A/HRC/43/44/Add.2 cheap labour for employment in the mines, manufacturing business, farms and homes owned by whites.17 83. Land and access to it are of enormous value to Zimbabweans as the society is emotionally, traditionally and economically connected to the land. The seriousness of the issue of land reform is undeniable in a country where, prior to 1980, a total of 5,700 white farmers owned half the productive area and black peasants were relegated to mostly inferior land in the drier, drought-ridden parts of the country. The Government of Zimbabwe began its land reforms to address the imbalances in land access, ownership and use that had existed in the country before independence. Several reforms were implemented over the years, with corresponding modifications to the law and redistribution targets. Land redistribution 84. The major land redistribution campaign began during the Mugabe period in the 1980s and intensified in 2000, causing the expulsion of white farmers and, in some cases, farm workers. According to many interlocutors that the Special Rapporteur met with, the land reform altered the landscape of Zimbabwean agriculture and, over the years, bore serious negative effects on productivity. 85. The Fast Track Land Reform programme, which generated significant attention in Southern Africa and beyond, was introduced in 2001 to speed up the redistribution of land. 86. Officially the land was divided into either smallholder production units or commercial farms, known as A1 and A2 schemes, respectively. 87. However, the reform has not delivered the outcomes the Government intended. Instead, it resulted in a complex system, which structurally weakened the country’s agricultural infrastructure and contributed to its deteriorating social and economic conditions, in particular the right to food. 88. The land was redistributed without facilitating and arranging access of the new smallscale farmers to the necessary technical and infrastructural resources. Meanwhile, commercial farms were divided without clear infrastructural, financial, institutional and technical support. Throughout the last two decades, these uncertainties around land tenure have multiplied and continue to contribute to today’s food insecurity crisis. 89. Communal lands were generally situated in less fertile, non-arable land and highly populated areas. As a result, the quality of soil and water deteriorated while productivity decreased. In the meantime, commercial farmers were either entirely expropriated or lost significant portions of their lands. Before the land reform, as few as 4,000 commercial farmers owned 7.6 million hectares, or 20 per cent of the total land area in the country. In the aftermath of the land reform, approximately 160,000 families resettled in those areas. Although statistics are contested, it is widely accepted that 90 per cent of the land formerly owned by white farmers were transferred to landless Zimbabweans, with war veterans being treated with special favour. 90. Land allocations are made through “offer letters”, which have reportedly been assigned to ministers and other high-level officials, without any formal guidelines for these allocations. The reallocation of land and farms expropriated from commercial farmers was reportedly done on a political basis, without any consideration given to whether or not the new tenants possessed the needed agricultural skills. As a result, many hectares of land were left abandoned and unexploited, or were managed by absent farmers – through so-called “cell phone farmers” – while the existing tools, irrigation facilities and infrastructures slowly deteriorated. 91. Moreover, according to information the Special Rapporteur received, there did not seem to be any security of tenure or respect of property rights: at any given time, lands could be confiscated and reallocated to individuals deemed more loyal to the ruling party. Although such allegations are contested, a climate of uncertainty surrounds the security of land tenure. 17 14 Sam Moyo and Tor Skalness, “Land reform and development strategy in Zimbabwe: State autonomy, class and agrarian lobby”, Afrika Focus, vol. 6, No. 3–4 (1990), pp. 201–242.