Fast Track Land Reform Programme Research Articles

The generational questions after land reform in Zimbabwe: a social reproduction perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a contemporary perspective on post land reform Zimbabwe with special focus on the youth. It uses the social reproduction conceptual framework to show that two decades after land reform, there are generational questions which are now arising in the new resettlement areas which need deeper, empirical and more nuanced analysis to comprehend. In a context where some countries in Southern Africa are grappling with the best ways of dealing with their land questions, it shows that from a youth perspective, the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) has important lessons. Design/methodology/approach The study was largely qualitative and grounded in an interpretive research paradigm. It employed various data gathering instruments and solicited for responses from 151 young people as well as 11 key informants. The study used the social reproduction perspective as a conceptual and evaluative tool to ascertain the outcomes of the FTLRP from a social reproduction perspective with special focus on young people. Findings The study showed that there are some young people in the resettlement areas who blame the land reform programme for the challenging socio-economic situation which they are facing. It also shows that for the youth, the FTLRP has had multi-dimensional impact; while some are complaining, others have managed to use their agency to access natural resources and land, which has seen them “accumulating from below”. For some young people, land reform has positively transformed their lives, while others feel that it has limited their opportunities. Originality/value The paper provides new and contemporary insights on post land reform Zimbabwe. This is an area which is increasingly gaining traction in scholarship on the FTLRP. In addition, the paper provides a unique perspective of looking at the issue of the youth from a social reproduction perspective; this is a unique academic contribution. Lastly, the paper is useful insofar as it transcends the debates on the FTLRP to proffer a unique analysis on the social reproduction dimensions of the FTLRP.

'Tobacco Thrives, but the Environment Cries': The Sustainability of Livelihoods from Small-Scale Tobacco Growing in Zimbabwe, 2000-2017

Abstract This study analyses the environmental consequences of the introduction in 2000 of the volatile Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) and the sustainability of livelihoods among small-scale African tobacco-farmers following the reform programme. Tobacco was significant in the colonial cash economy and remains a key cash crop in post-colonial Zimbabwe since 1980. Much of the extant tobacco literature focuses on white-settler tobacco farming in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. This study adds to and builds upon an emerging scholarship on African small-scale tobacco producers. Some of the scholars studied the institutional history of tobacco growing and the associated tobacco research and others focused on marketing boards. Geist's work is particularly significant for this study because it examines the environmental impacts of tobacco growing in the developing world. This paper focuses on smallholder flue-cured tobacco growing in Zimbabwe. It observes that the post-independence government made concerted efforts to promote small-scale tobacco-farming through the land resettlement programme and the provision of incentives for increasing agricultural output as well as accelerated black farmers' involvement in the growing of commercial crops, notably tobacco and cotton. The study explores links between the FTLRP and the increase in smallholder tobacco growers and the resulting ecological and livelihood impacts. While tobacco and some tobacco growers appeared to thrive, the environment suffered. Using qualitative and quantitative research approaches and methods like interviews, direct observation, published secondary material, contemporary newspapers and Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) resources, the paper demonstrates that the FTLRP marked the drive to change livelihoods among Zimbabwean farmers.

New land, old claims and the politics of belonging during a changing agrarian situation in central Zimbabwe

This article examines the way discourses of autochthony and belonging were deployed by various groups of people to make claims over land during the implementation of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in 2000. Although the FTLRP was not officially restitutive, people who occupied farms in Mhondoro Ngezi in central Zimbabwe claimed they were recovering their ancestral lands lost during colonial-era forced removals. As a result, discourses of autochthony and belonging became salient during land occupations. The paper concludes by arguing that claims of autochthony and belonging remain hugely contested and that such claims have underpinned the way various groups of people who occupied a former white-owned conservancy made claims over land and how they sought to legitimise such claims.

