Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1979 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement

Lancaster House Agreement

The negotiations which led to the Lancaster House Agreement brought independence to Rhodesia following Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. The Agreement covered the Independence Constitution, pre-independence arrangements, and a ceasefire...

, an effort to more equitably distribute land between the historically disenfranchised blacks and the minority-white

Whites in Zimbabwe

White Zimbabweans are people from the southern African country Zimbabwe who identify themselves as white...

s who ruled Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

  from 1890 to 1979. The government's land distribution is perhaps the most crucial and the most bitterly contested political issue surrounding Zimbabwe today. It can be divided into two periods: from 1979 to 2000 a principle of willing buyer, willing seller was applied with economic help from Great Britain and secondly, starting in 2000, the fast-track land reform program.