Osomir
VIP Member
Yes, that is the Malawi style policy, and it is actually how Zimbabwe started off its land exchange programs as well. Mugabe became both impatient with how slow the process was though, and also saw it as an opportunity to cater to populism and started being much more aggressive and seizing property and then instead of distributing it to poor farmers like Malawi has, gave it to his political cronies instead to further entrench himself in his office of power.
As for Malawi, and really Zimbabwe and South Africa, and even Kenya which all faced heavy racism against blacks by minority white governments and the forceful seizure of the most productive farmland and its redistribution to white farmers by authoritarian state apparatuses: the issue of continued wealth and land ownership gaps between whites and blacks is still a very potent social and political one. Even with independence and majority rule these states were still left with a situation where national wealth, due to past active discrimination was concentrated largely in the hands of whites and foreign companies. Part of the crime of colonialism was how oppressed it often kept indigenous populations and how it stifled their ability to take an equal part in the modernization and state building processes that occurred (or rather their exclusion from being able to modernize or state build at all depending on the European power's governance style). Addressing this legacy of discrimination and exclusion, and the resultant gap it created is vital in terms of allowing the country to move forward and in terms of forging strong state identity structures across traditionally fractured political and ethnic lines (kept that way often by European powers so that the risk of revolt remained low since the population was fragmented).
I can understand how you misinterpreted by initial response. I did assert though that I disagreed with the methodology of what Mugabe was doing though.
