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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Smallholder Land Interests, Political Opportunities,
and Farmer Organization: A Case Study of the
Zimbabwe Farmers Union

presented by

Maria E.O. Arnaiz

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for

, _Doc:to::a_l_ degree in _Resoucce_Deve10ment

Major professor

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Date Febggany 8, ZQQJ,

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‘ LIBRARY
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University

 

 

 

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6/01 c-JCIRCJDdoDmpes-ms

SMALLHOLDER LAND INTERESTS, POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES AND
FARMER ORGANIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF
THE ZIMBABWE FARMERS' UNION
By

Maria E. O. Arnaiz

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Resource Development

2001

 

ABSTRACT
SMALLHOLDER LAND INTERESTS, POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES AND
FARMER ORGANIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF
THE ZIMBABWE FARMERS UNION
By

Maria E. O. Amaiz

Farmer organizations are widely perceived as one way to represent the rural
disenfranchised. Rarely have studies investigated how these organizations represent
different and conﬂicting interests or whether they are democratic. If donors intend to use
farmer organizations to promote broad-based rural development, then we need to
understand which interests mobilize and are represented by them. This dissertation
examines organizational policy-making in the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU), a farmer
organization that counts commercial and smallholder farmers as members. Both member
groups seek greater access to land. Under what conditions can and do smallholder
members prevail in getting the ZFU to articulate their land demands?

The study asked; would smallholder members have greater Opportunities for
political action on land policy at the district level? Would those mobilizing for land
within the ZFU be more likely to achieve their goals at the district level? The district
level coincides with the level of implementation for land policy and suggests stronger
rules for leadership accountability and participatory decision-making. To explore these
questions, data were collected through individual and group interviews at the district and

national levels and household and farm surveys in Shamva District.

The study found that the ZFU's positions on land favor the interests of its senior
leaders, and members did not mobilize nationally to challenge those positions. Members
had more Opportunities for political action at the district level but did not take advantage
of them. They perceived the ZFU as a service delivery organization ineffective in
dealing with resettlement issues and chose to access land through informal land markets,
illegal occupation, and Opportunistic expansion. These actions facilitate land exchange
within the boundaries of the smallholder areas but do little to alleviate land scarcity. For
members to use the ZFU to articulate their land needs, they must see it as effective in
acquiring land for them. Unfortunately, the highly publicized farm invasions of 2000 -
carried out largely by opportunistic squatters - reinforced the notion that individual action

rather than collective action is the most effective way of acquiring land.

To David, Manny, and Emilio for putting the dissertation into perspective

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people and organizations aided in the completion of this dissertation. This
study was made possible through ﬁnancial support from the Institute Of Development
Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. The Department of Resource Development,
Institute of International Agriculture, International Scholar Program, and the Graduate
School at Michigan State University provided invaluable ﬁnancial assistance.

I would like to thank Dr. Deborah Merrill-Sands and Dr. John Farrington for
giving me the Opportunity to work on the ISNAR/ODI collaborative research project that
brought me to Zimbabwe and introduced me to the ZFU. Berean Mukwende, the ZF U
senior projects ofﬁcer, and the late Gary Magadzire, the ZFU president, gave me access
to staff, leaders, and members. Staff, members, and leaders, were extremely helpful and
willing to share with me documents, reports, and project papers. I would especially like
to thank Liz Mhlanga who arranged interviews for me at the ZFU and with ministry staff
and leaders and staff at the CPU and ICFU. Without the ZFU'S cooperation, this
dissertation would not have been possible.

Cheryl Danley, a friend and colleague, introduced me to the IDS research group
headed by Sam Moyo. I would like to thank Cheryl and Sam as well as Louis Masuko
and Naomi Wekwete for providing collegial and administrative support. In the ﬁeld,
Mercy Nyamagwanda and Petronella Jeche, my research assistants, Offered invaluable
help in organizing meetings, interviews, and translations. The Chief Executive Ofﬁcer of
Shamva's Rural District Council, Mrs Jones, the District Administrator, and Agritex ﬁeld

agents greatly facilitated the ﬁeld research. Finally, I would like to thank my advisor,

Jim Bingen for his unﬂagging willingness to read and comment on countless drafts.
Thanks also to my committee members, Richard Harwood, Alan Schmid, and Tom Edens
for their insightful and helpful comments on earlier drafts. To my family who would not
let me quit, my greatest thanks.

I assume full responsibility for any omissions, inaccuracies, or errors of interpretation.

vi

PREFACE

My interest in the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union (ZF U) began in January 1995. As a
research associate for a collaborative ODI/ISNAR study, I had the Opportunity to work
with ZFU senior staff and leaders to develop and implement a study Of the organization's
actual and potential capacity to participate in technology development. In the course of
the study, I spoke with ZF U members, leaders, and staff from the grassroots to the
national level, and acquired a real appreciation for what the ZFU has accomplished in
helping members address their production problems. At the same time, I recognized a
dilemma common to organizations that represent such a broad interest group. On any
single issue, ZFU members had different and Often conﬂicting interests. How can an
organization reconcile those interests and equitably represent them? For donors, the
answer is critical for appreciating the realistic role the ZFU and similar organizations can
play in promoting smallholder development and grassroots democracy.

Because of my work with the ZF U, I was invited to join a study to investigate the
district-level impacts Of economic structural adjustment sponsored by the Institute of
Development Studies of the University of Zimbabwe. My role in the study was to
investigate the role of farmer organizations in helping farmers cope with economic
structural adjusment. In the process, I also investigated the issue of equitable
representation in the ZFU at a district-level and in the context of Phase II resettlement.

The IDS study concluded in October 1997. Signiﬁcant political changes affecting
the resettlement program have occurred since the end of my study. In the ZF U also,

Changes in leadership and staff have taken place. This dissertation is limited in its

vii

capacity to address how changes beyond the study period have affected conditions within
the ZF U that shape the political opportunities for its smallholder members. Thus, most
the discussion is limited to the period 1995-1997. When available, I use information
from secondary sources like reports, conference papers, seminar proceedings, and

newspaper articles to update the data obtained during the study period in Zimbabwe.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

LIST OF TABLES XII
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION 1
LAND AND SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE ....................................................................... 3
THE LAND POLICY ARENA ............................................................................................... 5
POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES WITIHN THE ZFU .................................................................. 8
Research Objectives .................................................................................................. I 0
Research Locale and Methods .................................................................................. 11
ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION .......................................................................... 13
CHAPTER 2
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LAND POLICY 15
COLONIAL LAND POLICIES ............................................................................................. 17
Company Rule and Laissez-Faire Policies ............................................................... I 7
Land Apportionment ................................................................................................. 20
AGRICULTURE POLICIES AND RURAL DIFFERENTIATION ............................................... 23
The Roots of Black Commercial Agriculture ............................................................ 24
The Master Farmer Program .................................................................................... 26
ORGANIZING FARM INTERESTS ...................................................................................... 28
White Commercial Farm Interests ............................................................................ 28
Black Commercial Farm Interests ............................................................................ 29
Black Smallholder Farm Interests ............................................................................ 30
POST-INDEPENDENCE LAND POLICY .............................................................................. 31
Resettlement 1980-1990 ............................................................................................ 32
Resettlement 1990-1 997 ............................................................................................ 35
SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................... 40
CHAPTER 3
THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF LAND DEGRADATION - 43
TRANSFORMING OF AFRICAN AGRICULTURE ................................................................. 44
Conservation in the Native Reserves ........................................................................ 44
Conservation in the Settler Areas ............................................................................. 4 7
THE CONTEXT OF SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE: 1980-1997 ....................................... 49
Land Resources ......................................................................................................... 50
Marketing Structure and Institutions ........................................................................ 53
Technology ................................................................................................................ 5 7
Conservation ............................................................................................................. 60
PUBLIC POLICIES AND LAND-USE IN SHAMVA DISTRICT ............................................... 62
Farming Systems ....................................................................................................... 63
ESAP, Marketing and Credit .................................................................................... 67
Land Scarcity ............................................................................................................ 68

ix

Land Degradation ..................................................................................................... 70

 

 

 

SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................... 74
CHAPTER 4
SMALLHOLDER MOBILIZATION FOR LAND WITHIN F ARMER
ORGANIZATIONS: A CONCEPTURAL APPROACH - 76
FARMER ORGANIZATIONS AND THE POLICY PROCESS .................................................... 77
Collective Action ....................................................................................................... 77
Incentives .................................................................................................................. 81
Mobilizing Processes ................................................................................................ 82
POLICY ARENAS, OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, AND FARMER POLITICAL ACTON ......... 83
Policy Types and Goods ............................................................................................ 84
Political Opportunity Structures ............................................................................... 89
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES ..................................................................... 95
SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................... 97
RESEARCH METHODS ..................................................................................................... 99
Data Collection and Sources .................................................................................... 99
CHAPTER 5
POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, INCENTIVES, AND
COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE NATIONAL CONTEXT 101
DECISION-MAKING AND LEADERSHIP ACCOUNTABILITY ............................................. 102
Structure ofDecision-making ................................................................................. 102
Rules for Leadership Accountability ....................................................................... 109
LEADERSHIP PROFILE ................................................................................................... 1 13
Farm Background ................................................................................................... I 13
Land Interests ......................................................................................................... I 15
Ideology .................................................................................................................. I 1 7
POSITIONS ON RESETTLEMENT AND OTHER LAND ISSUES ........................................... 1 19
Commercial versus Village Resettlement Schemes ................................................. 119
Settler Selection Criteria ........................................................................................ 121
Land Tenure ............................................................................................................ 124
INTERNAL MOBILIZATION ............................................................................................ 127
Demand for Land .................................................................................................... 127
Perception, Expectations, and Incentives for Mobilization .................................... 129
SUMMARY .................................................................................................................... 131
CHAPTER 6
POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, INCENTIVES, AND
COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE DISTRICT CONTEXT 133
POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES ....................................................................... 134
Structures of Decision-making ................................................................................ I 3 5
Leadership Accountability ...................................................................................... 139
Land Interests ......................................................................................................... 140
MOBILIZATION AT THE GRASSROOTS ........................................................................... 146
Role of ZF U. ............................................................................................................ 14 7

X

Performance of the Resettlement Program ............................................................. 149

 

 

 

LAND ACQUISITION OUTSIDE OF THE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM ................................ 153
Land Sales ............................................................................................................... 153
Land Occupation ..................................................................................................... 15 7
Non-governmental sector ........................................................................................ 158

SUMMARY .................................................................................................................... 159

CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS -- - 161

STUDY FINDINGS ......................................................................................................... 162
The National Context .............................................................................................. I 62
The District Context ................................................................................................ I 63

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ...................................................................................... 165

RECOMMENDATIONS .................................................................................................... 171
Policy ...................................................................................................................... I 71
Donor Policy ........................................................................................................... 1 75
Future Research ...................................................................................................... I 75

APPENDIX A
GOVERNMENT OF ZIMBABWE LAND POLICY FRAMEWORK ................... 179
APPENDIX B
ZFU STAFF _ - - - 185
APPENDIX C
SETTLER SELECTION 187
BIBLIOGRAPHY - 192

 

xi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Chronology Of land legislation ..................................................................................... 22
Table 2.2 Distribution of Land: 1930-1989 .................................................................................. 23
Table 2.3 Five year average production of graina , land cultivated and herd size in the native
areas, 1900-1950 .......................................................................................................... 27
Table 3.1 Distribution of land (‘000 ha) by natural region and farm class, 1990 ........................ 50
Table 3.2 Distribution of population in CA and LSC lands by natural region ............................. 52
Table 3.3 Changes in CA cropping patterns: 1970-1989 .............................................................. 53
Table 3.4 Maize production, marketing, and retention by province ............................................. 54
Figure 3.2 Agroecological Map of Shamva District ...................................................................... 64
Table 3.5 Percent of CA and RA farmers growing maize and cotton in 1995 .............................. 65
Table 3.6 Mean maize and cotton area (ha) 1995 ......................................................................... 65
Table 3.7 A comparison of maize and cotton yields between Shamva's smallholders and the
national average ............................................................................................................ 66
Table 3.8 Cattle holdings 1995 ..................................................................................................... 66
Table 3.9 Farm asset ownership .................................................................................................... 67
Table 3.10 IS your land adequate to meet your family's household needs? ................................... 69
Table 3.11 Mean percent of land left fallow 1995 ......................................................................... 70
Table 3.12 Rank quality Of croplands ............................................................................................ 71
Table 3.13 Rank quality of communal grazing land ...................................................................... 72
Table 3.14 1994-1995 maize production ........................................................................................ 72
Table 5.2 ZFU'S national leaders and farm ownership (1997) .................................................... 114
Table 5.3 Perspective on land redistribution ............................................................................... 121
Table 5.4 Responses to "who should beneﬁt from the resettlement program?" ......................... 124
Table 5.5 Responses to "should land be bought and sold in the communal areas?" ................... 125
Table 5.6 Responses to "why Shouldn't communal land be bought or sold?" ............................. 125
Table 5.7 Responses to "what are the beneﬁts of title deeds?" ................................................... 126
Table 5.8 Farm problems by ZFU afﬁliation .............................................................................. 128
Table 6.1 Wealth class by farm characteristics (n=466) ............................................................. 142
Table 6.2 Breakdown of ZF U respondents by wealth category .................................................. 142
Table 6.3 "Is your land adequate to meet your household's needs?" .......................................... 143
Table 6.4 Assessment of cropland by ZFU members ................................................................. 143

xii

Table 6.5 Major farm problems expressed by ZFU members .................................................... 144

Table 6.6 "Who should beneﬁt from resettlement?" ................................................................... 145
Table 6.7 “How will your children get land?” ............................................................................ 145
Table 6.8 ZFU beneﬁts ............................................................................................................... 147
Table 6.9 Changes in land ownership Observed in community Since 1990 by area .................... 154
Table 6.10 Means of acquiring cropland ...................................................................................... 155

xiii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The fall of the Soviet Union in the late 19805 and the subsequent rise of
democratic governments throughout the developing world created considerable academic,
political, and donor agency interest in the study of “civil society.” The World Bank,
bilateral donors, and non-govemmental organizations invested heavily in the study and
promotion of societal groups considered vital to the sustainability of ﬂedgling
democracies. Of greatest concern was the role that these organizations would play in
providing a political voice for the various historically disenfranchised groups. To this
end, the Bank and others targeted farmer organizations considered to be the most likely to
represent the rural disenfranchised.

The interest in farmer organizations (F O's) rests on the assumption that if poor
farmers organize, they can create a "demand-pull" for services and policies needed by
them from government and non-govemmental organizations and the private sector. By
making the demands listed below, FO'S can help to create an environment favorable to

smallholder production (Bratton, 1986; Zinyama, 1992).

1. Demand that national research systems provide smallholders with appropriate
technologies, and that national extension services provide them with appropriate
technical advice (Chambers et al, 1989; Merrill-Sands and Collion, 1994; Merrill-
Sands and Kaimowitz, 1990).

2. Demand pricing, marketing, and other agriculture policies that promote their interests
(Bates, 1981; Esman and Uphoff, 1984; Bratton, 1987).

3. Demand favorable terms from suppliers and from buyers (De Janvry and Sadoulet,
1993)

4. Demand a more equitable distribution of property rights to water and land (Moyo and
Skalnes, 1992; Stoneman and Cliffe, 1989; Lipton, 1974).

Growth in smallholder agriculture can lead to growth in the overall economies of many
developing nations where smallholder agriculture contributes signiﬁcantly to the gross
national product (GNP) (Hussi et a1, 1993). Growth in the general economy strengthens
democratic institutions. Conversely, a stagnant economy and declining real incomes
contribute to the instability of newly democratized governments (Duncan and Howell,

1992).

Research on F O'S has considered the conditions for their emergence (Bingen,
1994; Bray, 1991; Carroll, 1992), development (Bingen et al, 1995; Farrington and
Bebbington, 1994; Uphoff, 1993; ISNAR, 1995), and effectiveness (Amaiz et a1, 1995;
Bingen and Bratton, 1994; Ndiame, 1994; Wellard and Copestake, 1994). If a desire to
strengthen the voice of the rural poor drives donor and academic interest in FO'S, then
internal issues of mobilization and representation become critical. Yet, many F 0 studies
do not address these isSueS focusing instead on state-societal relations and projecting
upon "these organizations democratic aspirations, credentials, and capacities" (Bratton,
1994a). Assuming F O's are democratic or participatory becomes untenable as the size of
the F 0 increases, and it represents broader interests. National-level F O'S are desirable
because their scale and inclusiveness adds to their credibility but doubts persist about
their capacity to identify, represent, and communicate a broad range of members' interests

(ISNAR, 1995).

TO understand the role F O'S can play in promoting broad-based rural
development, research must also consider internal issues of mobilization and
representation. This study seeks to do so by examining how the Zimbabwe Farmers'
Union (ZF U), a smallholder farmer organization, chooses between conﬂicting member
interests in the land policy arena. The ZFU is unique among farmer unions because its
membership includes large-scale commercial (LSC) and small-scale commercial (SSC)
farmers. The government's new land policy identiﬁes black commercial and smallholder
farmers as recipients of the resettlement program. Given the limited availability of
resettlement lands and its incompatible land-use characteristic, commercial and
smallholder interests do conﬂict. Within this context, can poorer members prevail in
getting the ZF U to represent their land interests? What factors facilitate internal

mobilization among them?

LAND AND SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE

Land represents the most critical asset in agricultural production in Zimbabwe.
Since the pre-colonial period, societal groups have sought privileged access to prime
farmland (Beach, 1986). Colonial policies granted most of the fertile lands to white
(LSC) farmers while sequestering the rural majority on mostly marginal lands in drought-
prone areas. After twenty years of Independence, the distribution of land rights inherited
from the colonial period remains largely intact.

During the 19808, donors and scholars pointed to Zimbabwe’s smallholder
agriculture as the success story of sub-Saharan Africa. After just ﬁve years of
Independence, black farmers dramatically increased their production of maize and cotton

(Rhorbach, 1989; Mariga, 1994). However, from 1988—1995, maize and cotton yields

3

dropped by 26% and 28% respectively bringing into question the sustainability of the
yield gains achieved earlier (MLAWD, 1995). Recurrent drought during this period
contributed to the erosion of production gains, but analysts suggest a more fundamental
reason; gains in production came at the cost of long-term soil fertility. The
intensiﬁcation of smallholder agriculture coupled with mounting population pressures in
the smallholder areas gave rise to the highest erosion rates in the country (Whitlow,
1988). The limited access smallholder farm households have to quality farmlands poses
the major impediment to their continued development (Maposa, 1995; Skalnes and
Moyo, 1992).

The land problem faced by smallholders is two-fold. First, the ﬁxed boundaries
of the communal lands means that succeeding generations have access to ever
diminishing parcels of land (Mehretu, 1994). Campbell et al (1989) found a negative
association between parcel Size and soil degradation. Second, the placement of the
communal lands in drought-prone areas with primarily sodic soils makes them unsuitable
for intensive agriculture (Muir, 1994). Yet, post-Independence agriculture policies
encouraged smallholder farmers to intensify production. Responding to these incentives,
smallholder farmers readily adopted the use of chemical fertilizers in place of manuring
and rotations, and expanded their production of maize and cotton at the expense of
traditional crops like millet and sorghum (Roth, 1990).

Yield differences between high rainfall and low rainfall areas illustrate the
importance of land access in the development Of smallholder agriculture. Population
densities in high rainfall areas exceed population densities in low rainfall areas almost

three-fold. On average, farmers in the high rainfall areas have smaller landholdings than

farmers in the low rainfall areas (Sithole and Atwood, 1990). Yet, Stack (1994) found
that smallholders in the higher rainfall areas achieved higher and more consistent yields
than their counterparts in drought-prone zones. Bratton (1986) and Cousins et al. (1992)
concluded that access to better quality lands allowed smallholders in higher rainfall areas
to capture a disproportionate share of the development beneﬁts from government
policies. Moreover, differences in land quality explained why farmers in the lower
rainfall areas sought food aid from the government even during average rainfall years

whereas farmers in the higher rainfall areas did not (MLAWD, 1995).

THE LAND POLICY ARENA

Land presents a strong mobilizing principle for Zimbabwe's black farmers.
During the Liberation War, freedom ﬁghters mobilized the rural majority around a
demand for the return of "lost lands" (Lan, 1985). In the post-Independence period, the
Mugabe government used the land issue to consolidate its political base in the rural areas
and to mobilize that base when it felt politically vulnerable. The slow-down of the ﬁrst
resettlement program coincided with the signing of a unity accord between the two major
political parties, ZANU (PF) and ZAPU (PF).l Critics contend that the government's
renewed interest in resettlement came in response to the demand for multiparty elections

made by the World Bank and IMF as part of their loan package (Dashwood, 1996).

The 1992 Land Act, the enabling legislation for Phase II of the resettlement

 

' ZANU (PF) is the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), the ruling political party. ZAPU
(PF) was the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Patriotic Front), the major opposition party until the
signing of the Unity Accord in 1987. ZAPU (PF) folded into ZANU (PF).

5

program, expanded the pool of beneﬁciaries for resettlement to include all black farmers
and aspiring black farmers. Consequently, the previously uniﬁed black lobby for land
splintered into two groups: commercial farmers and smallholder farmers in the communal
areas (CA). Each group considers access to commercial lands as critical for their own
development. The relative scarcity of resettlement lands puts these interests in direct
conﬂict.

Zimbabwe's farm lobby comprises three farmer unions, each representing a major
farm sub-sector. The CFU, Commercial Farmer Union, represents the narrow interests of
the mostly white large-scale commercial farm class. The ICF U, Indigenous Commercial
Farmer Union, represents the interests of black large-scale commercial and emergent
farmers.2 Both the ICF U and the CF U want government to invest in the maintenance of
the commercial farm areas. The difference lies in the CFU'S opposition to the
government's land acquisition policy and the ICFU'S support of it. The ICFU argues that
government has a responsibility to invest in the development of black commercial
agriculture and to provide commercial farmers with land (ICFU, 1999).

Unlike the ICFU and CF U, the ZF U represents both peasant and commercial
farmers; a consequence of the bitter debate preceding the 1992 Land Act3 and on-going
processes of rural differentiation. Peasant farmers from the resettlement areas (RA) and

the communal areas (CA) account for the majority of the ZFU'S members. However,

 

2 Emergent farmers are those in business or non-farm sectors looking to become commercial agricultural

producers.

The Mugabe government Strongly encouraged a merger between the two farmer organizations
representing black farmers at that time to show solidarity among them for the new Land Act. The
NFAZ (National Farmers Association of Zimbabwe) represented CA and RA farmers, and the ZN FU
(Zimbabwe National Farmers Union) represented black small-scale commercial (SSC) farmers (Bratton,
1994a).

commercial farmers make-up a disproportionate percentage of the national leadership.
Unlike the ICFU and CFU, the land interests between ZF U members and between
members and leaders differ and conﬂict (Amaiz et a1, 1995; Burgess, 1994a).

The "top-down" nature of governmental decision-making requires smallholder
farm interests to have a strong policy voice at the national level to counter the ICFU and
CF U in the land policy arena. This study deﬁnes policy voice as "claim-making" - the
ability to access resources to or to modify the goals and procedures of an existing
program or project (Bratton, 1988; Esman and Uphoff, 1984). The government maintains
a highly regulated structure of organized interests that leaves smallholder farmers with
few alternatives outside of the ZFU or ZANU (PF) to articulate their demands to national
policy-makers.

Until the farm invasions of 2000, the government had moved cautiously in
deﬁning and implementing its land policy, recognizing the political necessity of
maintaining the support of each farmer union (Moyo, 1998). White LSC farmers
contribute Signiﬁcantly to the national economy, and in the government's view, the
successful implementation of its economic structural adjustment program required the
cooperation of the CF U (Skalnes, 1996). The ICFU offers a justiﬁcation for the
acquisition Of commercial farms by high-ranking party and government representatives
(Moyo, 1995). The rural poor represent ZANU (PF)'s political base for ZANU (PF), and
the party's desire to retain their support strengthens the ZFU as an actor in the land policy

arena.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN THE ZFU

Donors seek to develop the ZFU as policy voice for poor black farmers (Riddell,
1994). Many believe that having a strong national organization like the ZFU is sufﬁcient
for the expression of smallholder farm interests in policy-making (Burgess, 1992). This
belief, however, rests on the assumption that an organization like the ZFU can capture
and represent the diversity Of interests present within the smallholder population. Yet,
this assumption cannot hold in the context of conﬂicting interests, as is the case regarding
land policy. The limited availability of resettlement lands and their incompatible-use
characteristic suggest that the ZF U cannot effectively represent interests of its
commercial members and its poorer members.

The ZFU appears to favor commercial farm interests in its stated positions on
resettlement. In 1994, the Union's President, G. Magadzire, argued that “not every
person who requires land should have access to such land. The [ZF U] believes that only
competent‘ farmers should be allocated land under the resettlement program” (ZFU,
1995). The apparent conﬂict between commercial and smallholder land interests requires
smallholder members to have a policy voice within the Union. Do opportunities exist for
poorer smallholder farmers to prevail in getting the ZFU to express their land demands?
Do they have a policy voice within the Union? The process whereby poor members
mobilize through the organization and the conditions facilitating or blocking mobilization

is the focus of this dissertation.

 

4 The ZFU deﬁnes competent farmers as those: (1) ranking among the better-producing farmers in their

communal area; (2) having experience in commercial farm management; and (3) having formal training
in agriculture at the certiﬁcate, diploma or degree level.

8

The literature on peasant farm organizations has paid little attention to issues Of
interest mobilization and representation within the context of organizational policy-
making (Bratton, 1994a). Two dominant views have shaped research in this area. One
viewpoint assumes that all members share similar interests and that organizational
decision-making is an apolitical process (see Burgess 1992, 1997). Hence, the focus lies
in elucidating organizational structures associated with decision-making. A second
viewpoint contends that over time, leaders co-opt their organizations, especially those
representing the poor and illiterate. Michels' (1915) "Iron Law of Oligarchy" explains
that the interests of leaders and members diverge as the organization prospers.
Ineffective rules for holding leaders accountable, a shortcoming often found in
organizations representing the poor, allow leaders to use the organization for their own
self-interests (Fox, 1991).

The two viewpoints presented above represent extremes and the reality for most
F O'S lies somewhere in between. Even in narrow interest organizations, like the CFU,
interests between members diverge and conﬂict (Skalnes, 1989). The presence of
conﬂicting interests suggest that organizational policy-making has a political dimension.
Similarly, leaders do not often have broad discretionary power over decision-making.
Rival factions and other sources of decision-making power act as a check and balance on
the leadership's tendencies to co-opt their organization (Bingen, 1996a; Fox, 1991).

This dissertation contends that the decision-making process within the ZFU and
Similar organizations requires an analysis that joins an examination of interest
mobilization with an understanding of the structure of political opportunities.

Differences in the structure of policy arenas can explain why poor farmers may have

greater Opportunities to inﬂuence decision-making in some policy arenas but not in
others. The dissertation also looks compares the opportunities for political action present
at the national level and at the district (local) level. In Zimbabwe, as in most of sub-
Saharan Africa, the authority of the state weakens with distance from the administrative
center, Harare. The implementation of land policy at the local level presents smallholder
farmers and their representatives with opportunities to bargain with government ofﬁcials

on program implementation.

Research Objectives

The study's research Objectives are grouped under three major categories:

descriptive, methodological, and theoretical.

E

1. To describe the relationship between land policies and land degradation in the
communal areas making the case that sustained smallholder agricultural development
requires re-distribution of rights to land to beneﬁt small-scale farmers. To evaluate
the impact Of current and proposed land policy on agricultural production in
communal, resettlement, and commercial areas. Given the objectives Of proposed
land policy, what will be the structure of smallholder agriculture in the future?

2. TO identify Zimbabwean land policy and its constituent policy arenas.

Methcdclcgical
3. To assess the “openness” of the ZFU’S political system to demands from its members.
The analysis examines political Opportunity structures (POS) between land policy

arenas and within each arena looking to see if structures at the national level differ in
make-up from political Opportunity structures at the local level.

4. To identify the land interests of poor, middle-income, and wealthy smallholder
farmers. To understand their response to the POS'S that they face when lobbying for
their land interests within the ZFU.

Theoretical

5. TO review concepts and theories from the policy analysis, social movements, and

10

rational choice literature to understand the dimensions of political opportunities. The
study’s framework identiﬁes factors related to structure and agency as shaping the
political Opportunities for poor farmers within a membership organization.

6. To propose speciﬁc recommendations for expanding the political Opportunities poor
farmers have to inﬂuence land policy. Eight years have passed since passage of the
1992 Land Act, and the government has yet to declare a deﬁnitive policy on
resettlement. The rural poor have not participated in this process, and consequently,
their frustration expressed itself in widespread occupations of white-owned farms
from February to May 2000. To defuse the situation, the government must in the near
future ﬁnd a way to include the rural poor in the land policy process.

Research Locale and Methods

The study uses data obtained from a survey of smallholder farm households in
Shamva District located about 115 km northeast of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare
(ﬁgure 1.1). The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) research team implemented a
household survey in February-March 1996 administering the questionnaire to 468
randomly selected households in the district. This researcher also gathered data from
group and key informant interviews carried out at the national, district, and village levels.
Finally, this study uses data from a previous study, Farmer Organizations in Technology
Development and Transfer, a collaborative research between the Overseas Development
Institute (ODI) of London, and the International Service for National Agriculture

Research (ISNAR) of the Hague.

ll

 

 

 

  
  
  
     
   
 

  
 
 
 
 
 

 

Figure 1.1 Administrative Map of Zimbabwe
, Mozambique
Zambia ( Research
1’: p : tea
"M" MASHONALA -
Lake CENTR ‘

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\ MIDLANDS /n’"\‘
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,9 \ Bulawayol/ 7 ’ .

Key ° J \Vg, [I . a, 1
International J Zvrsnavane }
boundary 1., I I

--.... Province 1 j MASVINGO (
boundary {.../\3/ \

Capital city MAT‘s‘gsl'i'E-{LAN ‘5‘
0 Major town/city Bk
0 100 kilometres \\
(T 100 miles Mozambique
South Africa

 

 

 

12

ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION

The following chapter discusses the role of public policy in the development of
the large-scale commercial, small-scale commercial, and smallholder farm classes. It
argues that colonial land and agriculture public policies gave white farmers the
foundation for their development including the accumulation of wealth and political
power. On the other hand, it impoverished the black majority. The inequities in wealth
translated into inequities in political power. Although the government invited the NFAZ
and the ZNF U to participate in policy-making, their limited ﬁnances and analytic
capacities put them at a disadvantage when competing against the CFU in the land policy
arena. Consequently, the CFU effectively managed the land policy process to the beneﬁt
of its members.

Chapter 3 discusses the political ecology of land degradation in the smallholder
farm areas. Colonial and post-Independence policies created conditions of poverty, land
scarcity, and household food insecurity in the communal areas. These conditions defined
the context Of smallholder agriculture and Shaped the production choices available to
communal area farmers. The volatility of smallholder production coupled with a survival
imperative created barriers to the adoption of technologies capable of maintaining and
enhancing soil fertility; these technologies require at least three years before yielding a
material beneﬁt. Consequently, smallholder farmers use technologies that deplete soil
fertility but in the short-term, allow them to meet their subsistence needs. In this way,
land and agriculture policies have contributed to land degradation in the smallholder
farming areas.

The discussion in Chapter 3 underscores the need for poor farmers to have a

13

political voice in the land policy arenas and in the broader agriculture policy arena.
Chapter 4 outlines an approach for investigating issues of smallholder mobilization and
representation in the context of organizational policy-making. It combines concepts
dealing with collective action, policy arenas and economic goods, and political
Opportunity structures. The conceptual approach identiﬁes research questions Speciﬁc to
the land policy arena that are addressed in the following chapters.

Chapters 5 and 6 are the analysis chapters. Chapter 5 examines the national
context of organizational policy-making. It describes national level political Opportunity
structures within the ZF U, provides a proﬁle of the leadership, and describes how the
political opportunity structures are "Open" or "closed" to member mobilization around
land issues. Given the nature of the political Opportunity structures, it discusses why
members have mobilized or not mobilized around their land interests. Chapter 6 provides
a similar examination at the district level focusing on ZF U structures within Shamva
District. The study contends that political opportunity structures differ between national
and local levels, and that local political Opportunity structures are "open" to member
mobilization.

Chapter 7 summarizes the ﬁndings and conclusions Of the study and discusses the
implications of the ﬁndings given the recent political crisis triggered by the farm
invasions of 2000. Does the sudden availability of lands through the resettlement
program create greater incentives for smallholder farmers to use the ZFU to articulate
their land demands? It gives recommendations for donors interested in strengthening the

policy voice of poor farmers and identiﬁes areas for further study.

14

CHAPTER 2

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LAND POLICY

Few in Zimbabwe dispute the observation that acute land hunger exists in the
communal areas, and for moral and national security reasons, most support the idea that
the rural poor Should have greater access to land. Despite such public support and an
ambitious land resettlement program, the Zimbabwean government had transferred only
2.7 million hectares of commercial farmland to smallholder farmers by 1990. Most of
this land is located in the more arid regions of the country (Bratton, 1994b; Kangai,
1996). Twelve million hectares including almost all Of the prime farmland remain in the
LSC farm sector.

What underlies the post-Independence govemment’s reticence toward
redistributing land to the rural poor? Some note that many ofﬁcials believed smallholder
farmers inherently are subsistence-oriented and therefore, less efﬁcient than commercial
farmers. Until the land crisis of 2000, Ofﬁcials hesitated taking land from the core of the
commercial farm sector because of the commercial agriculture's contribution to the
national economy (Marcus, 1994; Roth, 1990). Second and more Signiﬁcantly, many in
government blamed smallholder farmers, their land husbandry, and traditional tenure for

the degradation of the communal areas (CA). They argued that even if smallholders

15

attained commercial production levels in the Short-term, in the long-term, they would
degrade the commercial lands much as they have their own lands (Skalnes and Moyo,
1992). The rationale blaming smallholder farmers for their low productivity and the
environmental problems of the CA'S echoes the arguments made by colonial authorities
and the settler farm lobby to justify apartheid land policies (Alexander, 1994).

This chapter argues that land and agricultural policies represent choices made by
the government in favor of a few well-organized interests. Because only 17% Of
Zimbabwe’s total land area can support intensive agriculture, farm groups have sought
privileged access to these lands as the basis for their development and the accumulation
of wealth and political power. In addition to land apportionment, settler farmer groups
won complementary policies that transferred productive resources like labor and capital
from the African farm sector to settler agriculture (Arrighi, 1973; Malahala, 1980).
Consequently, by 1970, colonial policies had effectively transformed a once thriving and
partially commoditized African agriculture into a subsistence agriculture practiced on
over-crowded and for the most part, degraded lands. Settler farmers, on the other hand,
developed from “subsistence producers into a highly successful bourgeoisie with a claim
to being essential to the capacity of the country to feed itself” (Stoneman, 1989: 12).
Since the late 1980's, black commercial farmers and business owners have sought Similar
policies to facilitate their development.

