Introduction
While conducting research in Sovelele, a resettlement area in the former Bubiana conservancy in Zimbabwe, a curious pattern emerged from my interviews with resettled families. I asked families which members were most responsible for different forms of agricultural and reproductive work, because I sought to understand household divisions of labour in the aftermath of resettlement. During the survey, male heads of household would often begin to shift uncomfortably, even become defensive, as it become apparent that their wives were overwhelmingly responsible for most tasks. In contrast, and despite this apparent unease among men regarding the intensification of female labour, almost all the women I spoke with expressed a seeming contentment with life in Sovelele, frequently attesting that life was ‘better’ in the resettlement area, as compared to the communal areas. The reasons for this stated satisfaction were undoubtedly complex, possibly reflecting the influence of gender norms and attempts to conform to the perceived expectations of both their husbands and me. Yet, I also learned that their expressed contentment had a material basis, conveyed bluntly by one woman who said, when I asked her why life is better in Sovelele, ‘because we have more control over the land’. This sense of a complex trade-off through which women accept an intensification of their labour in exchange for an expanded access to and control over land, underscores the enabling conditions that have facilitated women's empowerment in the aftermath of Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP).
At first glance, ‘empowerment’ seems like an inappropriate description for how women have been impacted by FTLRP. This dramatic upheaval (Scoones et al. 2010) represented an historic opportunity to rectify gender inequality in rural Zimbabwe. Despite being the demographic majority and primary agricultural labourers in Zimbabwe, women have historically held only usufruct rights in land, with their access determined largely through marriage and mediation by male kin (Gaidzanwa 1981; Cheater 1986). However, women's interests were largely marginalised during the initial stages of FTLRP, given the government's strategy of framing the issue as one primarily about achieving racial justice, in ways that overshadowed gender inequality (Jacobs 2000; Goebel 2005a; Pasura 2010). Less than 20% of plots were allocated to single women, and married women continued to lack formal recognition of land rights (Matondi 2012). Although the government in 2005 put in place a policy of joint registration according to which both husbands and wives should be listed on government-issued permits, in practice women are rarely listed. Women also continue to bear the brunt of agricultural and reproductive labour burdens, made all the heavier by the abundance of land, remoteness and lack of services.
And yet, when one considers the extremely limited access to land women held prior to FTLRP, it is difficult not to see resettlement as representing a process of change that has expanded rural women's ability to make ‘meaningful choices’, following Kabeer’s (1999, 437) understanding of empowerment. In this vein, more recent literature emphasises how women have benefited from FTLRP. Many single women previously excluded from land in the communal areas proactively staked out and occupied land for themselves (Sadomba 2011; Hanlon, Manjengwa, and Smart 2013).
Married women also gained broader access and control over land, whether through being granted larger plots of land from their husband – known as tseu – or through an increased ability to grow so-called ‘women's crops’ on their husband's land (Chingarande et al. 2012; Mutopo, Manjengwa, and Chiweshe 2014).1 Through their expanded access to land and natural resources in resettlement areas, women have developed more diverse livelihoods and trading enterprises through which they can gain further leverage in relationships with husbands and male-centred institutions (Scoones et al. 2010; Mutopo, Manjengwa, and Chiweshe 2014). This literature thus presents a picture of qualified empowerment in which land reform has expanded women's ability to manoeuvre within patriarchal norms and practices (Chiweshe, Chakona, and Helliker 2015).
This article builds upon this more recent literature on gender and FTLRP, which seeks to go beyond a ‘victimhood’ narrative and call attention to the ways women have been proactive agents in resettlement areas (Bhatasara and Chiweshe 2017). Yet, while this work describes how women exercise agency, it says less about the constitutive circumstances that enable their agency. These enabling conditions are addressed in previous work on resettlement in Zimbabwe: spatial patterns of settlement enable women more distance and autonomy from their husband's kin (Jacobs 1992), the sheer abundance of land allows men to give women larger tseu allocations or grow more ‘women's crops’ (Goebel 1999, 87), the limited role of customary authority and issuing of permits allow single women, particularly widows, more easily to hold land in their own right (Goebel 2005b). Yet, these enabling conditions are given only cursory treatment in most of the recent literature on gender and FTLRP, concerned as it is with describing women's ability to improve their lives in resettlement areas. Consequently, there is a risk of representing women's gains in the aftermath of FTLRP as overly stable, and underestimating the fragility of their empowerment.
