With the upcoming BIPPA government compensation drive happening in Zimbabwe, this article focuses on the issue of property rights in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean political timeline has been marred by sheer disrespect for property rights by both the colonialist and the post-colonial governments. In comparison with the systems that followed, it is necessary to understand that the precolonial political systems were more libertarian.
Precolonial Land System
During this time land was under tribal trust and was based on customary land arrangements among free people with the chief being the land trustee. If a member found the customary rules oppressive, they retained the practical freedom to move to another chief’s territory or negotiate different arrangements, because no single entity held a legal monopoly on land.
Colonial Era: The Original Sin of the State
The Pioneer Column—a private military division of the British South Africa Company—did not “settle” in Zimbabwe, they invaded and went on to create a formal colonial government. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 was not a reform, it was a racist, state-enforced cartel.
By state law and mandate, black Zimbabweans were dispossessed by force. White settlers later benefited from that force. No state charter, treaty, or parliament can morally launder theft. Most native black Africans were moved from productive, fertile lands to infertile lands in areas with poor rainfall and climate. This state-mandated system dispossessed Africans who had the potential to be productive on the land at the cost of a minority of white settlers. This was accompanied by discriminatory, aggressive tax policies towards the natives, limiting their productive potential. This created the foundation of modern Zimbabwe’s land regime; hence—through the forbidden fruit of state monopoly over land—the original sin was committed, only to be inherited over generations of governments (pre- and post-colonial).
Lancaster House (1979–1990): The Brief Glimmer of Markets
During the Zimbabwean independence negotiations between the African nationalist parties (ZANU and ZAPU) and the Rhodesian government (which occurred in England’s Lancaster House mansion), an agreement was reached on the land issue: that there would be voluntary buying and selling of land between the state and the farmers.
The Lancaster House Agreement’s “willing buyer, willing seller” provision was the only period in Zimbabwe’s history that approached a free market system in land distribution. For ten years, the state could not simply decree by law; it had to negotiate a price and buy. Admittedly, this was still a tense period, with fears and agitation from both racial camps, as the land question remained politically important. However, it was like an oasis in comparison to the desert of the rest of this timeline.
The 1990s: Compulsory Acquisition of Land Becomes Law
The Lancaster House Agreement (1979) had protected white-owned commercial farms for ten years by requiring a “willing buyer, willing seller” system. That protection expired in 1990. Almost immediately, President Robert Mugabe’s government signaled its intention to seize land more aggressively. When the government removed the “willing seller” clause in 1992, it tore up the last fig leaf.
Compulsory acquisition is theft—even if the state and the Pan-African intellectual community insist on “fair compensation” or “giving back the land to the people.” No man can set the price of his own seizure. The state abandoned voluntary exchange in totality, and predictable friction ensued between the state and the white farmers, who now had to sell at government-decided prices and had no say in whether they had to sell.
Fast Track Land Reform (2000–2008): The Abyss
The Fast Track Land Reform Programme (“Third Chimurenga”/“hondo yeminda”: Land War) was not a reform. It was a violent orgy of expropriation. Armed squatters, police-enforced evictions, and the kangaroo courts of ZANU-PF loyalists erased thousands of property claims overnight. This violence affected not only whites but also black employees and sympathizers, who were often physically assaulted and injured in retribution. The land acquired was not distributed according to productiveness or economic/financial merit to its new receivers, but to loyalty and political influence. This made things worse, as it guaranteed the birth of a marriage of convenience between the new farmers and the state—a relationship that gave birth to toxic annual state subsidies that are usually mismanaged.
Hyperinflation followed not as a mystery, but as a mathematical certainty. When a state destroys the most basic institution of production—secure ownership—the economy cannibalizes itself. By 2008, Zimbabweans were carrying wheelbarrows of cash for bread. That was not karma; it was cause and effect. There was a clear lack of compensation to the white farmers, no clear due process for both the former (mostly white) and new (mostly black) owners of the farms; everything was rushed.
Zimbabwe’s Land Compensation Era: A Libertarian Assessment
The 2013 Constitution was a modest improvement on paper, requiring compensation for foreign owners under BIPPAs. A treaty between Zimbabwe and other countries that was designed to protect other countries’ nationals’ investments in Zimbabwe, typically including guarantees of fair treatment and compensation in the event of expropriation. It also created a Human Rights Commission. It recognized a certain fundamental flaw on the government side: “responsibility in respect to treaties is based on the integrity of the signing parties.” The government understandably still maintains that this “is not a reversal of land reform.”
In this case, any repayment is better than none, and any return of property is superior to any payment. This gesture of goodwill surprisingly began opening up Zimbabwe to the West and vice versa; Western countries have begun removing economic sanctions and restrictions that they had imposed on Zimbabwe due to its land reform policy. To be precise, some Western sanctions have been lifted (e.g., US ZIDERA repeal), while some targeted measures remain, but the compensation gesture is helping thaw relations.
A Zimbabwean Libertarian’s View on Zimbabwe’s Land Question
White farmers were not the original owners of Zimbabwean land. They were themselves the beneficiaries of colonial theft. The first wrong occurred in the 1890s–1930s, when the British South Africa Company and subsequent colonial governments forcibly dispossessed black Africans.
Paying white farmers now (the ones who acquired or inherited land during the colonial era), after they already benefited from colonial theft, would be double compensation. They got the land free from colonialism, then got paid again when it was taken. The person who steals a horse cannot later demand compensation when a second thief steals that same horse from him. Both thieves are wrong, but the original owner’s claim comes first.
That said, the fast track land grabs were still theft against the white farmers as current possessors. They lacked due process and often bundled all farmers by race without regard to the farmers who bought their farms post-independence and those who were protected by BIPPA.
A Zimbabwean Libertarian’s Answer to Zimbabwe’s Land Question
There is a Zimbabwean proverb that says “yadeuka yadeuka mvura yemuguchu haidyorerwe” which can be loosely translated to say: “It has spilled, it has spilled—water from a gourd [traditional African container] cannot be collected back.” In essence, what’s done is done. The proverb is often used to advise caution, to accept consequences, or to discourage dwelling on past mistakes.
Zimbabweans have gone through a lot from war (against the Rhodesian government) to inflation, political instability, and violence post-independence. The land issue is a chapter that many Zimbabweans are more than willing to close. The BIPPA and other forms of compensation the government has agreed to with the farmers and other stakeholders are more than welcome, but that should not be the conclusion of this story. Rather, the government should begin ceding ownership and monopoly on land and allow the new entrepreneurial generation of people—regardless of race and nationality—to own this land by enshrining the protection of private property in the constitution.
All current commercial farmers not affected by the current policies of compensation should receive title deeds to the land they have instead of government leases. Any state land currently on offer should now be sold with title deed guarantee rather than the current opaque system of “offer letters” (temporary, revocable state permits, not ownership deeds). If the state cedes or sells the land to the private sector, which comprises interested enterprises and private citizens (local or foreign), the land becomes bankable and private capital can start to lend to farmers in need based on this bankable land as collateral. Lastly, the government should commit to no future infringements and put mechanisms in place that prevent its policymakers from infringing any property rights in the future. They should also be prevented from subsidizing the agricultural sector, leaving the financing to the private sector, and management and risk to the owners.