The remainder Of this chapter discusses how public policies inﬂuenced the
development Of each of the three farm classes: large-scale commercial, small-scale
commercial, and smallholder agriculture. It examines critical policies and programs that

shaped the economic, social and institutional context Of smallholder and commercial

l6

agriculture. It also discusses the role of organized interests in framing important policy

issues and in the policy process.

COLONIAL LAND POLICIES

Given the scarcity of prime farmland, land ownership and control of its resources
has ﬁgured prominently in the political economy of Zimbabwe. During the pre—colonial
period, the pattern of land ownership reﬂected the social hierarchy and the wealthiest
families had exclusive access to the most fertile lands (Beach, 1983). This is not to say
that the poor did not have access to lands. Embedded within Shona and Ndebele culture
is the belief that each man should have access to enough land to support his family
(Dzingirai, 1996; Yudelman, 1964). Altemately, white colonization Of Zimbabwe meant
increasing land alienation for the African majority. The settler ideology required that
whites maintain their dominance in the settler economy, and they did so largely through

policies that excluded Africans from the most fertile lands.

Company Rule and Laissez-Faire Policies

Shona-Speaking people ﬁrst settled into the area now known as Zimbabwe around
200 BC. Throughout the pre-colonial period, Zimbabwe comprised a number of
dynasties like the Great Zimbabwe, Mutapa, Rozvi, and Torwa empires. Beginning in
the 18308, the Ndebele, an offshoot of the Nguni from South Aﬁica, established their
own kingdom in southern Zimbabwe. The Ndebele, who were pastoralists, occasionally
raided the Shona, who were primarily cultivators, to the north and east. This practice
resulted in considerable animosity between the two ethnic groups; a situation exploited

by the Rhodesians to consolidate their control over the new colony (Beach, 1983;

17

Connah, 1990; Mutambirwa, 1980). In 1890, Cecil Rhodes and his “Pioneer Column”
crossed the Limpopo River in the south and invaded Zimbabwe for the British South
Africa Company (BSA). From 1890 to 1923, the BSA governed the colony as a business
venture.

During the early period of colonization, the BSA did not pursue an interventionist
land policy. Under pressure from the British government, it established reserves in Gwai
and Shangani in 1894 although it did not require Africans to live there. Africans could
remain in the European areas SO long as they were employed or rented their lands. In
some cases, Africans remained as squatters. Though the BSA had sold or given away
large tracts of land, much remained undeveloped. As of 1903, less than 10% of the
African population lived on the reserves.

The BSA'S business interests in the colony dictated its policy toward Africans.
Believing that Rhodesia’s gold reserves equaled those of South Aﬁica, the BSA initially
focused its investments on developing the mining sector. It imposed taxes and levies on
Africans to force them into wage labor at the mines. At the same time, it allowed African
agriculture to develop because at the time, few settler farmers were able to produce for
the market. Thus, the early colonial economy relied on Africans to meet their food and
industrial demands. African farmers responded positively to the new market incentives
and some reinvested their off-farm wages back into their farms to expand cropping area
to purchase cattle, ploughs, and other farm equipment and hire labor. In 1904, African
production accounted for more than 90% of the total agricultural output in the colony

(Mutabambirwa, 1980).

18

The context of African agriculture changed in 1908 when the BSA shifted the
emphasis of its economic policy from mining to agriculture. Realizing that Rhodesia’s
mining prospects fell far below expectations of a “Second Rand,” the BSA decided to re-
coup its investments through land sales to prospective commercial farmers. In the
coming years, the BSA developed railways and other transportation infrastructure to
service the settler areas and offered credit and training to new settler farmers. As the
settler population grew, so did the demand for cheap African labor. The Chartered
Administration imposed more taxes and levies on Africans thereby forcing those unable
to pay their Obligations to move to the reserves. By 1913, about 40% Of the African
population lived on the reserves. However, the continuing importance Of African
agriculture in the settler economy gave the Chartered Administration reason not to
forcibly move those who remained in the settler areas (Mahalala, 1980).

During the early years of the colony, the demands of settler farmers were often
subordinated to those of the mining sector. TO increase its political representation, nine
farmers’ associations merged in 1904 to form the Rhodesian Agricultural Union (RAU).
Composed of the few successful and progressive farmers in the colony, the RAU sought
greater water and land rights though with little success (Mutambirwa, 1980; Phimster,
1988a). With the implementation of the “White Agriculture Policy” in 1908, the
Chartered Administration took more seriously the demands made by the RAU and began
to consult them regarding the development of settler agriculture. The RAU, in turn,
outlined a policy that would eventually become the cornerstone for the development of
settler agriculture. It argued for the elimination of competition from African producers.

One way Of doing so was to put “the native cultivator in reserves. . .SO far away from

19

railways that the white trader will not be able to buy from him and compete with white
farmers."5 A corollary beneﬁt would be the maintenance of a pool Of cheap African labor

(Stoneman and Cliffe, 1989).

Land Apportionment

Formal segregation Of the races into European and African areas did not transpire
until passage of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930. Despite the demands made by
settler farmers for separate areas in 1923, the newly elected settler government moved
Slowly in that direction. In 1927, the Morris-Carter Land Commission recommended
formal segregation and repeal of the "Cape Clause,"6 but government did not act on these
recommendations until 1930 when worldwide recession threatened the viability of settler
agriculture (Malahala, 1980; Moyana, 1984).

By 1920, the settler farmer population exceeded that Of other sectors of the
economy. Its sheer numbers and the increasing importance of settler agriculture to the
development of the colonial economy meant that the farm lobby occupied a more central
role in policy-making. Regarding land, two rationales dominated the discussion.
Progressive farmers, most of whom belonged to the RAU, argued that Aﬁicans be legally
barred from owning or renting farms in the settler areas because their poor land
husbandry posed a threat to the cattle and crops of settler farmers. For the majority,
however, farming was a “speculative gamble,” and world market prices dictated cropping

choices more so than any long-term plans to cultivate the land or to develop their farms

 

5 Mining Commissioner, Bulawayo, 1907, as cited in Phimster (1988a), p. 65.

6

The Cape Clause gave blacks the right to purchase lands.

20

as sustainable business enterprises. Tobacco, cattle, and maize prices bottomed out in the
late 1920s leaving many of them bankrupt and close to losing their farms. For them, land
apportionment came to be mandatory for the maintenance Of white agriculture.
Increasingly, the settler ideology took on more racial overtones: “We are here to make
this a white man’s country. . .we must keep the upper hand."7

The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 formalized the dual structure of land
ownership and production relations that persist to this day. Settler farmers received about
50% of the land including the most fertile lands in the higher rainfall areas. African
farmers received less than a quarter of the land, mostly areas in the drought-prone
regions. To compensate the few African farmers who lost their farms pursuant to the
Land Act and to encourage black farmers to enter into commercial production, the
government set aside about 8% of the designated lands for Native Purchase Areas (NPA).
African farmers continued to farm in the European areas illegally until after World War II
when the government decided to settle ex-servicemen and immigrants from Britain and
South Africa on the undeveloped lands.8 The government forcibly relocated the squatters
to newly created natives reserves on tse-tse ﬂy infested areas in the northwest
(Nyambara, 1997).

In many ways, the 1930 Land Act deﬁned the development paths for commercial
and peasant farmers by determining the quality and quantity of lands each sector had
access to and the system of land tenure. Settler farmers gained freehold rights to almost

all of the best farmlands. Black small-scale commercial farmers gained similar rights to

 

Cited in Phimster (1988a), p. 194.

In 1945, the colonial government estimated that 78,500 families continued to live outside of the natives
reserves on crown land, forest areas, unassigned land, and alienated land

8

21

land with moderate productive potential and more importantly, held the title deeds to

their farms. Yet, by keeping the amount of land in the NPA'S small, the government

effectively limited the amount of political power that the black commercial sector could

attain. The majority of black farmers settled on marginal lands and possessed only

usufruct rights to that land. The communal tenure of the reserves made it difﬁcult for

black farmers to beneﬁt from land rents and improvements that they made upon their

land. Though an informal land market did develop in the communal areas, it did not

increase tenure security for smallholder farmers (Cheater, 1990).

Table 2.1 Chronology of land legislation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1894 Establishment of natives reserves in Gwaii and Shangani

1898 Defeat of Africans in ﬁrst Chimurenga (Liberation War). Natives reserves expanded to
10 million ha.

1920 Native reserves set to 8.4 million ha.

1930 Land Apportionment Act. Established European, African and Native Purchase Areas

1953 Recommendations of 1948 Commission on Land accepted. Native reserves expanded to
12.3 million ha.

1967 Tribal Trust Lands Act ﬁxes size of tribal trust lands (formerly the native reserves) at
18.2 million ha. 18.1 million ha set aside for European occupation.

1969 The Land Tenure Act conﬁrmed the distribution of land under the Tribal Trust Lands
Act

1977 The 1941 Land Apportionment Act appended to allow Africans to purchase land in the

 

European areas.

 

Source: D. Nkala: 53, Box 3.1.

Over time, other land acts would increase the amount of land in the Aﬁican areas,

but none challenged white ownership of the most fertile lands (table 2.1 and 2.2).

Ultimately, the land issue became “a potent symbol that conveniently summarized the

inequities of colonial rule,” and was used by both ZANU (PF) and ZAPU-PF to mobilize

support in the countryside (Bratton, 1994b; Moyana, 1984).

22

 

Table 2.2

Distribution of Land: 1930-1989

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Land Classes 1930 Land Act8 NLHA Independence 1989"
(‘000 ha) I953b 1980° (‘000 ha)
(‘000 ha) (‘000 ha)

European Areas 19,900 18,960 15,300 11,020

(LSC areas)

natives reserves 8,700 10,000 16,300 16,350

(CA)

Native Purchase 3,000 2,260 1,640 1,380

Areas

(SSC)

State Parks 240 1,580 4,310 6,339

Resettlement areas 0 O 0 3,290

Urban and Others6 7,236 6,279 1,525 700

Total 39,076 39,079 39,075 39,079

 

 

a Rukuni(l994):18.

b World Bank,(l986)

° Central Statistics Ofﬁce.
d MLAWD(I995)

Other includes unassigned lands, undetermined lands and urban areas up to 1980. From 1980 onwards,
this category included state farms, urban areas and land not accounted for in any of the land categories.

AGRICULTURE POLICIES AND RURAL DIFFERENTIATION

Agriculture policies to consolidate the position Of settler agriculture in the
colonial economy accelerated on-going processes of rural differentiation among the
African populace and facilitated the development of a black commercial farm class.
Colonial policies did not impoverish all African farmers because African farmers did not
have access to the same land resources. The quantity and quality of land one could

access mitigated the effects of colonial policy.

23

The Roots of Black Commercial Agriculture

From the beginning, the colonial government used taxes and levies9 on African
production to control the ﬂow of labor from the reserves to the settler economy. When
demand for labor rose, government increased taxes forcing males to seek Off-farm wage-
eaming jobs to meet their household's tax burden. For the majority, male out-migration
created greater household food insecurity and poverty. However, a minority of African
farmers capitalized on Opportunities to earn wages and invested their earnings in their
farm enterprises. They bought cattle, ploughs and other farm assets, and rented lands to
expand their own farms. From this group of farmers, a select few succeeded in
purchasing farms ﬁrst in the European areas'0 and later, after land apportionment, in the
Native Purchase Areas (NPA) (Phimster, 1988a).

The colonial government recognized the need for a reliable alternative source of
maize production for times when settler farmers switched to the production of higher-
value crops such as tobacco." It sought to facilitate the limited development of black
commercial agriculture, and SO, placed the NPA'S in higher rainfall areas adjacent to the
settler farm areas. Proximity to the settler farm areas allowed NPA farmers to realize

higher producer prices than farmers in the reserves. When the government installed a

 

For example, the government responded to the demands of the least efﬁcient of settler farmers, small-
scale and medium-scale farmers, for price subsidies. To pay for the subsidies, the government taxed
African agriculture through discriminatory pricing polices. The 1934 Amendment to the Maize Control
Act established a two-pool pricing system. Medium- and small-scale settler farmers, the least efﬁcient
farmers at the time, received prices 40% above parity prices. African and LSC producers received
minimal prices after the Maize Control Board (MCB) covered its export losses (Cliffe, 1981; Leys,
1959; Rukuni, 1994).

'0 By 1925, 19 farms comprising 19,000 ha belonged to black farmers (Roth, 1990).

Throughout the colonial period, commercial farmers shifted to tobacco or other high-value crops when
world market prices rose for these commodities. To make up shortfalls in domestic food production,
government used pricing policy to encourage Africans to market a greater proportion of their maize

24

Single-channel marketing system in response to settler farmer demand for price supports
and subsidies, it levied an implicit tax on African farm production.‘2 It placed the
marketing points in the settler areas, far from the reserves. NPA farmers whose land was
adjacent to settler farm areas, incurred lower transportation costs than farmers in the
reserves. Because of high transportation costs, farmers in the reserves often sold to
middlemen for prices well below those of the marketing boards (Amin, 1992).

The government intended to develop black commercial agriculture but not the
subsistence agriculture of the reserves, and its agriculture policies reﬂected this
distinction. In 1949, the government imposed a levy on maize and other commodities
sold to the Maize Control Board by African farmers. In 1951, a period of high tobacco
prices on the world market, the government decided to relieve NPA farmers of the
production levies assessed against other African farmers (Yudelman, 1964). In 1971,
during UDI, the government facilitated the formal organization of black commercial farm
interests by giving the African Farmers' Union (AF U)I3 the right to collect a levy on all
NPA production (Mufeman, 1997). In contrast, it did not give a Similar right to the
organization reprsenting smallholder growers, the National F arrners' Association of
Zimbabwe (NFAZ), until 1994.

The beneﬁts realized by black commercial farmers from colonial policies put
them in a position to take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves Shortly

before and after Independence. During the transition from UDI to majority rule, the

 

production (Yudelman, 1964).

'2 Colonial agriculture policies in general sought to reduce the competitiveness of African agriculture and
did so by raising the barriers to entry into domestic commodity markets (Leys, 1959; Stoneman and
Cliffe, 1989).

25

Muzorewa government lifted the ban on Aﬁican purchases of LSC farms and
implemented a program to assist eligible African farmers to secure farm leases or to
purchase farms. Most of those able to take advantage of these opportunities came from
the NPAS. NPA farmers owned their farms and could use them as collateral whereas

communal tenure in the CA's denied CA farmers this Opportunity (Weiner, 1989).

The Master Farmer Program

The colonial government recognized the need to maintain African agriculture to
meet the subsistence demands of the population in the reserves. To combat the rising
incidence of land degradation in the reserves, the government created a professional
farmer training program in 1926, the Master Farmer program, aimed at promoting the
adoption of "modern" farm practices. Colonial ofﬁcials believed that the adoption of
modern practices and technologies by Africans would raise yields and so reduce the land
pressures contributing to soil degradation in the reserves.

The government appointed E.D. Alvord, a former American missionary, as
director of the Master F arrner Training (MFT) program. Alvord enlisted African
demonstrators to implement the program believing Africans would only listen to their
own. Demonstrators had the task of recruiting trainees and establishing demonstration
ﬁelds in their areas. The MFT program advocated the rationalization of land-uses in the
reserves and provided instruction in rotations, manuring, clean-till, and the use of
improved seed and breeds. Those who passed received master farmer certiﬁcates giving

them the opportunity to purchase lands in the NPA'S (Phimster, 198 8a).

 

'3 Later renamed the Zimbabwe National Farmers' Union (ZNFU).

26

Demonstrably higher yields distinguished Master Farmers from other African
farmers but distrust of the government's intentions limited the success of the MF T
program. Many worried that if they raised their production the government would
increase their taxes or take their land away. Yet, African farmers did not wholly reject
the practices promoted by the MF T program. Speciﬁcally, they adopted those practices
that addressed their immediate needs. For example, the moldboard plow, a labor saving
innovation, became widely used by the end of the 19305. Africans also adopted the use

of larger-grained and higher yielding maize varieties, and began to manure at higher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2.3 Five year average production of grain' , land cultivated and herd size
in the native areas, 1900-1950
YEARS ‘000 kgs ‘000 ha Yield ‘000 head
(kg/ha) of cattleb

1900-1905 17545 240 73 74
1905-1910 22545 305 74 198
1910-1915 18818 372 51 380
1915-1920 22545 480 47 609
1920- 1925 24727 474 52 949
1925-1930 26000 528 49 1408
1930-1935 24454 619 39 1698
1935-1940 28727 645 44 1578
1940-1945 32090 769 42 1836
1945- 1950 37272 942 40 1792

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Yudelman (1964): Appendix B.
" Estimates based on bags of grain. Millet, sorghum, maize, rice, beans and groundnuts
production converted to grain equivalents. Maize accounted for about 50% of total output.

b Estimates based on recorded number of moving through dipping stations.

rates. These innovations allowed farm families to raise production and farm incomes
almost immediately, a necessity to cope with the tax burden imposed by the government
(Drinkwater, 1992). Table 2.3 Shows a leveling of grain yields from 1930 onwards

suggesting that the new practices allowed farmers to halt the decline in yields.

27

While the majority of farmers chose not to adopt the practices disseminated
through the program, those who did realized signiﬁcant innovator’s rents. From 1949-
1959, a period when African production accounted for a third of total maize sales,
analysts estimated that NPA and master farmer production made up more than three-
quarters of this ﬁgure (Mosely, 1983). Master Farmers used their wealth and farming
success to cultivate relationships with village chiefs and colonial authorities, the
authorities charged with allocating land in the reserves. Eventually, they gained access to
more and better quality lands than the majority of farmers in the reserves (Nyambara,
1997; Ranger, 1985). The most successful managed to purchase farms in the NPA'S.
From the 19503 onwards, the government required a master farmer certiﬁcate for Aﬁican

wanting to buy farms in the NPA'S.

ORGANIZING FARM INTERESTS

The colonial government solicited the participation of organized interests but at
the same time, regulated their expression by designating one organization to represent the
demands of each sector in the economy (Murray, 1970). In agriculture, the colonial
government through the Farm Licensing and Levy Acts encouraged the development of
farmer organizations to represent commercial interests by providing for them a stable and
ﬁxed funding source. It did not do likewise for smallholder farm interests and excluded

their organization from national-level policymaking.

White Commercial Farm Interests

Founded in 1904, the Rhodesian Agricultural Union (RAU) represented the

largest settler farmers. The rapid development of settler agriculture during the 19305 led

28

to a Splintering of farm interests along commodity and regional lines though the RAU
maintained its position as the pre-eminent spokesperson for commercial agriculture.
Recognizing the need to consolidate farm interests to minimize its own costs in policy
negotiations, the Rhodesian government proposed a unifying strategy to the RAU. If the
RAU agreed to merge with all other commercial farmer associations to form a single
organization, then government would pass legislation establishing “closed shop” rules for
commercial agriculture. In 1942, the RAU reorganized itself as the Rhodesian National
Farmers’ Union (RNFU) later renamed the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU). In
return, government passed the 1942 Farm Licensing and Levy Act making it mandatory
for all LSC farmers to buy farm licenses from the RNFU and in effect, to become
members of the organization. It also gave the RNFU the right to collect a levy on all
marketed commercial production of selected commodities assuring it a sustainable
funding base (Phimster, 1988a). With a reliable source of funding, the RNF U developed

its analytic capacity and the political power to challenge government in policy-making.

Black Commercial Farm Interests

The ﬁrst organization to represent Aﬁican farmers exclusively was the Bantu
National Congress (BNC) established in 1925. Originally begun by veterans of the ﬁrst
World War and progressive African farmers, the BNC eventually came to represent
farmers in the NPA'S. In 1942, it reorganized itself into the African Farmers’ Union
(AF U) in response to the creation of the RNF U. The AP U, while operating at the
periphery, was somewhat effective because of the economic importance of NPA
agricultural production (Mufema, 1997). During UDI, the government realized it had to

increase Aﬁican maize production as part of its policy of import-substitution. Within this

29

context, the government passed the 1971 Farm Licensing and Levy Act establishing
“closed shop” rules for NPA farmers, and giving the AF U the right to collect a levy on all
NPA production. After Independence, the 9,000 strong AF U renamed itself the
Zimbabwe National Farmers’ Union (ZNF U) (Herbst, 1990). The AF U used the license
and levies monies to support its lobbying activities committing its staff and resources to

its head ofﬁce in Harare.

Black Smallholder Farm Interests

Unlike the RNFU and AF U, farmers in the reserves did not formally organize on
their own, but organized by the government as an extension of the Master Farmer
Training program. In 1967, extension agents organized trainees into master farmer clubs.
In 1970, those clubs merged to form a regional association, the Victoria Provincial
Association of Master Farmer Clubs (VPAMF C). Master farmer clubs in other provinces
later formed their own associations. By the late 1970's, the provincial associations
merged to form the National Association of Master Farmer Clubs (N AMF C) (Mutimba,
1986)

The VPAMF C and later, the NAMF C, maintained close ties to the government. It
drew most of its ﬁnancial support from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and technical and
ﬁnancial assistance from the extension service. Begun as a technical organization, its
activities revolved around the Master Farmer Training Program and farmer-to-farmer
extension. Its reliance on government funds and services prevented it from publicizing
and representing its members’ demands. The extension service warned that it would lose
government support if it attempted behave like a “farrners’ union.” The NAMF C

deliberately excluded any mention of representing members’ demands in its constitution

3O

although it continued to do so covertly (Mutimba, 1990). At Independence, the NAMF C
renamed itself the National Farmers’ Association of Zimbabwe (NF AZ) and opened its
membership to women and non-master farmers.

The inability to collect a levy on smallholder production hampered the political
development of the NFAZ. Relying on donor funding and to a lesser extent, members’
dues, the NFAZ invested its resources in strengthening structures for delivering services
to members. The ZNF U, on the other, developed itself primarily as a lobbying
organization, a beneﬁt of the levies it could assess against small-scale commercial
production. Though the NFAZ had the largest constituency, it held the least political
power among the three farmer unions at Independence until the merger in 1991 to create
the ZF U (Makurnbe, 1994). NF AZ'S weakness revealed itself in its inability to inﬂuence
resettlement policy. The CF U, on the other hand, would marshal its resources and
political inﬂuence to manage the land policy process to the advantage of its members.
The desire to acquire the right to levy smallholder production inﬂuenced the NFAZ

president to agree to a merger with the ZNFU in 1991 to form the ZFU (Bratton, 1994a).

POST-INDEPENDENCE LAND POLICY

Rhodesia, under the leadership of Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front Party, made
a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Great Britain in 1965 after refusing
to accept a new constitution giving Africans more rights. Exiled African nationalist
parties, ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and ZAPU (Zimbabwe African
People’s Union), operating from Mozambique and Zambia, waged a guerrilla war against
the Ian Smith regime. The war escalated in the 19703 with the mass mobilization of the

peasantry (Lan, 1985). Both Sides agreed to a ceaseﬁre in 1979, and under the

31

chairmanship of the British, settled on a new constitution, the Lancaster House
Agreement. The constitution guaranteed whites 20 seats in the Parliament for seven
years and contained a Bill of Rights that protected the property rights of the white
minority (Stoneman and Cliffe, 1989).

In 1980, the black majority voted Robert Mugabe and his party, ZANU (PF) into
power. At Independence, the new government felt compelled to address the land
grievances of the rural majority to “neutralize a looming crisis of expectation on the part
of the land hungry population. ” '4 Land, after all, was the central issue of the Liberation
War (Moyana, 1984; Riddell, 1978). Yet, in spite of an ambitious start, the government’s
efforts at land reform slowed considerably by the mid-19805. The national economy’s
structural dependency on commercial agriculture, a legacy of the colonial period, made
ofﬁcials and donors averse to transferring too much commercial land to smallholder
farmers. At the same time, a new class of black farmers with roots in the NPAs emerged
to demand government-purchased lands and assistance for their development. Their
demands, couched within the language of economic nationalism and structural
adjustment, resonated with government and party ofﬁcials, many of whom owned LSC

farms.

Resettlement 1 980-1 990

Zimbabwe launched its ﬁrst resettlement program soon after Independence in
September 1980. Initial targets of 18,000 families to be resettled in three years soon

grew to 162,000 families to be resettled by 1985. To administer the program, the G02

 

" MPED 1981:124 as quoted in Alexander [1994].

32

created the Ministry of Land, Resettlement, and Rural Development (MLRRD) in 1980.
However, momentum for resettlement Slowed by 1985. The government dismantled the
MLRRD dividing its responsibilities between the Department of Agricultural and
Extension Services (Agritex)" and the Department of Rural Development (DERUDE).l6
At the same time, the government drastically cut the budget for farm acquisitions and the
development of resettlement schemes. By 1989, for all intents and purposes, Zimbabwe's
ﬁrst resettlement program ended. The government had resettled 52,000 families on about
3.3 million ha and exceeded the land reform efforts of Kenya and other African countries
(Bratton, 1994b). However, the Mugabe government had not changed the fundamental
structure of land ownership and agricultural production inherited from the colonial period
(Wiener, 1989). The majority of commercial farms purchased for resettlement were
located in NR’s III and IV, and large-scale commercial farmers retained control of 12
million ha or 40% of the prime farmlands.l7

The government blamed the slowdown of the resettlement program on lack of
money. Bound by the Lancaster House Agreement, Zimbabwe's ﬁrst constitution, the
government had to purchase farms on a "willing buyer/willing seller" basis and with
foreign currency. The rise in land prices beginning in 1983 with the return of whites to
Zimbabwe limited the government's opportunities to purchase more lands for
resettlement. Moreover, it lacked the money to build the necessary supportng
infrastructure on land it had already purchased. The government leased these properties

to white and black commercial farmers. Despite promises of ﬁnancial assistance from

 

’5 Agritex lies within the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement (MLARR).
'6 DERUDE lies within the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD).

33

Great Britain, the United States, and other donor nations, only Great Britain contributed
to the resettlement exercise. Drought during the late 19808 further diminished
government resources for resettlement and other development projects (Cliffe, 1981;
Roth, 1990; Stoneman and Cliffe, 1989).

Scholars identify two other motivations underlying the slow-down of the
resettlement program. First, the government recognized the reliance of the national
economy on production from the large-scale commercial farm sector. As of 1990, the
large-scale commercial farm sector employed over 225,000 workers and produced 68%
of the gross agricultural output, 82% of crop sales, 94% of marketed livestock, and 50%
of export earning (von Blanckenburg, 1992). The CFU argued that transferring lands to
peasant farmers would depress commercial production and risk the economy's health.
The CF U produced reports and policy papers to support the rationale of low productivity
and poor land husbandry ﬁrst articulated by the Rhodesian government." The
government's refusal to conﬁscate white-owned farms, as empowered by the 1985 Land
Act, illustrates its tacit acceptance of the CF U'S argument.”

A second motivation identiﬁed by scholars was self-interest. By the late 19803,
high-ranking members of the government and of ZANU (PF) had acquired large-scale

commercial farms. AS absentee landowners, many owned farms vulnerable to

 

For a full description of the resettlement program see Bratton [1990], Cliffe [1988], and Gasper [1990].

The ﬁndings of the govemment-sponsored Riddell and Chavunduka commissions appeared to support
the CFU’S characterization of smallholder production. However, both commissions acknowledged
severe land hunger in the CA's and blamed land scarcity for keeping smallholder households from
raising their incomes to a level that lets them meet their basic needs (Alexander, 1994).

The 1985 Land Act identiﬁed commercial farms heavily indebted to the Agriculture Finance
Corporation (AFC) and lands classiﬁed as under-utilized or abandoned by the Derelict Land Board as
appropriate for government expropriation.

34

government expropriation through the derelict land clause in the 1985 Land Act.
Government's refusal to acquire land in this way protected the interests of these black
large-scale commercial farm owners as well as those of white farm owners (Bratton,
1994b; Marcus, 1994).

Without the authority to collect levies on smallholder production, a beneﬁt given
to the CFU and the ZNFU, the NFAZ could not develop an effective policy voice in the
land policy arena. Moreover, its close ties to the government prevented it from
confronting the government on its administration of the resettlement program; many of
the services it provided to members were government services (Makumbe, 1994). The
statistic that over half of those resettled from 1980-1990 were squatters illustrates the
inability of the NFAZ to facilitate the acquisition of resettlement lands by its members.
Its only signiﬁcant victory in the land policy arena came with the government’s
agreement to change to emphasize farming experience and capacity rather than needs in

the settler selection process (Herbst, 1990).

Resettlement 1990-199 7

The Slow-down of the resettlement program reﬂected a fundamental shift in the
government's development policy. Throughout the 19805, donors and scholars applauded
President Mugabe's socialist approach to development. Government programs facilitated
the smallholder maize and cotton successes of the 19805 and extended health and
education services to the rural areas (Eicher, 1990). During this period, blacks in
business as well as agriculture took advantage of new economic opportunities introduced
by black majority rule. By the late 19805, the emergent black middle class and upper

class sought a change in the government's development strategy. Impatient with the Slow

35

pace of economic growth, they blamed the government's socialist programs and lobbied
for the government to use economic rather than equity objectives to guide the investment
of public resources. Their demands resonated with high-ranking Cabinet and party
members who convinced President Mugabe to apply for a World Bank loan and to agree
to implement an economic structural adjustment program in 1989 (Skalnes, 1995).

The increasingly vocal black business and commercial farm interests organized
formally into the Indigenous Business Lobby (IBL) and the Indigenous Commercial
Farmers Association (ICFA).20 Like the settler farmers before them, both organizations
argued that the scarcity of fertile farmland required land-uses that maximized its
production potential. Smallholder farmers, they argued, practiced subsistence
agriculture. Subsistence agriculture could not generate the production or the employment
opportunities that commercial agriculture could. Therefore, the nation would realize
greater beneﬁts if resettlement land went toward the development of black commercial
agriculture rather than the maintenance of a subsistence farm class. The government used
this argument in its 1990 Land Policy Statement to justify its decision emphasizing the
development of commercial agriculture through the resettlement program (Moyo, 1995).

Despite its intentions to use the resettlement program to develop black
commercial agriculture, the Mugabe government mobilized popular support for its new
land policy and the new land bill by resorting to the pre-Independence rhetoric of re-

acquiring the "lost lands." The CF U opposed the new land bill because of a provision

 

2° The ICFA renamed itself the Indigenous Commercial F arrners Union (ICFU) in 1997 after the
government formally recognized it as a legitimate spokesperson for black commercial farmers.
Government also gave black commercial farmers the freedom to afﬁliate with either the CF U or the
ICFU. Previously, all registered large-scale commercial farmers had to purchase their farm licenses
from the CFU and to effectively become members (see 1997 Farm Licensing and Levy Act).

36

that would give the government the authority to conﬁscate lands without having to
compensate the owners. The CF U argued that the new land bill would violate the
constitutional rights to property of white farmers. The IMF, World Bank, Great Britain,
the United States, and other western nations agreed with the CF U and opposed the
government. The World Bank and IMF feared that a radical land reform program would
decrease investors’ conﬁdence in the Zimbabwean economy and jeopardize the continued
implementation of ESAP (Maposa, 1995).

Responding to the CFU'S challenge, the government mobilized the black farm
lobby in support of the bill. To Show solidarity among black farm interests, the
government urged the presidents of the NFAZ and ZNF U to merge, and they did in 1991
to form the ZFU. Some scholars argued that the government co-opted the leadership of
both farmer unions by promising to give the new organization the right to levy
smallholder production. They also suggested that the merger weakened the policy voice
of CA and RA farmers. ZNF U leaders assumed half of the national leadership positions
within the ZFU including the presidency though commercial farmers made up less than
3% of the ZFU membership (Bratton, 1994a).

The demands made by the Indigenous Business Lobby's (IBL) and Indigenous
Commercial Farmers' Union (ICF U) that the government invest in the development of
black commercial agriculture fell within a broader movement for affirmative action. The
"indigenization movement" called for the government assistance to increase the
percentage of blacks in the productive sectors of the economy much as the colonial
government had done for whites. Regarding commercial farms, the IBL argued that

ownership would give blacks the collateral needed to develop other business ventures,

37

and so, was critical for their development in both non-agriculture and agriculture sectors.

Critics of the "indigenization movement" observed: "[I]ndigenization appears to
be merely a slogan to popularize government policies which are intended to replace a
white elite with a black elite. ”2' Soon after passage of the 1992 Land Act, the
Zimbabwean press revealed that government ofﬁcials were among the ﬁrst to beneﬁt
from the new resettlement program. The MLARR Minister, W. Mangwende, who had
led the movement for the new Land Act, received the ﬁrst farm acquired under the new
resettlement program though the government had originally targeted Bath Farm for the
resettlement of 18 families.22 The land scandal exposed the government to criticism from
its supporters and donors. ZANU (PF)'S own newspaper asked: "If a black elite replaced
a white elite on a LSC farm, can we say that land redistribution has taken place? ”2’ The
government claimed to have rescinded the leases to its own ofﬁcials, but in 1999, the
press revealed that the government had not done so, and the Minister of Lands, K.
Kangai, renewed those leases for a hundred years.”

Throughout this period, the ZFU did not publicly criticize the government's
resettlement program but openly supported it as a necessary mechanism for transferring
land from whites to blacks. On many issues, it adopted a view Similar to the
government's viewpoint. For example, like the government, the ZFU favored the
distribution of resettlement lands based on farming ability rather than need. It argued for

the use of economic principles to guide the selection of settlers and the development of

 

2‘ "The Land Scandal," Africa Report, January 1, 1995-
22 lbid.
23 Ibid.

24

"Chefs get lOO-year leases," the Financial Gazette, October 7, 1999.

38

resettlement schemes (ZF U, 1995). Implicitly, the ZFU's positions discriminated against
the land interests of the landless and the land-poor who lacked the assets and training
needed to enter commercial farming.

Despite its rhetoric, the government continued to address land policy as a political
policy rather than development policy. Blaming donors for their unwillingness to fund
the Phase II resettlement program and unwilling to make-up the Shortfall itself, 25 the
government acquired less than 1% of the six million hectares it claimed to need to de-
congest the communal areas. From 1990-1997, it resettled less than 2,000 families per
year, well below the targeted 50,000 families identiﬁed in its land policy statement
(Moyo, 1998). Most of the white farm owners succeeded in getting their farms de-listed.
For example, of the more than 1,500 farms identiﬁed for acquisition by the government
in 1997, only 321 remained on the list a year later; the courts ordered the others removed
for procedural and other errors. Of the remaining 321, critics complained that most were
unsuitable for resettlement based on criteria deﬁned by Agritex.“

At the Donor Conference on Land held in Harare in September 1998, the
government hoped to raise USS 2.2 billion but managed to raise less than US $1 million
for its resettlement program. Donors criticized the government's resettlement plans for
being too ambitious and lacking administrative transparency. The US, Great Britain,
and others tentatively agreed to fund land acquisitions and resettlement on the condition

that the government (1) prioritize the resettlement of CA farmers and (2) agree to pay fair

 

2’ In 1999, the Minister of Lands requested 253.6 billion to acquire and implement the resettlement

program. The government allocated only $150 million ("Land Reform De-railed!" the Insider,
February 26, 1999).

26 "Land Reform Derailed!" The Insider, February 26, 1999-

39

market value for acquired commercial farms.27

As of 1998, the G02 had not publicized a deﬁnitive land policy but released a
land policy framework (1998) broadly deﬁning the issues addressed by the new
resettlement program. Its land policy framework identiﬁes four separate policy domains:
land acquisition, settler selection, land tenure reform, and settlement support services (see
Appendix A). The farm invasions of 2000 create considerable uncertainty regarding the
implementation of the Phase II resettlement program. Though the government
announced its intentions to resettle farmers on the invaded farms according to the
program guidelines, it has not determined how it will deal with the squatters already on

the land or on farms not identiﬁed for resettlement.