This article makes three contributions to this literature. First, I focus on the underlying conditions that make possible women's expanded access to land in ‘A1’ households in Sovelele. I argue that women have experienced empowerment in five ways: (1) by increasing the size of plots wives receive from their husbands; (2) through wives exercising a higher degree of control over how surplus grain is marketed; (3) by enabling female de facto heads of households to control more land; (4) by encouraging more joint use of resources; and (5) by enabling single women to buy and hold land in their own right. Yet, these gains are fragile because they arise out of largely unintended and changing circumstances, including the spatial dynamics of resettlement, permit-based land tenure, limited market integration and labour shortage. As conditions change, women can experience adverse consequences: abundant land becomes scarcer as families grow and multiply, possibly curtailing women's autonomy (Dekker and Kinsey 2011). As the resettlement area becomes more connected with transportation networks, market integration deepens. With increasing market proximity, male heads of household may take more direct control of agriculture, insisting that land previously used for ‘women's crops’ be used for male-controlled cash crops (Djurfeldt 2018). In such circumstances, the limits of empowerment and its contingency on male authority and acceptance become clearer.
Second, while the underlying conditions of empowerment reveal its fragility, not all women are exposed to it equally. Among married households, wives who have received tseu plots appear the most vulnerable to having their increased access to resources curtailed. In other married households where wives do not receive tseu plots, there appears to be a more widespread and consultative use of resources, with some women emerging as the primary decision maker for all crops. While single women are the most economically precarious, within this group widowed women holding their late husband's permits appear to have more secure access to land than single women who acquire land through secondary markets.
Third, the context of this article – Sovelele – represents an area that has received very little attention in the published literature on FTLRP (cf. Chabata 2017). This is somewhat surprising given its size: Sovelele contains approximately 4000 ‘A1’ households spread over approximately 65,000 hectares.2 But the region is also remote and difficult to access. It is located in the driest region of the country (region V) and, as a former conservancy, has a very limited road network. While the previous white owners pumped water from dams, much of the infrastructure such as irrigation pipes was stolen or damaged during the land occupation, and has not yet been restored. Most case studies of gender and FTLRP are based in regions with more rainfall and proximity to urban centres. Mutopo's (2015) study in Mwenezi East is most comparable, but her research focuses on women who live near a major highway, providing them with easy access to trading networks. The circumstances of women in an ecologically marginal zone, with limited access to transportation networks, remain less understood.
A brief clarification on nomenclature and geography: the name ‘Sovelele’ is used by locals to refer to all the land on three former white-owned properties within the Bubiana Conservancy: Peregwe, Barberton and Sovelele. The data I present here were collected in Peregwe and Barberton, but, following local understanding, I refer to the area generally as Sovelele. Prior its resettlement in 2000, the entirety of Bubiana Conservancy fell under the provincial jurisdiction of Matabeleland South. Presently, Sovelele is under the administrative jurisdiction of Masvingo Province (Ward 17, Mwenezi West District) in the southeast of the country (see Figure 1).
This article is based primarily on two months of ethnographic research in 2017, during which I resided in Sovelele. Prior to carrying out this fieldwork, I had long-standing connections with many households in the region, based on my prior research with Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, and preliminary visits to the community in previous years (2009 and 2016). For the first month of my research, I lived with a local family near the northern boundary of the resettlement area (Peregwe). Living with a family enabled me to observe and participate in the daily routines of a typical married household. For the second month, I lived 20 kilometres south in a teacher's residence at a school in Barberton. Residing at the school enabled me to hold several unstructured interviews with teachers and attend meetings the school held with parents. I also participated in village meetings, church services and ‘market days’ in Sovelele.
I draw on a survey and participant observation I carried out with 20 households. I selected the households purposively, in order to reflect a range of wealth and household circumstances. Three polygamous married households, two de facto and three de jure female-headed households were included in the sample. Ten households were selected from the more northerly section of Sovelele (in Peregwe), and 10 households were selected in the south (in Barberton). The survey covered demographic, asset and land use information, and included a ranking exercise that focused on divisions of labour. My visits with each household typically lasted an entire day, including carrying out the survey, sharing meals and walking around each household’s fields and often helping with agricultural labour. With a sample of this size I do not claim that my argument is representative. Rather, this purposive sample aims to demonstrate the diverse manifestations of empowerment, and participant observation with each household provides a rich context for understanding intra-household dynamics.
