in 1991 and 1992, clashing with law enforcement. The unions also criticised the government during this time. In 1992, national police prevented workers from staging anti-regime demonstrations. Widespread industrial unrest which continued into 1994, however, weakened Zimbabwe's sagging economy. In 1996, civil servants, nurses, and junior doctors went on strike over salary issues. The general health of the civilian population also began to significantly flounder. By 1997 an estimated 25% of the population of Zimbabwe had been infected by HIV.
Economic difficulties and hyperinflation (1999–2008)
Land issues, which the liberation movement had promised to solve, re-emerged as the main issue for the ruling party around 1997. Despite majority rule and the existence of a "willing-buyer-willing-seller" land reform programme since the 1980s, white Zimbabweans continued to hold about 70% of the most arable land. Robert Mugabe began to forcibly redistribute this land to his associates in 2000. The legality and constitutionality of the process has regularly been challenged in the Zimbabwean High and Supreme Courts.
While it is widely acknowledged that the land upheaval brought about much destruction, joblessness, hunger, and political violence, some 58,000 independent black farmers have since experienced limited success in reviving the gutted cash crop sectors through efforts on a smaller scale. Advocates of the ruling party have used this pretext to indicate that some measure of racial equality was achieved despite chaotic circumstances, claiming that black citizens must "come first" in Zimbabwe.
Mandatory confiscation of white farmland was affected by continuous droughts, as well as a serious lacking in inputs and finance, leading to a sharp decline in agricultural exports, which was traditionally the country's leading export-producing sector. As a result, Zimbabwe experienced a severe hard-currency shortage that led to
