‘Displaced in Place’: Agrarian Displacements, Replacements and Resettlement among Farm Workers in Mazowe District

Abstract

Zimbabwe went into drastic economic decline from the late 1990s. Since then, there have been mass population displacements, including those that resulted from the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), which commenced in 2000 and was implemented in the context of acute political crisis, extraordinary hyperinflation, a breakdown in state services, and scarcities of basic commodities. Among the internally displaced are large numbers of farmworkers, as only a small proportion (less than one per cent) were resettled under the fast track programme. Some former farmworkers migrated to towns and cities, communal areas, rural and peri-urban informal settlements or neighbouring countries. But the majority remained in the farm villages, where most were unable to sustain themselves: their dislocation was socio-economic rather than geographical. This article discusses the findings of a study that investigated the effects of the FTLRP by focusing on the lives of farmworkers living on an A2 commercial farm in Mazowe District, Mashonaland Central. It argues that the effects of fast-track land reform in this context were contradictory: on the one hand, it undermined farmworkers' income and livelihoods, at the same time it allowed them residential autonomy and independence in other areas of life. The article sheds light on the experiences of these farmworkers, by considering them as ‘displaced in situ’.