zim politics and land issues

Zimbabwe politics seem to revolve around land reform. President Mugabe’s ZANU-PF has played his politics around land reform since independence in 1980. The importance of land became even more profound in the last seven or so years when the economy nearly collapsed, experiencing the worst inflation in the world’s history. Peasants resorted to subsistence farming to eke out a living under such miserable conditions. Many Zimbabweans emigrated to neighboring countries, especially South Africa. The Zimbabwe currency collapsed. Zimbabwe now uses the U.S. dollar as its official currency, together with the South African rand.

Thus, one of the dilemmas facing policymakers in Zimbabwe is how to manage to introduce a new Zimbabwe currency without hurting recent economic recovery. The use of the U.S. dollar has reduced inflation greatly, although many people lost their savings when the country adopted the U.S. dollar. The economy is slowly recovering, notably in the tobacco sector. And, by a stroke of good luck, Zimbabwe discovered huge mineral deposits, especially diamonds. Zimbabwe now has about 25 percent of the world’s diamonds.

 Thus, questions still linger as to whether the new constitution will change the country’s political landscape. The major problem with Zimbabwe’s politics to date has been the concentration of power in the presidency. The new constitution has, in many ways, reduced the powers of the president while expanding the rights of the citizenry. However, to realize the full benefits promised by the constitution, it is not just enough to enact the constitution. For a country that has seen years of erosion of the rule of law, the real challenge is inculcating a culture of constitutionalism in society.