![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme has led to the adoption of new patterns of land use by its beneficiaries. Tobacco farming is a case in point. By virtue of the crop’s export viability and driven by changes in land tenure brought about by the reform, investors and resettled farmers are entering into a new generation of land leases and joint-venture agreements. To varying degrees, these agreements are attempts by resettled farmers to mobilise the working capital they need for farming and attempts by investors – mostly white former farmers who lost land to the land reform programme – to regain access to land in order to apply their capital and know-how to farming. The very emergence of these arrangements suggests that Zimbabwe’s land reform programme, although radical, was not backed up by a corresponding financial strategy. The growing control of investors over land through these arrangements is also suggestive of a land reform reversal. This article draws on evidence of joint ventures in tobacco farming in the Zvimba district of Mashonaland West to argue that what are presented on the ground and in the literature as joint ventures are best characterised instead as land rental arrangements with asymmetrical power relations that favour investors. Despite the existence of national policy frameworks aimed at attracting investment in agriculture, there is no legal basis for the regulation of these joint ventures. Through examining the limitations of land reform, this article argues that the lease agreements, widely presented as joint ventures, constitute a certain reversal of the transformation attempted by the land reform programme.
Notes
1 See H. Binswanger-Mkhize and S. Moyo, Zimbabwe: From Economic Rebound to Sustained Growth: Growth Recovery Notes (Washington D.C., World Bank, 2012); S. Moyo and N. Nyoni, ‘Changing Agrarian Relations’, in S. Moyo and W. Chambati (eds.), Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White Settler Capitalism (Dakar, CODESRIA, 2013), pp. 195–250; I. Scoones, B. Mavedzenge and F. Murimbarimba, ‘Sugar, People and Politics in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43, 3 (2017), pp. 567–84.
2 C. Richardson, ‘The Damage to Property Rights and the Collapse of Zimbabwe’, Cato Journal, 25, 3 (2005), pp. 541–566.
3 Moyo and Nyoni, ‘Changing Agrarian Relations’.
4 I. Scoones, ‘Tobacco, Contract Farming and Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 18, 1 (2014), pp. 22–42; S. Moyo, W. Chambati, T. Murisa, D. Siziba, C. Dangwa, K. Mujeyi and N. Nyoni, Fast Track Land Reform Baseline Survey in Zimbabwe: Trends and Tendencies, 2005/06 (Harare, African Institute for Agrarian Studies, 2009).
5 S. Moyo et al., Fast Track Land Reform Baseline Survey in Zimbabwe.
6 Ibid.
7 T. Murisa and K. Mujeyi, ‘Land and Agrarian Policy Reforms Post 2000: New Trends, Insights and Challenges’, in T. Murisa and T. Chikweche (eds.), Beyond the Crises: Zimbabwe’s Prospects for Transformation (Harare, Weaver Press, 2015), pp. 82–120.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 L. Mukwereza, ‘Situating Tian Ze’s Role in Reviving Zimbabwe’s Flue-Cured Tobacco Sector in the Wider Discourse on Zimbabwe-China Cooperation: Will the Scorecard Remain Win-Win?’ (FAC Working Paper 115, Future Agricultures Consortium Secretariat, University of Sussex, UK, 2015); Moyo and Nyoni, ‘Changing Agrarian Relations’.
11 Moyo and Nyoni, ‘Changing Agrarian Relations’.
12 Ibid.
13 F. Mazwi, ‘Changing Patterns of Agricultural Financing Following the Fast-Track Land Resettlement Programme: An Interrogation of Contract Farming in Sugar and Tobacco in Zimbabwe’ (PhD thesis, UKZN, 2019).
14 S. Moyo, W. Chambati and S. Siziba, ‘Agricultural Subsidies Policies in Zimbabwe: A Review’, study commissioned by the World Bank (Harare, World Bank, 2014).
15 Ibid.
16 F. Mazwi, W. Chambati and K. Mutodi, ‘Contract Farming Arrangement and Poor Resourced Farmers in Zimbabwe’ (Harare, SMAIAS Publications, 2018).
17 TIMB, Annual Statistical Report for the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (Harare, TIMB, 2018).
18 E. Chikwati, ‘Zimbabwe: Go Into Joint Ventures, White Farmers Urged’, All Africa (23 July 2018), available via https://allafrica.com/stories/201807230360.html.