In what follows, I first provide an outline of the enabling conditions of women's empowerment in Sovelele, focusing on the spatial dynamics of resettlement, permit-based land tenure, limited marketisation and labour shortage. Second, I provide detailed snapshots of how women have been empowered across different marital circumstances. In conclusion, I reflect upon the uneven fragility of this empowerment, given the likelihood of underlying conditions changing.
Enabling conditions
My survey with 20 households reveals four trends of relevance to the argument here. First, the spatial pattern of settlement differed significantly from the communal areas. In the latter, patrilineal kin typically resided contiguously or in close proximity. But in the resettlement areas – as earlier studies demonstrated (Jacobs 1992, 16) – each household tended to look out for itself, in occupying the best land it could find. Land was initially allocated by local war veterans3 as A1 plots to families that took part in the occupation. Each family received a 100 × 100 metre plot for the homestead, as well as a field of between 5 and 8 hectares for growing crops, depending on natural boundaries (such as river, road or abrupt vegetation change). Those who arrived first tended to get larger and better-situated land (e.g. closer to water sources) than families which arrived later. This pattern of settlement accounts for some of the variation in land size across the 20 households in my sample, as well as the fact that by 2017 many households had subdivided or sold off portions of their land.4
The end result was that the new villages established in Sovelele were made up of people largely unrelated to each other. While neighbours in the new villages often knew each other prior to the land occupation – the settlers in Peregwe mostly came from Mberengwa, while those in Barberton came from Maranda – the pattern of settlement promoted a sense of individualism.
One settler I spoke to from Mberengwa described living in Sovelele as ‘family individualism’, conveying a sense of disconnection from patrilineal kin. He continued, ‘In the past, people used to be close together. But here people don't share ideas and plans’. As a consequence, the ‘nuclear’ family can become more important in resettlement areas (cf. Jacobs 2010). This can have negative repercussions for women who must cope with the sense of isolation and close supervision of a husband. But, as I discuss below, the absence of patrilineal kin can also ensure women more autonomy within the homestead, especially since husbands are frequently away during the day because of grazing, fishing, moulding bricks, cutting wood or other ‘piece jobs’.
Second, women were marginalised in the process of registering plots. In 2008, plot occupiers in Sovelele were issued permits by the Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement, which formalised their land claims. With one exception (see Mai Jacob below), in every married household in my sample, the documents list only the husband's name – despite the fact that spouses can be listed on the permit (as ‘joint’ registration). Responses differed among men when I asked why they didn't register their wives. One claimed that he was unaware his wife could be listed, and said he would seek to change it in the future. But most stated that the land simply belonged to them, and while their spouse was free to use the land, it was ultimately under his authority. These responses affirm the picture of women's interests being marginalised in the aftermath of land reform. However, as Chiweshe, Chakona, and Helliker (2015, 722) observe, the introduction of joint naming may have triggered ‘considerable give-and-take bargaining’ within households, whereby married women did not push for their names to be registered, in order to gain leverage with their husbands in other domains. Moreover, as I describe below, this permit-based land tenure has enabled single women, particularly widows, to access land more easily.
Third, while the majority of households in my sample produce a surplus above their subsistence requirements5 (see Table 1), they face significant obstacles to marketing their crops. As one farmer put it, ‘Yes, here we can grow high yields. But where to sell? We are price takers’. Out of the 20 households, the majority (14) rely primarily on a travelling market that visits Sovelele once per month. Farmers travel to the market with their crops, using their own scotch carts or hiring transportation. The problem with selling at this local market is low prices. In May 2017, a 20-litre bucket of millet was going for $2.50, and a 20-litre bucket of maize was $3, while these prices were more than double in urban centres. Three households reported that they send their grain to relatives in nearby towns, including Gwanda and Beitbridge, or to the communal areas, where better prices are available. But these options are available only to those with reliable friends or relatives, and access to vehicles (or who are willing to pay exorbitant fees to hire transportation). Another option is the Grain Marketing Board of Zimbabwe, but the GMB is notorious for late payment; only one farmer in my sample (from the wealthiest household) sold crops to the GMB. Some farmers report that they store a portion of their surplus after harvesting in April and May, with the hope of selling it once the market improves in December or January. But this strategy means cash is unavailable in the short term, and most farmers need to pay for seeds, groceries and school fees throughout the year. As a consequence of these various constraints, the majority of households (17) in my sample resort to bartering between 25 and 50% of their surplus for clothing, groceries and tools. This bartering is carried out with traders who frequently pass through Sovelele with goods for exchange. The fact that such a high proportion of the surplus is barter traded (often at the household gate) creates space for wives to determine how the surplus crops are traded.
