‘This is where all the white farmers come to die’: Exploring the Roles and Narratives of Former Tobacco Farmers in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Abstract

Throughout the pre-independence era, commercial tobacco growing remained an exclusively white enterprise in Zimbabwe. The situation did not substantially change with the advent of majority rule in 1980. Commercial agriculture in general, and tobacco growing in particular, continued to be dominated by a few large-scale white farmers. However, the situation was to change drastically following the adoption by the Robert Mugabe regime of the fast-track land reform programme (FTLRP) in 2000. This resulted in nearly all white farmers losing their farms, leading to a near collapse of the tobacco farming industry in Zimbabwe. The country’s tobacco farming industry has now been resuscitated, in part due to the successes of contract farming operations, both small-scale and commercial. The collapse of white farming in Zimbabwe following the FTLRP resulted in the movement of white farmers and their families into other areas of the tobacco industry. This article seeks to explore what happened to white tobacco farmers after the FTLRP. Many ex-farmers and their children are now working in the subsidiaries of the large leaf buying companies, on tobacco auction floors, and in small-scale contract farming operations. This article explores the history of the white farming community in Zimbabwe as a background to understand the new roles and positions that former farmers occupy as part of the new boom in tobacco production in Zimbabwe, and southern Africa in general.