Communal Land and Belonging Among Foreign Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

In the year 2000, the nation-wide land occupations and the ensuing Fast Track Land Reform Programme displaced tens of thousands of farm labourers from white commercial farms in Zimbabwe. Many of these farm labourers were of foreign origin, including from Malawi and Mozambique, though they had lived in Zimbabwe for extended periods. While farm labourers with Zimbabwean ancestry found it relatively easy, but not without problems in many cases, to move into communal areas subsequent to displacement, foreign farm labourers typically failed to do so because of their alien status. Nevertheless, some ex-farm labourers of foreign status did move into communal lands successfully, and sought to construct a project of belonging in doing so. Based on semi-ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Shamva District’s Bushu communal areas in Mashonaland Central Province, this article examines the many challenges faced by Africans of foreign origin in accessing communal land and how their ‘foreign’ identity continues to limit their tenure security while living alongside indigenous communal villagers.

KEYWORDS:

• land
• Zimbabwe
• belonging
• foreign farmworkers
• communal areas
• Shamva

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all those who participated in this study.

Notes

1 Though we use the term ‘autochthonous Zimbabweans’, we also problematise it throughout the article. In particular, claims about being an autochthonous Zimbabwean entail a project of belonging that is possibly subject to contestation from others. Overall, an autochthonous status is socially-constructed and dynamic, rather than a fixed identity.

2 Fast track resulted in the creation of a two-tier land-redistribution model comprising smaller, villagised A1 farms, and the larger commercial A2 farms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patience Chadambuka

Patience Chadambuka is acting head of the department of community studies at Midlands State University in Zimbabwe.

Kirk Helliker

Kirk Helliker is a research professor and head of the unit of Zimbabwean studies at Rhodes University in South Africa.