| Wealth indicator | HG 1 (n = 7) | HG 2 (n = 7) | HG 3 (n = 6) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual maize (tons) production | 1.9 | 0.9 | 0.5 |
| Annual millet/sorghum/rapoko (tons) production | 1.1 | 1.2 | 0.2 |
| Annual groundnut/roundnut (tons) production | 1.8 | 0.7 | 0.4 |
| Avg. cattle ownership | 11 | 4 | 1.5 |
| No. hired labour | 6 | 1 | 0 |
| Avg. land size (ha) | 8 | 6 | 4.5 |
| Avg. household size | (9) | (8.2) | (6.3) |
| No. receiving remittance | 5 | 3 | 4 |
Note: ‘HG’ refers to household group, in which 1 represents rich, 2 middle and 3 poor.
Fourth, in addition to the challenge of marketing their crops, many farmers complained of a labour shortage as a significant constraint to production. Most households lack cash to hire labour: only seven households in my sample reported hiring any labour in 2017. Among these seven they employ very few workers. With the exception of one household that hired 10 workers throughout the year, the rest employ only one or two workers – often for only a few weeks during the harvest season. In four of the seven hiring households, farmers pay workers ‘in kind’ (i.e. with crops instead of cash). While only a minority of households hire labour, all households reported participating in some form of labour exchange, whereby households combine labour to complete tasks more efficiently. Known as humwe in Shona, these labour exchanges typically require each household to contribute at least one person (and/or tools or animals) to a collective work group, which then carries out an agreed-upon task for each participating household. The most common tasks are weeding, harvesting, fence construction and applying manure to fields.
While hired labour and humwe partially offset labour demands in Sovelele, every household I interviewed reported their primary source of agricultural labour as unpaid family members, particularly women. As Table 2 indicates, the majority of work is carried out by wives.6
| Labour type | HG 1 (n = 7) | HG 2 (n = 7) | HG 3 (n = 6) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | F | C | J | M | F | C | J | M | F | C | J | |
| Clearing bush | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Ploughing | 4 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |||||
| Weeding | 6 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 1 | ||||||
| Harvesting | 5 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 6 | |||||||
| Chasing birds away from crops | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Selling crops | 1 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 4 | |||||
| Grazing animals | 6 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | |||||
| Collecting water | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Collecting firewood | 6 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | ||||
| Cooking and cleaning | 6 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Note: ‘M’ is male; ‘F’ is female; ‘C’ is child; ‘J’ is joint. The numbers adjacent to each labour type represent the aggregated responses for each household group to the question ‘Who provides the most labour for each of these jobs: is it men, women or children?’ Note that one household in HG 3 does not sell crops, hence there are only five responses for that category.
Table 2 shows household divisions of labour divided into three ‘wealth groups’ based on levels of crop production and cattle ownership. Wives are listed as ‘most responsible’ for agricultural jobs like weeding, harvesting and chasing birds, but also reproductive tasks (gathering firewood, getting water and preparing meals). I was told on several occasions that wives generally spend the whole day working in the fields, and most husbands only half. The latter will often leave the homestead to earn income through various ‘piece jobs’, the most common of which include moulding bricks, building huts, cutting wood and fishing, and herding cattle. Women's disproportionate labour burden in agriculture cuts across economic status. The gendered division of labour across HG 1 and 2 is very similar, although HG 3 has predominantly more female and child labour. This is because the HG 3 includes three female-headed households in which there are no husbands.
