came from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as from the largely white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which encouraged white farmers to refuse to sell land to the government. As a result of these pressures, the government began cutting
back on the funds allocated for the settlements.”
