Who Becomes a Farmer?: Migrant Farmers and the Cotton Economy in the Mid-Zambezi Valley Frontier Region, Northern-Western Zimbabwe

Abstract

Farmer support systems, mainly by the state, have long been considered as central in the agricultural development in Zimbabwe. While this is partly true, the main contention of this paper is that such a perspective fails to grasp the complex relationship between proletarianization and rural agriculture, and the significance of the rural economy within the life course of rural households. The paper develops this argument by focusing on the experiences of farmers in the mid-Zambezi to illustrate how they developed successful farming careers by investing income accumulated from employment. These farmers were formerly proletarianized. Rural production, therefore, met their income accumulation needs after retirements or retrenchments. The mid-Zambezi frontier offered scope for accumulation because of the availability of land and labour for extensive farming. The paper illustrates that the main aspect driving farming was access to financial capital accumulated from employment, which allowed farmers to take advantage of opportunities offered by the new environment. It concludes by examining policy implications of this case study for agricultural development in the country.

Keywords:

• cotton economy
• migrant farmers
• proletarianization
• Zambezi Valley
• Zimbabwe

Notes on contributor

Vusilizwe Thebe is Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Pretoria. His research focus is on former migrant labour societies in Southern Africa and their and dynamics of rural change and transformation. His has researched and written widely on the worker-peasantry, the context of its existence, its relationship to land and work, its transition overtime, and its interaction with state institutions and policy, the complex gender dynamics, and agrarian transformation.

Notes

1 During the WW II years, the compulsory conscription of Africa labour was guided by the Compulsory Native Act of 1942.

2 The Tonga are an indigenous forest tribe that were pushed further north after the arrival of the Ndebele in the forest, following evictions by the settler government.

3 I should make it clear here, that marijuana did not form part of the household crop, but was mainly produced by certain individuals within households as a way to make quick money.

4 Makombo is Shona word for virgin land. Virgin land has always acted as a major attraction for farming households, who were attracted by the prospect of ‘ku tema madiro’ (Chimhowu and Hulme, 2006).

5 The men only died after relocating to the area.

6 Tonga households were not farmers and were mostly paid in grain.

7 In these parts of the Zambezi forest, the availability of family labour is affected by the lack of schools locally (forcing school going children to attend schools in other areas where they spend most of their time), and high incidents of male migration to the cities and towns, Botswana and South Africa to seek employment.

8 ESAP led to massive retrenchments from the public and public sectors as a result of downsizing and deindustrialisation.

9 Mkandla, interview, 2016.

10 Ntuli, interview, 2016.

11 Ukusisa is a strategy used by wealthy rural farmers to develop social networks. The wealthy farmers enter into social arrangements where they lend cattle to poor households to keep and use for a certain period.