Among these households, women are more likely to take on so-called ‘male’ jobs, than for men to move into ‘female’ work. With the exception of grazing animals (primarily cattle), which remains defined as male work, in numerous households (9 out of 20) traditionally male tasks of clearing bush and ploughing are reported as female or joint. Nevertheless, the fact that men do in some cases become responsible for domains typically defined as female (in 4 out of 20 households, collecting water and firewood is defined as male or joint labour), suggests a more flexible division of labour or higher prevalence of joint labour than what one finds in the communal areas (Jacobs 1992, 20). Indeed, I observed many examples of husbands and wives working in tandem. When clearing bush, men uproot stumps while women burn roots under the soil. During ploughing, men drive the cattle-pulled plough, while women follow behind, planting seeds. Selling crops at the local market, men will stay with their scotch cart, protecting their transported produce, while women walk around looking for buyers. Yet, even if joint labour is more common after resettlement, women feel that their labour demands have nevertheless increased. One woman conveyed the general sentiment: ‘Yes, the land was easier back there (in Mberengwa). The field was small. Here the work is much harder. The distance to fetch water is too far. The land is huge’. Another woman stated that there were ‘too many jobs’ in Sovelele, but that she had no choice because ‘you have to wake up early and know your duties’.
Despite the widespread sense that their responsibilities have expanded, all women stated that they were better off in Sovelele, as compared to their previous life in the communal areas. What accounts for this seeming paradox? Women frequently mentioned that they preferred Sovelele because they can grow enough food for the family. But women have also benefited from resettlement through a broadening of their ability to access to land and household resources, as I examine below.
Narratives of empowerment
The first source of empowerment among women can be seen in the tseu given to wives by their husbands. In most households (12) in my sample, the husband gives a tseu plot to his wife or wives. In general, the plot sizes for the tseu are much larger in Sovelele than they were in the communal areas, as husbands now have more land to share with their wives. The groundnuts and roundnuts are understood as the property of the woman, which she can use for consumption, trade or sale. Given the relatively high yields for these crops across most households, this represents an important source of income that women control. The one exception to the pattern of women owning all the groundnuts and roundnuts came from a household where the husband had enrolled in a contract to grow groundnuts for an outside company. The latter provided him with seeds and sent a truck to buy the nuts after harvest. During our interview, he claimed that the roundnuts grown for the company were ‘his’, unlike the other ones owned by his two wives on their tseu plots.
A second way in which many married women benefit from land reform is their easy access to the granaries and responsibility over barter trading. The granary is a mud-walled, thatched roof structure in which each household stores its crops. Apart from a small bucket-sized hole for accessing the grain, the contents of the granary are not visible. As women are primarily responsible for food consumption, they use the granary far more often than the men – indeed, on a daily basis they need to take grain out for milling and cooking. Because most husbands do not keep close tabs on the stock of grain – most are away from the homestead for long portions of the day, grazing cattle or carrying out piece jobs – it is relatively easy for women to take grain and sell or exchange it without their husbands knowing. The ability of women to exercise control over the granary, and determine what gets exchanged during barter trading, varies among households. As mentioned above in the discussion of marketing, some husbands will send the grain to relatives in town, or (in one case at least) bring it directly to the GMB. These men have a stronger hold on the grains, and their wives have diminished opportunities to sell or trade them informally. But in the majority of male-headed households, women appear to have a higher degree of autonomy than they would have had in the communal areas, perhaps due to absence of patrilineal kin nearby. As one male head of household admitted: ‘It is easy for women here to sell the crops and keep the money. The man will not be having his relatives nearby to keep the ladies in control’.
Third, de facto female-headed households have greater access to land. Two households in my sample can be described as de facto female headed, in that the woman is married, but nevertheless controls most agricultural decision making and income. Such headship is common in southern Africa – there is a long-standing pattern of male migration for wage labour, whereby women are often left behind and placed effectively in charge of the homestead. What is different about these two de facto female heads in Sovelele is that there is no migration – the husbands continue to reside with the women and tolerate a situation where their wife is the primary income earner and decision maker.
The first example is Mai Simbarashe. Her husband is a well-known traditional healer and village headman. During the interview with this family, the father said ‘Amai’ (mother) each time I asked him questions about who handles decision making on their land, provoking strong laughter from other family members gathered around – including his wife. The only notable exception was cattle; the father identified himself as the main decision maker when it came to buying and selling cows. It was clear that the husband remained the symbolic head of household, with the permit listing only his name. At one moment he announced ‘everyone should be under me’ when I asked him who has ‘power’ in the household. Yet, in practice Mai Simbarashe controls the land and handles most of the household income. Upon completion of the formal interview with the husband and wife, I later asked one of their older children who holds the money in their parents’ relationship and they replied, ‘Amai keeps all the money. She will only give him a little here and there, to keep him happy’. Mai Simbarashe may have been the primary decision maker on the land in their former home in the communal areas, but because their land was so small and infertile, this was inconsequential. But now that they own over five hectares, Mai Simbarashe's status is significantly elevated.
