What has caused disparities in Zimbabwe? by Edward Michael Baxter https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze Consider: Land Ownership and Residence, Ethnicity, Disparity in Income and Employment and Parental Education. en-us 2016-09-20 00:52:23 UTC 2025-10-07 22:28:52 UTC hello@padlet.com -Ethnicity https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936378 Largely attributed to the racial dominance of white settlers in the colonial period (1890-1980)
  Zimbabwe was colonized in 1890 through the British South African Company.  The BSAC  discovered that the climate and the soils were suitable for agricultural production. This led to agricultural prospects, and white people, mainly from England, were brought to settle in the colony. The black uprisings against colonial settlers were defeated during the first Chimurenga war owing to their opponents’ use of superior weapons (Peel and Ranger, 1981). The defeat of the blacks marked the beginning of extensive expropriation of land, massive displacement of the indigenous people from land, confiscation of their cattle and exploitation of their labour. Racist and oppressive Introduction and Background 322 policies and laws were put in place to ensure total subjugation of the indigenous people. As a result, the whites who constituted 4% of the country’s population controlled over 90% of the economy in terms of owning the means of production. The blacks who accounted for 96% of the population only controlled 10% of the economy.
White settlers dominated politics to an extent of denying the blacks the freedom of assembly, the freedom of association and the right to participate in politics. The black people had also limited access to basic social services such as education, health and other social amenities while the best services were accorded to the white settler communities. Asian and colored communities accessed the medium-range services. The black people suffered discrimination at workplaces. Development was also racially- driven in favor of the whites. For instance, basic infrastructural facilities such as tarred roads and piped water were found only in urban white residential areas or white commercial farms. In urban areas, blacks were confined to townships with limited infrastructural and recreational facilities, which were also non-existent in rural areas - home to the black majority. Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union (ZAPU) to fight the colonial regime between 1966 and 1979. The liberation war – the second Chimurenga - Eventually, Ian Douglas Smith, who in 1965 had unilaterally declared independence from the British Administration. However, this agreement gave the new regime limited constitutional options for redressing the “land question” since it was bound by the “willing buyer – willing seller” principle for the first 10 years of independence. The provisions effectively protected the interests of white settlers by maintaining not only the status quo on land, but also their grip on the economy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3683821.stm
http://www.osisa.org/sites/default/files/sup_files/chapter_5_-_zimbabwe.pdf

On 18 September 2010 droves of white people were chased away from participating in the constitutional outreach programme in Harare at the weekend,

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]]> 2016-09-20 01:22:29 UTC https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936378 Education https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936501 During the colonial years of Zimbabwe ( or Rhodesia ), the  CAOR (Company Administration Of Rhodesia) created christian missionary schools to serve local communities. It provided education for the native population, but they limited and censored some parts of it compared to the education given to the British.

But, in the 1980's, the Rhodesian Bush war ended. After a 15 year guerrilla war fair, the ZANU won the war and the national election. Then, the ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) made education equal to all children.

Then, between the 1980's and 1990's, the government focused most of its attention to education and making equal. This caused the education system to nearly double the amount of students in school. But, the teachers were always having high demands, ever since Zimbabwe's independence. So, even with more and more children from neighbouring countries coming to Zimbabwe, the government created a special teachers-on-the-spot training. 8,000 teachers were trained due to this. Also, the government rapidly build more schools or improved the infrastructure of existing schools.