19 S. Moyo, ‘Land Reform and Redistribution in Zimbabwe since 1980’, in S. Moyo and W. Chambati (eds.), Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White Settler Capitalism (Dakar, CODESRIA, 2013), pp. 29–77; S. Moyo, ‘Land Concentration and Accumulation after the Redistributive Land Reform in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38, 128 (2011), pp. 257–76.
20 S. Moyo, ‘The Impact of Foreign Aid on Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Policy’, Africa Development 20, 3 (1995), pp. 23–50.
21 S. Moyo, ‘Land Reform and Redistribution in Zimbabwe s ince 1980’.
22 S. Moyo, ‘Southern African Potentials to Address Land-Based Conflicts’, in S. Moyo and Y. Mine (eds.), What Colonialism Ignored: African Potentials for Resolving Conflicts in Southern Africa (Langaa, RPCIG, 2016), pp. 37–74.
23 World Food Programme, ‘Zvimba District Risk Profile’ (Harare, WFP, 2016).
24 Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement, internal document shown to the researcher by a farmer, 2015.
25 Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, ‘Mashonaland West Census Report’ (Harare, Zimstat, 2012).
26 Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, ‘Zimbabwe Poverty Atlas’ (2015), available at: https://www.zimstat.co.zw/wp-content/uploads/publications/Income/Finance/Poverty-Atlas-2015.pdf
27 Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement, internal document shown to the researcher by a farmer, 2015.
28 K. Muir-Leresche, ‘Agriculture in Zimbabwe’, in M. Rukuni, and C. Eicher (eds.), ‘Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Revolution’ (Harare, UZ Publications, 1994), pp. 40–55.
29 S. Moyo, ‘Land Reform Under Structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe; Land Use Change in Mashonaland’, (Uppsala, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2000).
30 S. Moyo, ‘Land Reform and Redistribution in Zimbabwe since 1980’, pp. 29–77.
31 In other words: ‘who owns what’, ‘who does what’ and ‘who gets what’? H. Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change (Sterling, Kumarian Press, 2010). See also G. von Maltitz, G. Henley, M. Ogg, P. Samboko, A. Gasparatos, M. Read, F. Engelbrecht and A. Ahmed, ‘Institutional Arrangements of Outgrower Sugarcane Production in Southern Africa’, Development Southern Africa, 36, 2 (2019), pp. 175–97.
32 P. Cush and A. Macken-Walsh, ‘Farming “Through the Ages”: Joint Farming Ventures in Ireland’, Rural Sociology, 25, 2 (2016), pp. 104–16.
33 Ibid.
34 R.A.J. Clapp, ‘Representing Reciprocity, Reproducing Domination: Ideology and the Labour Process in Latin America Contract Farming’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 16, 1 (1988), pp. 5–39.
35 G. Mkodzongi and P. Lawrence, ‘The Fast Track Land Reform and Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe’, Review of African Political Economy, 46, 159 (2019), pp. 1–13.
36 B. Bunce, ‘A Class-Analytic Approach to Agricultural Joint Ventures in the Communal Areas of South Africa’, STEPS Working Paper 103 (Brighton, STEPS Centre, 2018).
37 D. Mayson. ‘“Joint Ventures”. Evaluating Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa’, Occasional Papers series, No.7. (Programme for Land a nd Agrarian Studies, 2003).
38 Von Maltitz et al., ‘Institutional Arrangements of Outgrower Sugarcane Production’.
39 F. Mazwi, N. Tekwa, W. Chambati and T. Mudimu, ‘Locating the Position of Peasants under the “New Dispensation”: A Focus on Land Tenure Issues’ (Harare, SMAIAS Publications, 2018).
40 W. Chambati, F. Mazwi, F and S. Mberi, Contract Farming and Peasant Livelihoods: The Case of Sugar Outgrower Schemes in Manhica District, Mozambique (Harare, SMAIAS Publications, 2018).
41 F. Mazwi, W. Chambati and G.T. Mudimu, ‘Tobacco Contract Farming in Zimbabwe: Power Dynamics, Accumulation Trajectories, Land Use Patterns and Livelihoods’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 38, 1 (2020), pp. 55–71.
42 Ibid.
43 Scoones et al., ‘Sugar, People and Politics in Zimbabwe’; G.T. Mudimu, T. Zuo and N. Nwalimba, ‘Inside an Enclave: The Dynamics of Capitalism and Rural Politics in a Post Land Reform Context’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 49. 1 (2020).
