Re-Understanding Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme.

 Re-Understanding Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme.

By Takura Zhangazha*
So a comrade asked me about Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) and its full import almost after twenty three years since it began. I replied with relative ease that it has changed how capitalism works in this country.  He retorted that it sort of works, no?

I could not give an immediate answer.  This is because the FTLRP spawned a new political economy in Zimbabwe.  What were peri-urban areas such as Seke in Chitungwiza, Harare province became at the blink of an eye ‘urban’. 

Areas that were assumedly rural became peri-urban as is the example of those surrounding Bikita and/or Chipinge.

Where we were told that,“land is the economy and the economy is land” by the central government we scoffed at it.  The reality is a different matter. 

The new political economy of Zimbabwe is based on land.  Land as private capital, land as inheritance, land as a benefit on the basis of political affiliation. 

This may appear complicated.  In reality we have a changing political economy in Zimbabwe.  One based on ironically the very fact of the FTLRP. 

When the white colonialists took our land via horse rides and legal processes that assumed we would never take the land back.
We went to war, fought a painful liberation struggle from the 1960’s through to 1980 and became politically free.  It took us eight (8) years before we could shake off the yoke of settler colonialism when we got rid of the Conservative party that was still led by the racist Ian Smith. 

We still however had the outstanding issue of the liberation struggle of ‘land to the people’.  The lack of popularity of the ruling Zanu Pf party and its ESAP motivated ideological appeal saw the rise of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) to the fore of what was initially union activism which then transcended into political activism. 

 The working peoples party, the Movement for Democratic Change( MDC) was then formed with one of the many primary intentions being the return of the land to the black majority.

The key issue is what obtains now.  Not in relation to opposition politics because that is no longer worth spending time on until 2028 in Zimbabwe. 

What now appears to be more important is the meaning of land as capital in Zimbabwe.  Both in its material and financial sense. 

 Indeed there is inherited land capital, purchased land capital and politically connected land capital. 

It would appear with the multiple land developments we are seeing that these ‘’capitals” are intermingling.  We have a new form of estate capitalism in Zimbabwe.  One that is ironically based on what was assumedly the revolutionary praxis of the FTLRP.

Indeed we took the land from white colonial settler farmers.  We then appropriated that former agricultural land for urban residential use.  Understandably so because of not only our black comrades desires to live in the ‘city’ and their ‘bright lights syndrome’ but also because of our own Fanonian recognized inferiority complexes. 

The reality in Zimbabwe however is that land is capital. This is not a Marxist argument as many of you are wont to accuse me of. But Marx and Engels help.

Zimbabwe is now a capitalist society.   We are no longer  a society that believes in its own people.

And therein lies the problem. 

We need to re-learn what it is that brought us together.  Not only to fight the liberation struggle but to eventually challenge its hegemony without a white-washing of history. 

So when we return back to the issue of land and in our explanation to younger comrades, we have to be clear on its fundamentality.  Land remains capital.  Whether you are going to build a house or set up a mine or even do diverse agriculture.  It is essentially capital.

So when the land barons emerged after the FTLRP, we did not know that they knew and framed their interests as capital.

In our material desperation we assumed they had good intentions.  In reality we are faced with multiple lawsuits where the reality of the FTLRP sinks in.  Well after the sloganeering and attendant protective political events.

Zimbabwe is an example of material lifestyle capitalism.  This is in an easy point to make.  Most new urban settlements are a result of the FTLRP.  I have no idea why comrades need an eight bedroomed house. What I do know is that the political economy cannot sustain it.

But thanks to the FTLRP, as liberatory as it may have been, we appear to have lost our minds. 
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity.