The background to the current land grab situation can be traced back to the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which effectively precluded blacks from land possession in the then South Rhodesia. It was an act that inflamed nationalist sentiment that eventually saw Robert Mugabe rise to power, with a mission to abolish what was seen as an archetypal colonial act and an affront to all black people. But Mugabe didn't just want to abolish the act, he wanted revenge for it. However, history will probably record the land grab in Zimbabwe as a chronic economic failure. Essentially when the country gained its formal independence from the UK in 1980, because of the Land Apportionment Act, most of the farming land belonged to the white population even though in total those whites accounted for just 1% of the country's total population.

With the economy in a state of disrepair after nearly twenty years of Robert Mugabe rule, Mugabe tried to distract attention from his failing regime by forcibly removing whites from their farms and giving the land to native Zimbabweans, many of whom had neither the skills nor the knowledge to successfully maintain the land. Originally the redistribution of land in Zimbabwe started under the Lancaster House Agreement of 1980 where it was to be on a willing buyer/willing seller basis. However as the program unfolded some one million farm workers found themselves displaced and evicted from their homes on those farms.