In August 2001, police again forcibly evicted settlers on the Rhodes Estate.142 Many of those taking advantage of the fast track land reform program are individuals or families who have a genuine need of land to cultivate. According to press reports and other anecdotal evidence, it seems that discrimination against those who have not demonstrated loyalty to Zanu-PF may have decreased, as the fast track program has progressed. However, the testimony collected by Human Rights Watch and other organizations reveals that in many cases others who have equal or greater needs were not benefiting, because they were frightened of violence from the war veterans militia, or because they were not prepared to show support for the ruling party. Gender Issues in Allocation of Land Women play a key role in subsistence agriculture in Zimbabwe. Women form 52 percent of the population of the country, and 86 percent of them depend on the land for the livelihoods of themselves and their families. They are the main providers of labor for farming (approximately 70 percent) and are the primary managers of homes in communal areas, given that many men are migrant workers in the cities or in other areas away from their homes. Nevertheless, rural women living in the communal areas are largely treated as dependants of men, not as landholders or farmers in their own right. Section 23 of the Zimbabwean constitution prohibits discrimination, but recognizes exceptions to this general principle in issues relating to, among other things, adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of property on death or other matters relating to personal law, and the application of African customary law. In April 1999, the Supreme Court, basing its judgment on this exception, ruled in Magaya v. Magaya that a woman could not inherit land from her deceased father. The Administration of Estates Act of 1997, passed after the events on which the Magaya case was based took place, has changed this position in relation to inheritance specifically, but only for deaths that occurred after November 1, 1997. Under this law, a widow retains rights to land on the death of her husband. In practice, women still occupy a subordinate position in the communal areas and in general only have access to land through their husbands. In another 1999 Supreme Court case, Mahlangu v. Khumalo, the court ruled that section 23 of the constitution still exempted African customary law from the principles of nondiscrimination, and other legislation also still discriminates on gender grounds. A land redistribution and resettlement program should ensure that women are given the opportunity to hold land in their own right on equal terms with men. In October 2000, the government stated that it would ensure a 20 percent quota for women to benefit from the fast track resettlement program, raising hopes in this regard. 143 This commitment was never implemented: there is no legal or administrative framework in place to ensure gender equality in the distribution of resettlement land. The policy documents and laws setting out the basis of the fast track program make no mention of gender issues. Zimbabwe’s Women and Land Lobby Group has criticized government policy on and the results of past land resettlement schemes from a gender perspective: Although females heading households can access land and be given permits in resettlement areas, their married counterparts still had to access land through their husbands and have no security of tenure should their husbands die; there are not many women who own land in small scale commercial areas as most women are poor; the legal and policy framework has not incorporated inheritance rights pertaining to land for widows; the fact of women’s lack of access and control over land leads to them being excluded from credit, marketing facilities, decision-making powers 142 Enforcing the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe, p.24. The government-owned Daily News quoted Minister of Local Government Ignatius Chombo as stating that single women would be allocated 20 percent of land acquired by the government for resettlement and that there would be joint ownership of land by spouses, in accordance with official policy statements. IRIN, October 29, 2000. 143 Human Rights Watch 31 March 2002, Vol. 14, No. 1 (A)