A more explicit case of female headship within a married household is Mai Jacob. She came to Sovelele as a widow in the early 2000s, and has her plot registered in her own name. In 2005 she married a man who comes originally from Malawi, but worked for many years in a Zimbabwean mine. Mai Jacob's headship was made explicit at our first encounter. Upon entering her homestead, a scotch cart parked off to the side had ‘Mai Jacob’ emblazoned across the back, leaving no doubt as to who owned it. When I asked Mai Jacob for an interview, and added that I would like her husband to participate, she said she could answer my questions on her own. In her account, she owned all of the property in the household and, unlike Mai Simbarashe, claimed that she can buy and sell cattle. She did say that she ‘consults’ her husband when it comes to making purchases and farming, but she also stated unequivocally that she is the main decision maker when it comes to agriculture and how to use their income.
While Mai Simbarashe and Mai Jacob represent households where no tseu is given because the wives control the majority of land and crops, another variation of non-tseu households includes those where marriage is structured by the shared management of a shop or business. These households represent a fourth example of empowerment in the aftermath of resettlement: the joint sharing of resources.
A first example of this is Mai Anthony. She comes from the poorest household stratum (HG 3 in Tables 1 and 2). She is the primary labourer on the fields – doing all the agricultural jobs (including ploughing and clearing bush) – because her husband is away most days working as a driver. She operates a shop out of the family home, selling cooking oil, soap, candies and other items that are hard to obtain in the resettlement area. During our interview, she reported that she does not have a tseu. I asked her if, given the choice, she would want one, and she said no, ‘because everything we sell goes into the shop’. She went on to explain that most of her husband’s earnings, and the proceeds from the shop, were used to buy stock for resale. The shop therefore represents a space of shared investment. Instead of each partner keeping their income separate – as tends to be the case where there is a strict division between men’s and women's crops – income is channelled into the jointly owned shop. Moreover, since her husband is frequently away with his driving job, Mai Anthony is the primary manager and account keeper of the shop.
Mai Nkosana represents another example of households defined by the shared management of a business. In contrast to Mai Anthony, Mai Nkosana and her husband are part of the wealthiest household group. As symbols of their wealth, she and her husband were able to hire labour to assist with agricultural work, and they own more property outside of Sovelele. They also run a relatively large shop and beer hall on a plot of land next to their homestead. She and her husband own a large flatbed truck which they use primarily for a transportation business. As a symbol of her control over the family businesses, when I asked her husband for a lift to a town outside of Sovelele, he made me negotiate with his wife to determine the price.
So far, the cases presented above might suggest that women without tseu plots may be better off than those with them. But another case I encountered suggests a note of caution. This is the case of Mai Progress. She does not operate a business, nor does she have exclusive control over the groundnuts and roundnuts that would come with a tseu plot. She does the vast amount of labour on the land. Similar to Mai Simbarashe, her husband has an injury which prevents him from doing much agricultural work. Yet, this man is a war veteran and receives a monthly pension from the government. When I asked the couple whether the husband gives a tseu to his wife, he responded, ‘No, we do everything together … we share things’. I also asked him whether his wife has her own source of income, and he again said, ‘No … Our system is you tell me what you want, I tell you what you want’. Based on these responses, I perceived him as a domineering husband who extracts maximal labour from his wife, while denying her a plot of her own. Her predominantly silent disposition during the interview lent support to this perception.
Yet, during the course of my interview with this couple, an event happened which lent support to the husband's more harmonious depiction of their relationship. A man showed up at their homestead – one of the barter traders who specialise in clothes, linen and cookware – interrupting our interview. As he produced his wares from a large duffel bag, I watched as Mai Progress selected tennis shoes, curtains and several shirts. The husband simply nodded agreement, saying, ‘you want those ones? Okay’. When the price was agreed upon, he produced his phone and transferred funds to the seller's account using ‘ecocash’ on his cell phone. While the encounter revealed how the husband controlled money in their relationship, his willingness to buy whatever his wife selected also suggested a somewhat consensual use of resources.