Livelihoods fragility and land tenure in the post-fast track land reform era in Upper Guruve, Zimbabwe

This paper seeks to document the experiences of and challenges experienced by farmers resettled according to the communal/villagised model of resettlement in Upper Guruve district in Zimbabwe. The paper is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2009 to 2017. Almost two decades have passed since Zimbabwe’s popular and yet controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme was introduced in 2000. An analysis of the experiences of resettled farmers reveals challenges borne out of unresolved tenurial rights, unforeseen generational population pressures and conflict erupting between resettled farmers and existing residents from nearby communal areas. This has birthed competition over resources, boundary conflicts and contestations over authority, ultimately leading to livelihood fragility. Compounding the resettled farmers’ predicament is the recent discovery of minerals, the mining of which destroys their farms. The paper addresses the three interrelated issues of tenurial conflicts, challenges faced by resettled farmers, and the major contributors of livelihoods fragility in order to examine the causes, context and implications of livelihood fragility on resettled farmers in Upper Guruve.

The youth after land reform in Zimbabwe: exploring the redistributive and social protection outcomes from a transformative social policy perspective

ABSTRACT Focusing on the youth, this paper explores the social policy dimensions of Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme (FTLRP) using the transformative social policy (TSP) theoretical framework. It shows that in rural Zimbabwe, the FTLRP has impacted the youth in diverse ways which are only becoming visible now. Using the TSP framework, the paper argues that land reform is a social policy instrument that can be used to transform livelihoods and bring about inclusive development in former settler colonies. It uses empirical evidence gathered in Goromonzi district in Zimbabwe to show that there are discernible redistribution, production and social protection outcomes of the FTLRP. In a context where some Southern African countries are grappling with how best to deal with their “land questions,” the paper argues that there are lessons to be learned from the Zimbabwean experience.

Divergent perspectives on the land reform in Zimbabwe

Divergent perspectives on the land reform in Zimbabwe

Food Imports, Hunger and State Making in Zimbabwe, 2000–2009

This article uses hunger as a lens to explore how the process of state making in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2009 negatively affected the country’s food security. Using Eriksen’s concept of state making, the study demonstrates how the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) ruling regime concentrated more on accumulation and power retention at a time when government was expected to address the serious food shortages that the country was facing. The development of a different kind of state that had repressive and accumulation tendencies was signified in 2000 by the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) which was intended to appease the regime’s various constituencies. Taken together with other populist measures, particularly price freezes, the policies destroyed the country’s capacity to produce and manufacture food and pushed citizens to rely almost entirely on food imports (mainly from South Africa). The paper thus contributes to the literature on the Zimbabwean crisis by offering a different dimension, not only on the process of state making and how it caused hunger, but also on the specifics of how ordinary citizens were literally starving except those who could afford to buy imported food (particularly maize meal) from South Africa.

Scheffler’s autopsy of poverty in the biblical text: Critiquing land expropriation as an elitist project

The theme of poverty has recently dominated various scholarly platforms, including academic presentations and public debates. Nevertheless, it has emerged that the rhetoric about poverty reduction seems to be the project of the elite who apparently write and speak on behalf of the poor. The plight of the majority of the poor is problematised so that transformation is superficially democratised with the ultimate aim of benefitting the elite. The present study reflects on Eben Scheffler’s contributions on poverty and the poor in the Old Testament books of the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Proverbs. Although this study refers to Scheffler’s other works on poverty from time to time, particular attention is paid to four of them, namely, (1) ‘The poor in the Psalms: A variety of views’; (2) ‘Of poverty prevention in the Pentateuch as a continuing contemporary challenge’; (3) ‘Poverty in the Book of Proverbs: Looking from above’; (4) ‘Pleading poverty (or identifying with the poor for selfish reasons): On the ideology of Psalm 109’. Scheffler points out that it was the ancient Israelite elite who played the role of writing and speaking on behalf of the poor. It is essential to note that Scheffler’s thrust is not an appropriation exercise, although in some places he makes reference to the ‘contemporary world’. Thus, the present study attempts to explore the land debate in our contemporary world, with a special focus on South Africa’s (SA) land expropriation without compensation (LEWIC) debate and the foiled fast-track land reform programme in Zimbabwe, as elitist projects. The Zimbabwean Fast-Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) was a prototype of LEWIC in SA. It is argued that the poor rural communities in Zimbabwe continue to languish in poverty in a country endowed with abundant natural resources, including land. The study argues that land allocation in Zimbabwe benefitted the elite.

