Even as lawless invasions of private property recommenced in earnest, government initiated Fast Track Land Reform Plan in mid-2000. It envisioned purchase of between 5-8 million of hectares of agricultural land, resettlement of rural indigent, provision of infrastructure, technical advice and inputs by both civil and military authorities and involvement of all "stakeholders" - especially white commercial farmers - in an on-going dialog in framework of Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative.

But Plan fast deteriorated into strong-arm, threat-laden, and litigious confiscation of white property. Following a setback in polls - its proposed constitution was rejected - ZANU-PF aided and abetted in disorderly - and, sometimes, lethal - requisitioning of farms by a mob of war veterans, mock veterans, petty criminals, rural dispossessed, party hacks, and even middle class urbanites. Ironically, very anarchic nature of process deterred genuine and long term settlers.

About 2000 farms were thus impounded by end of last year. The government refused to compensate farmers for land seized insisting that such reparations should be paid by Britain. It did, however, provide pitiful sums for infrastructure added to land by white settlers.

As pandemic corruption, lawlessness, and mismanagement brought country to brink of insolvency and famine, Mugabe tainted with anti-Western diatribe his merited crusade for reversing past injustices. He lashed at IMF and World bank, at Britain and USA, at white farmers and foreign capital. Xenophobia - no less that patriotism - is refuge of scoundrel in Africa.

In 1997, Britain's New Labor government ceased funding acquisition of land from white farmers. Donors demanded matching funds from destitute Zimbabwe. By 1999, entire West - spearheaded by IMF - disengaged. Zimbabwe was severed from global financial system.

This was followed by sanctions threatened by EU and partly imposed USA and Commonwealth. Sanctions were also urged by prescriptive think tanks, such as International Crisis Group, and even by corporate and banking groups, such as Britain's Abbey National.

Yet, discarding land reform together with Mugabe would be unwise. The problems - some of which are ignored even by Zimbabwean authorities - are real. A negligible white minority owns vast swathes of forcibly obtained prime arable land in a predominantly black country.

A comprehensive - and just - land reform would cater to farm hands as well. They are mostly black - about one fifth of population, counting their dependants. They live in shantytown-like facilities on farms with little access to potable water, sanitation, electricity, phones, or other amenities. They were not even entitled to resettlement until recently.

According to "Rural poverty: Commercial farm workers and Land Reform in Zimbabwe", a paper presented at SARPN conference on Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation in Southern Africa, in June 2001, only about one third of most destitute black farm workforce have been imported as casual and seasonal workers from neighboring countries.

The rest, contrary to government propaganda, are indigenous. Yet, protestations to contrary notwithstanding, government, preoccupied with relieving growing tensions in communal areas and rewarding its own supporters and cronies, refuses to incorporate farm hands fully in its Fast Track Resettlement Program. They are being accused of causing previous resettlement programs to fail.

The problems facing Zimbabwe's agricultural sector are reminiscent of situation in Mozambique, Namibia, Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho, and South Africa. Namibia has already threatened to emulate Zimbabwe. Sam Nujoma, country's president, rebuked market mechanism as "too slow, cumbersome and very costly". An understandable statement coming from head of a government which, according to Namibian news agency, NAMPA, turned down 151 farms last year for lack of funds.

"Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Constraints and Prospects", edited by T.A.S. Bowyer-Bower and Colin Stoneman, notes that development, growth, and poverty alleviation in continent are directly linked to ownership and cultivation of land - often sole means of production. That no regional approach to this pressing issue has arisen attests to quality of self-centred, thuggish, and venal African leadership.

Politically-motivated land reform will lead to emergence of next generations of deprived and discriminated against. Resettlement has to be both fair and seen to be fair. It has to be based on unambiguous criteria and transparent and even-handed procedures. It has to backed by sufficient agricultural inputs and machinery, financial and technical assistance, access to markets, and basic infrastructure.

The proximity of services and institutions - from schools to courts - is critical. Above all, land reform has to look after people displaced in process - commercial farmers and their workers - and thus enjoy near universal support or acquiescence. Legal title and tenure have to be established and recorded to allow new settlers to obtain credits and invest in buildings, machinery, and infrastructure.

Alas, as both Human Rights Watch and UNDP concluded in their detailed reports, none of these requirements is observed in Zimbabwe. Hence recurrent failures and blood-spattered chaos they have produced. Is Mugabe to blame? Surely. Is he prime mover of this debacle? Not by a long shot. He merely encapsulates and leverages pernicious social forces in his country and in continent. Until root problems of Africa are tackled with courage and integrity Mugabe and his type of "reform" will prevail.

