The implementation of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in 2000 generated polarised debates across academia and in the media. Some commentators dismissed the FTLRP as a politically motivated ‘land grab’, which ruined a vibrant agrarian structure and contributed to food shortages. Landless peasants, who were the major beneficiaries of the land reform, were dismissed as inefficient and lacking the skills to work the land productively. However, empirical data gathered across Zimbabwe indicate that the outcomes of Zimbabwe’s FTLRP are diverse and require a nuanced analysis. This thesis explores the outcomes of land reform in terms of its impact on the livelihoods of peasant households who were resettled under the FTLRP. The thesis utilises empirical data to argue that, despite its shortcomings, the FTLRP has allowed peasant households to access land and other natural resources which were previously enclosed under a dualistic land tenure structure which had persisted after Zimbabwe’s independence from colonial rule in 1980. Data gathered in Mhondoro Ngezi District indicate that in the aftermath of land reform, resettled farmers now have access to better quality land and opportunities for employment at mines and through gold panning which have generally enhanced livelihoods. The thesis also argues that the benefits of land reform are broad and go beyond the utility of land as a means of production. Fast track land reform allowed people to recover ancestral lands lost during colonial era forced removals; it also allowed people to be reunited with ancestral graves and other symbols of spiritual significance. Overall, this has helped to address the diverse aspects of land which had remained largely unresolved due to the failure of Zimbabwe’s market driven land reforms of the early 1980s. The thesis is based on a case study of 185 households who were allocated land under the A1 Scheme (villagised model) in the Mhondoro Ngezi District in Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe.

This thesis examines people’s attempts to (re)construct belonging and authority after rapid socio-political and economic change. It is a study of the lives of those living alongside each other in a new resettlement area in Zimbabwe a decade after ‘fast track’ land reform. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted on a series of farms in the Mazowe area (March 2012-May 2013), I show that in the uncertain socio-political context of this new resettlement area, belonging was a dynamic social process involving complex moral bonds, and relationships of dependence and obligation. ‘Fast track’ land reform can be understood as a process of state-making in which the Zimbabwean state reconfigured its relationship with its citizens via the redistribution of land. After ‘fast track’, farms were transformed from socially and politically bounded entities under the paternalistic rule of white farmers, to areas in which land beneficiaries and farm workers lived alongside one another under the rule of the ZANU PF state. Land was allocated according to ZANU PF loyalty. Farmworkers due to their associations with white farmers and oppositional politics, were rarely allocated land. Thus farms in Mazowe consisted of landless farm workers who had lived and worked in the area for generations, and landed beneficiaries who came from a variety of places. In addition, ‘fast track’ was framed in terms of redistribution rather than restitution but many chiefs saw it as an opportunity to ‘return’ to their ancestral lands. However, their claims to authority in the areas remained uncertain. I examine how people dealt with the various tensions thrown up by ‘fast track’. By leaving these tensions unresolved, a contingent stability was generated on farms, even as this was fragile. My work contributes to better understanding the socio-political effects of land reform. Research on Zimbabwean land reform has tended to rely on official framings of people’s relationships to each other and the land, and has largely failed to capture the complexity and negotiated nature of these in everyday life. Anthropological work on belonging has mostly focused on explicit claims. I show how history and the micro-politics of everyday relationships profoundly shaped local forms of belonging which crosscut state delimitations of who belonged, and what land reform meant to those living in this area.

This thesis examines the livelihood outcomes of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). It asks, what has happened to rural livelihoods following land redistribution; how did land occupations and redistribution unfold; who gained land in the A1 resettlement areas; what new patterns of production can be identified and how do these compare between different settlement types and across time; how have smallholders responded to new opportunities and challenges on and off the farm; and what are the experiences of women and former farm workers? The thesis adopts a multi-methods, comparative approach, drawing on survey data from over 500 rural households and in-depth interviews with 132 “new” farmers. The thesis is a comparative assessment of livelihood outcomes in the new resettlement areas vis-à-vis the old resettlement and communal areas. The results of a series of statistical analyses and interviews show that the “new” A1 farmers are mostly poor and landless people from neighbouring communal areas. These resettlement farmers also produce more maize, cotton and tobacco than their counterparts in other rural areas. The main constraint to smallholder development in these areas has been the general lack of inputs (especially fertilisers), credit and markets. Resettlement farmers, old and new, have responded to these challenges by engaging in contract farming and/or a wider range of non-farm income generating activities, earning higher incomes than those in the communal areas. The data also shows that income from farm and non-farm activities is then reinvested in productive assets and agricultural production. The final chapter presents smallholders’ perceptions about their own tenure security. While many feel secure on their new land, land rights for women and former farm workers continue to be mediated through men and settlers, respectively. Their livelihoods thus rest precariously on their abilities to manage these relationships. Thus, in addition to offering a detailed, empirical analysis of the livelihood outcomes of Zimbabwe land reform, the thesis also contributes to wider theoretical debates, challenging narratives of deagrarianisation and emphasising the importance of multi-methods approaches to understanding complex livelihood changes in the context of land reform.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Ezekiel Walker. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-83).