From 1980 to 1990 there were entrenched provisions in the Constitution of Zimbabwe which protected land rights and required the government to pay full market price for expropriated land - if the owner of the property requested this, the payment had to be made in foreign currency. This obviously made it expensive for government to acquire land. Nonetheless, with financial assistance from various governments, including Britain, since 1980 government managed acquired a total of 3,8 million hectares of commercial farmland and has resettled 71 000 families. The early resettlement programme was not very successful due to inadequate planning and failure to provide proper infrastructures and agrarian support systems. Further land for resettlement became available when government cancelled leases on all leased State land. Unfortunately large numbers of these farms were then leased to high-ranking government officials. Many high-ranking government officials had already managed to purchase large tracts of commercial land. Government at present owns 300 000 hectares of former commercial farmland that have not yet been allocated for resettlement. There are also quantities of land which could be acquired as derelict land.

The land issue figured prominently in relation to the exercise to draw up a new constitution for Zimbabwe. As pointed out above, before putting the draft constitution to a referendum, government amended the land acquisition provision so as to allow for expropriation of land without compensation. In its advertising campaign for a yes vote in the referendum, the Constitutional Commission executive paid particular attention to the land issue. Using racist and politically inflammatory language, it accused racist whites and other sellouts of opposing the draft constitution because they did not want land reform. It alleged that persons opposed to the draft constitution were sell-outs and puppets of their colonial masters. It said the whites, who were reactionary and racist, were campaigning against acceptance of the draft out of self-interest.

Farm occupations
Invasions of white owned farms first began at the end of February and within a few hours over the weekend of 26-27 February groups of "war veterans" had occupied farms in Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Masvingo and Manicaland provinces. Earlier in February the ruling party had announced that the war veterans would help with its election campaign.

The groups of invaders consisted of some war veterans, but most of the men and women who were in these groups were too young to have taken part in the liberation struggle. It is now clear that the majority of the invaders are not genuine war veterans, but are Zanu (PF) supporters and unemployed persons. Some of the unemployed are Zanu (PF) supporters who feel that the white owned agricultural land must be repossessed, but some are participating in this exercised primarily because they are destitute and have been offered payment to take part in these occupations. It seems very likely that some of those participating in the farm occupations are persons with criminal records, given the indiscriminate nature of the recruitment process.

The leadership of the war veterans has repeatedly proclaimed that they were going to take back the land that had been stolen from the indigenous people of Zimbabwe by the white settlers after Zimbabwe had been colonised.

Since the invasions began large numbers of white owned farms have been invaded. As at 30 April 2000 well over 1000 farms had been occupied. The white farms that were particularly targeted belonged to farmers who had campaigned against the draft constitution, who supported the MDC or had successfully resisted by legal action previous efforts to take away farms.

Government involvement in farm invasions
Government maintains that it did not order, organise or take part in these farm invasions but that the invasions were a spontaneous manifestation by the people of desperate land hunger. It says that they were also a protest against the rejection of the draft constitution which contained a provision allowing government to acquire white farmland without compensation. Government has repeatedly denied that it ordered the war veterans to mount these farm invasions.

On the other hand, many people believe that these invasions were far from being spontaneous. They believe that the leadership of Zanu (PF) orchestrated this whole campaign of farm occupation in order to drum up support for the ruling party whose popularity had been rapidly declining and destroy the support base of MDC on the farms. The CFU believes that the ruling party was directing these invasions. Previously the Government played the land card in a vain attempt to win the referendum. Many commentators also think that the government is using the land issue to try to deflect attention away from other pressing problems such as a dire state of the economy and widespread, large-scale corruption within government.