Zimbabwe's land reform: challenging the myths

Abstract

Most commentary on Zimbabwe's land reform insists that agricultural production has almost totally collapsed, that food insecurity is rife, that rural economies are in precipitous decline, that political ‘cronies’ have taken over the land and that farm labour has all been displaced. This paper however argues that the story is not simply one of collapse and catastrophe; it is much more nuanced and complex, with successes as well as failures. The paper provides a summary of some of the key findings from a ten-year study in Masvingo province and the book Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities. The paper documents the nature of the radical transformation of agrarian structure that has occurred both nationally and within the province, and the implications for agricultural production and livelihoods. A discussion of who got the land shows the diversity of new settlers, many of whom have invested substantially in their new farms. An emergent group ‘middle farmers’ is identified, who are producing, investing and accumulating. This has important implications – both economically and politically – for the future, as the final section on policy challenges discusses.

Keywords:

• Zimbabwe
• land reform
• agriculture
• livelihoods

Notes

¹The paper draws from the book, as well as a series of feature articles prepared for the Zimbabwean newspaper (see http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/news/zimbabwe-s-land-reform-ten-years-on-new-study-dispels-the-myths). See www.zimbabweland.net

²The papers produced as part of the Livelihoods after Land Reform small grants competition show an extraordinary range, but again some important common themes (http://www.lalr.org.za/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-working-papers-1).

³Total land allocations have continued to increase. Moyo (2011a, 497) claims that total land allocations amount to nearly 9 million ha by 2010, as more larger A2 farms have been allocated.

⁴Nationally, the agrarian structure now includes smallholder farms (made up of communal area households (82.1 percent), old resettlement households (5.4 percent) and A1 households (10.5 percent) medium-scale farms (made up of old small-scale commercial farms (0.6 percent) and A2 farms (1.1 percent)) and large-scale farms, conservancies and estates (0.4 percent). In other words, today 98 percent of all farms can be classified as smallholdings (Scoones et al.2010, 6).

⁵Moyo (2011a, 514–7; 2011b, 262) divides this between large scale farms, including white and black owned farms and new A2 farms (1.5 million ha, including about 500,000ha allocated to 200 very large scale A2 farms) and estates/conservancies/institutions (1.2 million ha). However, in the absence of a detailed land audit these aggregate figures are prone to error, and remain estimates.

⁶Exceptions exist, such as the case studied by Zamchiya (this collection) which involved A1 self-contained schemes allocated by the state and not through land occupations, showing more similarity with the A2 pattern elsewhere.

⁷These are documents providing a permit to occupy the land, but no formal title or lease.

⁸Political manipulation of allocation processes was more common in areas close to towns (Marongwe, this collection) and where high value crops were at stake (Zamchiya, this collection).

⁹The acquisition of whole farms without subdivision to create ‘large-scale A2’ farms has occurred in recent years and has been characterised by political corruption. In Masvingo province, these farms average over 2000 ha.

¹⁰Stocking rates on the Mwenezi A2 ranches average 14.4 ha per animal, although herd sizes are building up. Recommended rates are around 10 ha per livestock unit for beef production in this dry area.

¹¹War veterans had land areas above the average in the A1 villagised schemes only (at 6.8 hectares). In all other instances their land holdings were actually on average marginally lower than the average.

¹²The MDC-T party won in seven of the 15 constituencies across the four districts of our study area in the 2008 parliamentary election, taking 41.2 percent of the vote, against ZANU-PF's 52.3 percent. ZANU-PF maintained its stronghold in Mwenezi and Chiredzi districts, but lost in Gutu and parts of Masvingo district (Scoones et al.2010, 29).

¹³In this respect, we disagree with Zamchiya's analysis (this collection) which assumes that nearly everyone is a ‘crony’ and/or a ‘party supporter’, rather than accepting that people switch allegiance opportunistically to gain strategic advantage, as described by Mkodzongi (2011). Such an alternative interpretation recognises the complexity and contradictions of public and private politics in the highly contested Zimbabwe setting, which of course varies significantly by region.

¹⁴A quite rigorous agricultural qualification, the result of training by the ministry of agriculture's extension arm.

¹⁵The values were calculated using US dollar-equivalent replacement costs for labour, materials, equipment etc., based on an average investment per household across the full sample of 400 cases (Scoones et al. 2010, 77–87).

¹⁶As discussed above, this is the local characterisation of ‘success’ used in the study to differentiate settlers, with Success Group 1 being the most ‘successful’ according to local criteria. Cattle ownership and accumulation was, unsurprisingly, one of the key indicators.

¹⁷Comment by the provincial agricultural extension officer at a workshop in Masvingo in 2006.

¹⁸ http://anothercountryside.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/potential-of-zimbabwe-land-reform-limited-by-violent-state/