Collectivization

Harare, Zimbabwe

Private ownership of land will be abolished and all farms nationalized, the Zimbabwe government said this week. For the past two years, the government has been seizing white-owned farms and giving the land to poor blacks or, more often, to cronies of authoritarian President Robert Mugabe. Now, though, even blacks are prohibited from owning farms. Title deeds will be replaced by 99-year government leases. Political analysts said the move would worsen the drop in agricultural production brought on by the land seizures. “It is a very big step away from a market economy to a communist-style command economy,” said Zimbabwean economist John Robertson.