Black and white farmers still bear land grabbing scars in Zimbabwe

Guy Watson-Smith felt hurt and betrayed when his 5,000-hectare (12,355-acre) farm in Beatrice, in Zimbabwe's Mashonaland East province, was violently invaded by three armed men in the early 2000s. The then-51-year-old white commercial farmer was not just losing his land; he was leaving behind hundreds of workers and their families, many of whom he had known since childhood, reports Al Jazeera. "We cried," the 75-year-old told Al Jazeera. On the morning of September 18, 2001, Watson-Smith, his two farm managers, and his unwelcome visitors sat at a table on the patio.

Watson-Smith's wife, Vicky, offered them a cup of tea. But the message was simple: leave or die. His family was given two hours to pack. They fled to the capital, Harare, 54km (33.5 miles) away, seeking refuge at his father-in-law's home in the Avenues, an inner-city suburb. Watson-Smith's ordeal was not an isolated incident.

Across the country, war veterans armed with pistols led similar land grabs, together with their children and with assistance from the police's elite units.
The invasions were part of the chaotic Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP), launched under President Robert Mugabe in 2000 to reclaim land from about 4,000 white farmers and redistribute it to landless Black Zimbabweans.

But instead of redressing past injustices, Zimbabweans say it fuelled economic and land insecurity as mainly governing party loyalists benefitted from the reclamations.

More than two decades on, a struggling agricultural sector haunts Zimbabwe, leaving the question of land ownership unresolved, even as the government has begun to pay compensation to white farmers.

When land was seized from white farmers in the early 2000s, it was forcibly and sometimes violently taken, with at least seven people killed in the process.

However, Zimbabwe's land struggles did not begin with Mugabe's FTLRP or even the country's independence in 1980. The tensions stretch back over a century to the arrival of white British settlers in 1890.