SUMMARY

Government inﬂuenced the development of the large-scale commercial, small-
scale commercial, and smallholder farm sectors through land and agriculture policies.
Land policies determined the quality and quantity of land each sub-sector had access to,
and as importantly, the applicable land tenure system. Whereas settler farmers gained
freehold tenure to the most fertile lands, the black majority received marginal lands and
possessed only usufruct rights to them. Without an adequate basis for accumulating
wealth, land policies impoverished the black majority while ensuring the development of
the settler farm class. Colonial policies facilitated the limited development of black
commercial farmers to address a need for a backstop to settler food production.

Assigning only 8% of the designated lands to the small-scale commercial black sector

 

27 Ibid.

40

effectively limited the political power that black commercial farmers could acquire.

Independence in 1980 strengthened the policy voice of black farmers to the extent
that the government invited the ZNFU and the NF AZ to participate in policy-making.
However, a legacy from the colonial period was their political ineffectiveness vis-a-vis
the CF U in the land policy arena. The economic power of white large-scale commercial
farmers coupled with the analytic, ﬁnancial, and political resources available to the CFU
allowed them to control the land policy process during the 19805. Government's fear of
depressing the production of the large-scale commercial farm sector and its constrained
ﬁnances effectively protected the core of the commercial farm sector from the
resettlement program. The statistic that over half of those resettled during the 19805 were
squatters speaks to the ineffectiveness of the NFAZ in the land policy arena.

The new Phase II resettlement program and the 1992/1996 Land Acts reveal the
increasing inﬂuence of black business and commercial farm interests. The convergence
of land interests between them and high ranking members in government and ZANU (PF)
facilitated a Shift in government's approach to development and Speciﬁcally, to the
resettlement program. The new land policy favors the use of the resettlement program to
facilitate the development of black commercial agriculture. The IBL considers land
ownership to be a critical factor in the development of blacks in the agriculture and the
non-agriculture sectors.

A consequence of the contentious debate preceding the passage of the 1992 Land
Act appears to be the muting of the policy voice of smallholder farmers. To create the
appearance of solidarity for the proposed land bill, public ofﬁcials convinced the

presidents of the NFAZ and the ZNFU to merge their organizations into one organization,

41

the ZFU. In return, the government would confer upon the ZFU the right to collect a levy
on smallholder production. However, the merging of the two organizations created an
organization where black commercial farmers occupy almost half of all the senior
leadership positions, including the presidency, though they account for less then 3% of
the membership. Placing smallholder and commercial farm interests within a Single
organization creates a situation where only one group farmers will have the opportunity
to have their land interests expressed by the ZFU.

The policies described in this chapter created conditions of poverty, land scarcity,
and political disenfranchisement among the black rural majority. These conditions deﬁne
the context within which smallholder farmers operate and Signiﬁcantly contribute to the
degradation of the communal lands. Poverty and household insecurity shorten farmers'
planning horizons and create barriers to the adoption of technologies that can enhance
soil fertility but that provide beneﬁts only in the long-term. Chapter 3 discusses the
relationship between public policies, poverty, and land degradation in the smallholder

farm areas.

42

CHAPTER 3

THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF LAND DEGRADATION

T 0 understand as well as to be in a position to solve the third world ’s
environmental crisis is to appreciate the ways in which the status quo is an
outcome of political interests and struggles.”

Chapter 2 discussed the relationship between the government and selected farm
interests in the land and agriculture policy process. This chapter focuses on the
consequences of these political processes on farm practices and land degradation. It
begins with a broad examination of how key colonial and post-Independence policies
created conditions of poverty, low production, and household food insecurity; conditions
that deﬁne the communal areas (CA). It then links these conditions to changes in farm
practices and the impact of those practices on CA land resources. Chapter 3 includes a
case study of smallholder agriculture in Shamva District to illustrate the argument at the
local level. A contrast is made with the role of government policies in the conservation

of commercial land resources.

 

28 Bryant and Bailey (199725).

43

TRANSFORMING OF AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

Conservation in the Native Reserves

Until Land Apportionment in 1930, moderate population densities in the reserves
remained allowed for the continued use of farm methods that maintained soil fertility
such as shifting cultivation, leaving land to fallow, hoe-based cultivation, and inter-
cropping.29 Forced migration coupled with a 3% annual rate of population growth meant
that the population in many of the reserves exceeded the land’s carrying capacity30 during
the 19305 (Robinson, 1953). Consequently, African farmers abandoned Shifting
cultivation and leaving land to fallow causing soil fertility to decline (Cheater, 1984).
Black farmers maintained production levels by bringing marginal lands into production,
but clearing these lands exposed the sandy soils to wind and rain erosion, accelerating the
process of land degradation in the reserves.

AS the viability of African agriculture declined, the pressure to seek off-farm
wages increased to pay taxes and fees assessed by the government." The out-migration
of male household members created labor bottlenecks during critical periods of the
cropping season depressing production and ensuring that labor-intensive measures to

maintain soil fertility went undone (Mahlahla, 1980).

 

29 Authority of the Colonial Secretary. 1924. Qﬂigial Yeatlmok 9f 11]: Cglgnx 9f 59";th Endem-
Statisticsandﬁeneraunfcnnaticn. Cited in Yudelman (1964).

Carrying capacity as determined by the Ministry of Agriculture using models. The post-Independence
government used the same models to determine viable land sizes for communal land reorganization
(Alexander, 1994).

The colonial government subsidized settler agriculture using the taxes and fees (e. g., marketing and
dipping fees) assessed against African households.

30

31

44

Responding to declining yields, Aﬁican farmers adopted the moldboard plow, a
labor saving innovation, and higher yielding large-grained maize varieties; both
technologies were disseminated through the master farmer program. These two changes
in the smallholder farm system helped to halt the decline in African grain yields.32
Smallholder farmers also began to apply manure to their ﬁelds. Lacking the money to
purchase chemical fertilizers, manuring offered a cheap alternative and contributed to
maintaining yields by protecting soil fertility. Though labor-intensive, Aﬁican farmers
widely adopted manuring (Drinkwater, 1992).

The adoption of the moldboard plow and ox-traction contributed to an increase in
cattle holdings among African farmers. The cattle population grew because Aﬁican
households used cattle to cope with the risk inherent in their dryland farming systems.
From 1915 to 1950, the African herd increased ﬁve-fold surpassing the carrying capacity
for livestock in most of the reserves during the 19305 and creating problems of over-
grazing and degradation in the communal grazing lands (table 2.3) (Phimster, 1988a).

Maintaining grain yields from 1940-1970 did not relieve land pressure in the
reserves for population growth continued at 3% annually. Tax obligations and household
food needs prompted the expansion of smallholder agriculture to lands designated for
forestry or grazing. By 1950, land degradation in the reserves had progressed to the point
of severely limiting the capacity of African farmers to increase yields per hectare within
the context of available technologies. Yudelman (1964) explained the increase in
marketed African maize during the 19505 as the result of two factors. First, Africans

extended maize production to lands previously planted in other crops or left fallow.

 

’2 From 1900 to 1940, grain yields fell from 7300 kg/ha to 4400 kg/ha (table 2.3).

45

Second, Africans sold a greater percentage of their production rather than retaining it for
household consumption.

Aside from the master farmer program, the colonial government used coercive
measures to gain compliance among African farmers with land-use directives from the
Ministry of Agriculture. The 1951 Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA) imposed
compulsory de-stocking, introduced title deeds, required the rationalization of land-uses
in the reserves,33 and forced title deed holders to be full-time farmers. Ofﬁcials harshly
implemented the NLHA program assessing considerable ﬁnes or imprisoning non-
compliant farmers.

The NLHA impoverished African households in several ways. First, the
restructuring of land rights to create individual tenure made landless 150,000 families."
Second, requiring male heads of households to be full-time farmers denied African
families critical non-farm revenue sources. Third, compulsory destocking forced African
families to dispose of cattle exceeding the carrying capacity for their home areas as
calculated by agriculture ofﬁcials and decreased the African herd by a third.”
Destocking generated resistance from Aﬁican farmers for whom cattle was material
wealth and the basis of their farming system. In addition, the reduction of the African
herd meant a signiﬁcant drop in the amount of manure applied to the ﬁelds and

contributed to losses Of soil fertility in the reserves (Machingaidze, 1991).

 

3’ By 1950, the reserves had been renamed the "tribal trust lands" or TTL.

3’ Under the NLHA, families received transferable titles to economic units of land. No family could own

more than three economic units but neither could families subdivide the land so that it was smaller than
one economic unit. The NLHA estimated about 200,000 holdings in the reserves but at the time, there
were about 350,000 households (Rulcuni, 1994).

The inﬂux of cattle into the market meant African families din not realize adequate compensation and
settler farmers would beneﬁt from the low price.

35

46

The draconian measures of the NLHA to manage land-use in the reserves created
resentment among the African population. Widespread acts of passive and violent protest
by farmers in the reserves and in the urban areas compelled the government to repeal the
NLHA in 1962 (Yudelman, 1964). Protest against the NLHA fed into the Black
Nationalist Movement that later expressed itself as ZAPU (PF) and ZANU (PF).

Another signiﬁcant factor contributing to low production in the reserves was the
lack of technologies appropriate for the dryland farming systems of Aﬁican farmers. The
colonial government did not invest in research to develop appropriate conservation and
production technologies for African farmers choosing instead to disseminate technologies
developed for settler farm systems in the higher rainfall areas (Avila et al, 1989; Rukuni,
1994). It did create the Department Of Agricultural Development (DEVAG), housed
within the Ministry of lntemal Affairs, to provide extension services to the reserves, but it
did not make the necessary resources available for DEVAG to be effective. Understaffed
and under-funded, DEVAG focused its programming on the master farmer training

program (Mutimba, 1986).

Conservation in the Settler Areas

The settler farm sector also faced problems of soil erosion and land degradation
due to the mismanagement of land resources by settler farmers. The colonial
administration passed legislation in 1913 baning two particularly damaging practices:
indiscriminate logging and stream bank cultivation. Yet, settler farmers continued to use
farm practices that promoted soil erosion because many of them operated their farms with
the aim of making money quickly and then returning to South Africa. Like African

farmers, the majority of settler farmers had short planning horizons that discouraged the

47

adoption of many conservation technologies. The CF U wanted the government to
regulate land management in the settler areas. At the time, the majority of settler farmers
did not belong to the CFU and opposed any government attempt to regulate their land-
uses. The CFU lacked the political inﬂuence needed to push through such a controversial
program (Phimster, 1988a).

The government recognized that many settlers had no previous farm experience,
so it created a research and extension system to provide them with appropriate
technologies and training. In 1934, the government established a conservation
experiment station, Glenara Farm, to develop conservation technologies for settler
farmers. The Ministry of Agriculture also tested livestock and crop varieties for
environmental suitability and determined appropriate practices. In 1948, the government
established the Department of Research and Specialist Services (DRSS) to institutionalize
agriculture research and to develop technologies to intensify production. In 1950, it
created the Conservation and Extension (CONEX) department to provide extension
services to commercial farmers (Avila et a1, 1989; Tawonezvi, 1994).

In 1941, the government passed the Natural Resources Act (NRA) that
institutionalized farmer management of natural resources in the settler areas, a concept
originally proposed by the CFU in 1935. The NRA established a Natural Resources
Board (NRB) tasked with developing natural resource management policies, and divided
the settler farm areas into Intensive Conservation Areas (ICA). An elected committee of
farm owners within each ICA oversaw the implementation of natural resource
management policies and monitored compliance among ICA members. The government

empowered the ICA committees to impose severe penalties for resource mismanagement.

48

The ICA concept succeeded in instilling a strong conservation ethic among settler
farmers, and along with government subsidies and institutional support, resolved the land
degradation problem in the settler areas (Harvey, 1997).

The colonial government sought to control the development of African agriculture
to prevent it from competing with settler agriculture and to maintain a source of cheap
labor for the settler economy (Amin, 1992). Land degradation in the reserves contributed
to the achievement of both policy goals by eroding the capacity of African farmers to
produce enough to meet subsistence and non-subsistence needs. The diminished resource
endowment of the communal areas limited the positive impact of post-Independence
policies to stimulate smallholder production for the market, to improve the quality of life

in the rural areas, and to halt land degradation.

THE CONTEXT OF SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE: 1980-1997

During the ﬁrst ﬁve years of Independence, the government invested in the
productive capacity of the CA'S through increased funding for infrastructure, research,
extension, and credit. After 1985, however, government policy turned away from the
equity objectives driving public investment in the CA'S and embraced the economic
objectives promulgated by the emergent black middle— and upper-classes. The
government's ﬁrst economic structural adjustment program (ESAP) implemented in 1990
emphasized productivity increases in the high-potential areas and in the commercial
agriculture sector and paid little attention to investment in the CA's (FSR, 1991). Its
Phase II resettlement program explicitly favored the development of black commercial
farmers at the expense of the rural poor (Moyo, 1995). The following section discusses

how post-Independence marketing, technology, and economic policies reinforced and in

49

some cases, worsened conditions of poverty, household food insecurity, and low

production in the CA'S, perpetuating the colonial political economy of land degradation.

Land Resources

At Independence in 1980, about one million farm households lived in the
communal areas (CA), and 66% of them lived in low rainfall zones characterized by
periodic drought, natural regions IV and V. Zimbabwe is divided into ﬁve natural
regions (NR) based on climatic and soil conditions. NR I has the greatest productive
potential for intensive agriculture and NR V has the lowest. More than 60% of the large-

scale commercial areas occupied lands in NR'S I-III versus 28% of the CA'S (table 3.1,

 

 

 

 

 

ﬁgure 3.1).
Table 3.1 Distribution of land (‘000 ha) by natural region and farm class, 1990
Farm Class NR I NR II NR III NR IV NR V Total
Large-scale 200 3690 2410 2430 2490 1 1220
commercial areas (1 .8%) (32.9%) (2 1 .5%) (2 l .7%) (22.3%)
Communal areas 140 1270 2820 7340 4780 16350
(0.9%) (7.8%) (17.2%) 444.9%) (29.2%)
Small-scale 10 240 530 500 100 1380
commercial areas (0.7%) (17.4%) (38.4%) (36.2%) (7.2%)
Resettlement 30 590 1240 8 10 620 3290
areas (0.9%) (17.9%) (37.7%) (24.6%) (18.8%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: MLAWD (1995): 10

50

 

Figure 3.1 Agroecological Map of Zimbabwe

 

    

 

Kanba

“I

  
    
  

 
 
 

'-_§‘ Bulawa o
\,__._._..___ Y

_____.—._———

grim-Tones
' ﬂ—J—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farming Type Annual Rainfall Land Use
Specialized, > 1,000 mm “MW- Fm"
Diversiﬁed Low Temperatures) :gsggdﬂmt‘mk
750 - 1000 mm Crops
Intensive Summer Only Livestock
650 - 800
Semi-inteneive ln'mumt' m", Mansonobacco
Illd-eeaacn Dry on
450 - 650 mm
Semi-Intensive 5. A ... . . leeetock. Fodder

 

Drought, Severe

Mid-season dry '

 

 

 

pelle
< 650 mm
Extensive Low and Erratic Livestock on
Zambezi valley Natural Veld
< 600 mm

Save-Limpopo
Valley

 

 

 

 

51

Source: Gore et a1 (1992)

Population density is positively correlated to the incidence of land degradation in
the communal areas (Campbell et a1, 1989). Population densities in the CA'S exceeded
those in the LSC areas three to ﬁve times over (table 3.2). The CA's have the highest
rates of soil loss with the greatest losses being in the low rainfall areas, NR'S IV and V.
Of the 1.8 million hectares Of eroded land, 80% are located in the CA'S. According to
Whitlow (1988), by 1987 almost a third of all the communal lands had "severe" to "very

severe" problems with soil erosion versus only 1.3% of the commercial lands.

Table 3.2 Distribution of population in CA and LSC lands by natural region

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Communal Area Large-scale commercial
Natural % of Population % of Population
Region population density per population in density per
in CA km2 LSC area km2

1 1.2 57.4 11.1 20.2

11 14.6 39.1 47.2 17.4

111 22.0 30.2 16.8 6.0

IV 43.5 23.7 15.7 5.3

V 18.7 18.1 9.3 4.4

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Mehretu (1994): 57

Post-Independence policies to stimulate smallholder production did not account
for the degraded nature of many of the communal lands. The government sought to
transfer technologies developed for commercial farm systems to the communal areas. In
most cases, these technologies were inappropriate for smallholder dryland farming
systems. Consequently, the government's agrarian policies increased household food
insecurity and poverty especially in the low-potential zones, NR'S IV and V. The
government's refusal to fund the national research and extension system at a level
necessary for it to carry out research aimed at smallholder agriculture denied

smallholders technologies to address their subsistence needs in a sustainable manner.

52

Marketing Structure and Institutions

To stimulate smallholder production for the market, the government lifted many
of the production constraints imposed by colonial policy. It built marketing depots and
collection points in the rural areas, increased smallholder access to production loans,
included traditional smallholder crops as controlled crops, offered higher producer prices,
and made available research and extension services. In the ﬁrst year after Independence,
it distributed seed packs containing hybrid maize seed and chemical fertilizers among the
rural poor to jump-start production after the war (Rhorbach, 1989). Smallholder farmers
responded in ﬁve signiﬁcant ways. They;

increased the area planted to maize and cotton (table 3.3);
reduced the area planted to traditional food crops (table 3.3);
diversiﬁed into other cash crops such as tobacco and groundnuts;
increased their use of inorganic fertilizers and hybrid seed; and
used short-term production loans.

Table 3.3 Changes in CA cropping patterns: 1970-1989

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crop area Crop production
growth rate growth rate
1970-80 1980-89 1970-80 1980-89
Maize 2.0% 2.2% 5.3% 9.0%
Cotton 1.6% 25.0% -1 . 1% 26.5%
Sorghum -8.3% 3.8% -6.6% 5.0%
Pearl millet 5.8% -3.4% 4.2% 1.1%
Bullrush millet 13.0% -2.8% -2.1% -1.2%
Groundnuts -O.7% -3 .9% 19.9% -1 .3%

 

 

 

 

Source: Roth (1990): Annexl

Responding to government policies aimed speciﬁcally at increasing maize and

cotton production, smallholder farmers dramatically increased their production of these

53

crops from 1980-1988."5 Donors and scholars heralded the increases in smallholder
production as the success story of sub-Saharan Aﬁica (Eicher, 1990, 1995). However,
closer examination of the smallholder production gains from 1980-88 reveals the skewed
distribution of development beneﬁts. Farmers in the higher rainfall regions, notably the
Mashonaland provinces and parts of the Midlands, accounted for the greatest per capita
increase in maize production and sales. In areas characterized by erratic rainfall and
periodic drought during the cropping season, the Matabeleland provinces and Masvingo,
maize production remained low and farmers retained most all of their production for
home consumption (table 3.4). Though CA'S in Manicaland are located in high rainfall
areas, the extreme nature of land scarcity in the province depresses production and

increases household food insecurity (Stack, 1994).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3.4 Maize production, marketing, and retention by province
Mash Mash Mash Manica- Mid- Mat. Mat. Mas-
East Central West land lands North South vingo
Maize as % of
total production
1980-82 88.2 93.4 97.5 61.9 83.4 57.7 48.3 69.1
1983-88 87.8 95.7 98.5 72.0 87.3 61.5 35.2 58.5
Maize production
per capita (kg)
1908-82 216 299 507 219 430 71 165 305
1983-88 385 584 668 219 412 118 97 183
Maize sales as %
of production
1980-82 70.9 77.3 48.9 19.4 26.7 9.9 0.4 14.3
1983-88 54.6 71.7 68.7 28.0 23.9 3.6 0.4 21.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Stack (1994): 260

 

’6 From 1980-1986, smallholders raised maize yields by 50% compared to the period immediately
preceding Independence (Rohrbach, 1989). Smallholder seed cotton production more than doubled
from 77,022 tons in 1980 to 173,550 in 1988 (Mariga, 1994).

54

The maize technology package disseminated by the government included hybrid
maize varieties not originally meant for dryland farming systems. The yield response of
the maize hybrids depended on the availability of sufﬁcient levels of water and nitrogen
during the cropping season with yields dropping precipitously under drought or even low-
rainfall conditions (Piha, 1993). In NR'S IV and V, almost permanent drought conditions
exist, hence, farmers in these areas did not realize the same production gains as farmers
in the higher rainfall regions using the same varieties. Even during good rainfall years,
districts in NR'S IV and V reported chronic food Shortages (Sachikonye, 1992).

The widespread adoption of these hybrid maize varieties created greater
household food insecurity among smallholder families in NR'S IV and V who already
were grain-deﬁcient households (F SR, 1991). Forced to sell their maize to the Grain
Marketing Board (GMB) or to another buyer soon after the harvest when producer prices
are lowest, they later bought milled maize at much higher prices after exhausting their
supplies. The one-way ﬂow of grain37 out of the CA's and its return as a value-added
product, mealie-meal, imposed an implicit cost on these households. Grain-deﬁcient
households had to absorb transportation and large-scale milling costs reducing their
income by about 30% (Jayne et a1, 1994).

The implementation of ESAP in 1991 liberalized maize marketing but did not
increase the proﬁtability of smallholder maize production. Though producer prices rose,
prices for chemical fertilizers, seed, and other agricultural inputs as well as transportation

rose at a much higher rate leaving smallholder maize producers worse-off (MLAWD,

 

’7 The single-channel marketing system prohibited inter-district sales of maize grain thereby centralizing
maize milling in the large urban centers. Even after market liberalization in 1991, the growth of local
millers has been slow (Masuko, 1997).

55

1995; Oni, 1996). Because large-scale nrillers did not expand to the rural areas as
quickly as the government intended, smallholder maize producers did not realize the best
prices for their maize. Increasingly, they sold to middlemen or "briefcase buyers" who
paid low prices for the maize and later sold the maize to the large-scale millers in Harare
or the GMB for much higher prices (Matanda and Jeche, 1997; Rubey and Masters,l994).

Smallholders face a more favorable marketing environment for cotton because it
represents an important export crop. During the 19805, LSC farmers moved out of cotton
production and turned to higher-value crops leaving a "gap" in the market. The
government and the remaining LSC cotton growers recognized that to maintain their
share of the world market, they would have to facilitate cotton production among
smallholder farmers. Consequently, the CCGA (Commercial Cotton Growers
Association), donors, textile manufacturers, and buyers funded extension, research,
credit, and marketing for smallholder cotton producers. The statistic that smallholders
accounted for 70% of national cotton production in 1995 Speaks to the success of these
support systems.

In contrast to the maize story, liberalization of cotton markets beneﬁted
smallholder cotton producers. By 1996, four major companies, the Cotton Company of
Zimbabwe (COTCO), Triangle, Cotpro”, and Cargill-Zimbabwe competed for
smallholder cotton production, and producers realized greater credit opportunities and
prices. However, the beneﬁts of smallholder cotton production tend to be concentrated in
the higher rainfall areas and among better-off smallholder farmers. Because of stringent

market requirements, buyers only purchase cotton from registered producers. A farmer

 

38 Owned and operated by the CCGA.

56

must join a grower group to be registered, but the cotton companies only select the most
productive farmers based on their three-year production record and credit history. The
varieties distributed by the cotton companies do not perform well under drought

conditions effectively excluding farmers in NR'S IV and V.”

Technology

While the Mugabe government expanded the mandates for the national research
and extension systems to include the smallholder farm sector, there remains a lack of
appropriate varieties and conservation technologies for smallholder farming systems.
This Situation illustrates the long-term under-investment by the colonial and post-
independence governments in research for smallholder producers. Responding to the
government mandate at Independence, the Department of Research and Specialist
Services (DRSS) created a F arming Systems Research (FSR) Unit and commited 50% of
its operational ﬁrnds toward smallholder farm research. However, donors funded much
of the on-farm trials and research directed at smallholder growers (Avila et al, 1989).
Since 1982, the government has committed successively lower levels of funding for
research, and the context Of agricultural research changed for the worse.

0 Government resources committed to DRSS declined 35% in real value.

0 The proportion of total recurrent expenditure committed to salaries increased from
50%-70% and only 9% of operational funds available for actual research.

0 Most research stations and institutes within DRSS run out of operating ﬁrnds six
months before the end of the ﬁscal year (ARC, 1995).

 

’9 Interview with M Mangundu and J. Zvismou, Growers' Services, COTCO Tafuna Depot, November 30,

57

Fearing DRSS would no longer address their production needs, commercial farmers
through the CFU chose to develop their own research and extension system soon after
Independence. The Agricultural Research Trust (ART) Farm serves as the center for on-
farm trials and varietal testing. The withdrawal of CF U ﬁnancial support exacerbated the
ﬁnancial crisis within DRSS.

Despite the degraded nature of many of the communal lands, yields per hectare
still fell below the productive potential of the CA'S. Technologies to improve the
management and performance of existing crops and new crops suitable to the arid
environment Of the CA'S could raise smallholder production helping them to meet their
needs (ARC, 1995; Avila et al, 1989). In the absence of a coordinated national research
effort, NGO's have stepped in to facilitate farmer-to-farmer research on moisture and soil
conservation technologies."0 However, their efforts are local and not coordinated and
therefore, cannot properly address the problems of low productivity and household food
insecurity prevalent among smallholders. The lack of appropriate on-the-shelf
technologies perpetuates the condition of low production in the communal areas.

The development and transfer of cotton technologies for smallholder farmers has
occurred within a different context than maize technology development. The CCGA
established the Cotton Training Institute (CTI) to provide three-week courses on cotton
production and Integrated Pest Management (1PM) courses to smallholder farmers. The
CTI subsidizes smallholder training courses and works closely with Agritex and the

Cotton Research Institute (CR1) to develop and test cotton varieties appropriate for

 

1995.
4° See for example HIvos [1988], ITDG [1994].

58

smallholder conditions (Mariga, 1994). This system is enhanced by the fact that the CR]
and CTI are located on adjacent farms. However, the CRI has not escaped the funding
problems besetting the rest of the national agricultural research system; donor funding
has not prevented the attrition of experienced breeders nor maintained off-farm trials in
the CA's (ARC, 1995).

Though CRI breeders consider smallholder production conditions, it is not the
main criterion driving the breeding program. Breeders develop cotton varieties ﬁrst to
meet the demands of the world cotton market as deﬁned by the cotton companies.
Consequently, the variety disseminated to smallholder farmers is not necessarily the most
appropriate. For example, R502, the cotton variety most widely disseminated by the
cotton companies in 1995, did not perform well under the arid conditions and was prone
to aphid infestation. Though smallholders preferred R501 because of its drought
tolerance, the cotton companies decided to replace it with R502, a variety that yields a
longer staple and better thread quality (Arnaiz et al., 1995).

Intensifying smallhoders maize and cotton production, an objective of
government policies, promotes the use of practices and technologies inappropriate for
agroecological conditions in many of the CA'S. Consequenlty, intensiﬁcation often
results in the loss of soil fertility and structure. Smallholders require technologies to
replace soil nutrients beyond simply applying chemical fertilizers. The government's
unwillingness to properly support national agriculture research efforts jeopardizes

whatever production gains smallholder farmers have realized Since 1980 (ARC, 1995).

S9

Conservation

The post-Independence government responded to land degradation in the CA'S in
much the same way as the colonial government by imposing a system of land-use it
considered necessary to bring about sustainable production in the CA'S. The
government's decision to de-emphasize the resettlement program coincided with its
decision to channel resources to increasing the productivity of the communal lands.
"Communal Land Reorganization" comprises programs of soil conservation, land-
rationalization, and centralization. Like the colonial government, the Mugabe
government chose to maintain the prime farm lands in commercial production with black
commercial farmers as the main beneﬁciaries.

Modeled after the 1951 NLHA, communal land reorganization"l sought to
rationalize land-use by demarcating arable and grazing areas, and relocating families to
centralized villages. It also imposed destocking, forced the construction of conservation
infrastructure, and established a system of title deeds. Ofﬁcials supporting communal
land reorganization commented that the NLHA was not wrong in its content but in its
implementation. Acts of passive resistance by CA farmers and constrained government
ﬁnancing limited the implementation of this program (Alexander, 1994).

The Mugabe government also addressed the land degradation problem by
delegating the responsibility for natural resource management to local government.
However, it did not provide the level of funding necessary for local governments to

manage effectively their natural resources. The Rural District Councils (RDC) developed

 

4’ The Communal Lands Act of 1982 and its 1985 amendment empower the government to regulate land-
uses in the communal and resettlement areas and enables communal land reorganization.

60

land-use and zoning maps but lacked the resources to implement their plans (Masuko,
1993, 1995). Government departments tasked with natural resource management faced
similar ﬁnancial constraints."2

The amalgamation of local government structures for white areas (rural councils)
and black areas (district councils) to create a Single structure for local government, the
RDC, weakened the capacity of the ICA'S to manage land-uses in the commercial areas."3
The natural resources sub-committee within the RDC is tasked with developing and
implementing local resource management policies, and for providing support to the
ICA'S. The ﬁnancial problems faced by the RDC trickles down to its sub-committees.
The lack of funding available to the ICA'S negatively affects their initiative and ability to
manage land resources. At a meeting convened by the CFU to discuss the newly formed

RDC's, the chairman for the natural resources sub-committee of Gutu RDC commented:

Although no accurate information is available on the present number of
functional sub-committees nor their operational effectiveness, the general
opinions expressed at a recent meeting of the Environmental Affairs Committee
were of declining interest and effort by the old ICA ’5‘, while in the small-scale
sector, I doubt if any new sub-committees have been established.

(Keith Harvey, CFU meeting on RDC'S, February 1997)

To summarize, marketing policies to stimulate smallholder marketed production
without complementary technology and conservation policies have had the unintended
consequences of greater household food insecurity and poverty among smallholder

families especially in the low rainfall areas. From 1980-1994, the number of people

 

’2 Agritex has primary responsibility for ensuring compliance with soil conservation regulations, natural

resource ofﬁcers for the NRB oversee compliance with other environmental regulations, and forestry
ofﬁcials have oversight responsibility for forest resources.

43 The 1988 Rural District Council Act amalgamated the two structures of local government, but the two

61

requesting government food aid rose from 3.5 million to over 14 million.“ ESAP
contributed further to the impoverishment of smallholder families by raising the cost of
food staples and farm inputs. From 1991-1994, the ﬁrst ﬁve years of the ESAP program,
the cost of a rural Shopping basket rose by almost 300%."5

Poverty contributes to environmental degradation because rural households adopt
strategies to meet their immediate needs but often result in the long-term degradation of
their lands (FSR, 1994; Gore et a1, 1992). Non-farm activities like gold panning degrade
stream-banks and grazing areas. The costs of land degradation go beyond the CA's. For
example, where commercial and communal areas lie adjacent to each other, gold panning
contributes to the siltation of dams downstream thereby compromising the capacity of

large-scale commercial farmers to practice irrigated agriculture.

PUBLIC POLICIES AND LAND-USE IN SHAMVA DISTRICT

Shamva District lies in NR'S II and HI, and its smallholder producers have
beneﬁtted from the government's marketing and agricultural policies (ﬁgure 3.2).
Shamva's smallholder producers rank among the most productive in Zimbabwe.
Nevertheless, a rapidly growing population on land with ﬁxed boundaries means that
they face increasing land scarcity, poverty, household insecurity, and consequently, land
degradation. In the RA'S, land scarcity has only recently become an issue but the
incidence of land degradation is on the rise. The implementation of ESAP impoverishes

Shamva's farmers because of reduced public investments in institutions supporting

 

did not actually merge until 1993.
‘4 MLAWD, 1995: 105.

62

smallholder agriculture (e.g., Agritex, AFC) and steep increases in the prices of
agricultural inputs and basic foodstuffs. Consequently, Shamva's farmers have adopted
practices to meet their immediate needs but also degrade their lands.

The following section describes the context of smallholder agriculture in Shamva
District and discusses the impact of ESAP on the farm and non-farm practices of
smallholder farmers. Shamva District is unique in that communal, resettlement, and
large-scale commercial farm areas lie adjacent to each other. The data used in the

discussion come from a survey of 468 smallholder households in Shamva District.

Farming Systems

The LSC area occupies the southern areas of the district whereas the communal
lands lie in the center and to the north, areas with lower productive potential. The
resettlement areas occupy land in the north-central part of the district that formerly were
LSC cattle ranches. Soils in the LSC area are moderately shallow to moderately deep
silty loams over reddish-brown to yellowish-brown clay. The rich soils and moderate
temperatures found in the south make possible the tree savanna system that dominates the
area. In the RA'S and CA'S, soils are a mix of moderately deep to deep coarse-grained
sands over loamy sands and sandy loams over sandy clays (Savanhu, 1997).

Smallholders in the CA's and RA'S have dryland farming systems reliant on ox-

traction for tillage. In Shamva, the average parcel size in the CA'S is two hectares per

 

4’ Ibid.

63

Figure 3.2 Agroecological Map of Shamva District

      

  

      
   
   

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LARGE-SCALE
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64

family and in the RA's, four hectares. Maize represents the major food crop and cotton
the major cash crop in the smallholder farming system. About 98% of the respondents
grew maize, and 50% of the CA respondents and 71% of the RA respondents grew cotton
(table 3.5, 3.6). Minor crops include groundnuts, sorghum, and burley tobacco. Despite
an effort by Agritex and the ZF U to promote horticulture production, it remains limited to
garden plots maintained by women for food and supplemental income. Principe
Irrigation Scheme represents the exception. The sixty scheme farmers have access to one

hectare each of irrigated land and grow vegetables for sale locally and in Harare's central

 

 

 

 

 

market.
Table 3.5 Percent of CA and RA farmers growing maize and cotton in 1995
Grew Maize Grew Cotton
Yes No Yes NO
Madziwa CA 98.6% 1.4% 57.4% 42.6%
(n=288)
Bushu CA 98.7% 1.3% 41.0% 59.0%
(n=77)
Mupfurudzi RA 96.2% 3.8% 70.9% 29.1%
(n=76)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3.6 Mean maize and cotton area (ha) 1995

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farming Area Maize Cotton
Madziwa CA 1.2 0.5
(n=288)

Bushu CA 1.1 0.3
(n=77)
Mupfurudzi RA 2.3 1. l
(n=76)

 

Access to lands with good soils and moderate rainfall allowed Shamva's

smallholder producers to realize higher average yields than the national average (table

65

3.7). In the 19905, Zimbabwe experienced droughts in 1991/92 and 1994/95. Table 3.7
shows the effect of the droughts on maize and cotton yields. To make-up shortfalls in
production and income, smallholders in Shamva and elsewhere sold their cattle (Kinsey
et al., 1998). The Agritex Area District Ofﬁcer for Shamva District estimated a loss of a
third of the smallholder herd from 1990-1995.“ More than a third of the respondents
owned no cattle (table 3.8). Smallholders, however, did not sell their farm equipment
during the drought. The relatively high rate of farm asset ownership among smallholders

speaks to their productive capacity (table 3.9).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3.7 A comparison of maize and cotton yields between
Shamva's smallholders and the national average
Madziwa Mupfurudzi National
CA RA Average—

Maize
l994-95"‘ 750.0 N/a 1213
1993-94 2100.0 2240 1 124
1992-93 1750.0 2222 1090
1991-92* 3.3 1815 158
1990-91 2275.0 0 1101

Cotton
1994-95“ 750.0 N/a 672
1993-94 1000.0 678.6 612
1992-93 1000.0 1 128.1 676
1991-92* 116.5 791.7 195
1990-91 950.0 1662.5 700

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Crop forecasting ﬁgures, Agritex provincial ofﬁce, Bindura.
* Drought years

 

 

 

 

Table 3.8 Cattle holdings 1995
Own no cattle Mean herd size

Madizwa CA 34.9% 4.8
(n=292)

Bushu CA 38.5% 4.5
(n=79)

Mupfurudzi RA 15.2% 7.6
(n=77)

 

 

 

 

 

 

’6 Interview with Mr. Matare, Agritex District Ofﬁcer, Shamva Town, November 10, 1995.

