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11 1 Introduction To say the fast-track land reform programme initiated by the Zimbabwean government in 2000 has had a dramatic effect on the country’s political, economic and social landscape since goes beyond stating the obvious. The devastating effects of these reforms and the manner in which they have been carried out has produced a surfeit of literature, from journalistic accounts to personal revelations of experiences during the reform process and, ultimately, to numerous academic studies that have sought to grapple with the questions and issues it generated. However, in order to fully grasp the complexities of the current crisis it is imperative to have a firm understanding of its history. To a greater or lesser degree, nearly all of the published reflections on ‘the land question’ after 2000 could bene fit from a deeper, more nuanced perception of its history and construction .1 This is not to proclaim that the origins of the present crisis were inevitable and inescapable outcomes of the events of the last 100 years. It is in fact the opposite. A firm grasp of the historical construction of the crisis shows not only that it represented a significant break with the past, but that the justifications for the actions of the protagonists are based on highly particular readings of the past. Much of the new scholarship focuses on the white farmers themselves and explores the wholesale destruction of their community utilising a particular reading of Zimbabwean history. This chapter benefits greatly from the detail in much of this work, but seeks to add a longer and more complicated overview of the history of white farmers in Zimbabwe in order to contextualise events after 2000. Part of this story lies in tracing the land question in Zimbabwe and how it has been constructed since the arrival of the Pioneer Column in 1890. However, a much greater proportion of the chapter will be devoted to the history of white farmers White Farmers & their Representatives in Zimbabwe, 1890–2000 12 The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe and their representative bodies and how these interacted with the state since that time. In doing so it draws on the most recent literature on the topic, which has vastly improved scholarship on the story of white farmers in Zimbabwe. In particular, see Angus Selby’s thesis, ‘Commercial Farmers and the State: Interest Group Politics and Land Reform in Zimbabwe ’.2 However, a caveat must be applied to Selby’s work. His access to the CFU archives was seemingly unlimited and his thesis contains a wealth of facts and information from this organisation, particularly comments from council meetings. Unfortunately his analysis and use of that material is not as rigorous as his source extraction. In this regard, Selby’s thesis has been used more as a primary source for the information it has gathered from CFU archives that was unavailable to me during my research. However, as will be illustrated, there remain a number of gaps that still need more research. The central aim of this chapter is to provide the background and framework necessary to underpin the analysis in the subsequent chapters. The differing units of study and sources used, for example The Farmer magazine (Chapters Three and Four), the autobiographies and memoirs written by white farmers (Chapter Five) and the interviews with evicted farmers (Chapter Six), need to be placed in the material context of their production, and this chapter will provide a means for doing so. There will be a continual discussion between the sources used and the social and economic contexts in which they were produced, and this overview will help establish the essentials of that before the specifics are analysed in each chapter. 1890–1953: From Conquest to Federation While the history of land in Zimbabwe has received considered attention from scholars, the history of white farmers has, by and large, only been the subject of limited specific analysis. Seminal works on the early processes of European domination, such as those by Giovanni Arrighi, Robin Palmer and Ian Phimister, clearly illustrate the processes by which European power and control became entrenched.3 These works spurred investigations into Zimbabwe’s history that sought to garner a deeper understanding of land and control of it.4 However, the story of white farmers has been subsumed into that of the process of land alienation and there has been very little direct investigation into the composition of this [18.218.184...

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