Land, Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe Viewed from a Transformative Social Policy Perspective

Abstract

Much of the scholarly work on Zimbabwe’s land and agrarian reform has largely been premised on the “livelihoods”, “political economy” and the “neo-patrimonial” approaches; much to the neglect of other frameworks. This article attempts to analyse Zimbabwe’s post-2000 land reform experience from a transformative social policy perspective, utilising empirical data obtained from the 2013/14 Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies’ six-district-baseline survey. The article argues that although the Fast Track Land Reform Programme has met the redistributive element of the transformative social policy agenda, the productive, protection and social cohesion potentials of the programme are still to reach their maximum potential due to a number of factors. Although a fraction of surveyed households is accumulating, the majority of the peasantry is shown to be struggling due to fundamental, domestic macro-economic challenges; constrained capacity of the state and external factors such as international isolation, which the country continues to face. Primary data utilised for this article was collected by distributing questionnaires in 1090 households in the districts of Chipinge, Chiredzi, Goromonzi, Kwekwe, Mangwe and Zvimba, which represent the country’s five agro-ecological zones. The data utilised was also collected from all the three settlement models (A1, A2 and Communal Areas).