This paper outlines the rural development policies and debates which took place in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, with an emphasis on land reform. An introductory section provides general background information on Zimbabwe and sketches the policy context in the 1980s. Section 2 then looks at resettlement to (former) white-owned commercial farms, at the various constraints on the programme – technical, economic and political, as well as legal or financial – and at options and dilemmas facing the policymakers. In the 1980s much of the government leadership came to accept arguments that nonagricultural sources of foreign exchange were too few to make resettlement on the scale discussed in the 1970s an acceptable risk in the short or maybe even medium term. It was decided to give main attention to social and economic programmes in the existing peasant areas (the so-called Communal Areas), including organizational restructuring and associated land reforms. These programmes are sketched in section 3. The ‘land question’ seems to have become as much a matter of the internal organization of Communal Areas, and of movement from there to towns and newly cleared areas, as of movement of peasants to commercial farmlands. Section 4 notes the reemergence in 1989 of resettlement prominently on the political agenda after six years. It then summarizes the 1980s debate and considers the 1990s prospects for resettlement.