66

Table 3.9 Farm asset ownership

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plow Scotch cart Cultivator

Yes No Yes No Yes No

Madziwa CA 73.4% 26.6% 41.6% 58.4% 45.4% 54.6%
(n=288)

BushuCA 70.5% 29.5% 33.3% 66.7% 42.3% 57.7%
(n=77L

MupfurudziRA 94.9% 5.1% 59.5% 40.5% 54.4% 45.6%
in=76)

 

ESAP, Marketing and Credit

Market liberalization did not change the pattern of maize marketing among
Shamva's smallholder producers. In 1995, over 90% of smallholder producers sold their
maize to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the former government parastatal because
of the lack of other buyers, principally large-scale millers, in the local markets (Masuko,
1997). In light of high transportation costs, a consequence of ESAP, some smallholders
chose to sell "briefcase buyers" rather than transport their crops to the GMB depot
(Matanda and J eche, 1997). Some ZFU members grouped together to transport their
maize to the GMB depot and realize some economies-of-scale (Amaiz, 1997).

The majority of smallholder cotton producers continued to market their cotton to
the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (COTCO), the former marketing parastatal. Until
1996, COTCO was the only cotton company to operate a depot in Shamva, but that year,
it moved its operations to Bindura Town, and Cargill-Zimbabwe began operations at the
old COTCO depot. Aside from the cotton companies, "briefcase buyers" including some
LSC farmers in the district, bought cotton from RA and CA farmers who could not afford
to transport it to either the Cargill or COTCO depot. COTCO did attempt to lower

transportation costs for its farmers by sending trucks out to the CA's and RA‘s to collect

67

the cotton. Because COTCO organizes its farmers into farmer groups, they were more
likely than maize producers to organize group transport (Amaiz, 1997).

The droughts of 1991/92 and 1994/95 prevented a number of smallholder
producers from repaying loans to COTCO and the Agricultural Finance Corporation
(AFC). A high default rate among smallholders in the district left many ineligible for
production loans from the AFC or COTCO.“7 Moreover, the retraction of government
subsidies, an ESAP requirement, leﬁ the AFC with less money to use as loans for the
smallholder sector, thus, even eligible smallholders did not receive production loans in
1995.48 Lack of money prevented more than half of the respondents from purchasing
agricultural inputs in 1995/96 (Matanda and Jeche, 1997). A strategy adopted by
smallholders to cope with cash shortages was to contract with LSC farmers to exchange

labor in-kind for fertilizer and seed.“9

Land Scarcity

In 1992, Shamva District had a population of 93,938 people spread out across an
area of 2666.2 kmz. Madziwa and Bushu CA's have the highest population density, 47.9
persons/krnz,so and the LSC farm areas have the lowest. population density at 13

persons/kmz. The population in the CA's is a result of a moderate fertility rateSI and a

 

47

The repayment rates for 1994-95, a drought year, were less than 50% for AFC loans and 66% for
COTCO input loans. Interviews with M. Marowa, AFC loan officer Bushu, November 29, 1995 and M.
Mangundu and J. Zvismou, Growers' Services, COTCO Tafuna Depot, November 30, 1995.

‘8 Interview with Mr. Muposhi, AFC Loan Ofﬁcer, Bindura Ofﬁce, November 11, 1995.

‘9 Interview with Mr. G. French, December 6, 1995 and Mrs. Jones, District Administrator, June 27, 1995.

5° Population density for the communal areas is greater than that reported in the 1992 census because this

statistic did not include the 706.2 km 2 occupied by the Umfurudzi Safari Area considered a part of
Shamva District.

5' The average household size is 4.5 persons (Wekwete, 1997).

68

high immigration rate. The RA's which were established in the early 19805 have a
population density of 22.9 persons/kmz, less than half of that in the CA's (CSO, 1993).
There exists a need for land among Shamva's smallholders. The resettlement list
kept at the Rural District Council ofﬁces contains over 3,000 families. When asked if
their land was adequate to meet their families needs, almost half of the respondents
reported no. Land scarcity appears to be a greater problem in Madziwa CA than in
Bushu CA or Mupfurudzi RA (table 3.10). In the CA's, the average landholding per
family is two hectares, a ﬁgure below the average of 3.28 hectares determined by Sithole
and Attwood (1990) in their multi-district survey of CA farmers. In the RA's, the average
crop holding was four hectares, a ﬁgure that suggests increasing land scarcity.
Originally, settlers received ﬁve hectares of arable land from the government (Wekwete,

1 997).

Table 3.10 Is your land adequate to meet your family‘s household needs?

 

 

 

 

Madziwa CA Bushu CA Mupfurudzi RA
(n=29l) (n=94) (n=79)
Yes 49.5% 61.7% 63.3%
No 50.5% 38.3% 36.7%

 

 

 

 

 

A consequence of land scarcity is the intensiﬁcation of agricultural production.
Agritex recommends leaving at least 40% of arable land fallow from year-to-year. On
average, RA and CA respondents left about 22% of their land fallow (table 3.11). By
comparison, a survey of LSC farmers in Shamva District revealed that on average 43%

of their land is left as grassland or fallow land.”

 

52 IDS/Ford survey of 19 LSC farmers in Shamva District.

69

Table 3.11 Mean percent of land left fallow 1995

 

Farmig Area

% land left fallow

 

Madziwa CA
(n=292)

22%

 

Bushu CA
(n=79)

23%

 

Mupfurudzi RA
(n=78)

 

 

22%

 

 

Poor farmers unsure of their survival in agriculture from one year to the next tend

to have short-planning horizons. They tend not to adopt most conservation technologies;

these technologies yield beneﬁts only after ﬁve years, a planning horizon of little

relevance to their immediate needs (Woomer and Swiﬁ, 1994). Among the respondents,

59% reported using contour ridging53 and 17% reported manuring. Less than 10% of the

respondents used other conservation technologies like tied ridging, agroforestry, or

composting. By comparison, a survey of 19 LSC farmers in Shamva District’4 revealed

that 37% manured and 89% had contour ridges on their farm. In addition, almost half

used tied ridging, a ﬁfth practiced agroforestry, and 63% practiced no-till. The obvious

difference between Shamva's smallholders and LSC farmers is the size of their

landholdings. The average farm size among the LSC farm respondents was 925 hectares.

Land Degradation

To increase land access, smallholders encroached upon communal grazing areas

and high-risk areas. Savanhu (1997) found that farmers in Madziwa CA had cultivated

lands on the foothills and foot slopes, areas reserved for grazing lands. A comparison of

 

53 Contour ridging is the construction of dykes across the slope of the land to prevent soil erosion.

5‘ The respondent pool capture almost 50% of the LSC population of Shamva District where there are 39

70

Landstat photographs from before Independence and 1986-88 shows extensive
deforestation in Madziwa CA with most of the savannna woodland turned into open
grasslands. In one ward in Madziwa CA, Savanhu estimates less than 5% of the area
retains its original vegetative cover. Forest and vegetative cover are greater in the RA's,
but Savanhu found evidence of ﬁelds encroaching on the foot slopes and foothills.
Throughout the smallholder areas, Savanhu found open cultivation to be the prevalent
land-use.

The survey respondents noted the increasing incidence of land degradation in
their areas. About 25% of the CA respondents found their land to be of very good or
good quality, and a third thought their cropland to be of poor quality. By comparison,
75% of the RA respondents found their land to be of very good or good quality (table

3.12).

Table 3.12 Rank quality of croplands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madziwa Bushu Mupfuruzi RA
(n=292) (n=80) (n=72
Very good 4.5% 2.5% 26.6%
Good 25.0% 22.5% 46.8%
Satisfactory 37.7% 45.0% 16.5%
Damaged 21 .9% 25 .0% 8.9%
Not ﬁt for agriculture 11.0% 5.0% 1.3%

 

 

 

 

Overgrazing and encroachment has resulted in some degree of land degradation in
the grazing areas. Savanhu (ibid) believes gully and hill erosion in foot slope and foothill

regions is probably due to overgrazing. A third of the CA respondents versus 11% of RA

respndents found their grazing lands to be of poor quality (table 3.13).

 

registered LSC farmers.

71

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3.13 Rank quality of communal grazing land

Madziwa Bushu Mupfuruzi/Sanye
(n=274) (n=76) (n=79)

Very good 3.3% 3.9% 30.4%

Good 20.4% 30.3% 43.0%

Satisfactory 32.8% 39.5% 15.2%

Damaged 25.2% 19.7% 3.8%

Not ﬁt for grazing 18.2% 6.6% 7.6%

 

 

 

 

 

The more degraded nature of the communal lands relative to the resettlement

lands makes their production more vulnerable to drought. Soil erosion and loss of soil

structure decreases the buffering capacity of the soil. In 1994/95, 75% of Bushu

respondents and 54% of Madziwa respondents lost their entire maize crop versus only

34.2% of the RA respondents (table 3.14). Consequently, 79% of the respondents used

government food aid through the grain loan scheme in 1995/96.

 

 

 

Table 3.14 1994-1995 maize production
Madziwa Bushu Mupfurudzi
(n=292) (n=79) Qr=77)
Realized no production 54.3% 74.5% 34.2%
Realized somgroduction 45.7% 25.5% 65.8%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Without adequate assistance from the government or access to production credit,
Shamva's smallholder producers had to ﬁnd other ways to raise the money to purchase
seed and chemical fertilizers aﬁer the 1994/95 drought. They sold their cattle, sought off-

farm employment, and carried out non-farm income generating activities, principally gold

panning (Kinsey et al, 1998).

Next to farming, gold panning has become the farmers’ most important source of

income. Entire families go up to the mountains to pan during the winter.

(M. Maropa, Agritex agent Mupfurudzi RA, November 17, 1995)

72

 

This year, we have no money to buy fertilizers for our maize crop. The AFC will
not give out loans because we defaulted last year. T 0 get money for fertilizers
and seed and food, families are turning to gold panning in the river nearby.
Families have formed syndicates where the men dig and the women and children
transport the dirt to the river where they process it.

(Councilor and community workers, Gono Ward, Bushu CA, November 15, 1995)

Gold panning is an environmentally damaging process. Those who pan for gold
go to government lands, grazing areas, and in rare cases, LSC farms where they dig deep
holes and transport the dirt to water sources like rivers to process. Shamva's RDC
considers gold panning to be the major environmental problem in their district.
According to G. French, the chairperson for the Natural Resources sub-committee of the
RDC, "Gold panning is the major cause of environmental problems in our district. Gold
panners destroy river banks causing major problems with siltation." Increased siltation
of waterways reduces the water capacity of dams downstream in the LSC farm areas.

The RDC attempted to regulate gold panning by declaring certain gold panning
areas protected zones. Yet, it lacked the human and ﬁnancial resources to evict the
illegal miners from the protected zones and to enforce conservation and natural resource
laws. It approached the Ministry of Mining Affairs and NGO's for ﬁnancial assistance
but was unsuccessful.55

The Shamva case study illustrates the relationship between public policies, land
practices, and land degradation. The CA's have the highest population density and
smallest average landholdings in the district, and consequently, its lands were degraded
more so than lands in the RA or LSC area. However, within the RA's, the processes of

land fragmentation and intensiﬁcation of agriculture was evident and so too the

 

’5 Interview with 0. French, Chair RDC Natural Resources sub-committee, December 6, 1995.

73

consequences (Elliot, 1996). The post-Independence government's incomplete
implementation of the ﬁrst resettlement program coupled with its retraction from
agricultural marketing, research, and credit, contributed to the increase of poverty and
household food insecurity among Shamva’s smallholder families during the 19903.
Reliant on government grants, the RDC lacked the funds to regulate environmentally

damaging land practices.

SUMMARY

Public policies deﬁne the rights of individuals to natural resources, and it is this
structrure of rights that mitigates the impact of environmental change, like land
degradation, by allocating the beneﬁts and costs among societal groups (Bryant and
Bailey, 1997). The settler minority beneﬁted from land degradation in the reserves; land
degradation compromised the capacity of Aﬁican farmers to produce for the market. In
the post-Independence period, white LSC farmers and now blacks interested in acquiring
commercial farms beneﬁt from land degradation in the CA's and RA's. Low production
among smallholders reinforces the CFU'S and the Indigenous Commercial Farmers'
Union (ICFU) contention that if given commercial land smallholders could not attain the
production levels of commercial farmers (ICF U, 1999). Hence, commercial lands should
remain in commercial production, and rights to the land ought to remain with white LSC
farmers or given to emergent black commercial farmers. In the colonial and post-
Indepedence period, the rural majority bore the costs of land degradation through
impoverishment and household food insecurity.

To break the cycle of poverty, low production, and land degradation, smallholder

producers must develop an effective policy voice to gain greater access to land and as

74

importantly, to win higher levels of support for institutions that support smallholder
agriculture (Bratton, 1988; Merrill-Sands and Collion, 1994). The regulated structure of
organized interests maintained by the government requires smallholder farmers to use
either the ZF U or ZANU (PF) to participate in the policy process. For farmers using the
ZFU, they must ﬁrst develop a policy voice within the Union to compete with
commercial and other farm interests also represented by the ZFU. The following chapter
presents a conceptual approach to understand the structure of political opportunities faced
by smallholder members within the ZF U. It also discusses the incentives or disincentives

for mobilization presented by the policy type and nature of the "good" affected.

75

CHAPTER 4

SMALLHOLDER MOBILIZATION FOR LAND WITHIN FARMER
ORGANIZATIONS: A CONCEPTURAL APPROACH

As discussed earlier, to protect the rights of settler farmers, the colonial
government used the Land Apportionment Act of 1931 to grant the best lands to settler
farmers and to remove blacks to lands with limited productive potential in drought-prone
areas. Though the post-Independence government recognized the two black farmer
unions, the NFAZ and the ZNFU, these Unions did not succeed in fundamentally
changing the distribution of land rights inherited from the colonial period. Limiting a
rapidly growing agrarian population to a ﬁxed amount of land without the beneﬁt of
appropriate technologies created the conditions contributing to land degradation in the
communal areas56 (CA).

The scarcity of farmland capable of sustaining intensive agriculture creates
incentives for white and black farmers to gain or maintain access to these lands through
the policy process. A strong white farmers' union, the CFU, backed by the World Bank
and IMF and a government unwilling to risk economic instability worked for several

years to maintain the status quo. More recently, the growing inﬂuence of opposition

 

’6 See chapter three.

76

parties and donor demands that the Phase II resettlement program be oriented to beneﬁt
the rural poor has strengthened the ZFU's political voice in the land policy arena.

The government nevertheless maintains a highly regulated structure of organized
interests and limits participation in policy debates to organizations that it recognizes as
legitimate representatives of societal interests. The rules of participation require
smallholder farmers to articulate their demands through the ZFU to have a voice in the
national debate on land. However, the inclusion of commercial farmers as ZFU
members, even though they represent a minority, creates a conﬂict of land interests
between them and farmers from the resettlement areas (RA) and CA's . In this context, it
cannot be assumed that the ZF U represents the land interests of its smallholder or poorer
members raising fundamental questions about the role of poor farmers in shaping land
and agricultural policy, and in addressing the problems of land degradation in the
smallholder farming areas

This chapter outlines an approach for investigating issues of smallholder
mobilization and representation within the context of organizational policy-making. This
approach combines concepts developed from economic and political studies of
organizations speciﬁcally dealing with collective action, policy arenas and economic
goods, and political opportunity structures. The chapter concludes with several speciﬁc

questions that will be examined in Chapters 5 and 6.

FARMER ORGANIZATIONS AND THE POLICY PROCESS

Collective Action

Rational choice theorists assume that individuals act and make decisions in a

consciously self-interested and economically rational manner. Individuals calculate the

77

perceived costs and beneﬁts associated with alternative courses of action and choose that
course which maximizes their utility. Applying this assumption to group behavior,
Mancur Olson (1965) convincingly argued that large or “latent” groups of self-interested
individuals will not come together to achieve a common or group interest. For individual
members, the level of beneﬁts arising from group action are too small and the costs of
ensuring that others contribute are too great. In small or “privilege” group situations on
the other hand, the beneﬁts per individual rise as policing costs decline thereby making
collective action more likely.

Olson observes that some latent groups have organized formally, but individuals
join these groups to access services and other beneﬁts rather than to lobby for common
interests. These organizations, according to Olson, use selective or private beneﬁts to
attract and maintain their membership. Consequently, lobbying activities are a "by-
product" of their economic activities. Olson points out that often organizations begin by
providing services and goods and only later, enter into political activities. Latent groups
may also come together if their representative organizations have the authority or
capacity to coerce individuals to join like the use of "closed shop" rules in the United
States and Europe.

The American Farm Bureau (AFB) illustrates many features of an organized
latent group (ibid: 148-159). Access to extension services, information, and technologies
were critical in attracting and maintaining membership. Although the AFB began as a
service organization to facilitate the dissemination of farm technologies, it eventually
developed a lobbying capacity at the national level. An advantage enjoyed by the AFB

was government ﬁnancial support through the 1914 Smith-Lever Act and the presence of

78

a farmer-oriented agriculture research and extension system that had "on-the-shelf"
technologies ready for dissemination. Few if any of these conditions exist for
smallholder farmers in the developing nations thus raising the question, what incentives
can compel them to join in a collective action?

Bates (1981) applied key assumptions of rational choice theory and Olson’s
concepts to an examination of why policy makers in sub-Saharan Africa have tended to
favor policies that are not in the direct interests of their country's smallholder farmers.
Bates argues that where governments have the latitude to choose between interests, those
with the greatest access to policymakers, like large farmers, often succeed in promoting
policies in their favor. Following Olson, Bates notes that the size distribution of
production affects the incentives and capacity of farmers to organize in defense of their
interests. Large-scale farmers and farmers of specialty crops (as “privilege groups”) can
more easily organize to inﬂuence government policy because of their limited numbers.
On the other hand, the geographic dispersion, limited access to communication
infrastructure, lack of ﬁnances, and disparity of interests all conspire against poor farmers
organizing themselves to act collectively. Bates concludes that because of their inability
to organize, poor farmers (as “latent groups”) have not effectively lobbied for agricultural
policies. Subsequently, agriculture policies do not promote the development of

smallholder agriculture.”

 

57 As agriculture develops, the size of the farm sector decreases, a consequence of greater production

efﬁciencies and the inelastic consumption function for food (Cochrane, 1979; Ellis, 1989). Production
efﬁciencies are gained through the adoption of more-capital intensive and specialized technologies.
Farmers within each specialized sub-sector lobby for their own policies. The relatively small size of
the potential group of beneﬁciaries guarantees a large payoff for each member (Bonnen, 1992). As
farmers specialize, they also make asset-speciﬁc investments, like the purchase of farm equipment
intended for a speciﬁc use. The economic imperative to protect the value of these investments provides
strong incentives to lobby for policies that maintain or enhance the proﬁtability of their production

79

Bates stimulated development scholars to identify the conditions for the
formation and development of farmer organizations58 (Hirshmann, 1984; Korten, 1984).
Second, it encouraged researchers to take a closer look at farmers organizations (F 0’s) in
the policy process and to understand under what conditions that they have succeeded
(Schmid and Soroko, 1997). To this end, research considered factors such as policy type
(Bratton and Bingen, 1994; Bratton, 1987; Skalnes, 1995), organizational structure and
services (Amaiz et al., 1995; Carroll, 1992; Makumbe, 1994), political regime (Herbst,
1990; Bingen, 1994, 1996b; Bray, 1991), relations with external actors (Farrington and
Bebbington, 1994; Wellard and Copestake, 1994; Ndiame, 1994), and culture/history
(Anderson, 1994; Bebbington et al., 1991; Bunker, 1987).

Many of the studies focused on state-societal relations and assumed that members
shared similar interests. Responding to Bates, scholars reasoned that if smallholder
farmers organized, then they would succeed in gaining favorable policies (see Burgess
1992, 1997). Farmer organizations were conceptualized as an apolitical entity or black
box used by members to articulate their demands to policymakers.

Skalnes' (1989) study of the Commercial Farmers’ Union in Zimbabwe found that
even among commercial farmers (a “privilege group”) members' interests differed and
often conﬂicted. Similarly with smallholder farmers, studies of peasant differentiation
document the divergence of interests among the rural poor as their agriculture develops

(Amin, 1992; Cousins et al., 1992). Accepting that the interests of smallholder farmers

 

systems (Cochrane, 1979; Williamson, 1985). In developing nations, commercial farmers lobby for
higher prices because size and efﬁciency differentials mean that they capture most of the beneﬁts
(Bratton, 1987; Bates, 1988).

See also the Series on Rural Local Government, Rural Development Committee, Cornell University,
Ithaca, NY.

58

80

do differ challenges the belief that their organizations can represent all of their interests
equitably. How and under what conditions farmer organizations mobilize becomes an
important question if we are interested in how a farmer organization might promote
smallholder development. We cannot, as Bratton (1994a) observed, assume that peasant
organizations are democratic and that smallholders’ interests will prevail. In fact, as
Michels’ (1918) “iron law of Oligarchy” suggests, organizational leaders often use their

position for their own self gain.

Incentives

Olson (1965) argued that the high exclusion costs of public policies create
disincentives for their provision especially within latent groups. To overcome the
disincentives, organizations must provide members with selective or private beneﬁts.
What incentives can be used to compel members to join in a collective action within their
organization? Prevailing at the organizational level does not mean that the organization
will succeed in winning the policy in the national policy arena nor will the costs of
excluding those who did not contribute diminish. The tenuous relationship between
contributing to the provision of a policy and actually obtaining the desired policy
weakens incentives for collective action.

Rational choice scholars have begun to identify the role of psychological
variables in an individual's choice to join in a collective action (Ostrom, 1998). Schmid
(1987: 199) notes that "people have various capacities for trust and opportunism," and an
individual's personality must also be considered. Altruism changes the value of beneﬁts

and costs associated with a collective action.

81

Anthropologists have long argued that individual behavior cannot be divorced
from the cultural, social, and economic circumstances of the individual. Regarding
smallholder farmers, anthropologists characterize their society as constituting a "moral
economy" where group cultural values and norms over-ride individual objectives. The
"moral economy" perspective attributes a distinctive social and economic logic to
peasants which differs from the "rational" capitalist logic (Sanford, 1991; Scott, 1976).
Smallholder farmers operate within risky environments unsure of their survival from one
year to the next. The web of relationships represented by the community acts as a safety
net or insurance during times of crises and drought (Scott, 1979; Wolf, 1966). Customs
and traditions maintain this system of reciprocity and exchange. Threats to the continued
viability of their community or culture create a powerful incentive for smallholder
farmers to participate in collective action (Anderson, 1994; Bryant and Bailey, 1997;

Hyden, 1990; Bebbington et al., 1991).

Mobilizing Processes

The costs of mobilizing within an organization include more than the costs
entering into an individual’s decision process. The mobilizing process involves
identifying common interests, packaging those interests into a persuasive message, and
communicating that message to the target population. To do all of this requires
resources. The actual costs depend upon the size of the target population and its
geographic dispersion (Kitschelt, 1986). A political entrepreneur can bear the initial
costs of mobilization to facilitate collective action (Marwell and Oliver, 1988; Popkin,
1988). Because smallholder farmers lack the resources to play this role, it often falls

upon external actors such as NGOs, government actors, and more recently, retired or

82

retrenched civil servants to do so (Farrington and Bebbington, 1994; Gubbels, 1993;
Ndiame, 1994; Tendler, 1994).

Mobilizing within large peasant organizations raises many of the constraints
described above. The costs of communicating with other members may still be
considerable for most peasant organizations lack adequate mechanisms for
communicating between and across organizational levels (Carroll, 1992; Esman and
Uphoff, 1984). Organizers can use pre-existing organizational structures, like affiliated
clubs and associations, to communicate their message and to mobilize members. Political
entrepreneurs continue to play a critical role in mobilizing members (Fox, 1991), but
interfering in an organization may dissuade external actors from becoming involved
(Fisher, 1994). Consequently, poor farmers face considerable costs to mobilizing for
their interests in their organizations.

To summarize, high exclusion costs create disincentives for the provision of
public policies by "latent groups" like smallholder farmers. Latent groups do not
organize formally in the absence of selective beneﬁts or coercion. The mobilizing
process itself creates costs. In the extreme case, smallholder farmers may mobilize to
protect the basis of their cultural and social reproduction, i.e., their community. Given
these conditions, the small group size of commercial farmers in the ZF U (a "privileged
group") means that they face stronger incentives to mobilize around land policy than

poorer members.

POLICY ARENAS, OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, AND FARMER POLITICAL ACTON

Policy research has begun to look at the internal political dynamics of farmer

organizations and its impact on the type of policies pursued by the organization. Fox’s

83

(1991) longitudinal study of a Mexican co-operative found that the presence of multiple
loci of power, i.e. rival factions, at the highest levels of the organization facilitated
leadership accountability and increased the opportunities for ordinary members to have
their interests expressed by the organization.” Bratton’s (1994a) analyses of the decision
by the presidents of the NFAZ and ZNF U to merge to form the ZFU exposed the political
dimension of organizational decision-making. Bingen (1994, 1996a, 1996b) and Bingen
et al (1995) similarly explored issues of leadership, accountability, and decision-making
in a Malian cotton farmers union and linked these issues to the organization's ability to
identify and represent its members interests. Together, these studies showed that the
opportunities for poor members to have their interests expressed by their organization
varied widely across organizations. Some organizations possess greater democratic

capacities than others.

Policy Types and Goods

What the studies above do not do is consider how political opportunities may vary
across policy arenas. Theodore Lowi‘50 (1964) provides a classiﬁcation of public policies
that illustrates how opportunities and incentives for political action differ between policy
arenas. Lowi explains that expectations deﬁne relationships between people and in
politics, public policies determine those expectations. Therefore, the type of policy at
stake deﬁnes political relationships or the power structure of its related policy arena. The

power structure delimits the opportunities available to participating political actors.

 

’9 See also Lachenmann (1992) who carried out a longitudinal study of a farmers’ movement in Senegal.

60 For a review of articles addressing Lowi’s policy classiﬁcation, see Spitzer, 1987.

84

Lowi identiﬁes three types of public policies based upon the breadth of their
expected impact.“ Distributive policies do not aim to transfer resources or rights
between groups thus its impacts are not inter-related; a beneﬁt for one group does not
incur a cost on another. Regulatory and re-distributive policies do transfer rights between
groups and create a zero-sum game. The two differ in terms of the level at which the
policy impacts occur. Regulatory policies affect groups within a sector only. Re-
distributive policies transfer rights across racial or class lines affecting society at the
highest levels.

Each type of policy gives rise to its own type of policy arena. Lowi explains the
differences between policy arenas in terms of conﬂict and competition between interests.
Re-distributive policies give rise to conﬂictual but non-competitive arenas. The threat of
transferring rights between classes mobilizes societal and political elites to control the
policy process and to exclude weakly organized interests, like smallholder farmers, from
participating. Regulatory policies give rise to competitive and conﬂictual arenas with
numerous participating interests. Opportunities to form coalitions on an issue by issue
basis exist, and the ability to form coalitions distinguishes interests that succeed (Browne,
1990). Distributive policy arenas have the lowest level of conﬂict and competition
though numerous interests do participate. The limited political cost of distributive
policies means that all participating interests can gain favorable policies. Politicians
often use distributive policies as "patronage policies" to co-opt opposition and to gain

political support.

 

6' Lowi (1972) identiﬁed a fourth class of public policies, constituent policies, to include policies that
affected organizational practices within government bureaucracies or political parties.

85

The notions of conﬂict and competition help this study to begin to identify policy
arenas where smallholder farmers have opportunities and incentives for political action.
By deﬁnition, policies for land reform and land tenure reform exhibit traits of re-
distributive policies suggesting that smallholder farmers have constrained opportunities
for political action (Lipton, 1974). However, land policy in Zimbabwe comprises several
policy decisions each made within its own constituent policy arena.62 Using concepts
from institutional economics, Schmid (1987) develops a complementary and more
nuance approach to understanding opportunities for political action by smallholder
farmers.

Schmid (1987) deﬁnes property rights as rules that order and control human
interdependence and determine access to or ownership of "goods." Policies represent the
formal expression of these rules. Goods have inherent characteristics that create different
contexts for human interdependence and these characteristics determine how one person's
actions can potentially affect the welfare of another. Schmid identiﬁes six relevant
characteristics: incompatible-use, joint-impact, transaction costs, economies-of-scale,
surplus, and ﬂuctuating supply and demand.

Individuals acquire goods by bidding directly for them or through the policy
process. In the case of land, individuals use the policy process to acquire rights to land
that they lack the resources to acquire on their own. Land, like water and other factors of
production possess an incompatible-use characteristic; one person's use of the good

precludes its use by another. The capacity to exclude another from using a resource

 

62 For a description of the constituent land policies, see chapter 2.

86

creates power“3 for the owners of incompatible-use goods (IUG's) (ibid: 44).
Consequently, policies that aim to transfer rights to land create highly conﬂictual policy
arenas similar to Lowi's re-distributive policy arenas.

A single policy can generate different goods, and each good creates incentives
and disincentives for its acquisition. Settler selection policy determines access to
resettlement lands, an IUG that creates strong incentives for its provision but only among
communal area farmers. Other farmers are not eligible for settlement on village
resettlement schemes. Limiting the pool of beneﬁciaries to smallholder farmers creates
opportunities for political action especially among poor farmers. However, settler
selection policy implicitly inﬂuences the direction of smallholder agriculture
development, and within the black farm lobby there exist competing preferences for how
smallholder agriculture should develop. A preference for the use of resettlement lands to
facilitate the commercial development of smallholder agriculture creates an incentive for
powerful interests like black commercial and business interests to participate in this
policy arena. Their entry diminishes the opportunities for political action by smallholder
farmers who want to use resettlement lands to facilitate their own social and cultural
reproduction.

Some policies affect goods that do not create conﬂictual arenas. Joint-impact
goods (JIG's) like roads or pricing and credit policies do not create the same

interdependencies as IUG's because these goods are used but not consumed, a positive-

 

“ Schmid explains that power is the capacity to force one's preference upon others. Schmid implicitly
equates economic power with political power. Owners of IUG's can charge rent for the use of the
resource and in this way, accumulate wealth. That wealth can then be re-invested in the political
process to gain policies ("rules") that enhance their capacity to accumulate wealth. Those who do not
own an IUG, like poor farmers, do not have a basis for accumulating wealth and so by deﬁnition, have

87

sum game. High exclusion costs create the greatest disincentive for their provision (Ibid:
75). Nevertheless, the resultant policy arena resembles Lowi's distributive policy arena.
Smallholder land interests have the greatest opportunity for political action in the least
conﬂictual policy arenas.

High transaction costs can prevent political action by smallholder farmers and
other latent groups and therefore, maintain the status quo (Ibid: 97). Transaction costs
are a by-product of all exchanges. In the policy process, it includes contractual,
bargaining, information, and other costs related to gaining consensus and commitment
from group members. Transaction costs rise as group size increases. At a certain level,
transaction costs dissuade interests from participating in the policy process. In this sense,
commercial farmers (a "privilege group") have an advantage over smallholder farmers
because of their small group size.

In certain contexts, transaction costs can create conditions where the preferences
of smallholder farmers can prevail. The initial rights distribution to a resource matters in
determining who bears most of the transaction costs. Land tenure reform policy proposes
to privatize land rights in the communal areas and install a system of title deeds.
However, there already exists in the communal lands a structure of effective land rights“
and rules for the allocation of those rights through traditional authorities and to a lesser
degree, local government (Cheater, 1990). To transform the present system, the

government ( the "bidder") must appeal to each rights holder (the "seller") to relinquish

 

less power in the policy process than owners of IUG's like commercial farmers and business owners.

6‘ Effective land rights means that individuals have de facto land rights. Communal land tenure gives
individuals only usufruct rights to land, but the state's inability to regulate the informal land markets in
the communal areas means that those on the land have effective rights to it.

88

their current rights and to apply for new land rights. The lack of a guarantee that
households will receive the same or even any land under the new tenure system creates
weak incentives for cooperation by smallholder households. The large number of
"sellers" creates high contractual costs for the government (the "bidder'). High
contractual costs favor smallholder interests desiring to preserve the current system of
land rights in the communal areas. Government would not face similarly high contractual
costs in the resettlement areas where the population is less and the land rights structure
has not yet fully developed.65

Insights drawn from Schmid's (1987) paradigm for institutional performance and
Lowi's (1965) policy classiﬁcation have relevance for understanding choices made by
organizations to pursue one policy position over another. Variables like the structure of
political relations, interdependencies created by the type of "goods" sought, and
transaction costs constrain and create opportunities for smallholder political action.
Though the political dynamics of organizational decision-making are not equivalent to
the political dynamics of national policymaking, similarities exist. Other structural
variables also shape the political opportunities for action by smallholder farmers. These
variables can act as substitutes or complements to the political factors introduced above

and can expand or constrain the structure of political opportunities.

Political Opportunity Structures

The concept of political opportunity structure from the social movements

literature helps us to understand how changes in the institutional structure or informal

 

65 Resettlement area farmers have leasehold rights to land acquired from the government.

89

power relations of a political system affect opportunities for political action. Movement
scholars often use the concept of political opportunity structure (POS) as the key
explanatory variable for determining the timing and outcome of social movements
(McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, 1996). If political opportunities expand, i.e., become
facilitative, then even weak movements can succeed. Conversely, strong movements can
fail when political opportunities contract, i.e., systems become closed or authoritarian
(Tarrow, 1996).

At a system or societal level, McAdam (1996:27) identiﬁed four conditions that

specify the structure of political opportunities.

Access to the institutionalized political system.

The stability of elite alignments that typically undergird a polity.
Opportunities for forming coalitions with elite allies.

The state’s capacity and propensity for repression.

99°19?

The ﬁrst dimension acknowledges the importance of the formal legal and institutional
structure of the political system in determining the types and number of access points
available to social movements. The second and third conditions recognize the informal
structure of power relations speciﬁc to an issue area. These two factors modulate the
political “voice” of social movements. They can add to or take away from the strength of
their collective action efforts and at the same time, increase or decrease access to policy
arenas and decision-makers. The last factor refers to the tolerance of a political regime to
dissent and challenges from societal actors.

