The analysis of agrarian change presented in this thesis integrates state practices and wider politics to the study of rural differentiation, using a case study of Zimbabwe. Most studies of agrarian change in the 21st century have tried to come to grips with rural differentiation in Africa, its causes and effects, by using particular models such as those of neo-classical economics, livelihood approaches, Marxist analysis of accumulation and social and cultural networks, or a combination of variables from the four approaches. However, these theoretical approaches fail to comprehensively integrate the role of the state and politics into the analysis of rural differentiation. My study explains differentiation by exploring beneficiary selection, production and accumulation processes on Zimbabwe’s Fast Track land reform resettlement schemes. Fast Track involved a series of partisan and violent invasions of largely white owned commercial farms from 2000, which constituted the largest land redistribution in post-colonial Africa. Scholars exploring politics and the Zimbabwean state have not applied their insights to an analysis of field based data on production and accumulation on Zimbabwe’s resettlement farms. I argue that the restructuring of the state and politics as an instrument of violence and as a site of accumulation dominated by patronage-both justified through ideology-was central to agrarian change after 2000. I find the three concepts of violence, patronage and ideology more useful in capturing the nuances and modalities of empirical realities on resettlement schemes than neo-patrimonial theories that provide generalised accounts of the African state. Though still acknowledging the role of other differentiating factors such as social networks, hard work by resettled farmers and economic factors, it is through the integration of political processes into the analysis of agrarian change that, I argue, one can understand better the dynamics shaping rural differentiation in post-2000 Zimbabwe.

This thesis examined the evolution and transition of agrarian labour relations in the aftermath of Zimbabwe‘s radical land redistribution, which reconfigured the agrarian structure in terms of landholdings, production practices and labour markets from 2000. Despite the importance of agrarian labour as source of livelihood for the largely countryside based population, insufficient academic attention has been paid to its evolution following the land reforms. Specifically to the mobilisation, organisation and utilisation of wage and non-wage labour against background of the changed land ownership patterns, agrarian policies and macro-economic conditions. Historical-structural approaches rooted in Marxist Political Economy informed the analysis of the new agrarian labour relations since in former Settler colonies such as Zimbabwe these were based were based on a historical context of specific land-labour utilisation relations created by land dispossession and discriminatory agrarian policies during the colonial and immediate independence period. Beyond this, gender issues, intra-household relations, kinship, citizenship and the agency of the workers were taken into account to understand the trajectory of labour relations. Detailed quantitative and qualitative empirical research in Goromonzi and Kwekwe districts, as well as from other sources demonstrated that a new agrarian labour regime had evolved to replace the predominant wage labour in former large-scale commercial farms. There has been a growth in the use of self-employed family farm labour alongside the differentiated use of wage labour in farming and other non-farm activities. Inequitable gender and generational tendencies were evident in the new agrarian labour regime. The new labour relations are marked by the exploitation of farm workers through wages that are below the cost of social reproduction, insecure forms of employment and poor working conditions. While their individual and collective worker agency is yet to reverse their poor socio-economic conditions. Various policy interventions to protect their land and labour rights are thus required. The study shed light on the the conceptual understanding of agrarian labour relations in former Settler economies, including the role of land reforms in the development of employment, and how the peasantry with enlarged land access are reconstituted through repeasantisation and semi-proletarianisation processes. / Public Administration and Management / D. P. A.