‘Rooted Back Home’: Exploring Linkages between Small-Scale Land Reform Beneficiaries and their Communal Areas of Origin in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article examines why land reform beneficiaries maintain linkages with their communal areas of origin two decades after Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP). This is done by investigating the extent to which and the ways in which beneficiaries of the FTLRP are connected to their communal areas of origin, as well as the implications of maintaining their belonging. Studies of the FTLRP have paid insufficient attention to the importance of understanding linkages with places of origin. Thus, using empirical qualitative insights from Zvimba district, Mashonaland West province, I argue that belonging, even in the case of land reform, links people despite their physical relocation. The findings illustrate that the need to belong makes people maintain their links with their place of origin. The article concludes that land reform programmes should consider social elements such as belonging which are embedded in the social fabric of people’s lives.