A fifth example of women's empowerment involves cases of de jure female headship. These are women who do not live with a male partner, and who manage their land and livestock entirely on their own. The three cases of de jure female-headed households are all in the poorest category in my sample. Despite this, they have managed to access and hold land, even in the face of challenges to their tenure.
The first case, Mai Rudo, demonstrates how women can acquire land in Sovelele. Mai Rudo came to Sovelele in 2000 and occupied a plot near a water source. She remained at this location for over 10 years, when she left for mysterious reasons. In her own account, she stated that she wanted to find a ‘better place’. According to village elders I spoke with, however, she was reportedly ‘chased away’ by neighbours who accused her of witchcraft. Whatever the cause, she left this plot in 2012 and moved to a different section of Sovelele five kilometres away. She acquired this new plot by paying a cow to a landholder who had chosen to abandon their plot. It is officially illegal to sell land in the resettlement areas of Zimbabwe, but according to my conversations with village heads the practice is widespread and largely tolerated. The fact that Mai Rudo was able to buy land in this way contrasts with the lack of such opportunities in Mberengwa (where she originated), where women generally do not buy land on their own.
Although her new plot is significantly smaller and further away from water than her original one, she was adamant in her interview that resettlement had improved her life. ‘Before this we were selling mats in town in order to survive and feed my children. But here I can grow enough food and have my own livestock’. While Mai Rudo has never married, she has two adult daughters who work outside of Sovelele. The two daughters – both also unmarried – leave their own children at Mai Rudo's homestead, where they attend a nearby school and provide domestic labour. The two daughters also use Mai Rudo's homestead as a place for keeping their own livestock that they have purchased over the years. Thus, resettlement has enabled her to achieve a better life for her and her family than she might have otherwise.
Another example, Mai Farai, similarly demonstrates the advantages of resettlement for single women. Mai Farai came to Sovelele as a widow with three children in 2013, moving onto a plot held by her parents. Previously, she had been living in a communal area with her late husband. In her interview, she explained that she chose to move to Sovelele because members of her late husband's family took over the land she had been utilising – a common experience for widows in the communal areas of Zimbabwe. Within a year of moving to Sovelele her own father died, leaving her alone with her elderly mother. In these circumstances, Mai Farai has taken over control of the plot. She identified herself as the primary decision maker of the household, responsible for deciding what and where to plant, and for exchanging the surplus.
In contrast to Mai Farai's experience of losing her access to land as a widow in the communal areas, Mai Takudzwa provides a final example of how widows in Sovelele retain access to land. She came to Sovelele in 2000 with her husband. Following his death in 2009, she began migrating regularly to South Africa for employment as a domestic worker. She sent her four young children to live with relatives. By 2013, with her land idle and uninhabited, the brother of her late husband – who also resides in Sovelele – attempted to take her land and sell it. When a neighbour informed Mai Takudzwa over the phone, she immediately returned to Sovelele to defend her claim to the land. While she was in possession of a permit for the land, it listed only the name of her late husband. But she also had a marriage certificate showing her status as wife of the landholder. Supported by these documents, the village head accepted her argument that she was the rightful occupier, and he forced her brother-in-law to forgo his attempted sale of Mai Takudzwa's land.
These examples suggest that female heads of household in resettlement areas can more easily access and control land than they can in the communal areas. Nevertheless, the examples also show how men seek to reassert control over land, as Mai Rudo was pushed off her land following accusations of witchcraft. Similarly, Mai Takudzwa faced a challenge from a male relative who attempted to take her land following the patriarchal custom in communal areas. But in both of these examples the woman was able to retain land – in one case acquiring a new plot, and in the other appealing to the village head.
Conclusion: fragility and differentiation
Thus far, I have traced how patterns of settlement on abundant land leave women with more autonomy from male oversight compared to the communal areas. Relative disconnection from markets provides a source of leverage for many married women. Lack of markets creates a dependency on barter trading, and encourages men to seek wages outside of the homestead (but largely within the resettlement area), thereby expanding their wives’ autonomy and control over the granary. As the primary labourers, married women have considerable input into agricultural decision making. De facto female heads of households control larger plots. Permit-based land tenure enables divorced, widowed or single women to acquire and retain land more easily.