44 Scoones, ‘Tobacco, Contract Farming and Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe’.
45 Mazwi et al., ‘Locating the Position of Peasants under the “New Dispensation”’.
46 Y. Sakata, International Companies and Contract Farmers after Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe (Harare, SMAIAS Monograph, 2017).
47 Ibid.
48 Moyo, ‘Land Concentration and Accumulation’ .
49 Ibid.
50 Y. Sakata, ‘Peasants and Transnational Companies after the Land Reform in Zimbabwe: A Case Study of Tobacco Contract Farming in Mashonaland East Province’ (PhD thesis, Osaka University, 2016).
51 TIMB, Annual Statistical Report for the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (Harare, TIMB, 2018).
52 Moyo and Nyoni, ‘Changing Agrarian Relations’.
53 Ibid.
54 Mazwi et al., ‘Tobacco Contract Farming in Zimbabwe’.
55 Interview with a capitalist partner, 16 May 2019, Zvimba.
56 Scoones, ‘Tobacco, Contract Farming and Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe’.
57 Interview with a landowner, 8 January 2019, Zvimba.
58 Mazwi, ‘Changing Patterns of Agricultural Financing Following the Fast-Track Land Resettlement Programme’ .
59 Interview with an extension officer, 16 January 2018, Zvimba.
60 Interview with a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture, 14 February 2020, Harare.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 W. Chambati, S. Siziba, K. Mujeyi, F. Mazwi, and T. Chamboko, IFFs in the Agricultural Sector in Zimbabwe (Harare, SMAIAS Publications, 2017).
65 Interview with landowner Mr Kembo, 15 May 2019, Raffingora.
66 P. McMichael, ‘Value-Chain Agriculture and Debt Relations: Contradictory Outcomes’, Third World Quarterly, 34, 4 (2013), pp. 671–690; G. Martiniello, ‘Bitter Sugarification: Agro-extractivism, Outgrower Schemes and Social Differentiation in Busoga, Uganda’, the 5th International Conference of the BRICS Initiative for Critical Agrarian Studies October 13–16 (2017), RANEPA, Moscow, Russia.
67 Bankability and Land Tenure System in Zimbabwe Symposium, 28 February 2020, Commercial Law Institute, University of Zimbabwe, Harare.
68 Landowner at Zimbabwe Land and Agrarian Network (ZiLAN) validation workshop on joint ventures, Harare, 17 December 2019.
69 A. Ndiaye, ‘The Scramble for Agricultural Land in Senegal: Land Privatisation and Inclusion?’ in S. Moyo, P. Jha and P. Yeros (eds), Reclaiming Africa: Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development (Singapore, Springer, 2019): pp. 143–62.
70 Interview with extension officer, 16 May 2019, Banket.
71 Ministry of Lands and Agriculture Joint Venture Memorandum of Understanding Template, 2019.
72 Ibid.
73 F. Mazwi, N. Tekwa, W. Chambati and T. Mudimu, Locating the Position of Peasants under the ‘New Dispensation’: A Focus on Land Tenure Issues (Harare, SMAIAS Publications, 2018).
74 Clapp, ‘Representing Reciprocity’ ; I.G. Shivji, The Roots of an Agrarian Crisis in Tanzania: A Theoretical Perspective (Tanzania, University of Dar es Salaam, 1992); Martiniello, ‘Bitter Sugarification’.
75 Chambati et al., Contract Farming and Peasant Livelihoods .
76 Interview with an extension officer, 14 December 2018, Zvimba.
77 Moyo, ‘Fast Track Land Reform Baseline Survey in Zimbabwe’.
78 Ibid.
79 F. Mazwi, A. Chemura and G. Mudimu, ‘Political Economy of Command Agriculture in Zimbabwe : A State-Led Contract Farming Model’, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 8,1–2, (2019), pp. 232–257.
80 Joint Venture Memorandum of Understanding Template (Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, 2020), p. 3.
81 Ministry of Lands and Agriculture Joint Venture Memorandum of Understanding Template, 2019.
82 Mazwi, ‘Changing Patterns of Agricultural Financing Following the Fast-Track Land Resettlement Programme’.
83 Landowner at Zimbabwe Land and Agrarian Network (ZiLAN) validation workshop on joint ventures, Harare, 17 December 2019.
84 Interview with Mr Rwodzi, Banket Farm, 15 May 2019.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Freedom Mazwi
Freedom Mazwi Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Drosty Rd, Grahamstown, Makhanda, 6139, South Africa; The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies, 19 Bodle Avenue, Estlea, Harare, Zimbabwe. E-mail: [email protected]