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

Murisa: Social Organisation in the Aftermath of ‘Fast Track’
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Joint use of productive infrastructure
The land redistribution process was implemented in such a way that it
brought together strangers from different backgrounds, such as Communal
Areas, urban areas and former Large-Scale Commercial Farms, to settle on
previously large-scale farms that had been subdivided into smaller units for
the land beneficiaries (Murisa 2009; Murisa 2011: 1146). Most of these
previously large farms had immovable productive assets such as tobacco
barns, dip-tanks, cattle- handling facilities and irrigation equipment and nonproductive
or social assets such as farmhouses and farm worker compounds
(GoZ 2001: 3) that could not be utilised effectively by a single household
resettled on 6 hectares of land. As part of its efforts to rationalise access to
such equipment, the GoZ issued a directive that all A1 households should
share the productive and social infrastructure left behind by the previous
owner, but did not clarify how this would be done (GoZ 2001: 2). The farm
divisions in A1 areas created common grazing lands which had to be utilised
by the resettled beneficiaries on a particular former Large-Scale Commercial
Farm, thereby suggesting another need for mechanisms of engagement and
cooperation among the beneficiaries.
The Government of Zimbabwe policy on social infrastructure inherited
from the previous owners in A1 areas was that it became state property to be
used for state-specified public purposes, such as conversion of farm houses into
schools or clinics, while productive facilities were to be used on a shared basis.
This policy, in some cases, provided an impetus towards the establishment
of social structures to coordinate the use and maintenance of these facilities
(Murisa 2007: 39). Within the A2 scheme, the lease agreement provided the
holder of the farm on which infrastructure was currently installed the authority
to ‘use and to sublet infrastructure to other farmers and obliges them to grant
such subtenants right of access to the infrastructure’ (World Bank 2006: 24).
Evidence gathered from the field showed that slightly more than half of
the population (52.3%) of the total sample had entered into an arrangement
of sharing productive infrastructure (Table 7.4), with the phenomenon of
sharing being most common in Mangwe (71.7%) and Kwekwe (62.9%). The
infrastructure that they shared included tobacco barns, irrigation equipment,
farm compounds, dams, cattle-handling facilities and dip-tanks. 27 The initial
stages of resettlement were characterised by vandalism and looting of productive
assets from the farms, while equipment such as tobacco barns remained mostly
unused in A1 areas, due to the changes in land use patterns. Soon after the Fast
Track Land Reform in certain localities, the sharing of infrastructure was done
Land and Agrarian Reform in Former Settler Colonial Zimbabwe.indd 275 28/03/2013 12:57:31