The Political Dynamics of Food Security and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: 2000 and Beyond

The Political Dynamics of Food Security and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: 2000 and Beyond

Names, labels, the Zimbabwean Liberation War veteran and the third Chimurenga: the language and politics of entitlement in post-2000 Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans’ naming and labelling of individuals and groups opposed to the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in post-2000 Zimbabwe. As instruments of political coercion, the two processes participated in the production of images of individuals and groups opposed to land expropriation, particularly white farmers and political opponents in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), that were at once grotesque and indicative of the polarized nature of political discourse in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The article evinces that naming and labelling participated in the articulation of the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans’ sense of entitlement to land, resources and preferential treatment by the post-2000 Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government of Robert Mugabe. Using the Zimbabwean Liberation War context in which post-2000 Zimbabwean political culture of framing reality in exclusionary terms finds its roots and inspiration, the article explores how veterans of the Zimbabwean Liberation War used names and labels to categorize people and phenomena, separating so-called patriots from exploiters and sell-outs. The discussion also explicates how the Zimbabwean Liberation War veterans held themselves up as yardsticks of commitment to patriotic citizenship in the context of a perceived ZANU-PF war against neo-colonialism.

Dynamics of Women's Land Rights, Agrarian Change and Gender Transformation in Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform Programme

Women’s land rights feature prominently in contemporary policy debates on agrarian change and gender transformation in Africa, although often accompanied by a certain weary skepticism about what this prominence signifies. On the one hand, policy-makers invoke women as an important category for attention, while on the other hand, analysts and activists regularly denounce the gap between high-level policy commitments and implementation. The basis of this paper is to establish the dynamics of women's land rights, agrarian change and gender transformation in Zimbabwe's fast track land reform programme. Using a qualitative method of inquiry based on interviews, focus group discussions and observations with study participants in Bubi district, an empirical material is constructed and interpreted. Using constructivist grounded theory, dynamics of women’s social goals and strategies in production and reproduction are identified, mapped out and analysed. Drawing on gender theory and new institutional theory, which recognise power and discursive signs of institutional change in rules, norms and values, it uncovers layers of social complexity in the dynamics of female and male land rights as well as between male land rights and female labour in the gender regime. In so doing, it shows how power relations emerging from unequal land and labour rights are enacted in cooperation, competition and conflict, between spouses and between co-wives. The findings show how land, besides being a natural resource for food production, is an important social, cultural and intergenerational symbol in Bubi district. This has implications for women and for their position and room of manoeuvre in food production. It also shows how the gender regime is subject to incremental institutional change through gendered agency, mainly from within the regime but accelerated by land scarcity as an external process. To conclude, the gender regime of land and labour rights has implications for how gender is enacted in everyday strategies, constructed in terms of female and male identities and configured in terms of masculinity and femininity. In the end, it is argued, these conditions affect food production and, in its extension, also food security and gender transformation. This study recommends on the importance of disaggregating women and designing policies that recognise class and other differences among them, and cater for women’s interests in land.

A survey of communication media preferred by smallholder farmers in the Gweru District of Zimbabwe

This study is a quantitative survey of communication media preferred by smallholder farmers resettled under the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in the Gweru district of Zimbabwe. Data were gathered using a questionnaire and simple random sampling. Communication is integral to agricultural development, particularly so in the context of the FTLRP characterised by a dearth of information, education and training, ensued by the discriminatory command agriculture (Murisa and Chikweche, 2015). Farmers' preferences of communication media in receiving agricultural innovations should be prioritised to improve agricultural communication and subsequently, productivity, which is dire in Zimbabwe in the light of the continuing food insecurity. The findings indicated that farmers prefer media that are stimulating and engaging such as television and demonstrations; convenient such as mobile phones and detailed such as books probably because the majority of them do not have training in agriculture. Demographic variables of age-group and education were found to be associated with communication preferences of some media. The study has implications for agricultural communication media policy. Beyond prioritisation of farmers’ preferences, a model of a multi-media approach to agricultural communication has been developed, that could widen communication reach if implemented.

