Former Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe’s claim Britain was to blame for the land reform crisis has been exposed in new declassified documents .
According to the documents , in 1982 the then Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher ruled out further land resettlement funds citing that Mugabe’s goverment has underused its £30 million allocation. Zimbabwe at the time wanted nearly £60 million for land reform. However Tatcher blocked further aid saying Mugabe had only claimed £1.5 million of the £30 million available by 1982. By the end of 1980s Mugabe had received a whopping £44 million.
The £44m was aimed at helping with land redistribution, buying up vacant land to give to the poor and to compensate farmers willing to sell.
The Conservatives stopped funding land reform in the late 1980s after giving £44m because it was going off the rails. It was not being used to tackle the problems of the landless poor. In the last two years, the land has gone to cronies of the government and is not even being farmed.”