Social movement scholars have applied the POS approach to study the emergence
of social movements and to make cross-national comparisons between social movements.
For the purposes of this study, the POS approach can be adapted to study mobilization

within membership organizations and to make comparisons between policy arenas. Four

90

conditions that specify the structure of political opportunities at the organizational level

are as follows.

Formal structures and rules of decision-making and accountability.
The cohesiveness of elite groups.

Opportunities for forming coalitions with elite groups.

Leaders’ background, goals and propensity to listen to members.

PPM”?

Membership organizations, like political systems, have formal structures and rules
for decision-making that dictate the access members have to decision-makers and the
decision-making process. Decision-making structures can be horizontal and participatory
or vertical and “top-down”. Within large organizations, decision-making tends to be
“top-down” and decision-making power concentrated at the apex level. The apex level
can consist of a single executive (president), a committee or a national assembly. In their
review of peasant organizations, Esman and Uphoff (1984), Carroll (1992), and Clark
(1990) found that members had more opportunities to inﬂuence decision-making through
their representatives when decisions were made by committee or assembly.

Complementary to formal structures of decision-making are the rules that hold
leaders accountable to members. Organizations representing the poor and illiterate have
long been observed as lacking effective rules for leadership accountability. Assuming
self-interested leaders, rational choice scholars focus on identifying formal organizational
structures that limit leaders’ discretionary behavior. While informal social rules and
relationships also limit discretionary behavior, these derive from the formal structures of
the organization (Ostrom, 1998; Robertson and Tang, 1995). The informal structure of
power relations between organizational actors may play a greater role in holding leaders
accountable. Distributing decision-making power across several groups facilitates

monitoring of leaders’ actions and allows each group to limit the discretionary behavior

91

of the other (Bingen, 1996; Fisher, 1994; Fox, 1991). In small groups, customs,
traditions, and rules deﬁne the relationship between leaders and members and outline the
obligations each has to the other (Ostrom, 1990; Taylor, 1987; Uphoff, 1992, 1993).

Most organizational studies that address issues of representation have focused on
the formal structures and rules of decision-making. Based on a ﬁnding of “democratic”
or “un-democratic” organizational structures, the authors then draw conclusions about the
opportunities members have to press for their interests (see Makumbe [1994], Ng’ethe
and Odero [1994]). The political factors overlooked by this approach become
increasingly important as the level of conﬂict and competition within a policy arena rises.
Opportunities to form coalitions and the relative stability of elite groups play a critical
role in deﬁning political opportunities within regulatory and re-distributive arenas.

The fourth condition of organizational political opportunity structures relates to
leaders’ willingness to listen to and be inﬂuenced by their members. A considerable
body of empirical studies support the observation that in peasant organizations, leaders
do have choice and the freedom to exercise that choice (see Bebbington et al, 1991;
Bingen, 1996a; Bunker, 1987; Fox, 1991; Nuitjen, 1992). The structural variables
discussed above set the stage for policy-making, and leaders can take advantage of these
stage arrangements (Long and Long, 1992). In some instances, leaders have acted on
behalf of their membership even in the absence of structures holding them accountable.
Why leaders do so can be explained by their background, experiences and training which
shape their normative notions of what is “right.” In a parallel situation, Grindle and
Thomas (1991) found that personal backgrounds, formal training, and perceptions played

as much a role in the decision-making of bureaucrats as did pressure from interest groups

92

and donors. Like leaders in organizations, bureaucrats have acted independently to push
through policies they thought necessary and appropriate. The efforts of sympathetic
leaders can substitute for the resources poor farmers need to compete effectively in
conﬂictual policy arenas but often lack; sympathetic leaders can open the closed political

opportunity structures of regulatory and re-distributive arenas for poor farmer interests.

Policy Implementation

Conditions structuring political opportunities within organizations varies
according to the level of analysis. Access points in the policy process are not limited to
the national level although it may be at this level where policy is formulated. Policy
implementation often occurs at the local level and offers actors another point of access.
Numerous empirical studies have shown that during implementation, government
ofﬁcials and technicians often re-negotiate national policy with local leaders (Arce, 1993;
Arce et al., 1994; Drinkwater, 1992; Moore, 1994; Nuitjen, 1992).

Policies implemented at the local level offer farmers greater access and inclusion
in the policy-making process. Members are physically and socially closer to their local
leaders creating more opportunities to hold leaders accountable. Members and leaders
have face-to-face interactions and share multi-stranded relationships (Taylor, 1988).
Social norms and a shared cultural background strengthen lines of accountability.
Principles of reciprocity and covenant circumscribe the relationship between members
and leaders and deﬁne their expectations and obligations (Bingen, 1996b; Hyden, 1990).

The degree of heterogeneity within peasant organizations decreases moving from
the national down to the local level. Base units usually draw their membership from one

village or from neighboring villages. Thus, members and leaders operate similar farming

93

systems within the same production environment. In Zimbabwe, historical factors have
segregated the principal farming sectors into discrete areas. Consequently, separate ZFU
groups exist for large-scale commercial, small-scale commercial, resettlement, and
communal area farmers suggesting three important differences between political
opportunity structures at the national level and at the local level.

1. Local leaders and their members share common interests making it more

likely that they would represent members’ demands since it would also be
in their interests.

2. Homogeneity of interests in the base units facilitates coalition building and
reduces the “conﬂictual” level within regulatory and re-distributive policy
arenas.

3. The small group size reduces the transaction costs of mobilizing around
land policy thereby creating more opportunities for smallholder political
action.

The preceding discussion suggests the likelihood of smallholder farmer
mobilization is inversely related to the "closed" or "open" nature of the political
opportunity structure. A closed structure limits access to decision process and gives
leaders considerable discretionary authority. Leaders' attitudes toward, and empathy for
poorer members and their interests can make a closed POS's more open. Greater
opportunities for political action exist at the local level, especially in land policy. At the
local level, a more direct relationship between action and actually acquiring resettlement
land exists creating stronger incentives for collective action. Smaller group size reduces
transaction costs including exclusion costs. Within the ZF U base-units, decision-making
is more participatory and rules for accountability stronger. Physical proximity also
suggests a common production environment and consequently, shared interests between

leaders and members. The conditions create open POS's for land issues at the local level.

94

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES

The analysis limits itself to the settler selection policy arena for theoretical,
empirical and logistical reasons. Settler selection policy comprises two critical policy
decisions: settler selection criteria and distribution of land between commercial and
village resettlement schemes. Theoretically, these policy decisions conform to Lowi's
regulatory and re-distributive policies though both decision involve the allocation of
rights to land, an incompatible-use good. This permits the analysis to consider a broad
range of variables that can inﬂuence the structure of political opportunities within the
ZF U, and the response of poorer members. At an empirical level, considerable research
has been carried out regarding settler selection policy giving this study more
opportunities to compare and validate results. Of equal importance, settler selection
policy has occupied a central role in the debate over land since Independence, and one
would expect smallholder farmers to be aware of, and to have developed a position on
these issues. This would not necessarily be the case with any of the lesser-debated issues.
Finally, funding and time constraints prevented consideration of other policy arenas.

The conceptual discussion suggests three hypotheses listed below along with the

major research questions.

1. Members face closed POS's at the national level and open POS's at the local level.
The size of the organization, their distance from decision-makers and the decision-
making process, and the lack of adequate mechanisms for communicating across and
between administrative levels suggest closed POS's for poor members. At the local

level effective rules for accountability exist, and leaders and members share a

95

common background and interests creating conditions of open POS's.

a. What are the political opportunity structures of the settler selection policy arena at
the national level and at the local level?

2. Members mobilize at the local level around their land interests but not at the national
level. The disincentives associated with large groups work against mobilization at the
national level. Opportunities to inﬂuence land policy at the local level, the level of
implementation, clarify the connection between action and obtaining land thereby
strengthening incentives for political action. Small group size at the local level lowers
transaction costs and facilitates mobilization.

a. Given the transaction costs associated with the provision of land policy, what
incentives for mobilization does land policy offer poor, middle and rich
smallholder farmers

b. What are the land interests of the ZFU's leaders? Does their background or
training predispose the ZFU's leaders to champion the land interests of their
poorer members even in the absence of pressure?

b. What are the implications of funding issues on leadership accountability?

3. Members will go outside of the ZF U to resolve their land demands if faced with
closed political opportunity structures in the organization.

a. Whose land interests does the ZFU represent in its national positions on
settler selection and scheme organization?

b. If poor farmers cannot use the ZF U to resolve their land issues, then what
other channels are available to them?

c. If the ZFU does not speak for poor farmers, what are the implications for
land degradation in the CA's and for the development of smallholder
agriculture?

96

SUMMARY

The conceptual approach outlined in this chapter provides a way for
understanding the opportunities and incentives for political action available to
smallholder farmers in the land policy arena. It combines concepts from the social
movements, rational choice, and public choice perspectives.

The land policy process creates strong disincentives for smallholder political
action. Land creates power for its owners and attempts to re-structure land rights
stimulates societal and political elites to participate in the policy arena. Their
participation creates highly conﬂictual arenas. As the conﬂict level rises, so too the costs
of participation. Often, smallholder farmers lack the resources to overcome the
transaction costs of mobilizing a large and widely dispersed population and so, do not
even participate in the land policy arena.

Zimbabwe's land policy comprises several policy decisions and not all generate
conﬂictual policy arenas. Credit and infrastructure policies generate goods that are used
by not consumed and so give rise to non-conﬂictual or distributive policy arenas where
smallholder interests can succeed. Policy decisions that affect a smaller population, like
settler selection policy, have policy arenas where smallholder farmers have opportunities
for political action. Altemately, policies determining the allocation of land between
village and commercial resettlement schemes have policy arenas where commercial farm
and business interests compete with smallholder farmers. In this arena, smallholder
interests have limited opportunities for political action. The transaction costs of
mobilizing and participating in the policy process dissuade political action by smallholder

interests thereby preserving the status quo. However, where smallholder farmers own the

97

rights to a resource, transaction costs prevent government and commercial farm interests
seeking to change the rights structure from doing so.

The incentives for political action grow weaker in the context of internal
mobilization for several reasons. First, the high exclusion costs associated with the
provision of public policies also exist when mobilizing within an organization. Other
members who may beneﬁt from the policy will choose to "free-ride" rather than
participate. Moreover, prevailing at the organizational level does not necessarily mean
that the organization will acquire the desired policy. The added step in the process
creates considerable disincentives. Costs also derive from the political opportunity
structures of land issues within the organization. Closed political opportunity structures,
i.e., limited access to the decision process and decision-makers and weak rules for
leadership accountability, impose a cost on smallholder interests seeking to participate in
decision-making. As in the broader context, the smaller group size of commercial
farmers gives them an advantage in mobilizing versus the much larger group size of
smallholder farmers even within the organization.

The disincentives and costs of mobilization decrease at the local level. First, the
local level coincides with the level of implementation for land policy. The potential
short-term and tangible payoff (i.e., acquiring resettlement land) to political action at the
local level creates strong incentives for mobilization. The small group size of the ZFU
base-units reduces the transaction costs of mobilization. Operating within a similar
production environment facilitates shared land interests between members and local
leaders indicating less conﬂictual policy arenas. These factors suggest that smallholder

farmers have greater opportunities and incentives for political action in local land policy

98

arenas. Chapters Five and Six address the research questions by examining the national

and local contexts for smallholder political action in land policy within the ZFU.

RESEARCH METHODS

This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods within a case study
framework. Qualitative data gathered from individual and group interviews identiﬁed
issues and questions addressed in a household survey and an organizational survey.
Afterwards, follow-up interviews were used to validate survey results and to explore in-
depth other issues not adequately addressed by the surveys.

The research in Shamva District was canied out by a multi-disciplinary team of
ten, eight of whom were afﬁliated with the University of Zimbabwe. Shamva’s unique
qualities make it a good site to address the research questions posed by this dissertation.
Few other districts have the diversity of smallholder and farm interests represented in
Shamva. Proximity to large-scale commercial farms, a number of which have been
designated for acquisition by the government, has kept the settler selection and land

acquisition issues in front of smallholder farmers.

Data Collection and Sources

Data collection occurred in ﬁve distinct phases. First, the research team canied
out a rapid rural appraisal in June 1995. Second, my research assistant and I carried out
individual and group interviews from September to December 1995. I relied on my
research assistant and Agritex agents to translate for me during the interviews. Third, the
research group developed an extensive questionnaire on agricultural production,

marketing, political activities, and viewpoints on the land issue. The group tested the

99

questionnaires in February 1996 and implemented the survey March-April. I organized

follow-up interviews in February-March 1997 and presented my initial results to

representatives of farmers’ groups, agritex, NGOs, and local government in Shamva.

1.

2.

3.

4.

m Key informant interviews were carried out with ZFU leaders and staff at
the national, provincial, and local levels; elected leaders in the CFU and ICFU;
ofﬁcials in line ministries tasked with resettlement; and representatives on the rural
district council.

Wm Focal group interviews were carried out with ZF U clubs and non—
ZF U members. Wards were chosen using the following criteria: dominant production
system, environmental condition, proximity to markets and main roads, and presence
of ZFU. Agritex (extension) agents, ZFU local staff, and village development
workers recruited the participants. Representatives often ZFU clubs, three area
associations, and the district council participated.

Householdsumey, The household survey adopted a stratiﬁed random sampling
design. Ten wards were chosen to reﬂect the agroecological, economic, and social
diversity of the district. The rural district council and village headmen compiled a list
of residents for each ward. The researchers then chose randomly from the lists until
10% of each ward’s population had been chosen. The study recruited enumerators
from the University of Zimbabwe.

W This study also collected information from government
documents, reports, and papers; ZF U reports, papers, and magazines; CFU reports
and magazines; NGO reports; and newspaper articles and journal articles.

100

CHAPTER 5

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, INCENTIVES, AND
COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE NATIONAL CONTEXT

The conceptual approach presented in Chapter Four helps us understand the
opportunities and incentives for smallholder mobilization within organizations like the
ZFU. It suggests that an open political opportunity structure (POS) and strong incentives
facilitate mobilization. More speciﬁcally, it suggests that smallholders will not mobilize
at the national level to advance their land interests because of organizational structures
that preclude their participation in decision-making and weak incentives.

This chapter examines the political opportunity structure deﬁned by the structure
of decision-making and rules for accountability in the ZF U and the impact of ZFU
leaders' farm background and ideology on opportunities for smallholder mobilization. In
the face of closed POS's, leaders could take the initiative to facilitate member
mobilization and speak out on behalf of members. Why they do so depends upon their
background, training, and belief system (Grindle and Thomas, 1991). Without pressure
from members, it is likely that the ZFU's national positions on land would more closely
reﬂect leaders’ own interests. The analysis compares the ZFU's positions on land with
those of members from Shamva District to test this statement. Chapter Five concludes

with a discussion of conditions at the national level that dissuade member mobilization.

lOl

DECISION-MAKING AND LEADERSHIP ACCOUNTABILITY

Structure of Decision-making

The ZFU is a large and complex organization with over 165,000 paid-up members
scattered across all 56 districts in the country. It has its national headquarters in Harare,
the capital city, a provincial ofﬁce in each of the eight provincial capitals, and district
ofﬁces in 28 districts with more planned. It has well-educated staff distributed across
seven departments, ﬁve of which have programmatic responsibilities: the marketing,
economics and research, ﬁeld and projects, education and training, and information
departments (see Appendix B).

Its complex structure with authority centralized in its apex and with specialized
departments to facilitate the planning and implementation of a broad array of member
programs. At the district level (the "local level") district organizers administer ZF U
programs from the national ofﬁce and provide technical assistance to the district councils
and area councils (Figure 5.1). Where the ZFU has not opened a district ofﬁce, the
provincial organizer and provincial marketing ofﬁcer carry out a similar role. Village
clubs and producers' associations, the ZFU's base-units, operate autonomously from the
head ofﬁce organizing to pool assets and resolve common production problems
(Mutimba, 1986).

The ZF U hierarchy consists of ﬁve levels: the national, provincial, district, ward
(WADCO), and village (VIDCO) (Figure 5.1). The leadership committees for the ZF U
councils include a chairperson, vice-chairperson, secretary, and treasurer. Communal and

resettlement area farmers organize into clubs at the village (VIDCO) level. At the ward

102

Figure 5.1 ZF U leadership and administrative hierarchy

 

President's council
President
3 vice-presidents

 

 

 

 

 

[—

 

‘ National Council
L 39 members

 

 

 

 

 

National Commodity Comnittees
(4 committees, 3 nat'l chair)

 

 

Sub-committees
(6 committees)

 

 

 

 

Provincial Council
(8 councils)

 

 

 

 

Provincial Commodity Committee L
(8 committees) j

 

 

 

 

 

District Council
(56 councils)

 

 

 

 

District commodity oomm’ttee
(56 committees)

 

 

 

 

l

l

 

 

Area Council Producers' Association
(1,120 councils) (125 associations)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Village Clubs
(>6,000 clubs)

 

 

 

103

 

 

level, club chairpersons come together to form an area council. Each area council
represents 6-10 clubs. In the small-scale commercial farming areas, farmers organize at
the ward (WADCO) level to form producer associations. Area council chairpersons and
producer association chairpersons together form the district council. In the research
district, for example, the 13 area council chairpersons and the four members of the
leadership committee comprise the ZF U Shamva district council. District chairpersons
come together to form a provincial council, and all four members of the leadership
committees for each of the councils sit on the national council. National commodity
chairpersons also sit on the national council.66 The leadership committee for the national
council, the President's council, includes the President and his three vice-presidents.

The ZFU's constitution identiﬁes the Annual General Meeting (AGM) or Annual
Congress as the highest decision-making body within the Union. Members of the
national council, national commodity chairpersons, and the four members of the district
leadership committees have the right to attend and to vote at the AGM. The AGM lasts
but three days. In the interim, the national council's decisions regarding policy and
programming are binding. In the day-to-day management of the ZF U, the ZFU president
holds considerable decision-making authority. He maintains an ofﬁce at the national
headquarters and is required to treat his presidency as a full-time position."7 Senior

leaders and staff defer to the president in all the decision-making (Bratton, 1994a). A

 

The ZFU has a commodity committee structure that parallels its administrative structure from the
district level to the national level. Commodity committees act as sub-committees to the main council
and have the responsibility of communicating commodity issues up and down the hierarchy. District
and provincial commodity committees are generalist committees. At the national level, separate
committees exist for grain, cotton, oilseeds, and livestock.

‘57 The CFU president is also expected to carry out his organizational responsibilities full-time but is

limited to one term in ofﬁce.

104

senior ofﬁcer remarked that "everything must pass over the president's desk for ﬁnal
approval."68

The national council has six sub-committees to assist it in its duties. Of these, the
most inﬂuential is the management sub-committee chaired by the president, and
comprising the vice-presidents, the provincial chairpersons, and some national
commodity chairs. The management sub-committee supervises the senior staff and the
day-to-day operation of the Union. It acts as the planning committee for the council and
develops programs and policies that it considers necessary to achieve the union's
objectives. It also oversees the implementation of the ZFU's policies. The ﬁnance sub-
committee chaired by the president develops the ﬁscal budget and supervises the ﬁnancial
administration by the senior director. The remaining four sub-committees deal with
agriculture-related issues: livestock, land and mobilization, production and marketing,
and women and youth development.

According to the ZFU's national leaders, the leadership hierarchy represents the
principle mechanism for communicating demands up to the national council. At each
level, leaders have the task of reporting their members' demands to the next higher level
during council meetings. At the AGM, district leaders have the once-a-year opportunity
to bring up their members' grievances, interests, and demands directly before national
council members. Aside from the AGM, ordinary members and district leaders have
little direct contact with members of the national council and must rely on members of

their provincial councils to relay their demands up to the national council.

 

6" Interview with B. Mukwende, senior ﬁeld and projects ofﬁcer, March 20, 1995.

105

Leaders at all levels have not effectively communicated members' demands up the
hierarchy or information down to the grassroots mainly. At the district and lower levels,
village clubs and councils lack the funds to send their chairpersons to area and district
council meetings.69 This explains in large part the poor information ﬂows below the
provincial level (Riddell, 1994).

We need to target facilitators and other farm leaders particularly at the area
level. These individuals should be informed, and they should pass the
information on to their members. This way, information is funneled to the

grassroots. The problem is that the leadership at the area level is not very
active or strong and this can be explained by the lack of money.

(Interview with E. Chikava, ZF U marketing ofﬁcer, November 22, 1995)

Aside from the leadership hierarchy, members can communicate their demands to
national leaders through the staff. However, this is a restrictive channel for
communication. The economics and the marketing departments have the main task of
identifying, aggregating, and prioritizing members' interests. They do so primarily
through household and farm-level surveys. It is important to note that the national
council, especially the management sub-committee, determines the scope and content of
the surveys. The survey data enters the decision cycle in the form of brieﬁng papers
provided to the national leadership. Senior leaders rely on the senior staff to inform them

of members' demands.

 

"9 Leaders at the village and area levels must use group funds to pay for their bus fares to ZFU meetings,
and the majority of those funds come from member dues. Of the 2520 fee collected from each member,
village clubs and area councils retain only 5% or ZS]. In 1997, the typical village club had an operating
budget of Z$25 and the typical area council had an operating budget of 28200, insufﬁcient to pay for its
chairperson's fare to all of the area council or district council meetings. The ZFU head ofﬁce retains
50% of all membership fees collected from communal and resettlement areas.

106

The commodity committees are important in discussions with government,
particularly on pricing policies. The Economics Department puts together
the information, but it is the representatives for the committees who argue
the case with government.

(Interview with E. Zhou, senior economics Ofﬁcer, January 18, 1995)
To the extent that national leaders are also full-time farmers, they lack the time to
research issues on their own. The brieﬁng papers represent their primary source of

information on issues that they must debate and vote upon in the national council.

Land Policy Positions

The decision process outlined in the ZFU constitution regarding land policy
illustrates the constrained opportunities members have to participate in national-level
decision-making. According to the ZFU constitution and project documents,” the Land
and Mobilization sub-committee has the primary responsibility for developing the
Union's position on land policy. The ﬁrst vice-president chairs the sub-committee, and
the national council chooses from among its members the remaining sub-committee
members. The ZFU constitution does not require the sub-committee to hold
consultations with the general membership. Sub-committee members identify members'
land interests either through conversations with farmers in their home areas or from
information supplied to them by the economics department. As of 1997, the sub-

committee had yet to commission surveys to identify members' land demands." The

 

7° ZFU. "Development of the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union: A Cooperation Project with Swedish
Cooperative Centre." July 1, 1994 - June 30, 1997. Project document.

7’ In 1995, the Economics Department (caps?) developed production proﬁles of its membership based on

a household survey it administered. In 1997, it contracted with a University researcher to carry out a
production survey of 300 members nationwide to determine members' training, production, and
marketing needs within the context of economics structural adjustment (ESAP). ZF U economists also
implemented commodity-speciﬁc ESAP-related studies (Interview with E. Zhou, senior economics

107

ZF U economists usually rely on data from government, academic, and CF U sources, as
the basis for brieﬁng papers submitted to sub-committee and national council members.72

In theory, the Land and Mobilization sub-committee identiﬁes and articulates
farmers' land problems and outlines the Union's policy position vis-a-vis land issues. In
practice, it does not appear to play a signiﬁcant role in determining the Union's policy
positions on land. For example, the Land and Mobilization sub-committee did not
participate in the development of the Union's position paper on its views regarding
critical issues in smallholder agriculture including resettlement and land tenure. The
process, initiated by Management sub-committee, relied on a committee of farm leaders
hand-picked by the ZF U president to outline the Union's positions. After ratiﬁcation by
the AGM, a second committee comprising the eight provincial secretaries developed a
second draft with the assistance of senior economics staff. Afterwards, the Management
sub-committee made its own revisions. In early 1995, the national council received the
ﬁnal draft and ratiﬁed it after making revisions of its own.73 At no point did the
committees discuss consult members at the grassroots. The Land and Mobilization sub-
committee had no recognized role in the process.

The restricted channels of communication between the national level and the
grassroots give the national council and particularly, the president, considerable
discretion in decision-making. The "top-down" style of decision-making embodied in the

Union's hierarchical leadership structure presents few points of entry for members. The

 

ofﬁcer, February 14, 1995; Interview with E. Tsikisayi, senior economist, March 5, 1997).

72 This is evident upon reviewing the proceedings of an ZFU-organized workshop on resettlement. The
Resettlement Programme in Zimbabwe Options for the Future held on March 16, 1995, Harare.

73 Interview with E. Zhou, Senior Economics Ofﬁcer, January 18, 1995, ODI/ISNAR Study.

108

lack of transparency of decision-making within the ZFU implies that members have even
more limited access to the decision cycle than suggested by the formal structures of

decision-making (Riddell, 1994).

Rules for Leadership Accountability

Effective rules for leadership accountability do not offset the concentration of
decision-making authority in the national council. The electoral process represents the
main mechanism for holding leaders accountable. As laid out in its constitution, the ZFU
follows a practice of indirect elections, a process that relegates ordinary members to

selecting leaders at the grassroots only."

The lines of accountability between ordinary members and leaders weaken as one
goes up the hierarchy. At levels above the ward, ZFU leaders must appeal to council
members at the level immediately below rather than to their members at the grassroots to
retain their positions. A rule requiring those voted into leadership positions at higher
levels to relinquish positions previously held at a lower level further weakens the
opportunities for members at the grassroots to hold leaders accountable. For example,
members of the provincial council voted into leadership positions on the provincial
committee must give up their position as district chairpersons. Doing so insulates them

from the politics in their former district councils. Only council members can remove a

 

7‘ Members of a club elect a committee whose chairperson sits on the area council.

Members of an area council elect a committee whose chairperson sits on the district council.

Members of the district council elect a committee whose chairperson and secretary sit on the provincial
council.

Members of the provincial council elect a committee whose members all sit on the national council.
Members of the national council elect the ZFU president and up to three vice-presidents.

Members of the national council appoint council members to sit on each of the standing committees.

109

member of that council's leadership committee. District council members can vote out
their representative to the provincial council who also serves as their district chairperson.

The weak structure of leadership accountability is further weakened by a tradition
of "leaders for life" in the NFAZ and ZNFU. During its 51 years, the ZNF U had only
four presidents”. The NFAZ had one president during its 12-year existence, and its
president and vice-presidents had held similar positions in the Victoria Province Master
Farmers Association (VPMF A), the NF AZ's parent organization (Mutimba, 1986). The
ZFU lost its ﬁrst president, G. Magadzire who was the former ZNF U president, in 1996
to illness. His replacement, S.D. Hungwe, had served as a vice-president in the ZFU,
NF AZ, and VPMF A. In the elections of 1998, national council members re-elected S.D.
Hungwe.

Given its short history, it is unclear whether this tradition will continue in the

ZF U. Although critics observed irregularities during its founding elections (Bratton,
1994a), recent experiences give mixed messages. As directed by its constitution, the
ZFU held general elections in 1994. The timing of elections was ﬁom the "bottom-up"
with club and association leaders elected ﬁrst. At the district level, a number of district
council seats changed hands, while at the provincial level, four of the eight provincial

chairpersons lost their positions. There was no turnover among the president's council.

Funding

In addition to electoral rules, funding presents another way for members to hold

leaders accountable. Organizations that rely on members' dues tend to be more

 

7’ Interview with K.B. Matekaire, ZFU senior director and former ZNFU director, March 13, 1995.

110

responsive to their membership. In this situation, members' refusal to pay their dues has
a direct impact on the organization's viability. Altemately, organizations that rely on
sources of income other than members' dues like donor funding are independent of any
threatened ﬁnancial pressure from disgruntled members.

The ZFU national ofﬁce retains 50% of all collected members' dues yet members'
dues make up only 20% of the ZFU's annual operating budget.76 Levies assessed on all
marketed smallholder production account for about 60% of the ZFU's budget (table 5.1)77
and donor funding for the remaining 20%. The levies created "closed shop rules" for the
ZFU effectively forcing all smallholder farmers to contribute to the Union's development
though the ZFU's members represent less than 20% of the smallholder population. To get
the levies back, non-members had to get a letter from the ZFU provincial or district ofﬁce
stating they were not ZFU members. Farmers then mailed the letter to the collecting
agency, i.e., the Grain Marketing Board, Cotton Company of Zimbabwe, or Cold Storage
Commission, and waited for their refund check in the mail.78 The costs of reclaiming the

levies assessed against their sales discouraged many non-members from making a claim.

 

7" Fifty percent of the annual dues paid by CA and RA farmers and 80% of the annual dues paid by SSC
farmers go to the national ofﬁce. Village clubs retain only 5% of all dues collected. Associations and
clubs also pay a one-time registration fee upon joining the Union.

77 The levy generated ZS 25 million or about USS 3.12 million (US $1 = Z S8 in 1995). The Farm and
Licensing Act of 1994 is the enabling legislation.

7" There is not strong support among smallholder farmers in general for the levies collected by the ZFU.

ZF U members complained that they were not consulted beforehand nor were they informed once the
Union began collecting the levies. "ZFU has the authority to levy crops, MP told." The Sunday Mail,
March 9. 1997.

111

Table 5.1 Percentage of smallholder sales levied by ZF U (1995)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commodity % of total sales
Groundnuts 1 .50
Maize 1.50
Sorghum 1.50
Cotton 1.40
Tobacco 1.00
Sunﬂower 1.00
Beef 0.55
Small stocks 0.45
Soyabeans 0.40
Pearl millet 0.25
Finger millet 0.25

 

The levies weaken members' ability to hold their senior leaders and staff
accountable. Monies collected from the levies support the national ofﬁce, the provincial
ofﬁces, and programs not explicitly supported by donor funding.79 At the district level,
however, lines of accountability between members and the district organizer are stronger
because members' dues support the district ofﬁce. If the district organizer cannot
mobilize new members or retain existing members, then the district ofﬁce would close
putting the district organizer out of a job. The ZF U senior economist explained that the
national ofﬁce decided not to support the district ofﬁces because it wanted to force
district staff to be responsive to members in their district.

The value of the levies as a source of funding may be short-lived. The on-going
privatization of agricultural marketing means buyers in addition to the former marketing
boards can bid for smallholder production. This places the ZF U in a position where it

must convince private buyers to collect its levies, but these companies ﬁnd little

 

7” Interview with E. Tsikisayi, senior economist, March 5, 1997.

112

economic reason to do so.80 The former marketing boards may also soon stop collecting
the levies for the ZF U and CF U. Previously, the government paid for the administrative
costs of collecting the levies through subsidies paid to the marketing boards. The
suspension of government subsidies means the ZF U or some other organization must step

in to pay for the administrative and other costs associated with collecting the levies."l

LEADERSHIP PROFILE

The organizational processes reviewed above describe a situation not unlike those
found in other large membership organizations that represent the poor (Carroll, 1992;
Esman and Uphoff, 1984). An elite leadership enjoys considerable discretionary
authority, and ordinary members have limited access to higher-level decision processes.
Within this context the personal, professional, and farm background of the leadership

becomes important to understand the land interests articulated by the ZFU.

Farm Background

Commercial farmers comprise less than 3% of the ZFU's membership but account

for a much greater percentage of the ZFU leadership, an artifact of the merger in 1991.

The ZNF U contingent vigorously opposed both majority rule and proportional
representation, insisting instead on parity between communal and small-scale
[commercial] farmers in the ZF U leadership. Hence, the top four national
executive positions were shared, with the ZF U presidency going to the former
ZNF U leader; the same was true for the posts of provincial chairman, where ﬁve
former NFAZ and three former ZNF U leaders were returned (Bratton, 1994a, p.
26).

 

8° Interview with E. Tsikisayi, senior economist, March 5, 1997.

81 Government of Zimbabwe. 1996. Zimbabwe Programme for Economic and Social Transformation,
[996-2000, Harare, Zimbabwe: Government Publications.

113

The 1994 elections led to a high turnover among the leadership. For the ﬁrst

time, a woman assumed the position of provincial chairperson. Even so, communal and

resettlement area farmers did not gain greater representation among the national

leadership. Of the 39 members of the national council, at least a third operate

commercial farms (table 5.2). The actual percentage is likely greater since background

information on other members of the provincial committees, all of whom sit on the

national council, could not be obtained.

 

 

Table 5.2 ZFU's national leaders and farm ownership (1997)
Position Location Production Enterprise
President LSC farm area Irrigated horticulture

 

lSt vice-president

CA

Maize, cotton

 

2'“l vice-president

CA

Maize, cotton

 

3“I vice-president

SSC farm area

Maize, cotton

 

Provincial chair Mashonaland West

CA

Maize, sunﬂower, groundnuts

 

Provincial chair Mashonaland Central

LSC farm area

Maize, horticulture

 

Provincial chair Mashonaland East

No information

No information

 

Provincial chair Midlands

SSC farm area

Maize/cotton

 

Provincial chair Matabeleland South

No information

No information

 

Provincial chair Matabeleland North

No information

No information

 

Nat'l commodity chair -- Cotton

SSC farm area

Seed cotton; irrigated horticulture

 

Nat'l commodity chair -- Grains

LSC farm area

Maize, sorghum

 

Nat'l commodity chair -- Tobacco

LSC farm area

Irrigated tobacco

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nat'l commodity chair -- Horticulture LSC farm area Irrigated horticulture
Nat'l commodity chair -- Livestock CA Maize, cotton
Nat'l commodity chair -- Coffee/tea LSC farm area Tea plantation

 

The rules for representation facilitate the over-representation of small-scale

commercial farmers on district councils that include small-scale commercial (SSC)

farming areas. The ZFU constitution does not impose a limit on the number of producer

associations that can represent a single SSC farming area or on the number of village

clubs that can represent a single VIDCO. However, at administrative levels above the

base-units, only one council can represent each administrative area. For example, only

114

 

one area council can represent a ward regardless of the number of village clubs in that
ward. Because producer associations organize at the ward level, SSC farmers in theory,
can send as many representatives as they wish to sit on the district council; chairpersons
for the producers associations sit on the district council. On the other hand, communal
and resettlement area farmers cannot send more representatives than the number of wards
in their district to the district council. The following example illustrates the advantage
held by SSC farmers in district-level decision-making. To counter what they considered
over-representation of communal area interests, SSC farmers in the Copper Queen SSC
area split their producer associations into smaller groups and doubling the number of SSC

farmers on the district council (Amaiz et al, 1995).

Land Interests

Since Independence, the land interests of commercial farmers and master farmers
in the communal areas have converged. In 1980, the govemment intended to use the
resettlement program to address inequities in wealth distribution inherited from the
colonial period and to reward the rural majority who were instrumental in the Liberation
War (Moyo, 1995). In line with this objective, resettlement guidelines favored the
selection of the landless, ex-combatants, ex-farm workers, and refugees, and
discriminated against the selection of master farmers. The resettlement policy did not

identify SSC farmers as beneﬁciaries.”

 

82 Chapter 2 includes a description of the resettlement program.

115

The NFAZ sought privileged access to resettlement lands for its members, who in
the early 19805 were mainly master farmers living in the communal areas."3 The NF AZ
argued that the scarcity of fertile land necessitated its allocation to those who could
maximize its productive potential. From the start, the NF AZ lobbied against the use of
the resettlement program as a tool for social justice. In 1984, it released a position paper
on resettlement arguing for the use of farming capacity rather than need as the basis for
selecting resettlement farmers. It scored a signiﬁcant policy victory when government
expanded the selection criteria to include farming capacity (Makumbe, 1994).