Contested histories and contested land claims: traditional authorities and the Fast Track Land Reform programme in Zimbabwe, 2000–2017

ABSTRACTThis article analyses conflicts among traditional authorities over ancestral lands, and boundaries during and in the aftermath of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP). It argues that the FTLRP gave a fresh impetus to conflicts over land and boundaries among traditional authorities as they sought to recast their authority into areas from which they were displaced during the colonial period. It further argues that land claims in the post-FTLRP period were often entangled with contestations over history and legitimacy as rival groups made use of oral traditions and archives to bolster their claims. Most of these struggles over land ended up being decided in the country’s court system. Overall, the article argues that struggles over land claims in the post-FTLRP period have largely ended up being struggles over versions of the history of land ownership and colonial displacements.

Family farms and the markets: examining the level of market-oriented production 15 years after the Zimbabwe Fast Track Land Reform programme

ABSTRACTSmall family farmers aim to secure food through own production, and the surplus is only sold to finance productive and reproductive investments. The Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP) caused a dramatic increase in the number of family farms, with approximately 180,000 families being resettled on 70% of agricultural land previously held by about 4500 commercial white farmers. This increased demand for agricultural capital goods, thus putting pressure on the under-resourced government of Zimbabwe, which had to provide inputs considering the FTLRP and capital outflows induced by the economic meltdown. The study tracks and maps out the position of family farmers in Zimbabwe with respect to the agricultural inputs and outputs markets over 15 years of land reform implementation. Specifically, the study utilises the SMAIAS 2013–14 Household Survey to calculate commercialisation indices for major agricultural crops in Zimbabwe. Commercialisation involves the creation of mechanisms that encourage farmers’ active participation and integration in the commodity markets. The survey results show that participation is found to be highly differentiated, with small-scale producers participating the least. More farmers were more active in the inputs markets than they were in the outputs markets, thus implying a perennial reduction of farmers’ incomes and productive asset investment capacity. Additionally, the study provides structural transformative policy alternatives for improving production and rural household income to reduce poverty.

The complexity of farmworkers’ livelihoods in Zimbabwe after the Fast Track Land Reform: experiences from a farm in Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThe Fast Track Land Reform programme in Zimbabwe was one of the largest land redistribution exercises in the world. The programme had varying impacts on the diverse rural population, leading to a binary projection of winners and losers. The authors use a micro case study of former farmworkers in Chinhoyi to highlight how this particular group has fared since 2000. The authors’ interest is in understanding how the programme impacted on the farmworkers’ livelihoods and how they have responded to the changing agrarian structure. The authors focus on the bulk of the permanent farmworkers on the A2 farms who remained in the farm compounds where they offered to work for the new black farm owners. Using qualitative methodology, this study assesses the fragile patterns of livelihoods for the resident farmworkers. The vast majority of these workers did not get land during the land reform programme, thus their livelihoods in large part derive from the labour they sell to their new employers. This livelihood option however remains limited, ephemeral and unreliable.

The fragility of empowerment: changing gender relations in a Zimbabwean resettlement area

ABSTRACTThis article examines the fragility of women's empowerment in Sovelele, a resettlement area established through Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform programme. Compared to their lives before resettlement, married women have larger plots allocated to them by husbands, exercise a higher degree of control over surplus grain and experience more joint use of resources. Single women can more easily buy and hold land in their own right. Yet, these gains are fragile because they arise out of largely unintended and changing circumstances, including the spatial dynamics of resettlement, permit-based land tenure, limited market integration and labour shortage. While attention to the conditions underlying empowerment reveals its fragility, it is not equally fragile for all women. Some women's gains may prove more resilient than others because they rest upon a deeper renegotiation of gender relations.

