Britain has, since Zimbabwe’s independence, been a strong advocate of effective and well-managed land reform. The international community has defined this as a process that would be carried out within the rule of law; would be transparent and fair; and would be within a well-managed economic policy framework that contributes both to poverty reduction and Zimbabwe’s economic prosperity.

Land reform carried out by the Zimbabwean government has not met these international criteria and has decimated the agricultural sector. Zimbabwe cannot now feed itself, and its capacity to generate foreign exchange from agricultural exports is greatly reduced. These factors contribute directly and substantially to the accelerating decline of Zimbabwe’s economy, and its related consequences: soaring inflation, unemployment, infrastructural collapse and the exodus of skills; together with serious declines in GDP, life expectancy and the standard of living for most Zimbabweans.

Zimbabwean Government policy is at the heart of this. Nevertheless, the Government continues to blame the country’s internal crisis on an external dispute between Zimbabwe and the UK. It claims this dispute is based on UK failure to honour the Lancaster House Agreement; and on the British Government’s opposition to land reform.

The Lancaster House Agreement (signed in December 1979) which ended the illegal Rhodesian regime covered the Independence Constitution, pre-independence arrangements, and a ceasefire.

The Zimbabwe-Rhodesia regime, the Patriotic Front led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, and the British government were represented at the talks and signed the final agreement. Land reform was discussed, and the UK’s position was set out thus by Lord Carrington, the Conference Chairman, in a statement on 11 October 1979.

"We recognise that the future Government of Zimbabwe, whatever its political complexion, will wish to extend land ownership. The Government can of course purchase land for agricultural settlement, as we all have seen.

The Independence Constitution will make it possible to acquire under-utilised land compulsorily, provided that adequate compensation is paid. Any resettlement scheme would clearly have to be carefully prepared and implemented to avoid adverse effects on production.

The Zimbabwe Government might well wish to draw in outside donors such as the World Bank in preparing and implementing a full-scale agricultural development plan. The British Government recognise the importance of this issue to a future Zimbabwe Government and will be prepared, within the limits imposed by our financial resources, to help.

We should for instance be ready to provide technical assistance for settlement schemes and capital aid for agricultural development projects and infrastructure. If an agricultural development bank or some equivalent institution were set up to promote agricultural development including land settlement schemes, we would be prepared to contribute to the initial capital.

The costs would be very substantial indeed, well beyond the capacity, in our judgement, of any individual donor country, and the British Government cannot commit itself at this stage to a specific share in them. We should however be ready to support the efforts of the government of independent Zimbabwe to obtain international assistance for these purposes."

The Constitution agreed at Lancaster House entrenched protection for property rights for the first ten years of independence. The government’s acquisition of land was limited to the willing buyer/willing seller principle. Thereafter, the Zimbabwean parliament would be able to alter the Constitution in accordance with its own legislation.

No provision was made in the Lancaster House Agreement for a specific fund to support land reform. But a Zimbabwe Donors Conference (ZIMCORD) in March 1981 raised $Z 70m (£17m) for development in Zimbabwe, including land reform. Between 1980 and 1985, the UK provided £47m for land reform: £20m as a specific Land Resettlement Grant and £27m in the form of budgetary support to help meet the Zimbabwe government’s own contribution to the programme.

By 1988 the Land Resettlement Grant had been substantively spent. The then UK Overseas Development Administration (ODA) fully endorsed the resettlement which had taken place as a result, and suggested measures for further improving the UK-funded programme. However the Zimbabwean government did not respond to the UK proposals, and the Grant was closed in 1996 with £3m still unspent. In 1998 the Zimbabwean government hosted a Land Conference in Harare, involving all major international donors and the multilateral institutions.

Both the UK and Zimbabwean governments endorsed the following principles agreed by the Conference: transparency, respect for the rule of law, poverty reduction, affordability and consistency with Zimbabwe’s wider economic interests. But the two-year Inception Phase agreed at the Conference was interrupted by illegal farm occupations and violence in the run-up to the 2000 Parliamentary elections.

The UK remains willing to support a land reform programme that is carried out in accordance with the principles agreed by the Zimbabwean government in 1998. This is also the position of the broad donor community. The Zimbabwean government has pressed ahead with its Fast Track Resettlement Programme, using arbitrary presidential powers to ride roughshod over parliamentary laws protecting individual property rights.

In late 2000, the UNDP Administrator proposed to the Zimbabwe government a slowing down of the programme to fit Zimbabwe’s implementation capacity; independent monitoring of the situation in commercial farming areas; the promotion of internal dialogue; and the possible resumption of UNDP technical assistance. UNDP stressed the importance of a transparent, just and fair land reform that respects the rule of law and in accordance with the principles agreed in 1998 - and with the laws of Zimbabwe.

In 2001 a group of Commonwealth Foreign Ministers (including the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe) met in Abuja. They agreed that land reform in Zimbabwe must be implemented in a fair, just and sustainable manner, in the interest of all the people of Zimbabwe, and that any programme should be on the basis of the UNDP proposals of December 2000.

The Zimbabwean government agreed to prevent further occupation of farm lands, to restore the rule of law, to take firm action against violence and intimidation and to honour the freedom of expression. At that meeting the UK re-affirmed its commitment to a significant financial contribution to such a land reform programme and gave an undertaking to encourage other international donors to do the same. But in November 2001, the Zimbabwean government amended the Land Acquisition Act to allow it to allocate land without giving owners the right to contest the seizures, contravening the agreement reached in Abuja. A UNDP report of 2002 on land reform in Zimbabwe concluded that the fast track programme is chaotic, unsustainable and lacks transparency.

The Zimbabwean government has not adhered to the principles for land reform to which it repeatedly agreed from 1980 onwards, nor even, on many occasions, to its own laws. In 2001 it agreed, at the Commonwealth Abuja conference, that "land reform must be implemented in a fair, just and sustainable manner, in the interest of all the people of Zimbabwe". But the Zimbabwean government’s programme is inconsistent with these principles, and is driven by the demands of political patronage rather than a genuine desire to resolve historical inequities. The UNDP report of 2002 on land reform bears this out.

The UK remains a strong advocate of land reform and has, since 1980, provided £44m for land reform, and £500m in bilateral support – more than any other donor - for development in Zimbabwe.

The UK has honoured its commitments, from Lancaster House onwards, and remains willing to contribute to an equitable land reform programme. Its objections are to the arbitrary seizure of property, the use of that property as a means of political patronage rather than to benefit the needy, the use of illegal violence; and the destruction of Zimbabwe’s agricultural productivity – and therefore its economy – in the interests of the few and at the cost of the many.