Matabeleland food shortages. Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo finally reconciled their political differences by late 1987. The roots of discord remained, however, and in some ways increased as Mugabe's rule became increasingly autocratic into the 21st century. In the early 1990s, a Land Acquisition Act was passed, calling for the Mugabe government to purchase mostly white-owned commercial farming land for redistribution to native Africans. Matabeleland has rich central plains, watered by tributaries of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, allowing it to sustain cattle and consistently produce large amounts of cotton and maize. But land grabbing, squatting, and repossessions of large white
Borders of Suriname Courantyne River. In 1799, however, Berbice governor Abraham Jacob van Imbijze van Batenburg and Suriname governor Jurriaan François de Friderici signed an agreement in which the western bank of the Courantyne River was demarcated as the boundary. All islands in the Courantyne, as well as the post at Orealla, were deemed to be in Suriname. As the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 returned Suriname to Dutch rule in the boundaries of 1 January 1803, the Courantyne became the new boundary between British Guiana and Suriname. Robert Schomburgk surveyed British Guiana's borders in 1840. Taking the Courantyne River as the border, he