President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is pressing ahead to expropriate "stolen land" from the small but productive white farming community, at a heavy price to his government as well as targeted farmers.
It is no coincidence that the release to the largely white Commercial Farmers' Union of a list of farms earmarked for expropriation has converged with a major financial crisis, signalled by a sharp fall in the value of the Zimbabwe dollar on the money market.
With land rights under threat, confidence in Zimbabwe's future and that of its currency has been severely undermined. As one well-placed observer remarks, the commandeering by the government of about $150 million from domestically-owned corporate foreign exchange accounts has certainly not helped.
The local unit is hovering at around 15 to the US dollar after three days of crisis and emergency measures by the Zimbabwe government, having fallen steadily throughout the year from less than 11 to the US dollar at the end of last year.
Mr Mugabe's long-declared intention to confiscate 1,772 white-owned farms - which account for just over a third of the land owned by commercial farmers - has come closer to realisation with release to the farmers concerned and the CFU of the list detailing the farms identified for expropriation.
The confiscations are justified in the name of the 600,000 black peasant families who, while collectively numbering at least seven million people, have to squeeze a living in overcrowded conditions on barely twice as much land as the commercial farmers.
But there is a prevailing belief that the actual beneficiaries may include leading members of the ruling party, ZANU-PF. Past experience has shown that there is often a divergence between rhetoric and reality when it comes to land reform.
A Zimbabwean journalist, Michael Hartnack, notes that records of the deeds office show that Mr Herbert Ushewokenze, one of Mr Mugabe's former lieutenants, owned five farms when he died. Another top Mugabe man, Mr Solomon Mujuru, the former commander of the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army, has major interests in companies which own at least three farms. To cite a third example: a formerly white-owned farm which was meant to accommodate 33 black peasant farmers after it was sold has been registered in the name of a former agriculture minister, Mr Witness Magwende.
Although Mr Mugabe has been making threatening noises against commercial farmers since he came to power in 1980, he cannot stall any longer without losing credibility with the huge black farming community on which ZANU-PF, faced with growing disillusionment and anger in the cities and towns, increasingly depends.
Mr Mugabe has vowed not to compensate white farmers for their land, arguing that the land was seized from the indigenous blacks by invading settlers and that the colonising power, Britain, should accept financial responsibility. But, according to diplomats, the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, has made it clear that Britain will help finance only a well-supervised "poverty alleviation" programme, one which will prevent Mr Mugabe's ruling elite from grabbing part of the spoils.
Mr Mugabe is, however, committed to paying expropriated white farmers for improvements to the targeted farms. It is not clear, however, when he will find the money to do that.
He is already scraping the barrel to pay between 30,000 and 40,000 guerrilla combatants $50,000 each after they took to the streets of Harare in May to protest after the local press published details of how high-ranking Zanu-PF officials had plundered the War Veterans' Fund.