LAND ACQUISITION AMENDMENT ACT, 2000 (ZIMBABWE)

Since Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 the issue of land reform and,in particular, the issue of land acquisition and redistribution has seldom beenoff the political agenda. For the first ten years of independence there wereconstitutional constraints on the acquisition of land for resettlement purposes,but the National Land Policy of 1990 set out plans for an accelerated programmeof resettlement. In order to achieve its ambitious targets the government ofZimbabwe saw the need to strengthen its powers of compulsory acquisition bothby amending section 16 of the Constitution (which provided strong protectionagainst the compulsory acquisition of property) and by enacting the LandAcquisition Act to provide a statutory basis for the new policy. These reformswere extremely controversial both inside and outside the country and a clauseexcluding the right to fair compensation for expropriated land was droppedpartly in response to international pressure.