Access to land and its economic bounty has been a constant issue throughout Zimbabwe's history. Under both British colonial and then white minority government rule, black Africans were denied access to the best agricultural land and forced to eke out their living from small plots on "tribal reserves."

Later, the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 restricted blacks' access to land and forced them into wage labor.

In 1965, the former British colony known as Rhodesia -- after Britain's Cecil Rhodes who arrived there in the late 1800s -- declared itself an independent state. Prime Minister Ian Smith, however, refused pressures from his government to address historical racial inadequacies and any move toward a black African majority rule. The push for independence failed.

It was in response to this that two major black African political parties formed in the late 1960s, the Zimbabwe African People's Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union, to agitate for land and political rights for black Africans.

The Lancaster House Agreement
After years of intense guerrilla fighting, Smith eventually yielded to British-brokered peace talks in 1979. The result was the Lancaster House Agreement, signed by British and black Zimbabwean liberation leaders from the African National Conference, ZANU and ZAPU parties. The agreement marked the end of colonization but provided restrictions on land acquisition that protected white farm owners.

Under the agreement, the new Zimbabwean government, led by President Robert Mugabe -- who won British-supervised elections in 1980 -- could not seize white-owned land for the first ten years of independence. The government could buy land from white farmers only through a willing-seller, willing-buyer program at full market prices. Britain provided 44 million pounds to the government for land resettlement projects.

In the first decade of independence the government acquired 40 percent of the targeted 8 million hectares (19.77 million acres) of land. More than 50,000 families were resettled on more than 3 million hectares (7.41 million acres).

Phase one land reform
By 1990 the willing-seller clause of the Lancaster House Agreement expired and Mugabe's government amended the constitution to allow compulsory acquisition of white-owned land.

The 1992 Land Acquisition Act followed and provided the government with additional land resettlement tools, including the removal of full market price restrictions, limiting the size of farms and introducing a land tax, though the tax was never implemented.

The second decade (1990-1997) of land redistribution was slow and Britain accused Mugabe's government of giving land and money to its political cronies, instead of the landless poor.

Less than 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) were acquired and less than 20,000 families were resettled during that time. Much of the land acquired during what has become known as "phase one" of land reform was of poor quality, according to Human Rights Watch. Only 19 percent of the almost 3.5 million hectares (8.65 million acres) of resettled land was considered prime, or farmable.

Britain's initial 44 million pound resettlement grant, which Mugabe's government spent by 1988, formally expired in 1996.

Phase two land reform
In 1997, with pressure from landless blacks mounting in a declining economy, Mugabe announced that he would seize approximately 1,500 white-owned farms. He said that Britain should pay for any compensation to these farmers as Rhodesian settlers originally stole the land from black farmers. Britain responded by saying it was not responsible to meet the costs of land purchases.

By 1999 Mugabe announced that he would attempt to amend the country's 19-year-old constitution in order to strengthen the executive arm of the government and extend its powers to acquire land at will and without compensation.

Leading in the fight against the proposed changes was the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change, the first true opposition party in post-independent Zimbabwe, but Mugabe's ZANU-PF government won the 2000 parliamentary elections but lost the referendum to change the constitution.

To appease the landless masses and maintain political popularity, Mugabe's government officially encouraged veterans to occupy white-owned farms. In some instances, members of the army helped facilitate land grabs and police were told not to respond to landowners' complaints or to remove squatters. As a result of the land grabs, many white farmers and their black workers were killed or subjected to violent attacks.

Fast track land reform
According to the Commercial Farmers' Union, an organization that represents 4,000 white farmers across Zimbabwe, despite the government's efforts to take back land, by 1999 4,500 commercial farmers still held 11 million hectares (27.18 million acres) of the most fertile land in Zimbabwe.

With the presidential election only two years away and pressure still on from opposition party MDC, Mugabe announced his government's "fast track" resettlement program in July 2000 and defended the land seizures.

"In Zimbabwe, and only because of the color line arising from British colonialism, 70 percent of the best arable land is owned by less than 1 percent of the population who happen to be white, while the black majority are congested on barren land," Mugabe said in a speech to the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York City on Sept. 8, 2000.

"We have sought to redress this inequity through a land reform and resettlement program" that will result in "economic and social justice and [adhere to] our constitution and laws," he added.

Mugabe said his new program would be a "one farmer-one farm" program. It would be an attempt to achieve more equitable distribution of land away from foreign commercial farmers who owned more than one farm to redistribute to poor and middle-class landless black Zimbabweans. Under the Zimbabwean constitution, underused or derelict farms would be targeted.

The result of Mugabe's legacy
Between June 2000 and February 2001, the government listed 2,706 farms, covering more than 6 million hectares (14.83 million acres), for compulsory acquisition. The process was complicated, chaotic and in violation of the original Zimbabwean constitution. Often, land seizure was based on whether the farm owner was a supporter of MDC, or, according to a United Nations Development Programme report, error-filled. Some farms listed for acquisition and resettlement included flooded land, industrial land and even land already resettled, the report said.

Mugabe won contested presidential elections marred by violence and corruption in March 2002. By May, a special session in Zimbabwe's parliament passed additional amendments to the Land Acquisition Amendment Act. All acquisition orders, even those signed before May, immediately transferred ownership of land to the state. Farmers were to cease farming after 45 days and leave the land within 90 days.

In October 2003, the BBC reported that the Zimbabwean government had seized approximately 8.6 million hectares of land (some 4,300 farms) as part of its program and that 1,323 white farmers remain. About 127,000 blacks have been resettled.

-- By Annie Schleicher, Online NewsHour