Electoral Politics and a Farm Workers' Struggle in Zimbabwe (1999–2000)

Abstract

An extraordinarily lengthy 20-month farm labour struggle in Zimbabwe from 1998 to 2000 that became entangled in momentous national-scale politics provides insight into how electoral politics became a source of power, ambivalence and danger for these farm workers. This article analyses how leaders of this long struggle drew on electoral politics as a set of social practices, power relations and affective styles to make connections with extra-farm organisations, while compelling support among many of the farm workers. It examines how the farm workers' leaders were able to use some of the social networks and cultural politics associated with electoral politics in Zimbabwe to try to reconfigure the situation facing farm workers on a much broader scale. Both the labour struggle and emergent opposition politics in this context drew on the authoritarian style of electoral politics dominant in Zimbabwe. The linkages to wider networks within a political party, state bodies, and non-state organisations dramatically enhanced the sustainability and possibilities of this labour struggle. But they also brought hierarchies and the potential for violence. When the wider historical conjuncture shifted after February 2000, and national-scale politics began to focus on commercial farms, the ability to draw on diverse wider networks to enhance workers' demands was severely limited. This article thus provides insight into the cultural politics of opposition and ruling-party politics in relationship to farm workers during an important period in Zimbabwe's history.

Notes

¹ This paper is part of a book manuscript, provisionally titled Conditional Belonging: Farm Workers and the Cultural Politics of Citizenship, Land and Livelihood in a Time of Change in Zimbabwe.

² Examples of such mass farm worker actions include strikes on the plantations in eastern Zimbabwe in 1980 and in parts of Mashonaland East and Mashonaland West in October 1997. See L. Sachikonye, ‘State, Capital and Trade Unions’, in I. Mandaza (ed.), Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Transition 1980–1986 (Dakar, CODESRIA, 1986), pp. 243–73; J. Mtisi, ‘The Liberation War, Independence, and Disillusionment: Aspects of Plantation Labour Relations, with Special Reference to Jersey Tea Estate in Chipinge District since the mid-1970s’, in T. Ranger (ed.), The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe. Volume Two: Nationalism, Democracy and Human Rights (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Press, 2002), pp. 134–49; B. Rutherford, ‘Farm Workers in Trade Unions in Hurungwe District in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe’. in B. Raftopoulos and L. Sachikonye (eds), Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe, 1980–2000 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001), pp. 197–220.

³ B. Rutherford, ‘Belonging to the Farm(er): Farm Workers, Farmers, and the Shifting Politics of Citizenship’, in A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos, S. Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Harare, Weaver Press, 2003), pp. 191–216; B. Rutherford, ‘Desired Publics, Domestic Government, and Entangled Fears: On the Anthropology of Civil Society, Farm Workers, and White Farmers in Zimbabwe’, Cultural Anthropology, 19, 1 (2004), pp. 122–53.

⁴ S. Moyo, B. Rutherford, and D. Amanor-Wilks, ‘Transforming Social Relations for Farm Workers in Zimbabwe’, Review of African Political Economy, 27, 84 (June 2000), pp. 181–202; T. Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (2005), pp. 215–34; W. Sadomba and K. Helliker, ‘Transcending Objectifications and Dualisms: Farm Workers and Civil Society in Contemporary Zimbabwe’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 45, 2 (2009), pp. 209–25; W. Chambati, ‘Restructuring of Agrarian Labour Relations after Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38, 5 (2011), pp. 1047–68.

⁵ See R. Loewenson, Modern Plantation Agriculture (London, Zed Books, 1992); T. Mugwetsi and P. Balleis, The Forgotten People: The Living and Health Conditions of Farm Workers and their Families (Gweru, Mambo Press with Silveira House, 1994); D. Amanor-Wilks, In Search of Hope for Zimbabwe's Farm Workers (Harare, Dateline Southern Africa and Panos Institute, 1995).

⁶ B. Raftopoulos and L. Sachikonye (eds), Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980–2000 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001); S. Rich Dorman, ‘NGOs and the Constitutional Debate in Zimbabwe: from Inclusion to Exclusion’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 4 (2003), pp. 845–63; A. LeBas, ‘Polarisation as Craft: Party Formation and State Violence in Zimbabwe’, Comparative Politics, 38, 4 (July 2006), pp. 419–38.

⁷ See I. Phimister and B. Raftopoulos, ‘Zimbabwe Now: The Political Economy of Crisis and Coercion’, Historical Materialism, 12, 4 (2004), pp. 355–82; D. Moore, ‘Marxism and Marxist Intellectuals in Schizophrenic Zimbabwe: How Many Rights for Zimbabwe's Left? A Comment’, Historical Materialism, 12, 4 (2004), pp. 405–25; S. Moyo and P. Yeros, ‘Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Towards the National Democratic Revolution’, in S. Moyo and P. Yeros (eds), Reclaiming the Land, The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America (London, Zed Books, 2005), pp. 165–205; P. Bond and R. Saunders, ‘Labor, the State and the Struggle for a Democratic Zimbabwe’, Monthly Review, 57, 7 (December 2005); P. Yeros and S. Moyo, ‘Intervention The Zimbabwe Question and the Two Lefts’, Historical Materialism 15, 3 (2007), pp. 171–204; S. Moyo, K. Helliker, and T. Murisa (eds), Contested Terrain: Land Reform and Civil Society in Contemporary Zimbabwe (Pietermaritzburg, SS Publishers, 2008).