Young people and land in Zimbabwe: livelihood challenges after land reform

ABSTRACTThis article explores the livelihood challenges and opportunities of young people following Zimbabwe's land reform in 2000. The article explores the life courses of a cohort of men and women, all children of land reform settlers, in two contrasting smallholder land reform sites. Major challenges to social reproduction are highlighted, reflected in an extended ‘waithood’, while some opportunities for accumulation are observed, notably in intensive agricultural production and agriculture-linked business enterprises. In conclusion, the implications of generational transfer of land, assets and livelihood opportunities are discussed in the context of Zimbabwe's agrarian reform.

Restitution versus Populism: Revisiting the Dominant Tropes of the Land Question in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s land revolution at the turn of the millennia cast the country on the international spotlight for a myriad of reasons, ranging from laudatory admiration to negative criticism and bad publicity. Narratives and doomsday predictions of economic disaster, social upheaval and ultimately internal implosion were awash and not off the mark given the manner in which the political economic status quo was shaken and restructured. The Fast Track Land Reform (FTLRP) was hailed in some quarters as the long overdue corrective measure against historical injustices while other sections castigated it as chauvinistic and fascist machinations of a capricious regime battling for political survival. These ensuing contestations around land expropriation are not an aberration in that they form part of a repertoire of the languages of life and/or the teleology in the history and transition of post colonies with settler heritage. Land reform continues to gain policy traction in much of the developing South with a colonial history where the economic logic of settlerism was the dominant mode of exploitation, expropriation and accumulation. Widening inequality in much of the developing South particularly in post settler economies in southern Africa has heightened demands for greater access to land and other productive sectors putting land as another new frontier of conflict. Therefore the question remains, is land reform being driven by a genuine desire for restitution and a progressive redress of colonial wrongs or whether it is just another pretext for populist demagoguery and patronage politics? This paper posits that these two dominant tropes are deeply interwoven within Zimbabwe’s political economics fabric within its transition as a post colony and the matter is much more complex and cannot be reduced to such binary terms of reference. The paper therefore traces the trajectory of land reform in Zimbabwe since independence until the turn of the millennia and the attendant policy contradictions, constraints and rationalities that undergird land expropriation and redistribution.

How efficient is maize production among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe? A comparison of semiparametric and parametric frontier efficiency analyses

ABSTRACTThe controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe that redistributes commercially-owned farmland to smallholder households has caused concerns about the efficiency of agricultural production in the country. In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of resource use among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe when producing maize, the staple crop in the country. Using both a semiparametric model and a fully parametric stochastic frontier model, we find significant production shortfalls for smallholder maize production. While labor, capital, and land all significantly affect the total output, the estimated mean efficiency score for farms with less than 10 hectares of land (A1) appears to be under 0.75, and for the entire sample (A1 and A2) it ranges between 0.595 and 0.772. There clearly exists a great potential for maize farmers to improve the technical efficiency and increase the total output. Gender and age of the household head, access to extension services, and activities of other crops significantly affect the technical efficiency of smallholder maize production in Zimbabwe. We also find that all farms operate under increasing returns to scale and that the technical efficiency score tends to increase with the level of output.

A model for the adoption and effective utilization of ICTs in commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe

The turn of the 21st century saw Zimbabwe embarking on the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) which promoted new commercial farmers in the agricultural sector in the country. These new commercial farmers in post-FTLRP utilise basic ICTs like mobile phones which have less significance in revitalizing their farming activities. This study seeks to establish reasons behind the low level of ICT adoption and underutilisation by new commercial farmers in Zimbabwe. Using the critical realism philosophical paradigm, the study proposes a model for the adoption as well as effective utilisation of ICTs in commercial agriculture in the country. It is further argued that the adoption of ICTs in commercial agriculture remains a challenge in Zimbabwe especially in the post land reform era where farmers concentrate on using basic farming equipment such as pivots, telecommunication lines and water pipes previously put in place by former owners most of which are now vandalized. It is hoped that the new farmers in order to adopt new technology in farming should be trained through workshop and seminars on the use of ICTs for effective commercial agriculture. The Government of Zimbabwe is further challenged to review the land ownership policy especially on timely processing of ownership documents.