"Zimbabwe - an announced (and avoidable)... " a Zimbabwe Travel Page by lichinga

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The present situation of Zimbabwe is one which was foreseeable from far away and it was the politicians' task to avoid.
The beginning of the collapse lies in the 1979's Lancaster House agreements, which gave Zimbabwe the independence on the basis of a political memorandum which granted the "Whites" a 10% representation in the Parliament and the property of the best agricultural lands for the coming years. At that time, Zimbabwe came out of the sorrowful experience of Ian Smith's Southern Rhodesia - a unilaterally declared independence, which the British government never accepted - pretending to imitate the South African apartheid regime.
Lancaster House text granted the "Whites" the economic power (mainly based upon rich agricultural exports such as maize and tobacco and a rising industrial estate) and the "Blacks" the political power (though the difficult cohexistence of Harare's Shona and Bulawayo's Ndebele caused serious problems during several years).
The crucial problem was the ownership of rich agricultural lands in the Highlands, mainly along the road from Harare to Mutare, which the agreement granted to a powerful group of 4,500 white farmers, unless they preferred to sell the land to the state, this one having to pay it at market price, only from willing sellers.
As many other countries, the right to land is something which deserves the highest consideration, as people is desperately looking for suitable areas to crop and the extensive areas owned by the white settlers were too good to be kept out of the people's reach. Unfortunately, the ecological conditions of Zimbabwe do not allow for intensive cropping, so that large areas appeared as underutilised to the eye of land-starving people... and this is where the disaster began. If you want to know more about the <a href=http://www.gta.gov.zw/Land%20Issues/workingbrief.htm target=_blank>Land Issue in Zimbabwe</a>, have a look at this clear and brief document prepared by the Government of Zimbabwe.

<b><i>While waiting to write more, I prepared a short travelogue on the <a href=http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/.86039/article/65/19 target=_blank>Eastern Highlands</a>.</b></i>