⁸ B. Rutherford, ‘Commercial Farm Workers and the Politics of (Dis)Placement in Zimbabwe: Liberation, Colonialism, and Democracy’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 1, 4 (2001), pp. 626–51; B. Rutherford, Working on the Margins: Black Workers, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (London and Harare, Zed Books and Weaver Press, 2001); Rutherford, ‘Belonging to the Farm(er)’; B. Rutherford, ‘Conditional Belonging: Farm Workers and the Cultural Politics of Recognition in Zimbabwe’, Development and Change, 39, 1 (2008), pp. 73–99.

⁹ See Rutherford, Working on the Margins; Rutherford, ‘Desired Publics, Domestic Government, and Entangled Fears’.

¹⁰ See Moyo and Yeros, ‘Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe’; Timothy Scarnecchia, ‘The “Fascist Cycle” in Zimbabwe, 2000–2005’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 3 (June 2006), 221–37; L. Sachikonye, When a State Turns on Its Citizens: 60 Years of Institutionalised Violence in Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011); I. Scoones, N. Marongwe, B. Mavedzenge, F. Murimbarimba, J. Mahenehene, and C. Sukume, Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities (Oxford, James Currey, 2010). See also B. Rutherford, ‘Shifting the Debate on Land Reform, Poverty and Inequality in Zimbabwe: An Engagement with Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths & Realities’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 30, 1 (2012), pp. 147–57; I. Scoones, ‘Missing Politics?’, Zimbabweland (3 September 2012), available at zimbabweland.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/missing-politics/, retrieved 15 November 2012.

¹¹ J. Gledhill, ‘Power in Political Anthropology’, Journal of Power, 2, 1 (2009), p. 14; see also B. Rutherford, ‘“We Wanted Change Yesterday!” The Promise and Perils of “Poritikisi”: Zimbabwean Farm Workers, Party Politics, and Critical Social Science’, Anthropologica, 51, 2 (2009), pp. 381–94.

¹² T. Scarnecchia, The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940–1964 (Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2008), p. 6.

¹³ S. Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival’, Cultural Anthropology, 16, 2 (2001), p. 210.

¹⁴ See, e.g., B. Rutherford, ‘Another Side to Rural Zimbabwe: Social Constructs and the Administration of Farm Workers in Urungwe District, 1940s’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 1 (1997), pp. 107–26; R. Werbner, ‘Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Reinscription in Zimbabwe’, in R. Werbner (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power (London, Zed Books, 1998), pp. 71–102; Rutherford, Working on the Margins; E. Worby, ‘A Redivided Land? New Agrarian Conflicts and Questions in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 1, 4 (2001), pp. 475–509; A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos and S. Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Harare, Weaver Press, 2003); J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State-making & the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe, 1893–2003 (Oxford, James Currey, 2006); B. Rutherford, ‘Shifting Grounds in Zimbabwe: Citizenship and Farm Workers in the New Politics of Land’, in S. Dorman, D. Hammett and P. Nugent (eds), Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Leiden, Brill, 2007), pp. 105–22; B. Raftopoulous and A. Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2009); B. Rutherford, ‘On the Promise and Perils of Citizenship: Heuristic Concepts, Zimbabwean Example’, Citizenship Studies, 15, 3–4 (2011), pp. 499–512.

¹⁵ For a discussion of this transition in the early 1980s, see A. Ladley and D. Lan, ‘The Law of the Land: Party and State in Rural Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 12, 1 (1985), pp. 88–101.

¹⁶ See, e.g., T. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla Warfare in Zimbabwe (Oxford, James Currey, 1985); N. Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992); D. Maxwell, Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe (Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press, 1999); J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence & Memory: One Hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland (Oxford, James Currey, 2000); M. Spierenburg, Strangers, Spirits, and Land Reforms: Conflicts about Land in Dande, Northern Zimbabwe (Leiden, Brill, 2004); D. Moore, Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe (Durham, Duke University Press, 2005); Alexander, The Unsettled Land; J. Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage (London, UCL Press and Harare, Weaver Press, 2006).

¹⁷ See, for example, Rutherford, ‘Commercial Farm Workers and the Politics of (Dis)placement’; G. Magaramombe, ‘Rural Poverty: Commercial Farm Workers and Land Reform in Zimbabwe’, paper given at the SARPN conference on land reform and poverty alleviation in Southern Africa, Pretoria (2001); L. Sachikonye, ‘The Situation of Commercial Farm Workers after Land Reform in Zimbabwe’, a report prepared for the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (2003); E. Waeterloos and B. Rutherford, ‘Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Challenges and Opportunities for Poverty Reduction Among Commercial Farm Workers’, World Development, 32, 3 (2004), pp. 537–55; A. Hartnack, ‘“My Life Got Lost”: Farm workers and Displacement in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 23, 2 (2005), pp. 173–92; A. Hartnack, ‘Transcending Global and National (Mis)representations through Local Responses to Displacement: The Case of Zimbabwean (ex-)Farm Workers’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 22, 3 (2009), pp. 361–77.

