Zimbabwe: Mugabe's Land Grab

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While governments around the world are trying to get out of the business of state-owned industries, President Robert Mugabe is on the brink of nationalizing nearly half the white-owned farmland in Zimbabwe.

A bill moving through parliament would allow the government to buy some 12 million of the 28 million acres owned by the country's 4,200 white farmers, who produce around 75% of agricultural output, at confiscatory rates of compensation. Payment would be made either at a price determined by the authorities or with government bonds likely to be well below market values. But an amendment, reluctantly backed by Mugabe, would allow owners to contest the prices in court.

The plan has drawn protests from Western governments, and passage could jeopardize foreign aid to the drought-ravaged country, whose economic-reform program is already threatened by the need for food imports. But the warnings from abroad and the potential damage at home, where white farmers provide about half the country's dwindling foreign exchange, seem unlikely to persuade Mugabe to modify his course. "If I see anyone with cold feet," he promised, "I'll put hot irons under them."