Stolen Land
25 May 2026
The issue of land looms large in the Zimbabwean consciousness. In particular, all of Zimbabwe’s troubles stem from white people stealing the land. The funny thing is that even after white landowners, even those who purchased their land after 1980, have had their property taken from them, Zimbabwe’s economy continues to deteriorate. And yet at no point, even after nearly half a century of this cycle of envy and appropriation, has there been any introspection or rethinking of this logic. There has been no “a-ha” moment that maybe stolen land is not the deciding factor or that property rights might in themselves be valuable. Instead, the imputed evil powers of colonizers of centuries past is simply inflated to ever greater proportions to account for its continued devastating effect from beyond the grave.
It is clear that the “theft” in this context is not a legalistic issue of some individual or individuals illegally obtaining control of land that rightfully belonged to others. It has happened time and time again in the last two decades of the twentieth century that white farmers and businessmen jumped through all legal hoops and paid full price for land and obtained unquestionable legal title to it under Zimbabwean law. But if their efforts on their newly acquired land proved profitable, they would find it was soon seized by extra-legal means, often through extreme violence, by government agents or by angry mobs with the consent of the government.
At the logical level, this makes absolutely no sense. And yet at the emotional level, it obviously touches on a heartfelt sense of wrong that is irresistible, inescapable, and irreversible.
Staring you in the face is the enormity of the gap between the immense wealth of the white man and the miserable poverty of the black man that persists within the same country, even after more than four decades of rule by the most revolutionary anti-white government that could be found anywhere on the planet. It seems incomprehensible.
The theories proposed by Zimbabwean politicians and intellectuals to explain this reality often seem ludicrous. That such theories are seriously entertained can only be the result of a reality that is itself so unfathomable.
There can be no question that the whites found great wealth here that they did not bring with them. Yet no matter how often the government intervenes on their behalf, blacks continually fail to find this wealth. Therefore, one obvious theory is that the whites must have hidden it. As first Lady Grace Mugabe explained in 2017:
You can actually mention any of the minerals Zimbabwe has that mineral. Even some people believe that we have oil somewhere. Yes some people know. Our erstwhile colonisers had maps and they hid some of the information from us but we are getting to know bit by bit. God is revealing that this is yours use it
A more complex answer to this question is provided by someone using the byline Thula Bopela, who attributes the following words to a sinister white mastermind in the article I Will Never Forget What a White Man Told Me in Zimbabwe in 1980 posted on UjamaaLive in 2017:
‘We industrialised the country, factories, mines, together with agricultural output, became the mainstay of the new economy, but controlled and understood only by us. We kept the knowledge of all this from you people, the skills required to run such a country successfully. It is not because Africans are stupid because they do not know what to do with an industrialised country. We just excluded the African from this knowledge and kept him in the dark. This exercise can be compared to that of a man whose house was taken away from him by a stronger person. The stronger person would then change all the locks so that when the real owner returned, he would not know how to enter his own house.’
We then introduced a financial system — money (currency), banks, the stock market and linked it with other stock markets in the world. We are aware that your country may have valuable minerals, which you may be able to extract... but where would you sell them? We would push their value to next-to-nothing in our stock markets. You may have diamonds or oil in your country Mr Bopela, but we are in possession of the formulas how they may be refined and made into a product ready for sale on the stock markets, which we control. You cannot eat diamonds and drink oil even if you have these valuable commodities. You have to bring them to our stock markets.’
‘We control technology and communications. You fellows cannot even fly an aeroplane, let alone make one. This is the knowledge we kept from you, deliberately. Now that you have won, as you claim Mr Bopela, how do you plan to run all these things you were prevented from learning? You will be His Excellency this, and the Honorable this and wear gold chains on your necks as mayors, but you will have no power. Parliament, after all, is just a talking house; it does not run the economy; we do. We do not need to be in parliament to rule your Zimbabwe. We have the power of knowledge and vital skills, needed to run the economy and create jobs. Without us, your Zimbabwe will collapse. You see now what I mean when I say you have won nothing? I know what I am talking about. We could even sabotage your economy and you would not know what had happened.’
‘We started by changing the country we took from you to a country that you will find, many centuries later, when you gain political power. It would be totally unlike the country your ancestors lived in; it would be a new country. Let us start with agriculture. We introduced methods of farming that were not known in Africa, where people dug a hole in the ground, covered it up with soil and went to sleep under a tree in the shade. We made agriculture a science. To farm our way, an African needed to understand soil types, the fertilisers that type of soil required, and which crops to plant on what type of soil. We kept this knowledge from the African, how to farm scientifically and on a scale big enough to contribute strongly to the national economy. We did this so that when the African demands and gets his land back, he should not be able to farm it like we do. He would then be obliged to beg us to teach him how. Is that not power, Mr Bopela?
And at a certain level it’s all true. The whites really do have a hidden treasure map and a secret antidote that will make everything work again. The Smithsonian Institute of Washington, D.C. briefly revealed it as part of an exhibition in 2020, but then quickly removed it lest it fall into the wrong hands. We repost it here for the benefit of Zimbabwean readers:
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The dispossession and forced expulsion of whites from Africa that began in the Congo in 1960 continued in Kenya and Zanzibar, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe and now threatens the Boers of South Africa, the last and the oldest white African community. This ongoing human tragedy is met at best with uncomfortable indifference in the West. None but the farthest of the far-right dare show any sympathy. It’s almost in bad taste to suggest that these people should have any rights at all. They are better off than their black neighbors, therefore their property must have been obtained by thieving. As for their lives, what were they doing in Africa anyway? Don’t they know it’s a black continent?
But if the imputed color of a land mass is a valid moral justification for expulsion and murder, then isn’t Europe a white continent? By this logic, would not Europeans be justified in expelling non-whites from Europe and murdering them if they refuse to go peaceably? And if it is not justified, then why the Western reluctance to object when these things are done in Africa? It’s almost as if murder and injustice are thought to be local customs in Africa that we must not impose our Western values systems on.
This moral relativism was not the position of David Livingstone when he fought the slave trade in Africa. And if it’s really true that newcomers should respect existing local morality, then why the Western reluctance to assimilate newcomers to the Western countries?