¹⁸ J. Kelly and M. Kaplan, Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonisation (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001).

¹⁹ This 1998 election was the first time farm workers were able to vote in local government elections in commercial farming wards, even though most of them had their full-time residence in the labour compounds of these commercial farms.

²⁰ For those who had lived in Mashonaland East province for a long time, he reminded them of the ‘chameleon change’ of many former supporters of Bishop Muzorewa's party, the United African National Council, of the late 1970s, to ZANU(PF) after the 1980 election. A number of the senior ZANU(PF) officials in the district, some of whom also were working in the civil service, were identified to me as previously being ‘Bishop's men’.

²¹ Such initiatives were supported by a number of donors; see Rutherford, ‘Farm Workers in Trade Unions in Hurungwe’; Y. Tandon, ‘Trade Unions and Labour in the Agricultural Sector in Zimbabwe’, in B. Raftopoulos and L. Sachikonye (eds), The Labour Movement in Zimbabwe: Problems and Prospects (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001); Rutherford, ‘Desired Publics, Domestic Government, and Entangled Fears’.

²² Most of the workers were single women, often with dependants, and gender dynamics played a role in the successful mobilising tactics of the workers' committee. Those workers who were against it were mainly senior management and older male workers who had been farm workers for many decades. These dynamics are further examined in Rutherford, ‘Conditional Belonging’.

²³ See N. Kriger, ‘ZANU(PF) Strategies in General Elections, 1980–2000: Discourse and Coercion’, African Affairs, 104, 414 (2005), pp. 1–34; N. Kriger, ‘From Patriotic Memories to “Patriotic History” in Zimbabwe, 1990–2005’, Third World Quarterly, 27, 6 (2006), pp. 1151–69; Sachikonye, When a State Turns on Its Citizens; S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and J. Muzondidya (eds), Redemptive or Grotesque Nationalism: Rethinking Contemporary Politics in Zimbabwe (Oxford, Peter Lang, 2011).

²⁴ P. Bond and M. Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge: Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2002), pp. 90–106.

²⁵ Rutherford, ‘Commercial Farm Workers and the Politics of (Dis)Placement’.

²⁶ Zimbabwe Community Development Trust, Report on Internally Displaced Farm Workers Survey: Kadoma, Chegutu and Kwekwe Districts (ZCDT, Harare, 2003); H. Holtzclaw, ‘The Third Chimurenga? State Terror and State Organized Violence in Zimbabwe's Commercial Farming Communities’ (PhD thesis, Michigan State University, 2004).

²⁷ The total compensation that most of the workers received was actually less than they would have received if had they continued working for the low wages during this period.

²⁸ See, e.g., Alexander, McGregor and Ranger, Violence and Memory; B. Raftopoulos ‘The State in Crisis: Authoritarian Nationalism, Selective Citizenship and Distortions of Democracy in Zimbabwe’, in A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos and S. Jensen (eds) Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Harare, Weaver Press, 2003); Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Muzondidya, Redemptive or Grotesque Nationalism; A. Hammar, J. McGregor and L. Landau, ‘Displacing Zimbabwe: Crisis and Construction in Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 263–83.

²⁹ One should add they were also shaped by internationalised contexts, though this is outside the scope of this article. See, e.g., Raftopoulous and Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe.

³⁰ Rutherford, ‘Farm Workers in Trade Unions in Hurungwe’; Tandon, ‘Trade Unions and Labour in the Agricultural Sector’.

³¹ This is illustrated by the fact that Munyaradzi Gwisai, the ISO leader who acted as a lawyer for the Upfumi workers, successfully ran for the MDC as a MP in a Harare riding in the June 2000 parliamentary elections. But given his constant criticism of MDC policies, among other things, he was expelled from the party in 2002 and lost the subsequent by-election in which he ran as an independent.

³² A. Selby, ‘Commercial Farmers and the State: Interest Group Politics and Land Reform in Zimbabwe’ (PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2006), p. 277; R. Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers' Voices from Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2012), p. 99.

³³ For discussion of the politics concerning white farmers in Zimbabwe post-2000, see D. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape and the Problem of Belonging (New York, Palgrave, 2010); Selby, ‘Commercial Farmers and the State’; Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being; Léa Kalaora, ‘Madness, Corruption and Exile: On Zimbabwe's Remaining White Commercial Farmers’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 4 (2011), pp. 747–762.

A previous version of this paper was presented at the Canadian Association of African Studies conference at Laval University, Quebec City, in May 2012 and the CAS (Centre for African Studies) @50 conference at the University of Edinburgh in June 2012. I thank Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful suggestions. I also thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support for this research.

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Blair Rutherford

Blair RutherfordDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Email: [email protected]