9781422277690

they didn’t have connections. The country’s economy faltered under the weight of corruption and mismanagement. Government services were abysmal. Zimbabwe’s infrastruc- ture, once the envy of Africa, fell into disrepair. Land Grab Conditions grew infinitely worse after 2000, when Mugabe ini- tiated the “fast-track land resettlement program.” He portrayed it as a means of achieving much-needed land reform. Critics charged that the program was conceived mostly as a way to strengthen Mugabe’s grip on power. There was certainly a strong case for land reform in Zimbabwe. Decades of white rule had left most of the country’s black people landless. The 1979 agreement that led to Zimbabwe’s independence promised to correct this historical injustice. Large white-owned farms would be purchased, and the land redistributed to blacks to cultivate. But the white farmers were supposed to be offered a fair price for their land, and they weren’t supposed to be coerced into selling. However, under the fast-track land resettlement program, armed ZANU- PF members—often with support from police—invaded white- owned commercial farms. Using threats or actual violence, they expelled the white farmers and, in many cases, the black agricultural laborers who worked for those farmers. Large parcels of seized land were claimed by Mugabe’s inner circle. The president, too, would create his own huge estate from 10,000 acres of prime land taken from white farmers. For ordinary Zimbabweans, the path to owning a farm was less certain. Those who applied for land grants first had to

14

Dictatorship: Authoritarian Rule