The Western consensus about Zimbabwe holds that having inherited a country that was as beautiful as it was prosperous, and with the goodwill of the world behind him, President Robert Mugabe has outstayed his welcome at home, outlived his usefulness to his country and exhausted the patience and goodwill of the international community. The West's dominant image of Zimbabwe is one of a country sliding into lawlessness and anarchy.

While true, this is not the whole truth. As in most issues, there are two sides to this story, and Zimbabwe's has not received equal coverage in the international media.

The most recent flash points in Zimbabwe have come at the intersection of land rights and electoral politics. The politics of land is a peculiarly emotional issue everywhere, including Europe, Asia and North America. It is especially so in developing countries, conferring social status and privilege as well as being the most valuable resource. It is inextricably tied to issues of national identity.

The government is alleged to have exploited the issue cynically to terrorize whites, intimidate opponents and mobilize flagging support among the blacks. The goodwill of foreign well-wishers has been squandered, domestic politics is increasingly brutal and the impoverished populace is increasingly desperate.

Leaving aside the president's culpability for the bankruptcy of the country that he has ruled unbroken since independence, it is worth making three more points: The long shadows of colonialism have not fully disappeared, the land issue is a complex cluster of social conflicts and Britain does share some responsibility for Zimbabwe's sorry state of affairs.

Colonialism destroyed, arrested and distorted the political and economic development of many "native" societies. Since independence, developing countries have been engaged in the difficult task of reconstituting their society, polity and economy. Under the protective cloak of sovereignty, they have simultaneously pursued the three ambitious goals of state building, nation-building and economic development. Although not alone in being seduced by a socialist agenda, Zimbabwe has been slower than most countries in abandoning it.

It would be disingenuous to claim that the pattern of land ownership and distribution in Zimbabwe was not the product of colonial relations based on force and race. Nor is it credible to suggest that a 1-2 percent racial minority could forever hold on to the bulk of Zimbabwe's prime farming land, which was originally acquired by conquest. The market-based land acquisitions of the 1980s were followed by compulsory acquisitions in 1990-97 and occupations and seizures since then.

The nearly exclusive white ownership was split almost evenly between 6,000 large-scale commercial properties and 700,000 smallholders. To protect the newly emerging country's cash crops and international investor confidence, Zimbabwe accepted three crucial conditions as the price of independence. The British-brokered Lancaster House Agreement of 1980 stipulated that state acquisition of land could only be at market prices, in foreign currency and on a willing buyer/seller basis.

That is, notes Sam Moyo, director of the Harare-based Southern African Regional Institute for Policy Studies, the white farmers retained control over the amount, location and price of land for sale. According to him, two sets of problems followed and in effect perpetuated the inequities of race and class indefinitely. First, much of the arable land remained uncultivated and underutilized, being held in reserve for speculative capital gains. Second, land that was surrendered was often of poor quality, dispersed and scattered, and lacking in farming infrastructure like irrigation and extension services.

When the Lancaster House Agreement expired in 1990, the government started purchasing land in local currency and encouraged the entry of blacks into the large-scale commercial-farm property sector. The results have been disappointing, and there is speculation that the original goals of transfer of land to the landless and war veterans was subverted by political cronyism and nepotism.

As the responsible colonial power, Britain had agreed to fund part of the land-acquisition program. But London held back on its payments, and in doing so exacerbated the land problem as an interracial conflict, tarnished its own mediatory credentials and made it easier for the governing regime to play the race-cum-land card in domestic politics. Moyo's calculations show that whereas in Kenya Britain provided over 100 million pounds for land acquisition and settlement, in Zimbabwe it promised 75 million pounds and had paid only 30 million pounds by 2000.

By 1997-99 it was becoming clear that Mugabe's political hold on Zimbabwe's people was slipping. Forcible farm occupations by the landless and the war veterans were neither discouraged, resisted nor reversed by the state authorities. But the grievance, with the inflammatory mix of race, class and politics, was already there.

Thus Mugabe, his ruling party and the army may have chosen to ride the tiger of land acquisition nationalism and militancy, but they did not create the problem. The question is: Can they dismount the tiger in time, or will they suffer the usual fate of being devoured by the beast that cannot be tamed but lives by the law of the jungle?