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Livelihood dynamics in planned and spontaneous resettlement in Zimbabwe
Admos Chimhowu and David Hulme
Extracted from World Development Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 728–750, 2006
2006

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Summary
This paper compares the livelihood dynamics of planned and spontaneously resettled households in Hurungwe District, Zimbabwe, during 1980–2000. Initially, the state sponsored households significantly improved their condition but as the state withdrew support, they became vulnerable. The structure and outcomes of their livelihoods increasingly resemble those of spontaneous settlers on communal lands. The conclusions indicate the need for planners to use livelihood frameworks rather than small farm models and for policy to recognize rural settlement from a multiple actor perspective.

Introduction
Redistributive land reform is a recurring theme of contemporary development discourse in southern Africa. In Namibia, South Africa, and (until recently) Zimbabwe highly unequal land distribution exists alongside growing poverty and land shortage. Unjust land distribution is a legacy of colonial ‘‘settler’’ policies that saw large-scale alienation of land and other natural resources from indigenous groups. At independence, these states inherited distorted rural space economies ¹ in which a minority of white settler commercial farmers had, among other economic privileges, access to land of better agro-ecological potential while the majority (mainly black) smallholders had to make do with agriculturally marginal land (Palmer, 2003; Tshuma, 1997). The focus of land reforms has therefore been on redistributing land from mainly white commercial farmers to black ‘‘smallholders.’’

Redistribution has been justified, not only by considerations of social justice, but also by noting the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity (Ellis & Biggs, 2001). If smallholders are potentially more efficient producers then giving them more land can achieve both equity and efficiency goals (Deininger & May, 2000). In Zimbabwe and to an extent Namibia, land reform programs have involved the state in facilitating redistribution (Adams, Sibanda, & Turner, 2000) while in South Africa, redistribution has mainly been market assisted (Hall, Jacobs, & Lahiff, 2003). The argument for state involvement in acquiring and parceling out land has been that structural distortions inherited from colonial practices cannot be addressed through market forces alone (Deininger, 2003). In addition, as Hulme (1987) has argued, land reforms are of ‘‘supreme political rhetorical’’ value in that they allow populist politicians, bureaucrats, and donors to champion the causes of the landless and gain popularity by showing concern about poverty, equity, and justice. For populist post-settler regimes, land therefore is still important in ‘‘revolutionary politics’’ ² and also offers opportunities for political patronage.

In Zimbabwe, 91,000 families were resettled by the state during 1980–2000 (Government of Zimbabwe, 2003).³ However, it is often not recognized that many others were spontaneously resettling on state land in frontier districts (Brand, 2000; Chimhowu, 2002; Derman, 1997; Dzingirayi, 1998; Nyambara, 2002). In the absence of official statistics estimates based on an analysis of migration trends in frontier districts suggest that for every household resettled by the state at least two more resettled spontaneously (Chimhowu, 2003). As a strategy for rebuilding or improving livelihoods spontaneous movement is at least as important as planned resettlement. However, because state and donor resources are rarely committed to spontaneous settler households, little is known about the process and impacts of such migration.

In this paper, we compare the livelihoods of officially and spontaneously resettled households. The livelihoods approach ⁴ is used to investigate how households that resettled by different means in the same region and around the same time progressed. In the next section, we consider the use of livelihood approaches to investigate livelihoods of resettled households. In Section 3, we examine the macro-policy context in which resettlement has occurred in Zimbabwe showing key trigger mechanisms for migration to rural areas. Sections 4 and 5 offer a comparative analysis of livelihood composition and strategies among the resettled households. Section 6 considers the convergence of livelihoods over time while the concluding section draws out the policy implications.

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1. The paper uses the term ''distorted rural space economy'' to mean spatial distortions in economic development between the mainly underdeveloped black ''tribal homelands'' characterized by poverty and deprivation and the better endowed mainly ''white'' largescale commercial farmlands.
2. Land reform is often seen in southern Africa as part of the un.nished business of decolonization.
3. This paper focuses on the pre-jambanja (violent seizure of white owned commercial farms) period that began in February 2000.
4. We do not provide a detailed review of livelihood approaches as this has been done elsewhere (see, e.g., Carney, 1999; Ellis, 2001; Murray, 2002).

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