why is th fast track land refom in Zimbabwe debatable
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Answer:
Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) formally began with the Land Acquisition Act of 2002. The Program, that effectively co-opted the farm occupations since 1998, redistributed land from white-owned farms and estates, as well as state lands, to more than 150,000 farmers under two models, A1 and A2. The A1 model allocated small plots for growing crops and grazing land to landless and poor farmers, while the A2 model allocated farms to new black commercial farmers who had the skills and resources to farm profitably, reinvest and raise agricultural productivity. The number of large capitalist farms, mainly white owned, fell by around 75%, while there was a 16% drop in the number of large foreign and domestically owned agro-estates (Moyo 2011a).
Until recently, the FTLRP generated heated debates that polarised opinion between those who were in favour of redressing the colonial racial distribution of land in favour of black farmers and those who were against this objective as well as the way it was done (Cliffe et al. 2013), the latter almost universally supported by media and governments of the global North and especially the former colonial power, the United Kingdom. However, there is now a relatively large body of literature that has addressed the views that dominated scholarship in the earlier period (Chaumba, Scoones and Wolmer 2003; Moyo et al. 2009; Scoones et al. 2010; Matondi 2012; Hanlon, Manjengwa and Smart 2012; and Mkodzongi 2013a, 2013b). This literature broadly argues that the land reform was redistributive although underpinned by class, gender and ethno-regionalism (Hammar, Raftopoulos and Jensen 2003; Moyo and Yeros 2005, 2007; Moyo et al. 2009; Scoones et al. 2010; Chambati 2011; Moyo 2011a, 2011b; Hanlon, Manjengwa and Smart 2012; Matondi 2012; Mkodzongi 2013a, 2013b).
More importantly, the major beneficiaries of the land reform were peasants who now have access to better-quality land and natural resources that were previously enclosed and enjoyed by a few whites under the bi-modal agrarian structure inherited from colonialism, that is, white commercial farmers and agro-industrial estates on the one hand and small-scale black commercial farmers and black peasant families on the other. As noted by Moyo,
Fast track land redistribution undermined the underlying logic of settler-colonial agrarian relations founded on racial monopoly control over land that deprived peasants of land-based social reproduction and compelled cheap agrarian labour supplies. Redistribution reversed racial patterns of land ownership and broadened access to land across the ethnically diverse provinces, while replacing most private agricultural property rights with land user rights on public property. (Moyo 2011a, 944)
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