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Forever Gained:1 Resettlement and Land Policy in the Context of National Development in Zimbabwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

B. H. Kinsey
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Extract

In September 1980 the Government of Zimbabwe embarked upon a programme of agricultural resettlement which is modest in terms of the extent of the problems which it seeks to mitigate, but ambitious in terms of the capacity of a new administration to implement it. The target rates of resettlement designed into the original programme have subsequently been multiplied some ninefold by the addition of a second, parallel programme, which makes resettlement now and in the foreseeable future the major rural development activity in Zimbabwe; indeed, it is currently the only sustained public sector programme with the potential to affect fairly immediately and significantly the economic welfare of large numbers of rural dwellers.

Résumé

Acquise à jamais: Repeuplement et Politique d'Allocation de la Terre dans le contexte du développement national au Zimbabwe

En 1980, le Zimbabwe s'est embarque dans d'ambitieux programmes visant à réinstaller avant 1985 quelque 170,000 families des régions surpeuplées communales (préalablement ‘Tribal Trust Lands’) sur la terre acquise des fermiers européens. Les programmes demandent beaucoup en termes de personnel et de ressources, et la réinstallation de la population est virtuellement la seule activite de développement rural national opérant en 1982. Ces programmes semblent être motivés par une forte croyance que la terre est le problème central à résoudre dans un Zimbabwe indépendant. Des plans d'installation sont à l'heure actuelle en train d'être élaborés et mis en oeuvre sous une pression de temps considérable et avec une étroite insistance sur les aspects techniques à courts termes plutôt que sur les problèmes économiques et sociaux à longs termes. A vrai dire, beaucoup du contenu et du mode d'implantation des programmes existants semble inconsistant par rapport aux buts à longs termes du gouvernement. Si, toutefois, les nombres d'immigrants et d'hectares de terre sont la seule mesure de performance, les accomplissements dans une très courte période sont indéniables. Ce qui demeure cependant en doute est si le repeuplement dans sa forme existante est un instrument politique largement effectif pour atteindre les buts de croissance et d'équité du gouvernement. Car, bien que la réinstallation ait crée une période de grâce, celle ci ne sera que de courte durée; dans les cinq années seulement qui verront l'achèvement du programme projeté, l'arithmétique de la croissance de la population augmentera le nombre des habitants dans les régions communales au-dessus des niveaux de crise de 1980. Le Gouvernement doit encore confronter le challenge beaucoup plus ingrat d'accomplir une transformation agraire dans les régions communales, où il sera difficile d'échapper à la conclusion que le problème central à résoudre n'est pas la terre mais la population.

Type
Past and Present in Zimbabwe
Information
Africa , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 1982 , pp. 92 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1982

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