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The Land is the Economy: Revisiting the Land Question
Lloyd Sachikonye
Extracted from Institute for Security Studies (ISS), African Security Review 14(3)
March, 2003

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/livelihoods/landrights/downloads/land_is_the_economy.pdf

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This article revisits Zimbabwe's land question from the vantage point of having been written five years after the 'fast-track' land redistribution programme was launched. Without belittling the accomplishments of land reform in the first 19 years of the country's independence, it is generally clear that the sweeping programme of 2000-2003, the most comprehensive of its kind, created a new paradigm. Clearly, the consequences will take many years to work themselves out through the country's political, economic and social fabric.

The article briefly defines what may be termed 'old' and 'new' versions of Zimbabwe's land question before outlining the salient aspects of the reform process itself. It then assesses the outcomes of the redistribution, the apparent lacuna between 'land' and 'agrarian' reform, and the debate that the reform process itself has kindled. Transforming land distribution into qualitative agrarian reform has proved an Achilles heel in the arguments put forward by the proponents of the fast-track programme. Finally, recommendations are provided as to what is necessary to secure land and agrarian reform in the short, medium and long term.

Introduction
Struggles over access to resources historically have constituted the stuff of politics, and continue to do so in modern societies. In Southern Africa, one of the most profound causes of such struggles has related to the ownership and control of land. This question assumed its most acute form in former settler-colonies, and it was in one of them, Zimbabwe, that contestation over land took its sharpest form between 2000 and 2003.

The 'old' and 'new' land questions
In Southern Africa, the historical 'land question' centred on the forms and consequences of unjust expropriation of land by colonial states. In most instances, the best-endowed land was owned and occupied by white farmers, while some of the indigenous people who had previously lived on it were evicted and assigned inferior land. The patterns of land allocation under colonial rule were thus defined in terms of conquest. Zimbabwe was no exception to this pattern. For instance, under the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, some 51 per cent of land was reserved for white settlers (who numbered about 50,000), 30 per cent for African reserve areas (for about 1 million blacks), and the remainder for commercial companies and the colonial government.¹ When what was then Rhodesia, gained independence in 1980, the pattern of land ownership was as follows. Some 6,000 white farmers owned 15.5 million hectares; 8,500 black farmers operating on a small scale held about 1.4 million hectares; and approximately 4.5 million communal farmers eked out subsistence livelihoods on 16.4 million hectares. Most of the communal land was located in the drier ecological regions where the soils were poor.²

Against this background, the principal elements of the land question were focused on historical injustice and inequity. Inevitably, the demands of the colonised and dispossessed revolved around redress in the form of land redistribution, and fairness in the form of equitable access to sufficient resources to make the land productive. These demands continued to be made after independence, because the pace of land reform was slow. The focus on the land question was thus narrowed to recovery of land from white commercial farmers, for redistribution amongst communal farmers who were landless or lacked sufficient land, and to a smaller extent to unemployed farm workers. Promoting access to land for the majority of the indigenous people was expected to create stability in land property rights.³

For the first decade of independence, the land question thus revolved around how funds could be mobilised to purchase farms for the resettlement programme. Much of the academic and policy discussion related to the effect of the Lancaster House constitutional constraints on land redistribution, especially in the form of the 'willing seller, willing buyer' principle, and the amount of British funding provided for resettlement.⁴ The narrative and debate arising from writing on these matters will not be reviewed here. The observation may be made, however, that this narrow perspective on the land question (that is, an exclusive focus on resettlement of farmers operating on a small scale through the 'willing seller, willing buyer' approach) was inadequate to respond to other, growing, pressures for reform. These included the black bourgeoisie's aspirations to own land; pressure for tenure reform; and the imperative to link land reform to a broad development strategy. More generally, the desire for historical redress through restitution continued unabated.

Against the background of economic structural adjustment in the 1990s, and the economic hardships associated with it, the pressure to broaden the ambit of the land question (and the means of its resolution) intensified. This took political form in the demands increasingly made by the war veterans and the black economic empowerment groups. The backlog on resettlement also remained considerable. About 90,000 of a projected total of 162,000 remained to be resettled, although funding for this purpose had more or less dried up.

In the 1990s there was a discernible shift in how the land question was interpreted. In an attempt to redesign its land policy, the Zimbabwe government indicated that the promotion of 'emergent large-scale black farmers' would form part of its thrust to address the land question. There were some 500 such farmers in the mid-1990s, and perhaps about 800 (compared with 4,500 white farmers) by the end of the 1990s. There was clearly a growing number of blacks who aspired to become members of a new agrarian middle class and who supported the type of land reform that would release resources to them. Another new element was an emphasis on land tenure reform. In general, land redistribution was expected to enable the country to attain both self-sufficiency in domestic food production and a balance between equity, productivity and sustainability.⁵ As can be seen, the parameters of the land question were being significantly extended in the last decade of the 20th century.

The fast-track reform programme (FTRP) that began in 2000 was the catalyst for what became a new land question. The programme entailed a comprehensive redistribution of land that was accomplished with considerable chaos, disorder and violence. As about 11 million hectares changing hands within a three-year period, it was the largest property transfer ever to occur in the region in peacetime.6 The new elements it introduced to the land question arose from several factors.

First, there was a replacement of nearly 4,000 white farmers whose land had been transferred by the state to 7,200 black commercial farmers and 127,000 black recipients of small farms by October 2003. The stage was thus set for a new large-scale farming class under the A2 model and a household-based small-scale farming class under the A1 model. A1 and A2 are models for land reform introduced during the fast track land reform programme that was instituted in the year 2000. A completely new set of social relations were to emerge as a consequence. In due course, there would be struggles and conflicts over ownership of this newly acquired land.

Second, there was massive displacement of farm workers as an accompaniment to the eviction of white farmers. The fate of the approximately 200,000 farm workers was to constitute yet another element of the new land question. Disputes over land and housing rights were to develop between these displaced workers and the new farming classes.

Third, the resumption of production on the newly acquired farms would pose a challenge whose outcome would reinforce or undermine the case for fast track reform. The collapse of the levels of productivity is probably the most important issue the FTRP programme has raised. The link between agriculture and other industries, and the challenge of resuscitating the communal areas are two further questions that need to be considered.

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1. R Palmer, Land and racial domination in Rhodesia, Heinemann, London, 1977.
2. Report of the Presidential Land Review Committee, Harare, 2003 (Utete Report).
3. S Moyo, The land question, in I Mandaza (ed), Zimbabwe: The political economy of transition, CODESRIA, Dakar, 1986.
4. See H Moyana, The political economy of land in Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, Gweru, 1984.
5. Ministry of Agriculture (Zimbabwe), National land policy, Harare, 1990.
   
   

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