Zimbabwe's land reform: myths & realities, by Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarima and Chrispen Sukume, Oxford, James Currey, and Harare, Weaver Press, 2010, 304 pp., £16.99, ISBN 9781847010247
This book has already attracted a lot of attention since its well-publicised launches in Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom, and has begun to fuel controversy, which was in fact one of its aims. It states its purpose as one of tackling head-on what are regarded as ‘myths’ found in the oft-repeated, sensationalised headlines in Western media accounts of the land occupations, seizures and redistributions. It counters views that this ‘Fast Track Land Reform’ (FTLR) has been a disaster, causing the total ruination of agriculture, widespread food shortages, cutting off investments, and seeing the land put solely into the hands of a few political cronies, by a painstaking gathering and evaluation of detailed evidence from years of fieldwork.
The first task of a review, therefore, should be to explore the evidential base on which the authors base their counterclaims. The base derives from a 10-year study investigating changes in livelihoods following land reform in Masvingo province. Central was a sample survey of 400 households across 16 sites, stretching across a range of agroecological settings from Gutu in the north to Chikombedzi in the south. The study investigated different settlement types, both smallholder focused (A1 – with two sub-types: ‘villagised’ with clustered housing and common grazing areas; and ‘self-contained’, with individual holdings for crops, residence and livestock) and small-scale commercial farms (A2). The bare bones of diverse emerging livelihood trajectories were derived from the surveys, then fleshed out with some rich, illustrative vignettes from interviews with individuals about the new lives they are leading.
This case study material is set out against a close following of the record of developments at the national level over a tumultuous last decade, with regard to the political dynamics, the macro-economic meltdown, the land policies and legislation. The findings about who got what – the proportion of small (A1) as opposed to middle (A2) farms, the retention of one or more existing large holdings by elites, and the spatial and socio-economic origins of the various beneficiaries – correspond broadly to what official audits and studies by Zimbabwean institutions, the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS) and Ruzivo Trust say about the extent of land transfers. But this study adds much more than government reports on the human consequences. While recognising that the circumstances of acquisition and distribution have a crucial impact on these consequences, they also show that even within a single province, there is no single narrative of how land reform took place. The involvement of veterans, local chiefs and other notables, national politicians, and security personnel varied from location to location, as did the occurrence of violence or some due process.
The livelihood impacts are generalised using aggregate measures into a pattern made up of three categories, almost equal in number: those who were doing well, improving; others who were getting on, but with potential; and the asset poor, often struggling. Much detail then follows about asset levels (at settlement and after), investments, crop and livestock production, and off-farm incomes, including remittances, across these three strata and in different locations and types of schemes. The emerging patterns of differentiation are also analysed by looking at labour relations: the widespread use of hired labour, even on A1 smallholdings, and the survival within the schemes – though in marginal niches – of former farm workers who have not all dispersed to town or South Africa.
Some sceptics rejected the book's findings at the outset, once they knew it only covered one of the eight rural provinces – and one, Masvingo, that does not share, admittedly, the same characteristics of adequate rainfall and fertility of the Mashonaland provinces where most of the white commercial farms, including the more specialist and high-technology ones, were found. But as the authors say frankly, this is an issue that arises with respect to all case studies, even one that covers four distinct districts in one province. Such a response cannot be used to dismiss these findings from Masvingo, but it does point to the importance of reading this key work alongside the findings that are now beginning to come on track from the other provinces, much of which is broadly consistent in offering a very mixed bag of outcomes, but with some positives.
Among several themes that are teased out of the analyses and which find their way into a substantial list of lessons and policy recommendations, two can be picked out as having special immediate relevance. First, analysis of the production problems of the new farmers brings out the special efforts, of providing seed, fertiliser and other inputs plus extension advice, made by government – no doubt to save food security, but also to exert political control. The analysis also emphasises how these forms of support were in the style of a command economy, and often counterproductive: seed was distributed late in the planting season, etc.; and also how they were wedded to government monopolisation of product marketing and price levels. The study shows that improvements in access to markets and supply of inputs, especially after 2008, were more a result of ‘the ingenuity, as well as the desperation, of informal players’ (p. 152) and other entrepreneurial activity by farmers and traders, despite government efforts. In this connection, the refusal of the donor community, which has provided agricultural inputs throughout communal areas of Zimbabwe, to extend this provision to smallholders in the new resettlement areas leaves the government with a monopoly of control amongst those people.
A second key area explored is about land tenure – a matter under deep debate in the current drafting of possible legislation, covering future tenure arrangements on the redistributed land. These debates actually cut across the camps of ZANU-PF and its opponents, and also divide land specialists. Some critics of the FTLR outcomes perceive insecurity of land tenure as a major constraint to production, access to credit etc., and advocate individual titling (some urging freehold, others leases). Others, the AIAS for instance, point to data that indicate that people's occupancy of land has proved enough for them to get on with improving the land and getting credit, and also point to the dangers of landlessness being promoted by private titles. This book does recognise that there are problems of lack of security, but it brings out the downside of individual titling, from the projections of its own studies and by experience elsewhere in Africa (like Kenya). This is a vital matter facing some resolution in the coming months in Zimbabwe, but one at risk of being resolved by ideological stances rather than positions rooted in empirical observation. In this regard, as in such a wide range of issues, the evidence presented here is vital. The book is an indispensable tool for anyone serious about Zimbabwe's future as well as its recent past. They might, as I do, find the arguments compelling, but in any event there is enough meat here for them to reach their own conclusions, based on evidence rather than rhetoric.