The improvement of education in Zimbabwe increased over the following years and by 2014, out of 3.12 million students, 76% of them, from primary, progressed to secondary school.]]> 2016-09-20 01:23:31 UTC https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936501 Land Ownership https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936634 -Land Appointment Act (1930):
  •  Delegated 51% of agricultural land to a few thousand white settlers to use for commercial farming, and additionally prohibited the Indigenous people from owning and/or utilizing said land.
  • Because of this there were three main areas of agricultural land in Zimbabwe; White Commercial Farm Lands, African Purchase Areas (which resided between the other two types of land) , and the Indigenous Reserve ( which was renamed to Tribal Trust Lands (1965) and then finally Communal Lands (1981).
  • The African Purchase Lands is also known as Chitomborwizi, a small(20-100 ha of land) farming community 20km South of the provincial capital of Chinhoyi. It was intended for the black indigenous Africans to grow subsistence crops such as; maize, sorghum, cotton, etc during colonial times.
  • Communal Lands were un-owned areas meant for the local community to farm for their own benefit. By technicality this land could have been utilized by both black and white citizens.
Zimbabwe Land Ownership Act (1980):
  • Almost immediately after independence the current Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Mugabe had initiated this act in order to correct the racially imbalanced ownership of farm land.
  • White commercial farms were only provided 45% of existing farmland, while the indigenous people were given 55%.
  • This may appear to be a decent delegation of land until you realize that the 75% of the white-owned land was situated in high rainfall areas. This advantage as well as their high usage of said resources (60% of all the provided resources were fully utilized) allowed the white commercial farms to become so successful in later years
Fast-Track Land Reform (2000):
  • After Independence in 1980 Zimbabwe was willing to make the necessary land reforms to further fix the recurring issue of land ownership ( under he condition that land was bought and sold as usual), the UK had offered to fund half of the financial costs. However in the late 1990s the UK's Prime Minister Tony Blair terminated this plan due to the exhaustion of Margaret Thatcher's funds at the time.
  • In response to this the now President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe had decided to forcibly confiscate and evict white commercial farmers from their land without compensation. This resulted to be rather problematic seeing as white-owned commercial farming not only employed 30% of the country's paid workforce but it also supported 40% of exports (e.g: sugarcane, cotton, maize (High Yield Crop)) and provided 60% of domestic beef.
  • This then caused a nation-wide economic collapse due to the lack of food production, the prices for food drastically increased (e.g: A head of wilted lettuce= 12 Million Dollars USD, in the USA this would cost approximately 50 cents).
  • The inflation rate in 2007 continually increased by 50% a month/ 12,875% yearly
  • This hyper-inflation/ runaway inflation has especially effected other farmers, worsening the problem even more. This is because of  the fact that farmers only receive their wages monthly, or even seasonally.
  • ^ This has especially effected farmers living , especially those living in small areas such as Chitomborwizi. Farming is often generational , however due to the increased costs of food, unemployment, poverty and illness, about 3 million Zimbabweans have emigrated to neighboring countries (e.g: Zambia, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa) and many others have moved to more urban areas. This has caused a generational gap withing farmers in Zimbabwe, leaving new generations of farmers uneducated about agriculture and creating the stigma that farming is an unimportant occupation. Thus lowering agriculture in Zimbabwe, and in tangent raising food prices and adding to runaway inflation.

]]> 2016-09-20 01:24:48 UTC https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936634 Gender Disparity https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936678 Primary School Completion Rates: 
(1990) 83%
(2003) 63% 
  •  Reduced enrollment rates
  •  increased drop-out rates
  • Deterioration of quality of teaching
Barriers Towards Girl's Education:
  • Girls = Source of income for families;  through child marriage
  • Child labour = Source of cheap labour
  • High cost of education = low enrollment rates
  • Distance to school and lacking safety
  • Sociocultural norms = girls should be confined at home
]]> 2016-09-20 01:25:08 UTC https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124936678 Parental Income https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124937737 A recent report by anti-poverty organisation Oxfam revealed that, based on data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Datebook 2013 and 2014, much of the world’s wealth is in the hands of just 1% of the world’s population.
There is an extremely high Gini coefficient because of the vast differences in GDP per capita between the rich and the poor.
The average GDP per capita is only 953.38 USD.
The Gini Index is a measurement used to show the inequality of the distribution of family income in Zimbabwe and a few other countries. Zimbabwe has a Gini of about  51 degrees and that is very high.]]> 2016-09-20 01:34:51 UTC https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124937737 First impressions of Zimbabwe. e_baxter https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124937812 Check this out for an impression of what the country is like.]]> 2016-09-20 01:35:42 UTC https://padlet.com/e_baxter/lq1rqw95bhze/wish/124937812