Agricultural Land-Use Policies and Rural Spatial Differentiation in Colonial and Postcolonial Zimbabwe

Abstract

Agricultural development policies in colonial Zimbabwe were a specific outcome of the manner in which the country was colonised by British settlers from South Africa in 1890. The gold rush was the main motivation for colonisation of Zimbabwe and with its failure, agricultural land increased in value, which sparked off an unprecedented land scramble among the settlers which initiated the process of rural spatial differentiation. Successive colonial governments pursued dual agricultural policies aimed at developing European commercial agriculture while simultaneously underdeveloping African subsistence agriculture through systematic disinvestment. The attempt by the postcolonial African government to reverse this dual agricultural policy failed because of a combination of factors including the Lancaster House constitutional guarantees for rights to private property and the African politicians' failure by default or design to achieve a substantive ideological turnabout.