In 1987, the ZNF U released its own position paper on resettlement. Like the
NF AZ, it urged the government to select only master farmers and other progressive
farmers for resettlement. In addition, it argued for the expansion of the resettlement
program to facilitate the development of black commercial agriculture and outlined a
resettlement scheme organized around mid-size commercial farms. The ZNF U president,
G. Magadzire said: "The ZNF U is committed to ensuring that commercial agriculture is
not run down to ’another communal type ("8" SSC farmers had no interest in trading their
farms for ﬁve hectares of undeveloped land with only leasehold tenure.

Government policies promoting the commercial development of smallholder
agriculture facilitated a convergence of land interests between progressive farmers in the
communal areas and small-scale commercial farmers (Amin, 1992; Cousins et al., 1992).
A minority of communal area farmers had developed their farm enterprises to the extent

that they sought commercial farms and not just a place on a resettlement scheme.

 

83 The NFAZ did not open membership up to non-master farmers and women until 1980. As the VPMFA,
it restricted membership to master farmers.

8“ The Herald, January 17, 1991.

116

Recognizing a growing and vocal demand for commercial farms by black farmers, the
government created the Tenant Farmer Scheme, 3 program offering black farmers
inexpensive leases to commercial farms. Although critics identiﬁed the main
beneﬁciaries of the Tenant Farmer Scheme as ranking government, military, and party

ofﬁcials“, G. Magadzire, the ZNF U president fully supported the program.

What is important is to dilute the present position of Africans on one side
and white farmers on the other. For instance, in prime areas like Mazowe
or Banket, you need to plant blacks in between white farmers for two
reasons: break the network of racial neighborhood and create a nation of
people of which race is not important. Second ...blacks need to take that
experience [from white farmers]. We cannot do that by secluding them
and forming reserves of blacks.86

When asked about the Tenant Farmer Scheme in 1992, G. Magadzire, then the ZFU
president, maintained his position that "the Tenant F armer Scheme is the surest way to
create a black commercial farmer class. It need not compromise plans to distribute land
among poor peasant farmers'"." The 1992 Land Act gave black commercial farmers and
master farmers the legal basis to pursue their interests in acquiring govemment-purchased
lands beyond the Tenant Farmer Scheme. Assuming leadership positions in the ZFU

gave them a more visible political platform upon which to articulate those interests.

Ideology

The ZFU's senior leaders believe that the commercial development of smallholder

agriculture presents the only meaningful path for sustainable development. This belief

 

8’ 'The Land Scandal," Africa Report, January 1, 1995.
"One Man Went to Mow," Africa Conﬁdential, October 7, 1994.
"Zimbabwe Landed in Trouble," Africa Confidential, April 1994.
86 The Herald, January 17, 1991.

87 "One Man Went to Mow," Africa Conﬁdential, October 7, 1994.

117

reveals itself in the role leaders identify for the ZFU in smallholder development. In
1995, G. Magadzire identiﬁed the organization's primary purpose as the instruction of its
members in the "business of farming”? S.D. Hungwe who succeeded G. Magadazire
said during a meeting of the Land sub-committee: "Farmers should form with the main
aim of making a proﬁt instead of consumption. In the long run, all forms should be
commercialize ." 89 Their belief system makes it unlikely that the ZFU's senior leaders
would advance the land interests of poor farmers even in policy arenas where they do not
have a direct interest. The landless and the land-poor lack the assets and training to
participate in commercial agriculture.

Most of the ZFU's senior leaders participated in the master farmer training
program and are proponents of the program. The master farmer ideology identiﬁes the
commercialization of smallholder agriculture as the optimum development path for
smallholder farmers. By maximizing the productive potential of their lands, smallholder
farmers can improve their living conditions and facilitate the sustainable development of
their lands. It identiﬁes the continued use of subsistence practices and traditional tenure
as the root cause of land degradation in the communal areas (Alexander, 1994). Within
this paradigm, land is a productive asset not a basis for cultural and social reproduction.

The preceding discussion illustrates the divergence of background and land
interests between leaders and members. Moreover, it identiﬁes the dominant ideology
among the ZFU's senior leaders as creating incentives for their participation in land

policy arenas where they can realize no direct beneﬁt. Consequently, policy arenas

 

3“ Interview with G. Magadzire, ZFU president, February 4, 1995.

89 Comment made by S.D. Hungwe, chair of the NFAZ land committee, at a national council meeting,
5/17/91. Notes taken by research assistant, RGPA Zimbabwe Project.

118

where poor farmer interests may have had political opportunities like settler selection
policy become more competitive and closed to them. Closed political opportunity
structures at the national level and a leadership not predisposed to champion the land
interests of poor farmers suggest that the Union's positions on land would reﬂect the
interests of its senior leaders rather than its members. The next section illustrates this
argument. The ﬁnal section discusses factors contributing to member demobilization

around land issues at the national level.

POSITIONS ON RESETTLEMENT AND OTHER LAND ISSUES

To illustrate the divergence of the Union's and members' perspectives on land
issues, the analysis contrasts the ZFU's positions on resettlement, settler selection, and
land tenure with the opinions of 55 ZF U members who responded to the study’s survey.
The ZF U households represent the opinions of one district only, Shamva District, which
lies within the most productive area in Zimbabwe. Its farmers have access to better lands
than the majority of smallholder farmers and can be considered more productive and
commercially-oriented than their counterparts in the marginal areas. Therefore, their
opinions - as one group of smallholders - should more closely mirror that of the national

leadership.

Commercial versus Village Resettlement Schemes

At the societal level, land acquisition policy is re-distributive in nature because it

proposes to transfer rights to land from the mostly white large-scale commercial farm

119

sector to black farmers.” The ZFU takes the populist position of acquiring and
transferring land as soon as possible to black farmers. It rejects out-of-hand the CF U's
offer of 1.5 million hectares that its members have made available for resettlement
arguing that the amount cannot satisfy the demand for land among peasant farmers
(Moyo, 1998).

Land acquisition policy does not give way to contentious debate among the black
land lobby. With the exception of a few black LSC farmers whose poor farm
management practices have made their farms vulnerable to government acquisition, land
acquisition represents a "win-win" situation for black farmers. For them, the sticky issue
lies in the allocation of land between village schemes and commercial resettlement
schemes.”

The questionnaire did not ask if respondents supported the use of resettlement
lands for commercial resettlement schemes, but their positions can be inferred based on
their response to a question asking their opinion of the resettlement program (table 5.3).
About 83% of the ZF U respondents and 80% of the non-ZFU respondents considered the
resettlement program a success because it beneﬁted the poor and landless. The
government and the ZF U consider the resettlement program of the 19805 a failed
experiment because of its emphasis on equity rather than efﬁciency. Based on their
responses, ZF U and non-ZFU farmers favor implicitly the allocation of resettlement lands

to village resettlement schemes. The ZFU favors the allocation of lands to commercial

 

90 In its 1990 Land Policy Statement, the government proposed to reduce the large-scale commercial farm
class from 16.4 to 6 million hectares.

9' Chapter Two includes a description of village resettlement schemes and commercial resettlement
schemes.

120

resettlement schemes.92

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.3 Perspective on land redistribution
ZFU Non-ZFU

(n=52 (n=393)

It helps the landless 35.2% 32.7%
(n=l9) (n=130)

It results in fairer distribution of 35.2% 37.5%
land (n=l9) (n=l49)

It reduces land pressure in the 13.0% 8.6%
CA (n=7) (n=34)
It increases national income and 9.3% 10.1%
productivity (n=5) (n=40)

It decreases national productivity 0.0% 3.3%
(n=1 3)

It causes conﬂicts 3.7% 2.5%
Jn=2) (n=10)

It is unfair, only those known to 1.9% 0.8%
authorities get land (n=l) (n=3)

No opinion 1.9% 1.5%
(n=l) (n=6)

Other 0.0% 3.0%
(n=12)

 

 

 

 

 

Settler Selection Criteria

The ZF U and others recognize that the scarcity of commercial land means that the
resettlement program cannot provide land to all of the farmers who want land.93 The ZFU
believes that only the most efﬁcient producers should beneﬁt from the resettlement
program, and those who cannot be resettled should seek jobs outside of agriculture (PBS,

1998). The viewpoint that excess labor ought to transfer from agriculture to the

 

92 In 1997, the distribution of land between communal, resettlement, small-scale commercial and large-
scale commercial areas were as follows: 50.8%, 10.2%, 4.3%, and 33.4%. The ZFU considers the ideal
distribution of land to be 30% communal areas, 30% resettlement areas, 18% small-scale commercial
areas, and 20% large-scale commercial areas (Magurah, 1998). An increase in the size of the
resettlement areas would offset the decrease in the size of the communal areas. Only small-scale
commercial farmers would realize any real gains in land access.

93 The government can only resettle 300,000 families on the amount of land it intends to acquire (GoZ,
1998). According to the ZFU's plan, only 200,000 families can be resettled.

121

manufacturing or industrial sector conforms to the dual sector models that guided
development policy throughout the 19608 and again during the 19803 (Timmer, 1990).
The ZF U is not alone in its continued adherence to this incomplete development model.
In Zimbabwe, academics and government ofﬁcials also favor the idea that less efﬁcient
producers ought to go to the non-farm sector (Rukuni, 1998).

Consistent with this viewpoint, the ZF U promotes resettlement models that foster
more commercialized production within the smallholder sector. To this end, it supports
irrigation schemes and outgrower schemes such as the Wm and Bamrama
Farms,“ The Mwakasine Estates and Panorama Farm models can accommodate only a
fraction of the farmers that could otherwise be resettled on family farm schemes.” In line
with its thinking on the resettlement program, the ZFU endorses the following four
criteria for the selection of resettlement farmers (Magurah, 1998; ZFU, 1994).
Demonstrated capacity to farm commercially
Farming experience, education, or training

Farm equipment ownership
Origin in conununal areas with high population densities

PEPE"?

 

9" W has resettled 191 farmers on 10 hectare sprinkler irrigated plots. Partners received
short-term loans to assist in initial plantings of sugar cane and a long-term loan for the capital value of
the developed land. Rammmaﬁam has accomodated seven tenant farmers, each given 10 hectares of
land, and 70 resettlement farmers, each receiving 12 hectare plots. Farmers at Panorama farms receive
technical and ﬁnancial suppport for tobacco production.

95 Panorama Farms is one of several model resettlement schemes managed by the CFU as per an

agreement with the President of Zimbabwe signed in 1993. CF U provided the land for Panorama Farms
free to the government for resettlement. The Farmers' Development Trust, formerly the Tobacco
Development Trust, was established by the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA) to provide training
in tobacco production to current and future growers. The ZTA has guaranteed loans to Panorama Farm
farmers, and neighboring commercial tobacco farmers have assisted through the loan of equipment and
the provision of seed plants (Archibald, 1995).

Hippo Valley Estates Ltd., a major producer of sugar cane, and Triangle Ltd., a processor of sugar cane
and cotton, purchased Mkwasine Estates in the late 19705 by. The Estate provided training and
supervision to its farmers as well as loan ﬁnancing. The Estate undertakes to harvest, haul and deliver
farmers' cane to the mills (Spear, 1995).

122

The criteria promoted by the ZFU closely follow the criteria used by the colonial
government to select farmers for the Native Purchase Areas (NPA'S).9" Like the colonial
government, the ZFU wishes to resettle farmers with more skills and assets than those
resettled before them. With the exception of the ﬁnal criterion, the ZF U selection criteria
discriminate against the landless or land poor whose constrained access to land limits
their productive capacity and consequently, impairs their ability to accumulate farm
assets. The ZF U criteria describe graduates of the agricultural schools and colleges, farm
managers, as well as master farmers; beneﬁciaries identiﬁed in the ZNFU and NFAZ
position papers on resettlement. Contrary to the ZFU's position, more than 75% of the
ZFU and non-ZFU households in the survey felt that the landless and the young people
should be the primary beneﬁciaries of the resettlement program. Only 9% believed that
"good" farmers — such as those identiﬁed by the ZFU - should be the primary
beneﬁciaries (table 5.4).

Farmers in Shamva District are concerned that their children will be landless or at best,
land-poor. On-going land fragmentation has left many of them with parcels inadequate to
support their current households, much less share with their children in the future.
Moreover, in the village resettlement areas, farmers do not have the right to pass their
land on to their children (Wekwete, 1997).97 When asked how their children would get
this land, 70% of the ZF U households and 66% of the non-ZFU households expected

government, through the resettlement program, to provide the land.

 

9" In 1953, the government required a master farmer certiﬁcate to purchase lands in the NPAs. By 1957, it
required applicants to own capital assets or cash equivalent to 300 pounds sterling. By the 19608, it had
adopted a point system that rewarded ownership of farm equipment, agriculture experience, and proven
character of the applicant. The colonial government wanted to ensure that farmers in the newer NPAs
were more skilled and better ﬁnanced than those in the older NPA's (Weinrich, 1975).

123

Table 5.4 Responses to "who should beneﬁt from the resettlement program?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ZFU Non-ZFU
(n=55) (n=393)
The landless 61.8% 44.5%
(n=34) (n=175)
The young people 18.2% 33.1%
(n=10) (n=l30)
Those who are good 9.1% 13.7%
farmers (n=5) (n=54)
Anyone who wants land 9.1% 5.8%
(n=5) (n=23)
Other 1.8% 2.5%
(n= 1L (n=10)

 

 

Land Tenure

The ZF U contends that land degradation in the communal areas is a result of poor
land husbandry rooted in the traditional land tenure system. Farm families have usufruct
rights to land given to them by the headmen or sabhuku of their villages. In the 19903,
local government started to take this responsibility away from local authorities but has

realized only marginal success.

In the document, "Policy Viewpoints of the Union," the ZFU states:

The land tenure system in communal and resettlement areas is neither
environmentally, socially nor economically sustainable. There is a need to
develop a land tenure system that can bring new impetus to production growth
and development within the smallholder sector. [It] should be changed so that
smallholder farmers can equally compete with their commercial farmer
counterparts under the new economic environment. (p. 18)

It proposes the rationalization of land tenure systems between the smallholder and

commercial sectors, and believes that communal area farmers should be able to buy and

 

97 Communal Lands Act 1981.

124

sell their land. In this way, resources would be put to their most efﬁcient use. To
facilitate this process, the ZFU proposed that productive farmers, as evidenced by their
production record, should be favored during the titling process.

In contrast, more than 90% of the ZF U and non-ZFU households do not agree
with privatization, believing that it is their right to have access to communal land (table
5.5). Most argue that the land is communally owned and a gift of nature. A few
commented that they had fought for the land and so have a right to it. Twenty percent of
ZF U households fear that privatization would lead to the concentration of land in the

hands of the rich and leave the majority landless; an outcome implicitly favored by the

ZFU (table 5.6).

Table 5.5 Responses to "should land he bought and sold in the
communal areas?"

ZFU hh Non-ZFU hh
(n=55) (n=397)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes 8.1% 8.6%
No 94.5% 91.4%
Table 5.6 Responses to "why shouldn't communal land he bought or sold?"
ZFU hh Non-ZFU hh
(n=43) (n=301)

It is communally-owned 48.8% 58.8%
(n=2 1) (n=1 77)
It is a gift of nature 18.6% 19.6%
(n=8) (n=59)
It is what we fought for 11.6% 8.3%
(n=5) (n=25)
It will lead to problems/the rich will buy all 20.9% 13.3%
the land (n=9) (n=40)

 

 

 

 

 

125

Table 5.7 Responses to "what are the benefits of title deeds?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ZFU HH Non-ZFU HH
(n=5 5) (n=397)

No beneﬁts 50.0% 53.9%
Creditors would take leand away 0% 1.3%
Will give more security 18.5% 20.2%
Will give the incentives to develop land 5.6% 3.3%
Will be able to secure more credit 7.4% 6.5%
Will allow us to use land as we wish 7.4% 5.5%
Don't know 9.3% 8.8%
Other 1.9% 0.5%

 

 

 

 

The survey respondents' attitude toward title deeds contradicts their opposition to
the privatization of communal lands. About 40% of the survey respondents believe that
there are beneﬁts to having title deeds to their land. Respondents felt that title deeds
would give them greater tenure security, which in turn gives them greater access to credit
and incentives to develop their land (table 5.7). The beneﬁts identiﬁed by the
respondents match those articulated by the ZFU in support of title deeds. The apparent
contradiction between table 5.5 and table 5.6 may indicate that respondents recognize the
increased tenure security that title deeds give them and at the same time fear the potential
for negative consequences arising from privatization.

The preceding analysis strongly suggests that the positions advocated by the
ZFU's national leaders do not reﬂect the positions of its smallholder members. Although
the survey included only a small sample of ZFU members from Shamva District, the
socioeconomic and farm background of the respondents suggested that their views would
more closely mirror those of the national leadership. The respondents had more
productive farm operations and owned greater farm assets than their counterparts in the
marginal areas (Amaiz, 1997; Attwood and Sithole, 1990). The ﬁnding that their views

differ from the ZFU's policy positions is signiﬁcant. Smallholder farmers who live in

126

marginal areas and who practice subsistence agriculture would be less likely to hold

views similar to those of the ZFU leadership than the pool of survey respondents.

INTERNAL MOBILIZATION

Donors fund the ZFU to increase the political voice of poor farmers (Riddell,
1994). A survey of ZF U members in three districts found that members want the ZFU to
act as their "lawyer" and to lobby for their interests vis-a-vis the government and private
sector actors (Amaiz et al, 1995). In the case of land policy, it is clear that the ZFU's
positions favor the interests of its commercial farmers and wealthier members. Though
the Union's positions do not reﬂect those of most of its members at the grassroots,
members have not mobilized to confront their national leaders. Why they have not done
so can be explained in terms of the high exclusion costs associated with the provision of

public policies and members' expectations of the ZF U.

Demand for Land

Scholars and donors assume that there exists a strong demand for land among the
rural poor. They attributed the absence of an effective demand for land by the rural poor
in the late 19803 to the organizational weakness of the NFAZ (Amin, 1992; Herbst, 1990;
Skalnes and Moyo, 1990). However, the rural poor represent a differentiated population
whose land interests differ; the demand for land may not be uniform among them
(Burgess, 1992; Cousins et al, 1992).

The ﬁndings of a recent govemment-sponsored survey, the "Poverty Assessment
Survey," reveal that land is not a priority among the rural majority. Of the 19,000 rural

and urban households surveyed, only a minority considered poor land quality or land

127

scarcity as the main cause of poverty in their home areas. They identiﬁed enhancing the
productivity of their land through production loans and the construction of irrigation
infrastructure as a more effective solution to poverty (Bowyer-Bower, 1998). The
Shamva District household survey yielded a similar ﬁnding. Of the 466 households, less
than 6% identiﬁed land shortage as their main farm problem even though the average plot
size for the respondents fell below the national average. More than half of the
respondents cited the shortage of inputs and lack of draft power as their main production

constraints (table 5.8).

Table 5.8 Farm problems by ZFU afﬁliation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None Shortage Shortage of Army Land too Other Total
of inputs draft power worm small
Non-ZFUhh 24.6% 51.3% 9.9% 8.1% 3.8% 2.3% 100%
(n=411)
ZFUhh 32.7% 40.0% 12.7% 7.3% 5.5% 1.8% 100%
n=55>

 

Do the Poverty Assessment and Shamva District surveys mean that there does not
exist a signiﬁcant demand for land among the rural poor? The rural poor comprise the
landless, land-poor, and households with access to sufﬁcient lands. Surveys like the two
cited here tend to under-count the landless and land-poor because they often rely on a list
compiled by local or central government agents who use the "stand" or home site to
deﬁne the study population. These lists usually overlook the landless, especially

squatters. In 1997, the government estimated that over 200,000 families were "squatting'

on state land, grazing land, and other properties”. The squatter population will continue

 

98 "Southern Africa Development: Plenty of Rhetoric, Little Land." Inter-Press Service English News
Wire, April 23, 1997.

128

to rise as the population within the communal areas grows and opportunities for
employment in the non-farm sectors remain limited. Although the landless and land-poor

may be in the minority, they nevertheless represent a sizeable majority.

Perception, Expectations, and Incentives for Mobilization

There exists among poor farmers, including members of the ZFU, a strong
demand for land for themselves and for their children (see table 5.4). However, land
policies present weak incentives for internal mobilization because of the associated high
exclusion costs; those not willing to contribute to a policy cannot be prevented from
beneﬁting. The long-term and uncertain payoff to collective action also creates weak
incentives for mobilization. From 1990 to 1997, the government had acquired less than
50,000 hectares and resettled about 2,000 families per year, ﬁgures far below the targets
outlined in its initial land policy proposal (Moyo, 1998). At the village-level, Phase II
resettlement has had far less of a visible impact than the resettlement program of the early
19803 that resettled about 34,000 families in the ﬁrst four years (Gasper, 1990).

Members' perception of the ZFU as a service delivery agency rather than a
lobbying organization inﬂuences the demands that they make and their expectations of
the type and level of beneﬁts that they should receive to make their membership
worthwhile. The ZFU's historical roots lie in service provision. The NFAZ began as an
organization to facilitate the dissemination of agricultural technologies to smallholder
farmers, and farmers joined to access extension services and tax exemptions on farm
tools, seeds, and inputs (Mutimba, 1986). Only after the merger with the ZNF U, an
organization that emphasized lobbying activities, did the NFAZ as the ZFU begin to

develop its lobbying capacities through the expansion of its economic staff and leadership

129

training (Appendix A). Despite its greater interest in its lobbying capacity, the ZF U
continues to emphasize its service delivery role to members. On the inside cover of its
monthly magazine, the ZFU deﬁnes its roles as the following.

Ensuring a better package for farmers

Negotiating for viable producer prices

Coordinating marketing facilities

Arranging for grain bags

Coordinating transport arrangements

Working for sales tax exemption on agricultural inputs
Facilitating the purchase of farm implements
Encouraging group work

Giving expert advice to farmers

Providing information on current farming issues

The use of selective beneﬁts to attract and retain members is consistent with the
experiences of other farmer organizations in the North and South (Schmid and Soroko,
1997)

Farmers join the ZF U to access services and goods and not necessarily to pursue
their common interests in the policy arena (Amaiz et al, 1995; Amaiz, 1997; Makumbe,
1994). Despite the ZFU's efforts to inform their local leaders of the Union's lobbying
functions in "leadership training seminars," members at the grassroots continue to see the
organization as a service delivery agency. Consequently, members do not expect nor do
they make demands on their leaders to lobby for their land interests. Members' low
expectations of the organization's lobbying activities give senior leaders the political
space to the ZF U to promote their own interests in land and other policy areas. Though
they may not receive the credit for their lobbying efforts, leaders also do not have to

answer to the membership for the policy positions adopted by the Union.

130

SUMMARY

To summarize the ﬁndings in this chapter, the hierarchical structure of decision-
making centralizes decision-making authority in the national council and restricts
ordinary members' access to the decision process at the national level. Weak rules for
leadership accountability, exacerbated by the poor channels of communication between
the national and local levels, mean members cannot sanction their leaders directly.
Attaining the right to levy smallholder production provided the ZF U a stable source of
funding but at the same time, weakened already weak rules for leadership accountability.
The political opportunity structure for smallholders remains restrictive at the national
level in the land policy arena.

This, however, allows national ZF U leaders to promote their own ideology and
interests through the Union's positions on land. Moreover, senior leaders' background
and belief system makes it unlikely that on their own they will speak for the interests of
their poorer members. A comparison of the ZFU's positions on land with the opinions of
members in the study district suggest that at the national level, the Union does not speak
for the land interests of a majority of its members.

Members have not mobilized to challenge the Union's land positions even though
they demand land. Despite their interest, land policy represents them with weak
incentives because of the associated high exclusion costs and an uncertain payoff,
especially since the Phase II resettlement program has yielded few concrete results.
Equally important, members have not joined the ZFU as a means to realize their common
policy interests. Instead, access to services and goods (selective beneﬁts) and the Union's

historical function as a service delivery agency overshadow current efforts to expand

131

lobbying activities. Apparently, members are not likely to make demands on an
organization if they think it lacks the capacity to implement those demands.

Confronted with closed national political opportunity structures, smallholder
members may face more open political opportunity structures at the local level because of
stronger rules for leadership accountability and participatory decision-making processes.
The district level coincides with the level of implementation for resettlement policy. The
possibility of a tangible payoff strengthens the incentives for mobilization faced by poor
farmers. Together, these two conditions indicate a greater likelihood for internal

mobilization, an issue addressed in the following chapter.

132

CHAPTER 6

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, INCENTIVES, AND
COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE DISTRICT CONTEXT

Conditions that limit political opportunities at the national level do not necessarily
hold at the local level where members have greater access to the decision process and
stronger rules for leadership accountability (Bratton and Bingen, 1994; Uphoff, 1993).
The local or district level coincides with the level of implementation for resettlement
policies. Tangible payoffs to collective action strengthen incentives for mobilization
(Arce, 1993). As suggested in Chapter 4, poor members of the ZFU face more open
political opportunity structures at the local level and are more likely to mobilize at that
level than at the national level. This chapter explores this idea through a case study of
Shamva District in Mashonaland Central Province.

Chapter 6 begins by examining political opportunity structures for land at the
district level followed by an analysis of leaders' and members' land interests. We assume
that members and leaders share more interests because of a common production
environment. Given this, we are interested in examining whether ZFU smallholder
members have mobilized at the local-level around common land interests. Do the
conditions that inhibit mobilization at the national level also exist at the local level? The
chapter concludes by discussing how smallholder farmers have gained access to land

outside of the resettlement program and its implications for land degradation.

133

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES

In 1995, the Shamva District ZFU had 1,453 paid-up members,99 with a majority
of members living in the Madziwa communal area. The fewest live in the resettlement
areas of Mupfurudzi and Sanye. Agritex agents do not support the ZFU in the
resettlement areas,‘00 a situation unlike that in other districts where the ZF U and Agritex

work "hand-in—glove" (Amaiz et al, 1995).

There are no ZF U personnel in the resettlement areas. Agritex is not invited to
their mobilization meetings. There are bad relations between Agritex and ZF U
here. I do not see any benefit to being a ZF U member and I do not encourage
farmers to join. In other areas, ZF U has promised farmers many things to get
them to join but does not come though on those promises.

(Interview with Mr. Maropa, Agritex agent, November 17, 1995)

Among the seven districts that make-up Mashonaland Central Province, Shamva
District had the fourth highest level of membership. However, ZF U members in Shamva
account for about 8% of the district's population, a ﬁgure surpassed only by Rushinga
District (22%) and Centenary District (9%) in the province. In 1996, membership ahnost
doubled because district leaders promised prospective members cattle through a
govemment-sponsored re-stocking program. Only 84 farmers in the district received
heifers and few went to ZFU members. Membership dropped down the next year since in

the eyes of many it had not delivered on its promise.

 

9’ Source: ZFU's registry ofﬁce, Harare, March 1995.

'00 ZFU leaders had mobilized in the resettlement areas and promised access to credit programs,
transportation, assistance with tillage, and other services. According to the extension agents, the ZFU
had not delivered on any of these promises. The agents do not trust the ZF U and feel that it is only
there to take advantage of farmers in the resettlement areas. Consequently, they discourage farmers
from joining (Interview with Mr. Mavunga, Resettlement Ofﬁcer, Mupfurudzi RA, March 11, 1997).

134

Structures of Decision-making

The ZFU district council represents the highest decision-making body below the
provincial level. The district council comprises the chairpersons for each of the area
councils and the four members of the council's leadership committee. It meets once a
month like the thirteen area councils but village clubs follow their own schedule. As
stated in Chapter 5, the district council has the responsibility of communicating up to the
provincial level and national level members' problems or issues that it cannot address.
Similarly, it disseminates information from the national level down to the area councils
and to the grassroots. For two reasons, the Shamva's district council has not effectively
carried out this role.'°' First, village clubs and area councils lack the funds to send their
chairpersons to the council meetings on a regular basis.'°2 Second, the location of the
district council meetings creates difﬁculties for representatives from Bushu communal
area to attend.

Madziwa communal area and Bushu communal area sit about 45 km apart with
Madziwa CA to the north and Bushu CA in the center adjacent to the commercial farm
areas. Before the amalgamation of rural and district councils in 1993, Madziwa
communal area housed the district council ofﬁces. In 1994, the newly formed Rural
District Council (RDC) moved to its ofﬁces to Bushu Ward,'°3 but the ZFU district

council continued to meet in the old council ofﬁces in Madziwa (Figure 6.1).

 

'0' Interview with ZFU marketing ofﬁcer, P. Zakariah, Bindura Town, October 30, 1995.
'02 Group interview with ZFU leaders in Bushu CA, November 15, 1995.

'03 Historically, rural councils acted as the local government in white areas and district councils in black
areas. Amalgamation of rural and district councils occurred in July 1993 per the 1988 Rural District

135

In an interview with several village club leaders in Bushu ward and Kajakata
ward in Bushu communal area, leaders accused Madziwa communal area leaders of
having co-opted the district council. They noted that all four members of the leadership
committee lived in Madziwa communal area. The refusal of the leadership committee to
re-locate the ZFU district council meetings to Bushu or to a more central site excluded
the participation of Bushu leaders who often lacked the ﬁrnds for bus fares. Further, they
accused the leadership committee of diverting ZF U services and beneﬁts to Madziwa
members. Bushu leaders felt two district councils, one representing each communal area,
would best serve their interests.'°"

The perceived inability of Bushu leaders to inﬂuence decision-making within
their district council also derives from the fact that Madziwa communal area has three
times as many wards as Bushu communal area. Because only one area council can
represent each ward, Madziwa representatives outnumber Bushu representatives three to
one. Putting aside the problems of attendance, the process of aggregating members'
interests, a necessity for large farmer organizations like the ZFU, inevitably results in the

"muting" of minority voices.

Council Act.

'04 Group interview with ZFU members in Gono Ward, Bushu CA, October 14, 1995, and in Kajakata
Ward, October 15, 1995.

136

 

 

 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

 

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LAND COMMON“. LAND 51 NM
52 Nutundu

nessntuem uno [j counsecm uno

Source: Matanda and Jeche (1997)

137

 

 

Village clubs have a horizontal or simple structure of decision-making. Leaders
or members may call meetings when they wish to introduce an activity or issue and
members participate in decision—making through a "show-of-hands." In Gokwe District,
Midlands Province, and Chivi District, Masvingo Province, Amaiz et a1. (1995) found
that village clubs responded to their members' production problems more often than area
councils or district councils. In some cases, ZF U village clubs had afﬁliated clubs
organized around special activities like horticulture whose members did not belong to the
ZFU. In Shamva District on the other hand, almost all of the clubs existed only to access
services delivered by the ZFU national ofﬁce (Amaiz, 1997). Older clubs were more
likely to organize their own activities than those recently formed. For example, the ZF U
clubs in Bushu ward organized asset pooling, marketing, and extension activities at the
club level and at the ward level. The ﬁrst club formed in 1987, and in 1997, eight village
clubs represented members in six VIDCO's in Bushu ward.

At the time of the study, three national ZFU leaders lived in Shamva District
albeit in the large-scale commercial area: the ZF U president, the provincial chairperson,
and the vice-chairperson for the national horticulture commodity committee. According
to the ZFU members interviewed, the ZFU president and the provincial chairperson had
not visited their areas though the provincial chairperson’s farm lies adjacent to Bushu
communal area. The horticulture vice-chair had visited some of the ZFU groups in the
area but as part of her own program to promote smallholder horticulture production.
Unique among ZFU leaders, she used her own funds to visit with members'“. The

minimal contact between the ZFU’s national leaders and members in Shamva District

 

'05 Interview with Mr. E. Chikava, ZFU senior marketing ofﬁcer, Harare, November 25, 1995.

138

supports the earlier observation regarding the closed nature of the national political

opportunity structures.

Leadership Accountability

At the club and area level, the physical and social proximity of members and
leaders facilitate members' efforts to hold their leaders accountable. Each club has the
responsibility for writing its own by-laws, and contrary to the demand by the national
ofﬁce to hold elections every three years, village clubs in the study area did not hold to a
rigid schedule for elections. Of the 10 village clubs interviewed, all called elections on
an "as-needed" basis when members became dissatisﬁed with their leaders' performances.
For example, members had removed a village club leader afﬁliated with the sorghum

grower groups only after they caught him stealing money.

There have been three votes since the club formed in 1986. The people on the
committee have remained the same although they have been moved from position
to position. If someone does not do well in one position, they are given lower
positions to encourage them to work harder.

(Interview with ZF U club, Gono ward, October 14, 1995)

Established in 1983. If the committee is doing well, we do not change or vote a
new one in. As yet, we have faced no problems.

(Interview with ZFU club, Kajakata ward, Shamva District, October 15, 1995)

Funding

The district council secretary identiﬁed the district council's two main
responsibilities as communicating member grievances to the provincial level and
recruiting new ZFU members. Of the two, recruiting new members occupied most of his

time, and he mobilized for the ZF U daily. The leadership training courses offered by the

139

national ofﬁce to district and area leaders emphasizes the recruitment of new members.

The Shamva District Council lacked the funds needed to address members'
demands. The district council retains only 10% of all members' dues collected106 and
does not receive additional funding from the levies.107 In 1995, the council had an
operating budget of Z $2,906 (US $363), an amount insufﬁcient to reimburse council
members' bus fares for the year.”’3 Though the district council's reliance on members'
dues hampered its ability to provide services to its members, at the same time, it

strengthened the informal and formal rules for leadership accountability.

Land Interests

Within broad-interest organizations like the ZF U, the units at the grassroots
represent more homogenous interests because members and leaders operate within the
same physical, social, and cultural environments. This is true in Zimbabwe where
colonial policies segregated commercial and peasant farmers. In Shamva District, the
majority of smallholder farmers practice rainfed agriculture based on a maize/cotton
rotation and ox-traction hence members ought to share common interests with leaders.

To examine this question, the analysis considers the production background of

ZF U members and leaders responding to the household survey and their land interests

 

'06 Membership dues are distributed as follows: village clubs (5%), area council (5%), district council
(10%), provincial council (30%), and national council (50%).

'07 At the time of this study, the national council had not yet speciﬁed a plan on how to spend the levies
though it had begun to support some staff positions and programs. It aims to use the money for
research and other unspeciﬁed areas. One of those areas was to assist district councils with funding for
bus fares and special projects. But to receive the money, district councils had to submit budget
proposals and project plans; requirements that surpassed the capacity of Shamva District Council.
Interview with B. Mukwende, senior Field and Projects ofﬁcer, Harare, March 17, 1997.

'08 Interview with Mr. Mandizha, ZFU district secretary, Madziwa CA, March 4, 1997.

I40

vis-a-vis resettlement. Only six of the 55 ZF U members who participated in the survey
identiﬁed themselves as leaders. Because they represent a small sub-sample, the analysis
used wealth as a proxy variable to overcome this shortcoming. Previous studies have
shown that leaders tend to be wealthier than members (see for example Bingen, 1986a;
Bunker, 1987; Fox, 1991; Nuitjen, 1993).

