Contextualizing Zimbabwe's land reform: long-term observations from the first generation

Abstract

In the heat of the discussions about the fast-track land reform programme (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe, little attention is given to the experience with land reform immediately following independence. Understanding these past experiences is useful to contextualize current challenges. Although the farmers resettled in the early 1980s started out in a completely different political and economic environment, the challenges in establishing their farms and communities were, at least to some extent, very similar to those reported today. However, livelihoods developed by the farmers in the old resettlement areas have been severely constrained by the macro-economic context. We argue that any discussion on the success of FTLRP should acknowledge the impact of the devastating macro-economic context on the opportunities for smallholder farmers to establish their farms and become agriculturally productive.

Keywords:

• land reform
• Zimbabwe
• livelihoods
• economic crisis

Notes

¹It is important to note that the old resettlement programme mainly involved individual smallholders, labelled A or A1 farmers in both resettlement phases, and no large- or medium-scale A2 farmers – a class of farmers created by the FTLRP.

²The ZHRDS is the longest continuous panel study of households ever undertaken in Africa. The full panel is some 500 households resettled in the early 1980s and 150 households from neighbouring communal areas.

³Information on resettled households was collected in 1983/84, 1987 and annually from 1992 through 2001. Households from communal areas were surveyed annually from 1997 through 2001.

⁴In pre- and post-2000 comparisons, we often limit ourselves to a comparison over time between the 194 households that were interviewed in both 2010 and the earlier years.

⁵Barr uses a broad definition of CBOs, referring to all the nonpolitical-party groups (clubs, religious groups, unions, revolving savings and credit associations, burial societies, etc.) that were established in the village or that attracted membership from the village.

⁶In communal areas, the average number of non-religious groups that at least one household member belongs to is 1.52, compared to 4.09 in old resettlement areas.

⁷See for example Scoones et al. (2010) on FTLRP communities in Masvingo province and Matondi (2011) for Mazowe District.

⁸Nevertheless, a number of farmers who had been resettled in the ORAs 26 years earlier lost some or all their land in the political intimidation that surrounded the 2008 elections.

⁹Similar households in communal areas are households that applied for resettlement in the early 1980s but were not selected into the programme.

¹⁰See, for example, Mutupo (this collection).

¹¹Note that changes in household size reflect net-migration and natural growth, accounting both for household members moving out (including deaths) and household members moving in (including newborns).

¹²In Mupfurudzi, some village heads decided to create new residential homesteads in their village to allow adult children and their families to occupy their own stands. The agricultural fields belonging to the original household heads were not extended and were still informally subdivided.

¹³Interestingly, churches have been much less affected, with 89percent still functioning today.

¹⁴Some of the data collected since 2007 suggest profound changes in engagement in and patterns of mutual assistance among smallholder farmers. We find for example a decrease in assistance given for funerals and transfers of food, while tillage services and labour assistance are on the increase (see also Dekker and Kinsey 2011).

¹⁵While a comparable time series for communal areas is not available, the mean application rates across the CAs in 2008/09 and 2009/10 were 7.9kg/ha and 12.8kg/ha respectively.

¹⁶The reduction in cotton cultivation in these areas is in sharp contrast to the national trend reported by Moyo (2009) and the experience of fast-track farmers in Masvingo province documented by Scoones et al. (2010) and can be explained with reference to geographical differences in input requirements and availability.

¹⁷Sixpercent of the beneficiaries of free inputs received seed only.

¹⁸This geographical difference in input provision partly reflects international donor policies on production support. The two priority areas identified by the donors were the communal areas and the old RAs, while the post-FTLRP areas were excluded from this support.

¹⁹Over twopercent of growers over all areas do not reside on the holding where they are growing their crops.

²⁰The decline in mean tobacco area per grower is to be expected since new entrants into tobacco cultivation are inexperienced, and they also have not yet constructed sufficient barn capacity to be able to cure the harvest from a larger area.

²¹A partial explanation for this phenomenon is that growers of cotton on credit reported to the research team that they diverted some of the fertilizer received for cotton to their maize crop.

²²When compared to other smallholder farmers, these production figures are favourable but, with the larger family sizes in the ORAs, they allow for only a scant surplus – if any. Moreover, the reduction in production is evident.

²³Barter trade was prevalent during the period of hyperinflation, but continues to be important even after the dollarization of the economy in 2009, as hard currency remains scarce in rural areas.

²⁴The hyperinflation experienced over the past decade and the associated abandonment of the Zimbabwe dollar make it very hard to substantiate actual reductions in agricultural incomes.

²⁵It should be noted that in Zimbabwe gardening is not considered farming. The term farming is applied only to field crops, whereas most gardening takes place in women's domains – around or near the homestead.

²⁶Because cattle prices moved in parallel with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or even exceeded the rise in the CPI.

²⁷Based on the monetary value of animals sold in 1995, the following weights are used to construct an ox-equivalent value: 1.0 for a trained ox, 0.83 for a bull, 0.71 for a cow, 0.58 for a heifer, 0.59 for young oxen and 0.30 for a calf.

²⁸As the decline in aggregate livestock wealth was accompanied by a decline in household size as well (and at least a third of the household members who moved out to the FTLRP areas took cattle and equipment with them), there is only a small net reduction in per-capita cattle wealth between 2000 and 2010. Although this may be interpreted as stability in individual wealth, the increasing proportion of cattle-poor households suggests that an increasing number of farming households in the old resettlement areas lost part or all of their entire resource base, which is an important input for agricultural production.

²⁹Related to this, future work will aim at understanding to what extent the observed average decline of herd size in ORAs is related to the reported accumulation in the FTLRP schemes (for example by Scoones et al. 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bill Kinsey

The authors wish to express their deep appreciation to the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Harare for support to conduct the 2010 round of the panel study and to Michael Shambare and Nyaradzo Shanaynewako for their assistance in collecting data since 2001. The authors would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers.