41 SECTION 6 THE LAND QUESTION AS PART OF THE ECONOMY 6.1 INTRODUCTION The land question remains the single most emotive subject in our nation and its resolution will have far reaching benefits for the nation. This is so because agriculture has always been the mainstay of our country’s economy. Between 1980 and 1999, it contributed over 40% of national exports and 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employed 30% of the formal labour force and 70% of the population. Close to 50% of GDP growth depended directly or indirectly on agriculture and agro-industry2. However, the agrarian structure before independence was highly inequitable, largely along racial lines. This situation continued late into the 90s. In 1999, the large-scale commercial farming (LSCF) sector comprised 4,000 white families owning about 9,000 farms, and about 20 large agro-industrial estates. By 2000 about 400 blacks held LSCF farms while another 400 held middle sized state leasehold-to-buy farms. By contrast, over 1.2 million smallholder producer families held an average of 3 hectares each of marginal arable land with limited infrastructure, while approximately 300 000 households were landless or land short3. The LSCF sector comprised 75% of the most fertile land, 90% of the irrigation and agricultural electricity resources and the bulk of various rural public infrastructural resources. Sooner or later there was bound to be some unrest resulting from the glaring inequitable distribution of land. This situation was morally indefensible and certainly needed to be corrected. However, the process of correcting this situation has been fraught with controversy and was accompanied by a lot of pain, leaving our society highly polarized. Since 2000, the Government has been implementing the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) to re-distribute land to the landless. This was mainly a result of the moral obligation to redress the injustices of the past, and partly in response to the social pressures that were building as a result of the slow land reform process between 1980 and 1999. Under the FTLRP, 11 million hectares of land have been acquired and are in the process of being re-distributed. Matshe, I. (2003) “Impacts of the Fast Track Land Reforms on the Zimbabwe Economy” AIAS Research Paper, Harare: Mimeo 3 Moyo, S. (2000) Land Reform Under Structural Adjustment: Land Use Change in the Mashonaland Provinces, Stockholm: Nordiska Africa Institutet. 2