THE YOUNG and THE NEW versus THE TIRED and THE TRIED

The cult of youth in central Europe was an inevitable outcome of utter failure of older generations. The allure of new and untried often prevailed over certainty of tried and failed. Many senior politicians, managers, entrepreneurs and journalists across this region are in their 20's or 30's.

Yet, inexperienced temerity of young has often led to voter disillusionment and disenchantment. Many among young are too identified with pratfalls of "reform". Age and experience reassert themselves through ballot boxes - and with them disingenuous habits of past. Many of "old, safe hands" are former communists disingenuously turned socialists turned democrats turned capitalists. As even revolutionaries age, they become territorial and hidebound. Turf wars are likely to intensify rather then recede.

THE TECHNOCRATS / EXPERTS versus THE LOBBYIST-MANAGERS

Communist managers - always quintessential rent-seekers - were trained to wheedle politicians, lobby state and cadge for subsidies and bailouts, rather than respond to market signals. As communism imploded, involvement of state in economy - and resources it commanded - contracted. Multilateral funds are tightly supervised. Communist-era "directors" - their skills made redundant by these developments - were shockingly and abruptly confronted with merciless market realities.

Predictably they flopped and were supplanted by expert managers and technocrats, more attuned to markets and to profits, and committed to competition and other capitalistic tenets. The decrepit, "privatized" assets of dying system expropriated by nomenclature were soon acquired by foreign investors, or shut down. The old guard has decisively lost its capital - both pecuniary and political.

Political parties which relied on these cronies for contributions and influence-peddling - are in decline. Those that had foresight to detach themselves from venality and dissipation of "the system" are on ascendance. From Haiderism to Fortuynism and from Lepper to Medgyessy - being an outsider is a distinct political advantage in both west and east alike.

THE BUREAUCRATS versus THE POLITICIANS

The notion of an a-political civil service and its political - though transient - masters is alien to post communist societies. Every appointment in public sector, down to most insignificant sinecure, is still politicized. Yet, economic decline precipitated by transition to free markets, forced even most backward political classes to appoint a cadre of young, foreign educated, well-traveled, dynamic, and open minded bureaucrats.

These are no longer a negligible minority. Nor are they bereft of political assets. Their power and ubiquity increase with every jerky change of government. Their public stature, expertise, and contacts with their foreign counterparts threaten lugubrious and supernumerary class of professional politicians - many of whom are ashen remnants of communist conflagration. Hence recent politically-tainted attempts to curb powers of central bankers in Poland and Czech Republic.

THE NATIONALISTS versus THE EUROPEANS

The malignant fringe of far-right nationalism and far left populism in central Europe is more virulent and less sophisticated than its counterparts in Austria, Denmark, Italy, France, or Netherlands. With exception of Poland, though, it is on wane.

Populists of all stripes combine calls for a thinly disguised "strong man" dictatorship with exclusionary racist xenophobia, strong anti-EU sentiments, conspiracy theory streaks of paranoia, revival of an imaginary rustic and family-centered utopia, fears of unemployment and economic destitution, regionalism and local patriotism.

Though far from mainstream and often derided and ignored - they succeeded to radicalize both right and left in central Europe, as they have done in west. Thus, mainstream parties were forced to adopt a more assertive foreign policy tinged with ominous nationalism (Hungary) and anti-Europeanism (Poland, Hungary). There has been a measurable shift in public opinion as well - towards disenchantment with EU enlargement and overtly exclusionary nationalism. This was aided by Brussels' lukewarm welcome, discriminatory and protectionist practices, and bureaucratic indecisiveness.

These worrisome tendencies are balanced by inertia of process. Politicians of all colors are committed to European project. Carping aside, countries of central Europe stand to reap significant economic benefits from their EU membership. Still, outcome of this clash between parochial nationalism and Europeanism is far from certain and, contrary to received wisdom, process is reversible.

THE CENTRALISTS versus THE REGIONALISTS

The recent bickering about Benes decrees proves that vision of a "Europe of regions" is ephemeral. True, century old nation state has weakened greatly and centripetal energy of regions has increased. But this applies only to homogeneous states.

Minorities tend to disrupt this continuity and majorities do their damnedest to eradicate these discontinuities by various means - from assimilation (central Europe) to extermination (the Balkan). Hungary's policies - its status law and economic benefits it bestowed upon expatriate Hungarians - is epitome of such tendencies.

These axes of tension delineate and form central Europe's political landscape. The Procrustean categories of "left" and "right" do injustice to these subtleties. As central Europe matures into fully functioning capitalistic liberal democracies, proper leftwing parties and their rightwing adversaries are bound to emerge. But this is still in future.