The analysis divides respondents into four categories based on farm asset
ownership. Previous studies used herd size as the primary indicator of wealth but these
studies did not factor in the impact of drought on herd sizes (Drinkwater, 1992; Burgess,
1992).109 Kinsey et a1. (1998) in a panel study of three resettlement areas including
Mupfurudzi RA in Shamva District found that households coped with drought primarily
by selling their cattle. They only rarely sold personal items, household effects, or
agricultural equipment to raise cash during drought years. Given that Zimbabwe had a
severe drought in the production season immediately preceding the household survey, it
is appropriate to use ownership of agricultural implements as a wealth indicator. The

wealth categories based on farm asset ownership are as follows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categpry Assets own
Poor None
Middle Plow and/or cultivator
Rich Plow, cultivator, scotch cart
and/or bicycle
Very Rich plow, cultivator, scotch cart,
bicycle, tractor and/or car

 

Applying the wealth categories to the entire survey sample, the analysis found a positive

relationship between the study's wealth categories and other indicators of wealth like herd

 

'09 Zimbabwe experienced two serious droughts between 1991 and 1995 that drastically reduced the
smallholder herds.

141

size, production levels, and production acreage (table 6.1)

Table 6.1 Wealth class by farm characteristics (n=466)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wealth Herd Grew Mean maize Grew Mean cotton Mean total maize
ironp size maize 1995 output (kg) cotton 1995 output (kg) + cotton area (ha)
Poor 1 93.7% 82.9 27.4% 183.7 2.8
(n=96)
Middle 3 100.0% 344.8 56.1% 210.7 5.1
(n=123)
Rich 8 99.1% 512.5 68.3% 341.6 5.7
(n=230)
Very rich 11 100.0% 1391.9 60.0% 408.7 7.1
(n=l6)
Totals 5 98.3% 414.3 56.4% 293.6 5.0
(n=466)

 

No ZF U respondents fell into the “very rich” category and only a few (n=6) fell
into the “poor” category. For the statistical analysis, the responses of "middle" farmers
are taken to represent those of "members" while the responses of "rich" farmers are taken
to represent those of "leaders." For descriptive purposes, the responses of poor members

are included in each of the tables below."°

Table 6.2 Breakdown of ZFU respondents by wealth category

 

 

 

Wealth category N
Poor 6
Middle 20
Rich 29
Very Rich 0
Total ZFU members 55
Land Size and Quality

Although not statistically different, more members considered their land

inadequate to meet their household's needs than poor farmers or leaders. Almost three-

 

”0 The test for signiﬁcance uses a likelihood ratio chi-square statistic appropriate for analysis of
categorical data (Norusis, 1990).

142

quarters of the members found their land inadequate versus about half of the leaders and

poor farmers (table 6.3).

 

 

 

Table 6.3 "Is your land adequate to meet your household's needs?"
Poor Member Leaders
(n=6) 3 (n=29)
(n=20)
Yes 50% 30% 41.4%
No 50% 70% 58.6%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 6.4 Assessment of cropland by ZFU members

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ZFU Poor Members Leaders
(n=6) (n=20) (n=29)
Very good 16.7% 15.0% 6.9%
Good 33.3% 40.0% 37.9%
Satisfactory 16.7% 25.0% 37.9%
Badly damaged 0.0% 20.0% 17.2%
Not ﬁt for 33.3% 0.0% 0.0%
am’culture

 

 

When asked to assess the quality of their cropland, half of all respondents rated
their land as either "very good" or "good" (table 6.4). This suggests that farmers who
considered their land inadequate to meet their household's needs most likely meant that

their parcels were too small rather than being of poor quality.

Production Constraints
Considerably more leaders, almost half, responded that they have no farm
problems whereas only 25% of members responded likewise. Among members reporting

to face production problem, the majority identiﬁed input shortage as their greatest

constraint. A slight statistical signiﬁcance was found between the responses of members

143

and leaders suggesting a difference in their production environments.”' Leaders appear

to have fewer production problems than members or poor farmers (table 6.5).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 6.5 Major farm problems expressed by ZFU members
Poor Members Leaders
(n=6) (n=20) (n=29)
None 0.0% 25.0% 44.8%
Shortaggf inputs 66.7% 55% 24. 1%
Shortage of draft animals 16.7% 10% 13.8%
Army worm 16.7% 5% 6.9%
Land size 0% 0% 10.3%
Other 0% 0% 0%

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of the poor farmers or members cited land size as a major constraint to
production. Only three leaders cited parcel size as a constraint. There appears to be a
conﬂict between the responses in table 6.5 and those in table 6.4, but the information in
table 6.5 refers to just one farm problem, the problem which posed the greatest constraint
to production. Although more farmers, especially members, may ﬁnd their land size to

be too small, it may not represent the biggest or the most pressing farm problem.

Opinions on Resettlement

Farmers in all three categories support the use of the resettlement program to
beneﬁt the landless and young people (table 3.1). Few identify "good farmers" (i.e., the

most productive) as the appropriate beneﬁciaries of resettlement (table 6.6).

 

'” Likelihood ratio = 9.09124; df = 5; signiﬁcance = .10548

144

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 6.6 "Who should beneﬁt from resettlement?"
Poor Member Leaders
(n=6) s (n=29)

(n=20)

Landless 83.3% 60.0% 58.6%

Young people 16.7% 15.0% 20.7%

Good farmers 0.0% 5.0% 13.8%

Anyone who wants land 0.0% 15.0% 6.9%

Other 0.0% 5.0% 0.0%

 

 

 

 

 

 

The widespread support for the use of the resettlement program to beneﬁt the
young and the landless can be understood within the context of land scarcity in the
communal lands of Shamva District. Resettlement area and communal area farmers
worry about where their children will ﬁnd land. On-going land fragmentation has left a
number of households land-poor or without enough land to pass on to all of their children
(Wekwete, 1997). Almost a third of all of the ZFU members interviewed expect the
government to give their children land (table 6.7). There was not signiﬁcantly statistical

difference between the responses of members and leaders suggesting some commonality

of interest between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 6.7 “How will your children get land?”

Poor Members Leaders

(n=6) (n=20) (n=29)
Be given by government 60.0% 65.0% 75.9%
Settle where they wish 20.0% 10.0% 10.3%
Be given by headman 0.0% 10.0% 6.9%
Inheritance 0.0% 15 .O% 3 .4%
Buy land 20.0% 0.0% 0.0%
Don't know 0.0% 0.0% 3.4%

 

 

 

 

 

The preceding analysis provides empirical evidence showing members and

leaders at the local level do share similar production constraints and land interests.

145

Although leaders experience fewer production problems than members, both have an
interest in seeing the resettlement program assist young people and the landless, a

position contrary to that of the government and the ZF U.

MOBILIZATION AT THE GRASSROOTS

Local government ofﬁcials and district-level representatives of line ministries
have the responsibility of implementing resettlement policy. The settler selection
committee, individuals who actually choose settlers for the resettlement schemes,
includes the Agritex area supervisor (area AEO), the district resettlement ofﬁcer, the
RDC Chief Executive Ofﬁcer, and as of 1997, the ZFU district chairperson. The settler
selection process occurs at the end of the implementation phase for settler selection
policy. Thus, at the district-level, strong incentives exist for farmers to mobilize around
settler selection because of the potential short-term and tangible payoff to action.
However, interviews with district leaders reveal that the ZF U has never approached the
RDC to challenge the list of settlers for resettlement. The district carried out two
resettlement exercises from 1990-1995 (see Appendix C). Only a contingent of VIDCO
councilors headed by Chief Bushu, one of four traditional chiefs in the district,
challenged the selection of settlers.

The conditions at the local level appear open to member mobilization around land
issues. Why have ZFU members not done so? As was the case in the national context,
members' perception of the ZFU's capacities inﬂuenced their decision not to use the
Union to articulate their land demands to policy-makers. The performance of the

resettlement program in Shamva District also affected the incentives for mobilization.

146

Role of ZF U

The ZFU in Shamva District emphasizes its role as a service delivery agency to
attract and maintain membership. The ZFU club members and leaders said that farmers
joined the ZFU to access the beneﬁts listed below (table 6.8). All but two of the beneﬁts
fall into Olson's (1965) category of "selective beneﬁts." The policies lobbied for by
national and local leaders and recognized by members are commodity pricing and

marketing policies.

Pricing and marketing policies affect goods with a joint-impact quality; the use of
the good by an individual does not preclude its use by another. Joint-impact goods
(J IG's) create incentives for their provision for two reasons. The associated policy arena
is distributive in nature, i.e., has low levels of conﬂict, meaning that participants face
relatively low costs to acquire desired policies. Second, the likely and tangible beneﬁts
create incentives for the ZFU's local leaders to participate in the policy arena. They
understand that they must deliver beneﬁts directly or through the policy process to

members to retain their leadership positions.

Table 6.8 ZFU beneﬁts
D. IE ﬁl [1° 13 HI
Sales tax exemption Lobbying for better prices vis-a-vis buyers
Grain bag loans Lobbying for favorable marketing policies
Grouppurchase of inputs
Grower contracts
Technical training
Project support
"Lawyer" vis-a-vis marketing boards
Women's income-generating groys
Marketing and pricing information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

147

At the district level, farmers joined the ZFU to access the services listed above.
To do so, they had to become members of a ZFU village club. All but three of the ten
ZFU clubs interviewed had organized since 1990, and these clubs formed ostensibly to

access ZFU services (Amaiz,1997).

The group got together for sales tax exemption and to get other ZF U benefits. As
a group, we don 't do anything except wait for things from the ZF U which were
promised.

(Interview with ZFU club, Nyamaropa ward, November 27, 1995)

Mrs. Mavudzi [ vice-chair for the national horticulture committee] promised us
mange tout [snow peas] seed and horticulture contracts. That is why we joined
the ZF U.

(Interview with ZFU members, Principe Irrigation Scheme, November 16, 1995)

District leaders understand that:"members expect us to listen and support them in their
projects so that they see a difference between a member and a non-member.“ '2

Poor farmer organizations rarely venture into advocacy because their members do
not tolerate uncertain and long-term payoff horizons (Bratton and Bingen, 1994). District
leaders chose not to participate in local land politics though some are well-placed to
inﬂuence local resettlement policy. The ZFU district chairperson, Mr. Muzondo, is also a
ward councilor from Madziwa communal area. As a ward councilor, he sits on the Rural
District Council (RDC) that along with traditional chiefs has the responsibility of land
allocation in the district. Yet, Mr. Muzondo addressed the RDC only to lobby for roads

and community projects, all joint-impact goods.”3 The Chief Executive Ofﬁcer for the

 

”2 Interview with Mr. Mandizha, ZFU district secretary, Madziwa, March 19, 1997.
”3 Interview with Mr. Zendera, CEO Chaminuka RDC, Chaminuka council ofﬁces, March 3, 1997.

148

RDC said: "T he ZF U [chair] is ineffective in land issues." ZF U members do not see their
local leaders as participants in local land politics.
People don ’t believe that the ZF U has anything to do with land allocation and

resettlement. They are unaware of national eﬂorts in this area. [VIDCO and
WADCO] councilors claim all of the power. "

(Interview with Mr. Mandizha, ZF U district secretary, March 19, 1997)

Land access has an incompatible-use quality that creates incentives for powerful
interests to participate in land policy arenas. The highly conﬂictual nature of re-
distributive policy arenas like land policy creates costs that dissuade ZFU local leaders
from participating. Their decision not to participate in local land politics reinforces the
perception that the ZFU is only a service delivery agency and not an actor in the land

policy arena.

Performance of the Resettlement Program

In the minds of many, the ZF U acts as a government department facilitating
smallholder farmer access to public programs. The selective beneﬁts that it uses to
recruit and maintain members derive from its unique relationship with the government.
As the NFAZ, it offered members privileged access to extension services. As the ZFU, it
expanded its services to include access to government credit programs and food
assistance (Amaiz et al, 1995). From 1990-1997, the government resettled about 2,000
families per year. The limited availability of land through the resettlement program
provides weak incentives for farmers to use the ZF U to gain access to land. Farmers

have greater opportunities to get land outside of the resettlement program.

149

Historically, large-scale commercial (LSC) farmers owned most of the area in
Shamva District. At Independence, 69% (1446.8 kmz) of the land belonged to them'”.
Black farmers lived in either Madziwa or Bushu communal areas. Surrounded by
commercial farms, Bushu communal area (CA) served as a source of cheap labor for the
farms and commercial mines in the district.”5 The Umfurudzi Safari Area, public lands,
occupied 706.2 km2 along the northeastern border of the District. Independence in 1980
brought with it considerable change in the settlement patterns in Shamva District. As of
1997, the LSC sector occupied 33.2% or 885.18 km 2 and RA's made up 16.3% of the
land or 434.8 km 2. The size of the CA's and government lands remained the same.“6

Resettlement in Shamva District extends back to the colonial period when in the
late 1970s, the transition government built "protected villages" or keeps in the northern
wards of Madziwa CA. Shamva District shares a border with Mt. Darwin and Rushinga
districts to the north, areas that were under the comrades' control during the Liberation
War (Lan, 1985). To cut-off support given to the comrades by the rural populace, the
government forcibly resettled black farmers in protected villages where they remained
under the surveillance of government troops. Aﬁer the war, some of the families decided

to stay.”7

 

'1' Mashonaland Central Province Comparative Tables: district population indicators and information for
development planning. CSO, November 1989.

”5 There are two commercial mines in the district. Shamva mine is located to the south of Shamva town,
and Madziwa mine is located some 35 km northeast of the town.

”6 Mashonaland Central Province Comparative Tables: district population indicators and information for
development planning. CSO, November 1989.

Census 1992, Provincial Proﬁle Mashonaland Central. Central Statistical Ofﬁce, Harare, Zimbabwe.
”7 Interview with Mrs. E. Jones, District Administrator, Shamva town, November 2, 1995.

150

Large-scale resettlement by the government occurred after 1980. Almost all of
the commercial farmers located between Madziwa CA and Umfurudzi safari area
abandoned their farms or chose to sell them immediately after the war. The government
purchased 22 farms and developed them for resettlement (Figure 6.1). Resettlement
began in 1981 with the establishment of Mupfurudzi resettlement scheme and Simba
Youth producers' cooperative, the two pioneer schemes in the country. The government
settled 566 families on the Mupfurudzi scheme, a Model A scheme organized around 18
nucleated villages. Twenty-nine ex-combatants and their families moved onto the old
Paraidon Farm to begin Simba Youth cooperative (Akwabi-Ameyaw, 1990).

The government established six other Model B producers' cooperatives in the
district after Simba Youth: Batsaranai F arming Collective, Chiororo, F undanevu, Dairies
of Shashi, Kubudirira, and Kushingirira. However, most of the families on the district's
resettlement list did not want to resettle on the collective farms preferring spaces on
Model A schemes, the village resettlement schemes. The district council had a difﬁcult
time resettling these schemes and membership never reached the levels identiﬁed by
Agritex as necessary to implement the farm plans it had developed”.

Since Mupfurudzi, the government has made available only one other village
resettlement scheme, Sanye, which lies adjacent to Bushu CA. Occupying a much
smaller area, the government resettled 86 farm families on the scheme in 1989. In 1991-
1992, the government developed the last resettlement scheme in the district, Principe

Irrigation Scheme, located adjacent to the Sanye resettlement area. Principe Irrigation

 

”8 Interview with Mr. E. Veremu, District Extension Ofﬁcer, Ministry of National Affairs, Shamva town,
November 2, 1995.

151

Scheme was developed with funding from DANIDA (Danish Aid). Sixty farm families
received one hectare each of irrigated land and access to dryland cropping areas and
communal grazing areas.

The most active period of the resettlement program coincided with the earliest
years of the post-Independence period from 1980-1984. During this time, the Mugabe
government used land and access to other production services to consolidate their
political presence in the rural areas (Moyo, 1995). The new land policy responds to the
demands made by an emergent black middle and upper classes (Skalnes, 1995).

Resettlement in Shamva District since 1991 illustrates the government's emphasis
on commercial agriculture development in its new land policy. From 1991-1997, the
government purchased four commercial farms in the district. Unlike the previous
acquisitions, the newly acquired farms are located in the southern half of the district, in
the middle of the LSC farming area (ﬁgure 6.1). Rather than using the farms for
resettlement, the government chose to lease three of the farms to emergent black
commercial farmers, some of whom occupied senior positions in the government and
ZANU (PF ).”9 It planned to use the fourth farm, Bend Farm, for smallholder farmers but
scuttled these plans in 1994 though the RDC had already conﬁrmed the selection of 22
families. The RDC chairperson said the government lacked the money to develop the

farm for resettlement!”

 

”9 Of the 39 registered LSC farmers in the district, 19 are black farmers; 15 bought their farms, and four
are leasing their farms from the government.

'20 Source: Minutes from IDS/Ford Shamva Project Farmers' Workshop, Chaminuka Council Ofﬁces,
March 20, 1997.

152

Black LSC farmers have beneﬁted in another way from the new land policy. Of
the LSC farmers in the district, some are high-ranking party and government ofﬁcials.
Though LSC agriculture occupies more than a third of the district's lands, the amount of
commercial land identiﬁed falls below the provincial average (Moyo, 1998). Some of the
black-owned farms in the district meet the criteria used to identify farms for
acquisition.”' In Shamva District, Phase H resettlement has not made more land available

for smallholder farmers forcing them to seek other ways to gain access to more lands.

LAND ACQUISITION OUTSIDE or THE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM

There exists a strong demand for land in Shamva District. From 1990-1997, only
82 families out of more than 3,000 on the Rural District Council's resettlement list have
received land. Smallholder farmers have sought to acquire land through channels outside
of government, but overwhelmingly, their efforts have not relieved congestion in the
communal areas. They have acquired land largely through the informal land market in
the communal areas or through illegal occupation. Both mechanisms do no add to the
land available to smallholder farmers but simply facilitates the exchange of land within

the communal areas.

Land Sales

Cheater (1991) and Nyambara (1997), in their studies of land acquisition,
document a long history of land exchange among smallholder farmers. The authors

identify land sales between farmers and the sale of lands by traditional authorities as

 

'2' Interview with Mr. Nherera, ICFU president, March 4, 1997, and interview with Ms. Jones, Shamva
DA, November 13, 1995.

153

accepted practices in the informal land markets of the CA's. Headmen and chiefs
traditionally allocate lands to private bidders and individuals also exchange land rights
among themselves. Holleman (1969) observed that those leaving a parcel of land
received compensation from those taking it over.

An informal land market exists in Shamva District. In Madziwa CA, farmers
accuse their traditional chief, Chief Nyamaropa, of selling arable land and land in the
grazing areas to outsiders. One farmer reported that Chief Nyamaropa had sold some of
her land to "strangers from Harare."'22 The survey results lend support to the anecdotal
information gathered during the farmer group interviews. When asked what changes they
had seen in land ownership in their communities since 1990, three-quarters of the
respondents from Madziwa CA reported migration and settlement in the grazing areas
(table 6.9). More than a third of the communal area respondents reported that they were

born outside of the district supporting the claim of heavy migration into the district

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 6.9 Changes in land ownership observed in community since 1990 by area
Madziwa Bushu CA Mupfurudzi
CA (n=80) RA

(n=290) (n=76)

Migration and 72.8% 68.8% 75.0%

settlement in grazing

areas

Out-migration 7.6% 5.0% 3.9%

None 10.3% 7.5% 13.2%

Don't know 4.8% 12.5% 3.9%

Other 4.8% 6.3% 3.9%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

122 Interview with farmers in Mutumba ward, Madziwa CA, December 1, 1995.

154

Table 6.10 Means of acquiring cropland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madziwa Bushu Mupfurudzi
CA CA RA
(n=29Q (n=8 1) (n=79)
Allocated by Headmen 63.5% 61 .7% 1.3%
chief)
Inherited 29.0% 23.5% 8.9%
Resettled by govermnent 1.4% 2.4% 81.0%
Bought from an 1.0% 1.2% 0.0%
individual
Renting 1 .4% 1.2% 0.0%
Settled on own 0.3% 0.0% 0.0%
Others 3.4% 9.9% 2.5%

 

 

When asked how they had acquired their land, more than 60% of the CA respondents
reported that they received their land from traditional authorities (table 6.10). Though the
1988 Rural District Council Act gives the RDC authority to allocate land, in practice
traditional authorities retain considerable power over land allocation in their areas.‘23
When asked whom they approached to resolve land conﬂicts, almost 60% of the
respondents from the CA's said they went to either their headmen or chief versus 26%
who approached either their councilors or the RDC.

Moyo et a1. (1997), a researcher on the Shamva District study, found evidence of
land sales among farmers in the resettlement schemes. The government regulations that
apply to RA’s give farmers limited tenure. If they should abandon or leave the parcel
assigned to them, then the parcel reverts to the government. The resettlement ofﬁcer or

the RDC has the authority to reallocate the parcel to another farm family on the

 

'23 Moyo et al. (1997) reports another incident of land sales in the Umfurudzi Safari Area, government
lands. An individual claiming to be a descendent of the old Chief who ruled an area within the
Umfurudzi Safari area sold parcels to people from outside Shamva District for Zim $300 - $500 apiece.
The area claimed by Chief Onyimo straddles the northern border of the Safari area and spills into

neighboring Mt. Darwin district.

155

resettlement list. In the Mupfurudzi resettlement area, farmers who could no longer farm
sold their plots to outsiders rather than relinquishing the plots to the resettlement

ofﬁcer?"

In Principe Irrigation Scheme, two settlers sold their plots without ever having

moved to the scheme.

It has come to the attention of this office that while two families have abandoned
settlement at [Principe], someone has taken it upon himself to identiﬁ) and resettle
people without authority and above all without following correct procedures for
vetting would-be settlers.

(Memo from E. Matashu, AEO Irrigation, August 4, 1994)

The study also found that resettlement farmers increased their land holdings by
opportunistically expanding to otherwise undeveloped areas. This type of expansion is
unlikely in the CA's where ahnost every piece of arable land is already under cultivation

(Savanhu, 1997). In a memo, the Agritex ofﬁcer notes:

Farmers at Principe Irrigation Scheme appear to have opened more land up for their
dryland cropping besides what you allocated them. Due to the problems of deforestation
and particularly siltation of our water source, could you assist in controlling this
development?

(Memo from E. Matashu, AEO Irrigation, October 31, 1994)

The illegal expansion of croplands in resettlement has precedents dating back to the
colonial period when the government forcible blacks in "wilderness" areas of Midlands
Province. Settlers expanded their croplands into undeveloped lands owned by the
residents of the area. They gained effective rights to the land by clearing it and planting

crops (Nyambara, 1997).

 

'24 Source: Minutes from Chaminuka Rural District Council Meetings, August 28, 1996.

156

Land Occupation

For people frustrated or impatient with the government, squatting has become an
effective mechanism for acquiring new lands (Herbst, 1990). In Shamva District, the
squatter issue has a more complex dimension. During the colonial period and through the
post-Independence period, immigrants from neighboring Mozambique, Zambia, and
Malawi came to the district to work on the commercial farms, in the mines, and to escape
a civil war. Despite government's attempts to repatriate the migrants, especially
Mozambican citizens in 1995, many have refused. Some have married Zimbabwean
citizens, and others are second or third generation immigrants.

Immigrants cannot acquire land through the resettlement program although
resettlement has displaced many foreign farm workers. Because they have no kinship ties
with the local population, they also cannot go to the traditional authorities to get land.
Among the few options available to them is to settle illegally in grazing areas and on state
lands.‘25 Moyo et al. (1997) found 13 squatter families in the Mupfurudzi resettlement
area who had settled onto their land in 1987. Of the 13 families, eight were second-
generation Mozambicans who felt that the land rightfully belonged to them since they
had had possession of it for so long.

The RDC has the responsibility of managing the squatter problem in the district.

It organized a squatter eviction committee in 1995, however, lack of funds prevent it
from evicting many of the squatters (Masuko, 1995). At the village level, farmers in

Gono ward expressed ﬁ'ustration with the squatters who had settled in areas designated

 

'25 Sources: Interview with Mrs. E. Jones, District Administrator, Shamva town, November 2, 1995, and
Mr. Zendera, CEO Chaminuka RDC, Chaminuka council ofﬁces, March 3, 1997.

157

for a grazing scheme. The VIDCO councilor said that they had grown tired of waiting
for the RDC to act and evicted the squatters themselves, however, the squatters only

returned soon alter.“5

At the time of this study, squatters had yet to settle on the
commercial farmlands in the district.‘27 The situation changed in February 2000 during a
series of land takings led by a militant group of ex-combatants. Peasant farmers claimed

several white-owned and black-owned farms in the District.

Non-governmental sector

The non-govemmental organization, Danish Aid People-to-People (DAPP), has
established an outgrower scheme in Shamva District to provide an alternative mechanism
for farmers to acquire land. DAPP purchased three commercial farms and in 1995, began
its program to train smallholder farmers in commercial production of horticulture, cotton,
forestry, and livestock production. The aim of the program is to teach farmers how to be
commercial producers, and to help them save the money needed to buy their own farms.
The program puts a percentage of each farmer's income into a savings account that s/he
can access after completion of the three-year program. Following the Panorama Farm
model, farmers receive loans for inputs, cattle, and equipment, and three hectares of land

for cropping.

 

'26 Interview with VIDCO councillor, village health workers (2), and Agritex agent, Gono ward, November
15, 1995.

'27 Herbst (1990) documents the widespread squatter problem in Nyanga district during the 19808. In
1998, squatters claimed land on three farms in Marondera district (NY T, June 22, 1998).

158

SUMMARY

As discussed earlier (see Chapter 3) extensive over-grazing and land exhaustion is
found in the communal areas of Shamva District. According to the provincial AEO
(Agritex Extension Ofﬁcer), many areas in the district show signs of "burnt ground
syndrome." Soil erosion and siltation in water sources, consequences of over-grazing,
deforestation, intensive cotton and maize production, and gold panning, are also
becoming evident in the resettlement areas.” Land fragmentation in the CA's has left
parents with not enough land to pass on to their children who wish to continue farming.
These problems have their roots in the 1930 Land Apportionment Act that sequestered a
growing peasant farm population on reserves with ﬁxed boundaries.

This chapter has shown that the political opportunity structure at the local level is
open to smallholder members of the ZFU. Strong incentives to mobilize around land
issues also exist. Under these conditions, it was expected that smallholder members
would mobilize to use the ZFU's local structures to advance their interests to the RDC,
the resettlement ofﬁcers, and other local decision-makers. Instead, smallholders have not
mobilized within the ZF U. Smallholders do not consider the ZFU an effective actor in
the land policy arena. On the contrary, they see it mainly as a service delivery agency, a
role critical for the recruitment and maintenance of its membership. The choice by
district leaders in Shamva District not to undertake lobbying activities reinforces
members' perception of the organization's capacities. Consequently, smallholders use

other channels to access land.

159

The performance of the resettlement program in the district also weakens the
incentives for members to mobilize around land issues. Farmers join the ZFU to access
government programs and services, but the limited availability of lands through the
resettlement program means that they would have few opportunities to get land using the
ZFU. Though 88.5% of the survey respondents felt that the government should provide
their children as well as the landless and poor with land, their own personal experiences
suggest otherwise.

Going outside the resettlement program may help to address their immediate land
needs, but it does not alleviate the structural conditions contributing to land degradation
with the ﬁxed boundaries of the communal areas. Without access to commercial lands,
the alternatives to the resettlement program only facilitate the exchange of land within the
boundaries of the CA’s. Squatting in the grazing areas and on state lands extends
cultivated areas to lands considered high-risk erosion areas accelerating the processes of
land degradation. Chapter 7 reviews the ﬁndings and conclusions of this study and

discusses its broader implications for smallholder development in Zimbabwe.

 

'28 Chapter 3 describes the environmental problems found in Shamva District.

160

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The central question posed in this dissertation was: How can the structure of
political opportunities be altered so that smallholder members can prevail upon their
leaders to articulate their land demands to national policymakers? The study looked
speciﬁcally at the opportunities available to members of the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union
(ZFU), the ofﬁcially recognized representative of smallholder interests. The analysis
examined the structure of political opportunities and incentives available to smallholder
members in the context of resettlement policy at the national level and at the local level.
The study addressed the research questions below.

1. What political opportunity structures do members face at the local level and
at the national level regarding land policies?

2. What incentive for mobilization does land policy offer members and leaders?
Have ZF U members mobilized around their land interests at the national
level or at the local level?

Whose land interests does the ZF U represent?

4. What other channels can poor farmers use to resolve their land issues? What
are the implications for land degradation in the communal areas and for the
development of smallholder agriculture?

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STUDY FINDINGS

The National Context

The ZFU's decision-making structure concentrates decision-making power in the
national council and the President's council. Financial constraints prevented effective
communication between national and local levels and provided members with few
opportunities to monitor the actions of their national leaders. The process of indirect
elections plus the ZFU's reliance on levies rather than members' dues means that
members cannot sanction their senior leaders. Moreover, members and senior leaders did
not share common interests because of differences in their production systems and
backgrounds. While, commercial farmers accounted for more than third of the national
leadership at the time of this study, including half of the President's Council, they made
up less than 5% of the ZFU membership. Most of these senior leaders share an ideology
of commercialization or modernization derived from their training in the master farmer
program, and this ideology manifests itself in the belief that the ZFU ought to facilitate
the commercialization of black agriculture. Together these factors allow senior leaders
the political space to use the Union to articulate their own land interests.

Furthermore, the ZFU's ofﬁcial positions and members' opinions on land issues
diverge widely. The ZFU's positions reﬂected the interests of its senior leaders who
support the use of the resettlement program to develop black commercial agriculture. On
the other hand, smallholder members value land for its role in their own social and
cultural reproduction, and they support the use of the resettlement program to provide

land for their children. Land fragmentation in the CA's and RA's has compromised the

162

ability of smallholder farmers to pass on to their children land to sustain their households.

Though the ZFU's land policy runs counter to the interests of its membership,
smallholder members do not mobilize at the national level to protest the Union's land
positions. Members' perception of the ZFU's capacities provides an explanation. The
ZFU's senior leaders deﬁne their organization as a service delivery agency. They use
services as the "hook" to recruit and retain members. Like the predecessor organization,
the NFAZ, ZF U activities center on service provision and rarely venture into lobbying for
members' interests (Herbst, 1990; Makumbe, 1994). Though the ZF U has emphasized its
lobbying activities since 1991, poor communication between the national and local levels
means that most members remain unaware of this political role.

While the case of only one ZFU district precludes generalization of the results to
the broader ZF U membership, the ﬁndings do provide insights about the opportunities
available to ZF U members to pursue their land interests. Shamva District lies in a high-
rainfall region and farmers realize higher and more reliable crop production than their
counterparts in the drought-prone areas. Their agroecological situation suggests that they
might share common land interests with the ZFU's senior leaders on resettlement policy.
The ﬁndings to the contrary raise real questions about the ZFU's ability to represent the
land interests of smallholder farmers, and more broadly the inﬂuence of smallholder

farmers in the land policy process.

The District Context

Smallholder members face conditions favorable to mobilization at the local level.
Participatory structures of decision-making and strong rules for accountability facilitate

members’ use of village clubs and area councils to address production problems.

163

Members and local leaders also share similar land interests, thereby creating less
conﬂictual arenas at the local level than at the national level. The Shamva Rural District
Council carried out two settler selection exercises from 1990-1994 creating the real
possibility of gaining access to resettlement lands through the policy process. In this
context, members faced strong incentives to mobilize around the settler selection process.

However, members do not mobilize around settler selection issues within the ZFU
at the local level. As in the national context, local leaders' deﬁnition of the ZFU as a
service delivery agency creates low expectations among smallholders for the Union's
capacity to resolve land demands. The decision by local leaders not to become involved
in local land politics, even though they were positioned to do so, reinforced the
perception of the ZFU's capacities. Members join the ZF U to access services and not
necessarily to demand program or policy changes from the government. In short,
members see lobbying as a "by-product" of the ZFU’s economic activities.

The Union's activities in the marketing and pricing policy arenas present an
important exception to this observation. Policies affecting joint-impact goods (JIG's)
such as producer prices and marketing relationships create more incentives for their
provision than policies affecting incompatible-use goods (IUG's) like land. The
incentives to provide these goods derive from the relatively low costs associated with
their provision and the potentially large pool of beneﬁciaries. Altemately, land policies
affect incompatible-use goods; its use by one precludes its use by another raising the
costs of its provision while at the same time reducing the potential pool of beneﬁciaries.
From the organization's perspective, lobbying for marketing and pricing policies can

yield tangible beneﬁts available to all of its members. At the district level, land policies

164

would beneﬁt only a few ZF U members.

Members' decision to go outside of the ZFU to acquire lands results from the
limited availability of resettlement lands in Shamva District. The limited availability of
resettlement lands means that even if local leaders did participate in settler selection, only
a few ZF U members could actually beneﬁt. Thus, the value of a ZF U membership lies in
the privileged access one gains to government programs like extension, credit, drought-
aid, and tax exemption for agricultural inputs (Amaiz, 1997; Amaiz et a1, 1995;
Makumbe, 1994).

Since members do not value the ZF U as a means of acquiring land, they instead
approach their traditional authorities and local government ofﬁcials to make their
demands for land. In Shamva District farmers act as individuals and acquire land through
informal land markets, opportunistic expansion, and illegal occupation of state land and
grazing areas.‘29 While farmers may resolve their immediate land demands through these
channels, they do not alleviate the structural condition at the root of land scarcity and

land degradation in the communal lands, the distribution of rights to land.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

This study showed that even under favorable structural conditions, members do
not use the ZFU to articulate their land demands. By their actions, they expressed greater
conﬁdence in their own initiative to access land. Members' perception of the ZFU's
capacity to be an effective actor in land policy reinforces going outside of the

organization to resolve land issues. The perceived capacities of the Union derive in part

 

'29 Burgess (1992) and RUD (1988) reached similar conclusions.

165

from the role the ZFU's leaders have deﬁned for the organization viS-a-vis farmers.
Equally important, it derives from the performance of the resettlement program.

To change the structure of incentives at the local level so that members use the
ZF U to articulate their land demands, the ZFU itself must be seen as effective in
inﬂuencing land policy and Obtaining land for members. Members do confront ZF U
leaders and staff to express their dissatisfaction with the level or quality of the services
provided. They know from past experiences that mobilizing around issues of marketing,
transportation, extension, and credit can lead to tangible results (Amaiz et al., 1995).

During the 19903, Phase II resettlement failed to meet the targets set out in the
government's 1990 Land Policy Statement.130 From 1990-1997, it resettled about 2,000
families per year well below estimates of about 5,000 families per year (Moyo, l998).'3'
In contrast, the original resettlement program resettled 34,000 families from 1980-1984
(Roth, 1990). Government has acquired less than 1% of the six million hectares of
commercial land it claimed to need to address congestion in the CA's (GoZ, 1998; Moyo,
1998). At the district level, the resettlement program has had a minimal impact on the
day-to-day lives of smallholder farmers. In Shamva District, only 82 families out of
more than 3,000 have moved off the resettlement list though commercial farms occupy
more than a third of the district's land area.

AS of 1997, the government lacked the resources and the political will to meet its

resettlement targets. The government complained that it lacked the money to purchase

 

13° The government revised its targets for land acquisition in its 1998 Land Policy Framework to reﬂect
concessions made to donors at the Donor Conference on Land held in Harare, September 1998.

