Academic literature on the topic 'British land policy in Zimbabwe'

Related to the functions of the central state and local state, a range of interventions in the urban land-development process may be pursued. Typically, policies and practices related to land are devised at different times for different purposes and are administered by different agencies. Rarely are the relationships between them, their implementation, and their overall impact considered systematically, especially for developing countries. In this paper I evaluate urban land policy in Zimbabwe. I consider tenure, land-use planning and development control, taxation, and direct public sector intervention in the land market. Particular attention is given to the local administrative context and to the relationship between central and local government as portrayed in the paths of land delivery for private developers, municipalities, and central government. The overall conclusion is that Zimbabwe's urban land administration system works effectively. However, it is formal and complex, which is restricting its ability to play an appropriate role in catering for rapid urban growth and the needs of low-income residents.

The place of Sub-Sahara Africa in the Worldsportsystem The contemporary world sportsystem is developed through globalisation with its homogenisation and heterogenisation processes. The result of these opposite forces is the division of the world in 6 classes. Sub-Sahara Africa underwent, with the exception of South-Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, a total and passive acceptance of the western (British) modern sports. The place of that part of Africa is analogue to and correlates with its place in Wallerstein’s worldsystem periphery. The introduction of modern sports is associated with the spatial diffusion of the 19th century British hegemonic cultural imperialism. The purpose of this policy was a transformation of the traditional society into a modern functional world-culture and the incorporation of that part of the world in the world-system. The anti-western feelings after the independence resulted in a political Pan-Africanism. However, sport and more specific soccer, a typical product of the western domination, has not been rejected. On the contrary, local politicians used it to create a national identity. The strong link between soccer and soil resulted in a strong form of topophily. This connection was transformed into sportnationalism and created in the, through artificial borders developed, nations a unity and a national pride. The outcome of sport games was used to demonstrate the successes in politics and economics. The absence of any political platform on which the Third World had a strong voice brought about that the international sport scene, such as the FIFA, was used for the unification of the Third World against the former colonial powers. Nowadays, the globalisation processes result in an increasing labour migration of African football players to the rich core competitions in Europe. This form of migration can be classified as another form of “cash crop” or in this case “foot drain..” “As Roman imperialism laid the foundation of modern civilisation and led wild barbarians of these islands (Britain) along the path of progress, so in Africa today we are repaying the debt, and bringing to the dark places of the earth – the abode of barbarism and cruelty – the torch of culture and progress… we hold these countries because it is the genius of our race to colonise, to trade and to govern” (quote by the English educationist Sir Frederick Lugard (1858-1954) in Mandell, 1986: p.102).

The gazetting of the Land Acquisition Bill on 24 January, 1992 unleashed what has been described as the fiercest debate ever known in the history of Zimbabwe. However, the issue of land reform had been back on the political agenda ever since the expiry of the Lancaster House Constitution on 18 April, 1990, and pressures from a variety of quarters, both internal and external, had been brought to bear on the government during the intervening period. In particular, its adoption in 1990 of a document declaring National Land Policy had generated intense controversy. In accordance with the principles set out in that document the government has sought to facilitate the acquisition of land for resettlement purposes, first by amending section 16 of the Lancaster House Constitution and subsequently by enacting the Land Acquisition Act. In formulating its policy the government has recognized both the need to redress inequalities in land distribution and the need to take into account current national and international socio-economic realities. The result is a compromise.

This article explores the ways in which constructions of identities of place are embedded in the ideology of race and social orientation in Zimbabwe. Using newspaper reports, memoirs, speeches, advertisements, fiction, interviews and ephemera produced around key discursive thresholds, it examines the production of multiple meanings of key terms within competing discourses to generate co-existing parallel lexicons. Crucially, labels like ‘settler’, ‘African’ and ‘Zimbabwean’, labels that are inextricably linked to access to and association with the land in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe, shift their reference and connotations for different speakers in different settings and periods. For example, the term ‘settler’, used to refer to white colonists of British origin who occupied vast agricultural lands in colonial Zimbabwe, is appropriated in post-independent Zimbabwe to designate blacks settled on the land in the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. The analysis of semantic pragmatic change in relation to key discursive thresholds yields a complex story of changing identities conditioned by different experiences of a raced national biography.

LAND ACQUISITION AMENDMENT ACT, 2000 (ZIMBABWE)Since Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 the issue of land reform and, in particular, the issue of land acquisition and redistribution has seldom been off the political agenda. For the first ten years of independence there were constitutional constraints on the acquisition of land for resettlement purposes, but the National Land Policy of 1990 set out plans for an accelerated programme of resettlement. In order to achieve its ambitious targets the government of Zimbabwe saw the need to strengthen its powers of compulsory acquisition both by amending section 16 of the Constitution (which provided strong protection against the compulsory acquisition of property) and by enacting the Land Acquisition Act to provide a statutory basis for the new policy. These reforms were extremely controversial both inside and outside the country and a clause excluding the right to fair compensation for expropriated land was dropped partly in response to international pressure.