Zimbabwe: Mired in Transition: Zimbabwe: Mired in Transition

11. The Fast-Track Land Reform Programme. Impacts on the Environment & Agriculture

283 Introduction That many African countries advocate for and have implemented land reform as a part of post-colonial restoration is a much-discussed topic, particularly in relation to southern Africa. Here, the different and sometimes painful drive to land reform has been observed in young post-colonial states. Aware of the importance of land, and its centrality in colonial resistance, countries such as Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe have prioritised land reform in the name of achieving ethnic and racial equity in land distribution. However, in the case of Zimbabwe, the impact of land reform on agriculture and the environment and the state of social services in resettled areas is not well known. These are matters that this chapter seeks to address. The first section deals with the conceptual framework and is followed by a brief description of the fast-track land reform programme. The main section looks at the impact of land reform on agriculture and the environment, and the last section presents recommendations on how Zimbabwe can move forward in the area of land reform. Conceptual framework The chapter proceeds from the simple transactional premise dominant in social anthropology that individual interests pervade political and The Fast-Track Land Reform Programme Impacts on the Environment & Agriculture Vupenyu Dzingirai, Emmanuel Manzungu and Owen Nyamwanza 11 284 THE FAST-TRACK LAND REFORM PROGRAMME social life (Bailey, 1973; Barth, 1970). Ruling elites want legitimacy and recognition from those they govern. This sought-after legitimation is crucial as it allows ruling elites to preside over resource flows and their allocation. When the legitimacy of these elites is threatened by crisis – be it economic or ecological – such that they can no longer provide basic resources to their agitated followers, who may start to accuse them of being selfish or corrupt and therefore needing replacement , they become more desperate and adopt the following strategies, but not necessarily in the sequence that follows. First, they will adopt pragmatic strategies to survive, using political offices or positions to unlock resources such as arable land to share out among the citizenry (Christodoulou, 1990). Second, they will use procedures such as constitutional reform to access material and control economically valuable resources like land, forestry, wildlife and water to provide these to the disgruntled public. Thirdly, they may also exploit related legislation and policies to obtain those natural resources, e.g., land, that people need for survival. Where such rules and principles do not exist, or where existing principles and rules favour competing groups, politicians and political groups create new ones to disenfranchise them. In the case of Zimbabwe, ZANU PF created new legislation and policy to wrestle land from white settler farmers and give it to black households. The disenfranchisement of the unfortunate ‘other’ is ideologised. The expropriation of land, for example, is often justified in normative or ideological terms. It may be presented as redistributive, intended to create an equitable society, even if the resource in question is retained or centralised. It may be presented as corrective, intended to redress the ills of the past. The ‘other’, in this case the landowners and those connected to them (including farm workers), are vilified and criminalised, making the expropriation seem not only inevitable but justified. This seems to be the case even in South Africa, where land occupations usually precede the criminalisation of Afrikaners (Sihlongonyane, 2005). In this conceptual scheme then, a delicate equilibrium is reached: politicians remain – at least for a while – legitimate as a result of their populism, and followers celebrate their short-term spoils arising from the support they give. However, ruling elites cannot control how their followers use the resources they acquire in this way. Indeed, for fear of upsetting them, the elites are forced to be more and more chaotic 285 Vupenyu Dzingirai, Emmanuel Manzungu and Owen Nyamwanza and populist, suspending all rules relating to wise use of the resource in question. Fidelis Kanyongolo (2005) has shown this to be the case in Malawi, where politically nervous politicians have not rebuked land abuse by the landless people. Using this framework of transactional populism, this chapter considers Zimbabwe and the impact of land reform on the country’s land and agriculture in the last ten years, the interests in land by the powerful and the state of social service delivery to new farmers. It uses Zimbabwe as a case study, a country wherein land has...