Land restitution : the experiences in Kenya and Zimbabwe compared : lessons for South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Land has been the revolutionary metaphor for wealth and power in the worldand even more so in Africa. Ideally, land reform in Africa should therefore,contribute to social and economic progress and ultimately result in socialequity as well as increased agricultural productivity.This study was devoted to the history of colonialism and the meaning andbirth of land reform policies after colonialism. Moreover, to familiarise thereader with the various meanings and issues concerning land reformparticularly in Kenya and Zimbabwe. The outcome of the study was toprovoke further discussion on the need for land reform in other developingcountries, especially South Africa, as well as to investigate whethercolonialism created certain land ownership patterns that had harmful effectson the political and economic climate after independence in Kenya andZimbabwe.Kenya has been unable to establish a sustainable land reform programmesince independence. Ethnic clashes in the early 1990's were seen as acontinuation of a battle to recognise the existence of property rights. Thecontributing factor to the conflict was the fact that the political leadership inKenya was the direct beneficiary of land reform policies. Furthermore, theuncontrolled privatisation of public land only resulted in economic andagricultural decay. The Kenyan experience provides no evidence of increasein agricultural production, but inevitably resulted in social and economicinequalities and the emergence of significant landlessness, which was a resultof the inadequacy of government, to provide credit as was initially proposed.Zimbabwe faces the painful reality that its political revolutions have onlybrought them halfway to true independence. The objective for Zimbabwe wasto establish a functional socialist economy where decision making would beunder political control in order to bring about the drastic redistribution ofwealth from whites to blacks and to become independent form capitalists.The importance of land in Zimbabwe did not so much lie in the social andeconomic inequalities, but rather the inability to access land, accompanied bya growing overpopulation, landlessness, land deterioration and escalatingpoverty in the black areas parallel with severe under-utilisation of land in thewhite farming areas.This study concludes that African governmental land reform programmeshave had mixed success. The complex nature of the liberation struggles inAfrica, created diverse post-independence governmental systems. However,some former colonies illustrate certain common underlying issues such as thefact that years after independence, land remains one of the key unresolvedissues in both Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as in South Africa.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University