'3' The government of Zimbabwe has resettled about 64,000 families since Independence, a ﬁgure that far
exceeds the results of similar resettlement efforts. Still, it represents only half of the projected 150,000
families the government hoped to settle in the original resettlement exercise (Bratton, 1994b). In Phase

166

the farms and to develop already acquired farmlands for resettlement.‘32 At the donor
conference on land in 1998, the government raised less than US $ 1 million.'” It sought
US $ 1.9 billion to implement its Phase II resettlement program. The government did not
step in to make-up the shortfall and refused to provide the Ministry of Lands with a level
of funding necessary to acquire more than a handful of farms.“ Despite President
Mugabe's threats to conﬁscate white-owned farmland, in practice, the government did not
acquire farms for which it could not pay.‘35

The government did not appear willing to invest in implementing its Phase II
resettlement program relying instead on donor aid that was not forthcoming. The
implication for the ZF U was that it would have limited opportunities to obtain land for its
members at the local level. Consequently, the structure of incentives would remain the
same and members would continue to go outside of the ZFU and the resettlement
program to acquire land. In 2000, a change in the government's approach to land
acquisition made signiﬁcantly more land available through the resettlement program.

In February 2000, voters rejected constitutional amendments that would have

increased Mugabe's presidential powers and given the goverrunent the authority to

 

II resettlement, the government aims to resettle 500,000 families (602, 1998).
”2 "Land Reform Derailed!" The Insider, February 26, 1999.

'33 Donors accused the resettlement program of cronyism and for its lack of transparency. In 1999, the
government offered gave government and party ofﬁcials 100-year leases to 400 farms originally slated
for the resettlement of poor farmers ("Chefs get 100-year Leases on State Land." The Financial
Gazette, October 7, 1999).

'34 In 1998, Minister of Lands, K. Kangai, complained how the government could justify its commitment
to land reform if it was only willing to provide Z$ 150 million (US $ 6 million) for land acquisition. In
1999, the government provided Z S 350 million (US $ 9.6 million) for land acquisition. "The Futility of
Defying History." The Financial Gazette, April 27, 2000; "Land Reform Derailed!" The Insider,
February 26, 1999.

'35 "Zimbabwe Talks Tough But Steps Softly in Battle Over Land," the New York Times, April 11, 2000.

167

acquire farms without compensation. The President’s critics accused him of attaching the
provision for farm acquisitions to gain the popular vote.‘36 They interpreted the defeat of
the constitutional referendum as a vote of no conﬁdence for the Mugabe government and
a ﬁrst step in Mugabe's removal from ofﬁce. The Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) led by the ZCTU president, Morgan Tsvangirai, posed the most signiﬁcant
challenge to ZANU-PF'S rule since Independence. The MDC and CFU together with
other civic organizations opposed the constitutional referendrun.‘37

In a speech a week after his defeat, Mugabe urged a group of veterans from the
Liberation War to invade white-owned farms.” Raising issues of race and land, Mugabe
accused whites of being "enemies of the state" and blamed them for the failure of the
economic structural adjustment program and for the resettlement program.‘39 By
targeting whites, Mugabe also attacked the MDC for the MDC had the support of the
CFU and white business owners."'° By August, the war veterans led by Chenjerai Hunzvi
and their supporters had taken control of over 1,600 farms.

Mugabe's reasons for endorsing the farm invasions had more to do with his desire
to retain political power than a sincere wish to see the rural poor acquire lands. At the

time of the farm invasions, Mugabe faced opposition not only from the MDC but also

 

'36 "Zimbabwe Constitution Vote is a Showdown for Mugabe." The Financial Gazette, February 12, 2000.

:3? "Zimbabwe Voters Break with Past." The New York Times, February 16, 2000.

'38 The group of war veterans led by C. Hunzvi had also invaded farms in November 1998. "Air of Crisis

in Zimbabwe Grows after Threat to Seize 841 Farms." The New York Times, December 1, 1998.
"Tsvangirai Accuses Mugabe of Inciting War Against Whites." The Financial Gazette, April 20, 2000.
"White Farmers Villiﬁed." The Financial Gazette, April 19, 2000.

In 1998, Mugabe facilitated a partnership between the CFU and the ZCTU when he announced plans to
seize white-owned farms and decreed that Unions could no longer call strikes. The partnership between
the CFU and Tsvangirai, the president of the ZCTU, continued when Tsavangirai became the leader of
the MDC ("Zimbabwe Smolder While Mugabe Shops." Guardian. November 30, 1998).

139

I40

168

from within his own party, ZANU-PF, who blamed him for Zimbabwe's eroding

economy."“

The political crisis initiated by the farm invasions allowed Mugabe to move
the parliamentary elections from April to June and to dissolve Parliament?” Before
dissolving Parliament, he succeeded in getting a "land nationalization law" passed giving
his government authority to conﬁscate farms and winning him political support from the
rural areas.

The physical intimidation and thuggery aimed at MDC supporters, farm laborers,
and whites in the months preceding the elections caused many in Zimbabwe and among
the international community to question the legitimacy of the upcoming elections. Robin
Cook, Great Britain's Foreign Secretary, asked could "free and fair" elections really be
held in this environment.”3 The election results gave ZANU-PF a narrow victory and a
slight majority in Parliament'“

In June, the government announced plans to acquire the 841 properties that it had
originally designated for acquisition back in 1997.‘45 It wants to resettle poor farmers
immediately though the farms lack the necessary infrastructure. The war veterans and
other squatters have so far refused to vacate the farms including those not identiﬁed by

the government for acquisition. C. Hunzvi, elected Member of Parliament in the June

elections, demanded that his followers receive 20% of all acquired properties though they

 

141

"Mugabe Faces Party Revolt." The Financial Gazette. April 20, 2000.
'42 "Tsvangirai Accuses Mugabe of Inciting War Against Whites," The Financial Gazette. April 20, 2000.
”3 "UK to Offer Conditional Aid for Zimbabwe Land Reform." The Financial Gazette. April 27, 2000.

'44 ZANU-PF held 147 of the 150 seats in Parliament prior to the elections. "Pressure on Mugabe to Go."
The Financial Gazette, June 29, 2000.

'45 "Mugabe to List White Farms to be Seized." The New York Times, June 1, 2000.

169

make up less than 1% of the population'“ The government insists that it will resume the
resettlement program and choose settlers according to the settler selection criteria deﬁned
in its 1998 Land Policy statement. It has not stated what it plans to do with the squatters
already on the farms.

The sudden availability of lands through the resettlement program does not
strengthen the incentives for members to use the ZF U to access these lands. Rather, the
events of 2000 reinforce the notion that individual initiative rather than collective action
through the Union is the most effective way to acquire land. Squatters rather than NFAZ
members beneﬁted most from the resettlement program in the 1980s and it is likely that
squatters will gain the rights to the land that they already occupy in 2000. Government
acquiesced to squatters' demand for land in the 19803 and again in 1998.‘47 Mugabe's
support of the farm invasions and the role played by the war veterans in the campaign
make it very difﬁcult for the government to order the squatters off the farms.

The farm invasions of 2000 suggest that so long as Mugabe remains in power, the
Zimbabwean political system will become less tolerant of Opposing views. Throughout
the latter half of the 19903, the government jailed journalists critical of its policies and
violently quelled protests by University students.” The movement toward a more
repressive regime creates a hostile policy environment for farmer organizations. Within
this political context, farmer organizations have retreated from political activities and

emphasized economic activities; farmer organizations do not often lead the opposition

 

'46 "Splinter Group Lobbies War Vets to End Anarchy." The Financial Gazette, May 25, 2000.

”7 "Zimbabwe Squatters: Land Claims on White Farms." The New York T imes, June 22, 1998.
148

"Bomb Destroys Zimbabwe Newspaper Press." The New York Times, January 28, 2001.
"Chombo Plots to Oust Judges." The Zimbabwe Independent, January 29, 2001.

170

against repressive regimes (Bray, 1991; N'gethe and Odero, 1994; Kaimowitz, 1988).
The ZFU's senior leaders will face considerable disincentives for political action
in opposition to the government on land and other re-distributive issues. Though the
Union has developed positions on policies contrary to the government's position, it has
been on sector-speciﬁc or narrow issues. It has not made public its position on the farm
invasions of 2000. Given the source of the beneﬁts offered by the ZF U, it would not
want to jeopardize its relationship with the government for its survival depends upon
maintaining that relationship. The government provides the ZFU with the services that it
uses to attract and maintain its membership and gives it the right to levy. In 1995-96, the
levies accounted for 60% of the ZFU's annual operating budget. The implication for
smallholders is that the political opportunity structures for land policy will become more
closed within the ZFU, and they will continue to be excluded from the formal land

policy-making process.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Policy

The results of this study indicate a need for the government to address the related
issues of land scarcity, poverty, and land degradation in the smallholder areas. That
farmers go outside of the resettlement program to acquire land and do not use the ZFU,
their formal channel to the land policy process, underscores the ineffectiveness of the
resettlement exercise to date. Conditions of economic deprivation experienced by the
rural poor made them vulnerable to political manipulation by Mugabe. A result of the

widespread farm invasions and consequent conﬁscation of white-owned farms has been

171

the destabilization of the Zimbabwean economy. As unemployment rises in the urban
areas, people retum to their home areas and attempt to re-enter farming.

The resettlement program cannot alone address land scarcity, poverty, and land
degradation in the communal areas but ought to be complimented with economic and
social policies. Creating wage opportunities outside of agriculture will reduce land
pressure in the rural areas; there already exists a signiﬁcant demand for wage-
employment among the rural poor. Rather than forcing people out of agriculture,
government can entice them to enter other economic sectors. In this way, the population
in the rural areas will decrease thus alleviating the condition underlying poverty and land
degradation. Though not supported by the study ﬁndings, insights gained from
conversations with farm leaders, members, and government ofﬁcials suggest that to
address poverty, land scarcity, and land degradation in the CA's, policy-makers ought to
consider the following.

1. Resettlement policies cannot alone decongest the CA 's because not enough
land exists in Zimbabwe to provide land to all of those who want it (Bratton, 1994b).

2. Government needs to put into place complimentary policies to create jobs
in the rural areas and in the urban areas, The Poverty Assessment Survey of 1998
indicated that a majority of Zimbabweans would rather work for wages rather than
farm. This ﬁnding suggests that a signiﬁcant number of people are in farming
because they have few alternatives. Jobless youth were among those invading
commercial farms.

3. People must have the skills needed by manufacturing and industry.
Government ought to implement education policies in the rural areas to prepare the
population to move into the non-agriculture sector. Education has a corollary
beneﬁt. As a population becomes more educated, its rate of population growth
decreases. In the study area, household Sizes fell below the provincial and national
averages. Respondents were also better educated than the national average
(Wekwete, 1997).

4. Employment creation is linked to the performance of the general economy.
Zimbabwe needs to implement properly the current economic structural adjustment
program. The World Bank-Zimbabwe criticized the government for only partly
implementing the current economic program though it is in its tenth year. The

172

government remains the majority shareholder for the former marketing and ﬁnancing
parastatals and continues to subsidize their operations. Thus, many of the former
parastatals, notably the Agriculture Finance Corporation (AFC), have cash ﬂow
problems, which have negative implications for the ability of peasant and
commercial farmers to acquire production loans.

The government will require donor funding to achieve the above, but the World
Bank, the IMF and other donors have withheld funding for resettlement and economic
programs pending a resolution to the current land crisis. Donors want the government to
demonstrate respect for and a willingness to protect the property and rights of white
farmers. Thus, the government must resolve the squatter issue to regain donor
conﬁdence, and as importantly, to maintain large-scale commercial (LSC) production.
The Zimbabwean economy continues to rely on LSC production. During the farm
invasions, LSC farmers halted preparations to plant winter crops like wheat. Annual
wheat production is worth Z$ 3 billion (US $ 83 million) at the primary producer level

149

with downstream industries adding more. The Zimbabwean economy has 50%

unemployment and 60% inﬂation."° It cannot afford to lose production from non-
conﬁscated farms.
Speciﬁc recommendations supported by this research are listed below.

1. Implementing the resettlement program in a more transparent manner. Donor
support for the resettlement program depends upon the government's demonstration
that resettlement lands are actually going to the poor rather than government cronies.
If government can follow the procedures outlined in its Land Policy Framework
(1998), then it will beneﬁt from donor aid. A politically difﬁcult but necessary step
will be to force the squatters on conﬁscated farms to go through the settler selection
process. Otherwise, it reinforces the notion that the most effective way to acquire
land is to illegally occupy it rather than to go through the resettlement program.

 

”9 "Farm Invasions Threaten Sector with Collapse." The Financial Gazette. April 20, 2000.

'50 "Zimbabwe‘s Economy Falters but Many Ask Who Really is to Blame?" The New York Times, April 8,
2000.

173

2. Down-sizing the Phase II resettlement program. Donors criticized the government's

5.

Phase II resettlement program as being over-ambitious and unrealistic. Down-sizing
the program to a scale that government can ﬁnance and administer effectively would
be appropriate. Given the changes brought about by the recent farm invasions,
government will have to ﬁnance quickly the development of supporting infrastructure
on the newly resettled farms at a minimum to maintain national food security."'

Committing suﬂicient resources to the resettlement program. The decision by
farmers to go outside of the resettlement program to acquire land has negative
implications for land-use management in the rural areas. Farmers did so because of
the limited availability of land. Committing resources to resettlement to acquire
farms and put in the necessary infrastructure can strengthen the incentives for farmers
to go through the government to acquire land. The availability of resettlement lands
through the resettlement program also strengthens incentives for members to
articulate their land demands through the ZFU especially at the level of
implementation.

Creating alternative channels for farmers to access the resettlement policy process.
The ZFU may not be the best vehicle to represent poor farmer land interests. The
government can create consultative groups comprising Shareholders at the district
level to develop and implement resettlement policies. It can also create Land
Boards'52 comprising traditional authorities, local government, and private citizens to
resolve land conﬂicts and oversee land-use at the WADCO and VIDCO levels. The
Land Boards can also assist the settler selection committees and the land
identiﬁcation committees in their duties.

Recognizing the need demand for land among the rural majority for their social and
cultural reproduction. The resettlement program ought to embrace efﬁciency and
equity objectives, and the distribution of land between commercial and village
resettlement schemes must reﬂect these twin objectives. The resettlement program
can also invest in the development of social as well as agriculture supporting
infrastructure in the rural areas to improve the quality of life for those remaining in
the CA's.

 

'5' In mid-November 2000, the government made available US $ 16 million in soﬁ loans to farmers as they

start preparing for the new season. Thousands of communal, small-scale and resettled farmers,
including those newly resettled under the controversial commercial farm settlement program will
beneﬁt from the fund.

'52 The ZFU advocates the creation of land boards at the district level to arbitrate land disputes within the

context of individual land ownership in the communal and resettlement areas. Interview with E.
Tsikisayi, ZFU senior economist, March 5, 1997. The land boards would have the same responsibilities
given to the Intensive Conservation Area Boards during the Pre-Independence period (see chapter 3).

174

Donor Policy

Zimbabwe's constitution allows for freedom of association. However, recent
events suggest that the government will not be so tolerant of different and opposing
societal views. The World Bank and the IMF have demanded that the government adopt
democratic reforms as a condition for funding (Dashwood, 1996). Donors have an
obligation to provide funding for resettlement and complimentary programs once the
government meets the conditions that donors set forth at the donor conference on land in
1998. Historically, donors have not kept their promises of aid for the resettlement
program with the exception being Great Britain. Lack of funding is a legitimate reason
for the Slowdown in Phase II resettlement. Only after the land crisis of 2000 did Great
Britain, Sweden, and Denmark step forward to provide funding. However, the money
was not to implement the resettlement program but to compensate the owners of
conﬁscated farms. At the same time, donors must demand that the government also
invest its resources in resettlement. In this way, the government can demonstrate its

commitment to the program.

Future Research

Zimbabwe's colonial history, structure of organized interests, and wide-scale
efforts at land reform make it a special case. With the exception of South Aﬁica, no
other country in sub-Saharan Africa has a comparable structure of organized interests to
represent the agriculture sector. That said, the issues of mobilization and representation
addressed in this dissertation have relevance for other farmer organizations in sub-
Saharan Africa. This study provided some insights into the internal dynamics of policy-

making within the ZF U. Its shortcoming lay in its use of a case study approach and the

175

limited scope of policy issues that it addressed. This type of research would beneﬁt from

comparative studies that include the variables below.

1.

Policy types. The relationship between internal mobilization and policy types needs
further examination. Policy types, and an appreciation of the characteristics of the
goods affected by policy, can lead to a greater understanding of the structure of
incentives for mobilization faced by members in a policy arena.

Organizational type and scale. This study assessed the political Opportunities
available to farmers within a farmer union. The "top-down" structure of decision-
making did not facilitate the participation of members and weakened rules of
accountability. Federations and grassroots organizations have horizontal structures of
decision-making suggesting open POS's. Do poor farmers have more opportunities to
prevail upon their leaders in these types of organizations to articulate their interests?
Do members mobilize more around political issues in federations and grassroots
organizations?

Capacity of the political system. Members' perception of their organization's
capacities affects the incentives for mobilization that they face within their
organization. For the ZF U, the limited availability of resettlement lands created weak
incentives for members to use the organization to access lands. The relationship
between the government's capacity to implement programs and the incentives for
members to use their organization to access those programs requires further research.

Openness of the political system. Previous studies identiﬁed a relationship between
the openness of the political system and the activities of farmer organizations. This
study found the ZFU did not oppose the government on broad-interest issues like
land. Under what political conditions do farmer organizations challenge the
government on re-distributive policies? Does the decision to do so come from the
membership or from the leadership?

Members. The study's conceptual approach suggested that previous experiences with
collective action through the organization facilitate member mobilization.
Unfortunately, members in the case study district did not have many positive
experiences using the ZF U to articulate land demands. Would members located in
areas with a stronger ZFU presence be more likely to use their organization rather
than go outside of the organization to articulate their land and other demands?

Land has occupied a central role in the colonial and post-Independence political

economy of Zimbabwe. Mandivambi Rukuni (1998), the former chairperson of the Land

Tenure Committee and the National Task Force on Land Policy Observed:

176

Since 1890, the land question has singularly had the most significant impact on
Zimbabwe's political and economic history. A national solution to the land question
may well be the most important national investment as we enter into the 21‘"
century... [Ljand reform has to provide a solid basis for long-term economic growth
and social integration... [Ljand resettlement or re-distribution alone is no longer
adequate. It is more appropriate to plan and invest for "land and agrarian

reform "...transforming land distribution patterns, strengthening land tenure
security, strengthening rural institutions, and providing services to land-users.

Farmer organization has a role to play in facilitating land and agrarian reform.
The ZFU provides smallholder farmers with production services and access to credit, all
economic services that facilitate smallholder development. It hopes to participate in the
development of rural institutions, like the land boards, to manage land administration and
land-use in the smallholder and commercial farming areas. However, it has not
effectively facilitated the expression of smallholder demand for land especially at the

grassroots exposing a need for other organizational structures to do so.

Unless the land movement is rejuvenated at the grassroots level, we cannot hope to
change the political and economic pattern that we have seen after Independence. It is
important for grassroots organizers to go back and ensure that people who need land
and who need it ﬁrst are actually maintaine ."3

(Morgan Tzvingarai, MDC and ZCTU president)

 

'53 Quoted in "Southern Africa Development: Plenty of Rhetoric, Little Land." Inter-Press Service English
News Wire, April 23, 1997. ZCTU is the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and MDC is the
Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party challenging ZANU-PF in the 2000
elections.

177

APPENDICES

178

Appendix A

GOVERNMENT OF ZIMBABWE LAND POLICY FRAMEWORK

The GOZ'S land policy framework comprises ﬁve separate policies: land
acquisition, settler selection, land tenure reform, communal land reorganization, and
settlement support services'“ (G02, 1998). The section broadly outlines each policy
domain.

Land Acquisition. Analysts have estimated that up to ﬁve million hectares of
commercial farmland are under-utilized or derelict (Roth, 1990; Weiner etal., 1985).
Government seeks to identify and acquire these properties. It believes that black
producers can optimize the productive potential of these lands with the proper support.
“Land reform policy must seek to achieve optimal land utilization and increased
productivity so as to deliver employment growth, improved income distribution, and
environmentally sustainable use of natural resources” (Moyo, 1998)

Acquisition policy outlines the procedures for identifying and acquiring
commercial farmland. Land acquisition policy is determined at the highest levels of the
government and within the ruling party, ZANU (PF). Control over which farms are
identiﬁed for acquisition resides with land identiﬁcation committees at the district,
provincial, and national levels. At the national and provincial levels, these committees
are chaired by the highest ranking ZANU (PF) ofﬁcial at that level who in turn, select

members of the committee. In theory, all stakeholders must be represented, however,

 

'54 The 002 policy framework identiﬁed environmental policy among its constituent policies. However,
the description was sparse requiring only an environmental impact assessment for proposed agricultural

179

representatives of the CF U are absent from these committees. At the district level, the
land committees are technical committees chaired by the district administrator (DA) who
may invite stakeholders to sit on the committee. Each committee is tasked with
identifying and evaluating farms for resettlement using criteria developed by the
Department of Agriculture Extension and Technologies (Agritex) and published in the
government's 1990 Land Policy Statement.

Land acquisition policy offers incentives to both white and black farmers to
become involved politically. White farmers stand to lose about 50% of their land if
government meets its goal of acquiring ﬁve million hectares for resettlement. Equally
important, the government has not been clear whether it will compensate the owners and
if so, how much (The Insider, January 1999). The CFU staunchly opposes current land
acquisition policy claiming the government has yet to resettle all of the land it current
owns (F ES, 1998). For black commercial and aspiring commercial farmers, land
acquisition policy offers them an Opportunity to lease or own commercial farmland, an
opportunity they would not have otherwise given the high commercial bank rates (ICF U,
1999). The landless and land hungry in the communal areas stand to gain access to land.
The ZFU supports land acquisition policy unconditionally whereas the ICFU has some
reservations since some of its members' farms qualify under the selection criteria (PBS,
1998)

Settler Selection. Settler selection policy has the most direct and visible impact
on the day-tO-day lives of smallholder farmers and their families. It lays out the criteria

for identifying CA farm families for resettlement and outlines the procedures for

 

developments in the resettlement and communal areas.

180

identifying and choosing those families. Also, it determines the type and number of
farmers who would be eligible for each of the ﬁve resettlement models'” identiﬁed for
Phase II resettlement. A critical issue that has yet to be openly debated is the distribution
of govemment-purchased lands between the A1 scheme (peasant production) and A2
scheme (commercial farm production)!”

After the donor conference on land reform in September of 1998, the GoZ
amended its settler selection criteria and proposed scheme types in response to donor
demands. The government now proposes to set aside 80% of government purchased lands
for Model A1 or single family farm settlement. Settlers in this scheme will be chosen
from the CA’s and from among displaced farm workers, ex-mine workers, and ex-
combatants. Beneﬁciaries of Model A2 (commercial farm settlements) and irrigation
schemes will be chosen from people with formal training in agriculture and farm
management and with the resources and inclination to farm full-time commercially (GOZ,

1998).

 

'55 Five resettlement models are as follows.

a. Model A]: Family farms with shared grazing land, woodlots, and water sources. Each household
can receive from 3-6 hectares for cropping depending upon natural region.

b. Commercial Grazing Model or Three-Tier Model: Settler households receive 180 hectares of
which three hectares are used for residential and agricultural purposes. The remaining 177
hectares are pooled into communal grazing areas.

0. Model A2: Settler households allocated self-contained farming units ranging from 50-300 hectares
in size depending upon natural region.

(1. Communal Area Reorganization Model: Reorganize land in the communal areas according to the
A. model.

e. Irrigation Schemes Model: Located wherever dams are constructed, each household receives 1 to
10 hectares depending upon the recommended farm enterprise.

'56 The scheme targeting aspiring black commercial farmers, the Tenant Farmer Scheme, has been folded
into the Model A2 schemes.

181

The settler selection criteria adopted by the government follows closely the
criteria used by the colonial government to select farmers for resettlement on the NPA'S.
Both sets of criteria place an emphasis on ownership of farm implements, a master farmer
certiﬁcate, and agricultural experience. The colonial government sought to place in the
newer NPA'S farmers with more skills and capital assets than those who had been
resettled before them (Weinrich, 1975). The current government seeks a similar
conclusion for the resettlement areas.

District committees comprising traditional authorities, local government, and the
ZFU select farmers for resettlement on A1 scheme. Administrative rule devised by the
Ministry of Lands determines the composition of the selection committees. Selection
committees use selection criteria developed by Agritex and approved by the Ministry of
Agriculture. Ofﬁcials from within the Ministry Of Lands select farmers for resettlement
on Model A2 (commercial farm) schemes . Current settler selection policy has yet to
determine the selection and the selection process.

Once a separate policy, communal area reorganization policy now lies within the
broader settler selection policy. Considered a "technical" policy, responsibility for its
formulation and implementation lies with the Ministry of Agriculture and speciﬁcally, the
Department of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (Agritex) (Alexander,
1994). A consequence of communal land reorganization will be the displacement of
households from their land and in some cases, displacing families from their CA raising
two important questions the government has not yet fully addressed. Who will decide
which families will remain? Second, where will displaced families go? The ZFU and

CFU support this plan arguing that the current organization of communal areas fosters

182

land degradation and low production (ZFU, 1994).

Land Tenure Reform. The government adopted most of the recommendations
contained in the Land Tenure Commission’s ﬁnal report (1995) although it has yet to
publish its deﬁnitive policy on tenure reform. Broadly, land tenure reform intends to
rationalize land tenure systems across the three farm classes. Government planners
expect that establishing freehold and transferable titles for all of Zimbabwe’s farmland
will lead to a vibrant land market that can make land available at reasonable prices and
Sizes. In this way, black farmers can realize greater access to land (Rukuni, 1998).

Thus far, government proposes to grant freehold title in all Of its resettlement
schemes and group title with respect to grazing land. Presently, the state owns all of the
resettlement lands. Resettlement farmers operate under a permit system that requires
them to farm full-time, limit the size of their herds, follow best management practices as
proposed by Agritex, and prevents them from renting out their lands. Violation of any of
these conditions can lead to their ouster from the resettlement scheme. However, the
government has failed to evict those who have violated the above conditions because of
institutional inefﬁciency and lack of political will. Still, resettlement farmers operate
under a great deal of uncertainty.

The new policy proposes to transfer ownership of communal lands to village
communities and to maintain traditional tenure at the individual level. The power to
distribute land will rest with the traditional authorities. Presently, the Rural District
Councils (RDC), and traditional authorities share this responsibility. The new policy also
intends to establish a hierarchy of land boards to act as watchdogs over land transfers,

conﬂicts, and arbitration. The ZFU, CFU, and ICFU all support the granting for freehold

183

titles to communal area and resettlement area farmers. In their view, it is the only way to
foster more responsible land husbandry among smallholder farmers.

Settlement Support Services. The new settlement support services policy
proposes to provide resettlement beneﬁciaries with (1) basic infrastructure, (2) marketing,
credit, and extension services, (3) training, (4) rural service centers'”, and (5) mechanical
tillage. Government also proposes to survey, subdivide, and demarcate all resettlement
areas to facilitate the granting of land titles. Government intends to create planning
committees at the local level tasked with planning the support services for the
resettlement areas and recruiting private sector actors to supply some of these services.
Government technicians, RDC’S, and representatives of farmer organizations, community

groups and NGOS will make-up these committees.

 

'57 A rural service center will be created for every 500 farm families. It will include clinics, schools and
industrial, commercial and residential stands, and ofﬁces for government departments. These centers
are intended to facilitate the creation of off-farm employment opportunities and the provision of
services to farmers.

184

APPENDIX B

ZFU STAFF

The ZF U has full-time staff at its national headquarters in Harare, in each of the
provincial capitals, and in more than half of the districts. The national headquarters staff
consists of a Senior Director, Director and seven department heads. The ZF U has ﬁve
programmatic departments: marketing, economics and research, education and training,
ﬁeld and projects, and information. The registry department maintains the membership
database. Not counting administrative staff, the ZFU had over 77 paid staff of whom 22
worked out of its national headquarters in 1997. At each level, staff is responsible for the
implementation of ZFU programs and the day-to-day management of the Union with
oversight from the management committee, a subcommittee of each council.

Table 8.1 ZFU staff composition and distribution (1997)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Department Head Provincial District
Ofﬁce Ofﬁce Ofﬁce
Marketing 1 8 8
Economics & Research 6 3 0
regional“
Education and Training 5 0 100*
Information 2 0 0
Field and Projects 4 8 28*"
Registry 2 0 0

 

 

 

 

 

* Region 1 covers Masvingo and Manicaland. Region 2 covers Matabeleland North and Matabeleland

South. Region 3 covers Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, and Mashonaland East.

*"' District trainers are volunteers paid an allowance and not considered salaried Staff.

**"' Donors like FES, SMV (Dutch), and HIV OS, support speciﬁc district offices. In other areas, member
subscriptions alone support the ofﬁces.

Since 1991, the ZF U has built up its professional staff largely through donor
funding. Most of the senior ofﬁcers at the national ofﬁce hold a university degree.

Provincial and district ofﬁcers possess at least a degree from an agriculture school or a

185

high school diploma.

Table B.2 Staff changes 1995-1997

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Size of Size of

paid staff paid staff

1995* 1997
Economics and Research 5 9
Marketing 9 17
Field and Projects 24 35
Education and Training 2 5
Total 40 66

 

* Does not include administrative, secretarial, and other supporting staff. Departments not counted
include the registry, administration, and information departments.

The premier department within the ZF U is the Economics and Research
department, the only department whose staff all possess a university degree. Whereas the
remaining departments have the responsibility of sourcing, developing and implementing
programs for members, the Economics department has a broader mandate. It carries out
policy research and participates in policy formulation. To do so, it routinely collects
farm-level data or contracts researchers at the University of Zimbabwe to do so. It also
provides technical assistance in the form of brieﬁng papers and seminars to national
leaders representing the ZF U in negotiations/debate with other farmers' unions,
governmental ministries, and agrO-industry. The Economics department provides

technical and organizational support to the commodity committees.

186

APPENDIX C

SETTLER SELECTION

The sections below describe the settler selection process for Principe Irrigation
Scheme and Bend Farm.

Principe Irrigation Scheme

Principe irrigation scheme located adjacent to the Sanye Resettlement area
accommodates 60 smallholder families. It lies within NR II. Each family has access to
one hectare of irrigated land, 0.5 hectares for dryland cropping, and communal grazing
land. DANIDA (Danish Aid) funded scheme construction. Authorities opened the
scheme for resettlement in September 1993.

The selection of farmers for Principe irrigation scheme was carried out previous
to the amalgamation of Chaminuka District Council and the Shamva Rural Council in
1993. Chaminuka District Council acted as the local government for the communal and
resettlement areas. The task of selecting settlers for Principe fell to the district council.
In 1992, the district council began the process of selecting settlers for Principe. First, the
district council decided that they would only choose settlers from the resettlement list
kept at the council ofﬁce. They did not want to consider farmers from outside of the
district. To choose from among the 3,000 farmers on the resettlement list, the district
council devised its own selection criteria and process. Its primary objective was to
ensure the reprsenatation of each ward on the list later submitted to a technical committee
for ﬁnal selection. WADCO councillors who sit on the RDC had the responsibility for

identifying qualiﬁed farmers.

187

A technical committee comprising the provincial resettlement ofﬁcer, the district
resettlement ofﬁcer, the district ofﬁcer for DERUDE (Department of Rural
Development), the Agritex area supervisor, and a representative of the district council
culled through the candidates. Administrative rules deﬁned within the Ministry of Local
Government determined the make-up of the technical committee. The committee rated
each applicant based on a scoring system developed by the Ministry of Agriculture that
considers two criteria: need for land and farming capacity. Being a ZFU member did not
add to an applicant's score. The RDC offered those with the highest scores plots on the
scheme'”.

Following on their assertion that only qualiﬁed farmers be selected for
resettlement, ZFU's national leaders have lobbied the Ministry of Local Government to
require the technical committees to use a list of prospective settlers kept at the ZFU's
provincial ofﬁce. Mr. Mavunga, the resettlement ofﬁcer who sat on the technical
committee for the Principe scheme, rejected the idea of using a list kept by the ZFU
arguing that it was not fair to just select ZFU members. Moreover, he saw no need for
ZF U to sit on the selection committee feeling it would only introduce bias. Mr.
Muchena, the Agritex supervisor who also sat on the committee agreed that it would be
inappropriate to include the ZF U on the selection committee'”.

Reviewing the list of farmers selected for the Principe Irrigation Scheme, few are

members of the ZFU. According to Mr. Mavunga, the deciding factor was who among

the prospective settlers wanted to farm under the stringent conditions imposed on

 

'58 Interview with Mr. A Mavunga, Mupfurudzi resettlement ofﬁcer, Zvimonanga ofﬁce, March 2, 1997.

'59 Interview with Mr. Muchena, Bushu area Agritex supervisor, March 2, 1997.

188

irrigation schemes. Many of the older and more experienced farmers on the list refused
to settle on the irrigation scheme because of the small plot Size and restrictive production
environment. In the end, most of the settlers were either young single men or young

couples with only one child, and a minority owned cattle and a plough”).

Bend Farm

Bend Farm is located in the southern half of Sharnva District within the large-
scale commercial farming area. Covering approximately 1,233 ha of land in NR 11,
Agritex determined that Bend Farm could accommodate 22 settler families. In 1994, the
Shamva RDC began the initial screening of the resettlement list. The RDC sought to get
equal representation from each ward in the district, and created a second list comprising
names submited by each WADCO councilor. A technical committee rated each of the
applicants using a score Sheet similar to the one used in earlier selection exercises. The
ZFU was excluded from the technical committee, and according the RDC CEO, no one
from the ZFU complained of their exclusion'“. A contingent headed by Chief Bushu

contested the ﬁnal selection of settlers accusing the RDC of favoritism.

 

"’0 Interview with Mr. R. Zhoya, Principe Irrigation Scheme Agritex Ofﬁcer, Principe Ofﬁce, November
11, 1995.

'6' Interview with Mr. Zendera, CEO Chaminuka Rural District Council, Chakonda Ofﬁce, March 3, 1997.

189

Score Sheet for Rating Settlers in Shamva District

The scoring sheet below was used during both settler selection exercises. The maximum
score is 50. The applicant must score at least 25 to be eligible for resettlement.

m

Number of dependents. Get 1 point for each child below the age of 18. (max = 5
pts.)

How many hectares do you currently crop? (max = 5)

0-1 ha = 5 pts.
1-2 ha = 4 pts.
2-3 ha = 3 pts.
4-5 ha = 2 pts.
> 5 ha = 0 pts.
5 . l '1'
Age (max = 10)
18 = 3 pts
(add one point per year older than 18)
25-35 = 10 pts
(drop 1 point per year older than 35)
45 = 3 pts.
Over 55 ineligible

Skills (consider both spouses if married) (max = 10 pts)

(a) Trained master farmer both spouses = 10 pts

(b) Proven agriculture ability based on past marketing and production record = 8
pts

(0) Any other skills relevant to farming like business Skills, mechanical skills,
handling of specialized crops

Education (consider both spouses if married) (max = 10 pts)
(a) both spouses completed their diplomas = 2 pts
(b) both spouses completed primary school = 1 pt

Health (max = 10 pts)
(a) negative points if disabled or chronically sick

190

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191

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