What happens to these forms of empowerment as underlying conditions change? I have noticed significant changes in Sovelele since my first visit in 2009, when most of the resettlement area was inaccessible by public transport. One had to disembark at the nearest growth point in communal areas and then walk upwards of 30 kilometres to reach the majority of homesteads. No households owned a vehicle. By 2015, there were several ‘bus stops’ throughout Sovelele, with minibus taxis passing through a few times a day, with a few homesteads having vehicles (e.g. see Mai Nkosana above). The availability of vehicles spurred interconnection with markets, as households began sending grain surpluses to town – rather than relying on traders coming to their homestead or bringing them to the local market. By 2016, a company approached some households to grow groundnuts on contract. By 2017, many households had engaged in subdivision of their land – with older male permit holders giving off portions of their land to married sons. Compared to 2009, when I was told one could buy a 2-hectare plot for $100 on parallel markets, the land frontier in 2017 had become relatively closed. Population density in Sovelele had increased, with community leaders now expressing concerns about the overexploitation of natural resources, including collectively held grazing lands (cf. Chabata 2017). In contrast to 2009, when I was told few households participated in collective activities like humwe, by 2017 social relations grew thicker as neighbours were now likely to pool labour.
The fragility of women's empowerment manifests unevenly. As market access improves, men may be incentivised to grow cash crops, participate in contract farming opportunities or exercise more control over grain surpluses – even as they continue to depend on their wives as primary labourers. As the example I provide above of a man growing roundnuts on contract attests, husbands can take over ‘women's crops’ when markets become formalised. Such an outcome may increase conjugal tension, as other scholarship on gender and the commercialisation of agriculture in Africa suggests (e.g. Carney and Watts 1991), or lead to a renegotiation of gender relations (Sorensen 1996). Those who receive tseu plots may be more vulnerable to their gains being rolled back than those who do not. In the tseu-granting households, there is an ongoing recognition of husbands having formal control over grain harvests (maize, millet and sorghum), and women having control over the groundnuts and roundnuts they grow on their tseu plots. Yet, at the husband's behest, the tseu plot can also be taken away. Historically, as land became scarcer in the communal areas, tseu allocation became less common (Peters and Peters 1998). In the tseu-granting households, wives depend upon informal control of the granary and barter trading, due to the relative absence and disengagement of their husbands from agriculture. If husbands in these households avail themselves of more opportunities to sell surplus grains on formal markets, women in these situations may lose this leverage.
In contrast, with the possible exception of Mai Progress, the non-tseu-receiving women appear to have a more stable form of empowerment, reflective of a deeper renegotiation of gender relations. While there are important differences between the two de facto female heads of households, Mai Simbarashe and Mai Jacob, what they have in common is a situation where the wife acts as primary household decision maker, yet grants her husband some symbolic authority. This is conveyed through Mai Simbarashe's silence, when she doesn't challenge her husband's statement that ‘everyone is under me’, and Mai Jacob, when she says she ‘consults’ with her husband about purchasing decisions. Likewise, the women who have defined their marriages around a shared business suggest a break from traditional gender norms based on clear divisions of responsibility. The resettlement area provides a fertile space for the flourishing of such shared businesses.
While single women are the most economically precarious, within this group widowed women holding their late father’s or husband's permit appear to have more secure access to land (Mai Rudo and Mai Takudzwa) than single women who acquire land through secondary markets (Mai Farai). As land pressure mounts, the availability of this land on parallel markets lessens. In contrast to the tseu-granting households, where empowerment hinges upon ongoing recognition of traditional gender norms – empowerment for these de jure female-headed households arises out of structural change in land tenure. In this respect, and despite their deeper poverty, the access to land for de jure female-headed households may prove more resilient than access for some married women in tseu-receiving households.
A key implication is a need for caution when considering tseu allocation as an index of empowerment in the aftermath of resettlement. Seen against the range of ways women have enhanced their access and control over land, tseu allocation may actually represent a form of containment: a way for husbands to reproduce traditional gender roles after the disruption of resettlement, and stave off a more fundamental shift in their wives’ relationship to land and household resources. This possibility deserves further research as part of efforts to understand and support what Goebel (1999, 77) calls ‘strategic areas for positive change’ in gender relations in rural Zimbabwe.