Land and Agrarian Reform in Former Settler Colonial ... - codesria

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Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White-Settler Capitalism
Despite the previous attempts to marginalise the office of the chief by both the
colonial and post-colonial governments, it remains as one of the most enduring
institutions in Zimbabwe. The authority of the chiefs derives from links with
ancestors and certain beliefs in the protecting powers bestowed upon the chief.
A similar connection between traditional authority and land was made by one
of the chiefs when he said that ‘the president does not own the land. The land
belongs to the chiefs. The white settlers took the land from the chiefs and not
the president’ (Chief Charumbira quoted in The Herald, 3 December 2000).
Cooperation amongst resettled households
The manner in which individual households cooperate within their immediate
neighbouring communities as part of a strategy to strengthen social reproduction
capacities entails a bundle of strategies to overcome farm production and
social constraints.
Maintenance of relationships with Communal Areas
The majority of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme beneficiaries are
men, aged between 36 and 46 years, mostly from Communal Areas, with
some form of secondary education (Moyo et al 2009). At independence, the
oldest in this category of beneficiaries would have been in their early twenties
and probably living with their parents. Given the dominant form of customary
area organisation, some of the members of this demographic group could have
left behind some small plots of land and even homes in the Communal Areas.
Evidence from the field shows that social and economic interactions between the
newly resettled land beneficiaries and their counterparts in the customary areas is
ongoing, albeit at varying levels. There exist links between customary areas and
land beneficiaries who used to live in customary tenure areas. Approximately 15
per cent still maintain homes there, for various reasons (see Table 7.2 below). The
most (57.5%) commonly cited reason for the maintenance of a customary area
homestead is because it is still home to other members of the extended family.
There were very few instances of lineage groups being resettled together. During
the survey, we only noted one A1 settlement on what used to be Dalkeith Farm
in Zvimba District that was composed of land beneficiaries from the same clan.
In the Shona and Ndebele cultural context, the concept of ‘family’ has a broad
meaning, including what has generally been called the ‘extended family’. In
certain cases, these customary area homes are the location of gravesites for lineage
members and, according to Shona custom, abandoning such homes would be
seen as turning away from one’s people (Bourdillon 1982: 3).
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