ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Zimbabwe's resettlement programme has resulted in improved rural welfare in the form of both more equally distributed incomes and higher incomes. It provides evidence that land reform has enhanced welfare for beneficiaries from the earliest phases of resettlement. The chapter compares a set of indicators of welfare in terms of both absolute levels and distributional inequality for households in resettlement areas and communal areas. Zimbabwe's Land Reform Programme, introduced in 1980 just months after the liberation war ceased, has been widely criticised. Zimbabwe's programme dwarfs all prior voluntary resettlement programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the planning for resettlement indicated that all quantified benefits from the programme would arise from farming activities, the comparison is limited to measures of income and wealth derived from crops and livestock. Although the planners who designed the resettlement programme assumed that households would earn their entire income from fanning activities, they ignored the importance of transfers and remittances, common throughout southern Africa.
