Beneficiaries are actors too.pdf - Southern Institute of Peace ...

Government or private agencies. This could be done either
through the provision of working space (land for farming, or for
embarking on various income generating projects) or the
provision of funding together with training on the prudent use of
such resources for sustainable livelihoods. Any empowerment
initiative must have a target group. The background to
Zimbabwe's economic empowerment history is firmly anchored in
the land reform process that began in the 1980s with the
resettlement of about 71 000 landless households (Utete, 2003).
However with the increasing demands for more land by people
especially in overpopulated communal areas and the subsequent
forceful occupation of both state land and private owned land by
landless peasants, the government embarked on the fast track
th
land reform programme from the 15 of July 2000. Though a
variety of factors are mentioned as having given momentum to the
fast track land reform programme, the basic idea was the
empowerment of previously landless people especially in the
communal areas where pressure on land was and is still high. The
A1 and the A2 models were aimed at the decongestion of
communal areas and the creation of an indigenous group of black
commercial farmers respectively.
The controversies of land reform in Zimbabwe stem from the
programme's divergent results. In its quest to empower the people
of Zimbabwe through land redistribution, the Robert Mugabe led
government in the same process was disempowering the white
community which owned most of the farms targeted for land
reform. The white farmers had mostly benefited from historical
patterns in land allocation which mainly benefited the white
community at the expense of indigenous blacks. After
disempowering the white community in Zimbabwe through land
seizures and related human rights abuses, punitive measures
were implemented by the USA against the government of
Zimbabwe through the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act (ZIDERA) of 2001 (Hondora, 2009) and a host of
other restrictive measures impacting the government's viability.
The United Kingdom (UK) under Tony Blair and various members
of the white Commonwealth also made sure the Mugabe regime
was punished for the land reform programme. It was the talk of
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