Just about all of those embroiled in the rancorous struggle over the fate of white-owned land in Zimbabwe agree on one thing: the redistribution of soil to hundreds of thousands of dispossessed black peasants is long overdue.
The government and its adversaries - from black trade unions to white farmers derided by President Robert Mugabe as "children of the British" - do not dispute that less than 2 per cent of the population cannot go on owning two-thirds of Zimbabwe's best farm land. But agreement ends there.
Mr Mugabe frankly admits that his plan to seize about five million hectares of farm land next year is politically driven. After 17 years as Zimbabwe's sole post-independence leader, Mr Mugabe is facing his worst political crisis to date, and white farmers are a convenient distraction from the aggravations of economic stagnation, one-party rule and corruption.
Most of the bitter and frustrated owners of the nearly 1,500 farms designated for nationalisation - with only minimal compensation after Britain refused to fund the seizure - met this week's deadline to lodge appeals with Zimbabwe's land minister, Mr Kumbirai Kangai.
Mr Kangai concedes that the original list is laced with errors in identifying who owns what land, in part because of the hurried way in which it was thrown together. But Mr Kangai insists that the takeover is morally and politically justified.
"The land issue is really a creation of the colonial era. Did Cecil Rhodes pay a cent to any of the chiefs here? He simply took the land. We're doing more than that. We're going to pay for houses, the roads, the irrigation. But the soil itself belongs to the people. We will not pay for it," Mr Kangai said.
"The poor say: `You told us there should be orderly resettlement. You told us we should not become squatters on white land. How long must we wait?' It's a moral issue. We have to address the poverty."
Mr Kangai says two-thirds of the land designated for nationalisation will be rented to about 90,000 families who have waited since independence for somewhere permanent to settle.
Among those who look likely to lose land - including some Irish farmers - are the writer, Doris Lessing, South Africa's affluent Oppenheimer family, and Zimbabwe's last white prime minister, Mr Ian Smith. Also designated for nationalisation is a farm adjoining Mr Mugabe's estate which the president has shown an interest in acquiring in the past. None of the dormant farms owned by senior government officials is at risk.
The director of the overwhelmingly white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), Mr David Hasluck, is also on the list. Mr Hasluck attacked the land nationalisation as arbitrary and unfair because, he says, it will leave many farmers homeless. He complains that while the government originally designated vacant, under-utilised and foreign-owned land for redistribution, most CFU members who face nationalisation are losing their most productive soil. Many are also losing their houses.
The government has barred any appeal to the courts. "The CFU has no objection if they pay fair compensation in a reasonable period of time, although we think that's an expensive way to do it," Mr Hasluck said.
Mr Mugabe announced the land redistribution at a congress of the ruling Zanu-PF in an attempt to offset growing discontent within the party over falling living standards, rising corruption and continued white dominance of parts of the economy. A party committee was assigned to decide which land should be seized. It is headed by an official who himself owns 14 farms - none of which is designated for nationalisation.
Mr Hasluck and other CFU leaders met Mr Mugabe to present their own scheme to voluntarily sell 300 farms, totalling 500,000 hectares, to the government. They told the president that his scheme will wreck Zimbabwe's economy, which relies on farm exports for 40 per cent of its foreign exchange.
The CFU doubted small-scale peasant farming could even feed the country. "He was unmoved by our arguments," Mr Hasluck said. "Mugabe was not interested in this as an economic issue and the development of Zimbabwe. He saw it as a political issue which he had a mandate for and he was going to have five million hectares. The president told us: `I'm not interested in the value or productivity of the land. I want to give it to the people'."
Even Zimbabwe's trades unions, once in the pocket of Zanu-PF, have decried the land seizure. The secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions says most workers back land redistribution as righting a long-standing wrong. But they question the government's intent, alleging that the nationalisation plan is merely a cover for ministers and senior ruling party officials to plunder one of Zimbabwe's greatest assets.