ANÁLISIS DE LABORATORIO OSP

Consideration of farm residency for the land beneficiaries is important for several reasons. Firstly, residency speaks to availability to engage in agricultural work. The farmer will be able both to work on the farm and supervise the progress that will be happening in real time. Residency on the farm can be said to make a statement on commitment and elimination of options of occupation. Secondly, residency will also confirm the notion that has been noted by several scholars that the FTLRP benefited ordinary people in the country. This view is premised on Sen (2005)’s concept of development as freedom to choose. In this case, residency would mean that the beneficiaries did not have another choice of where to stay because of their economic status. They therefore had to settle on the farm which they were allocated. The flip side of this is also true when land beneficiaries are not staying there. Though this may be a long shot, but those who would not reside at the farm could be categorised as the better off farmers in the small to medium capitalist production of the tri-modal structure. Table 6.8 shows that 87.1% of the A1 and 61.1% of A2 beneficiaries stay on the farms.

Table 6.8: Residency of plot owners in newly settled areas by settlement type Residency of plot owner

Settlement type A1 A2 Total N % N % N % On farm 412 87.1 179 61.1 591 77.2 Communal area 4 0.8 6 2.0 10 1.3 Urban area 49 10.4 95 32.4 144 18.8 Diaspora 4 0.8 6 2.0 10 1.3 Other 4 0.8 7 2.4 11 1.4 Total 473 100 293 100 766 100

Source: AIAS Household Survey, 2013/14

There is a higher percentage of A2 farmer who stay in urban areas (32.4%) compared to 10.4% of A1 farmers. This speaks more to the middle farmer who still has his or her job in town and comes often to the farm to monitor progress. In the Sherwood area, some of these farmers are able to use the money they generate from their various vocations in urban areas to sustain their agricultural interests. Some have bought equipment and inputs even after drought seasons when other farmers would not have starting capital.

Figure 6.6: A1 Farm residency trends in Kwekwe District

Source: Own fieldwork, (2015)

44 45 13 25 21 17 21 32 15 9 4 11 6 1 _{0 0} U M L A L A D E V I L W O O D L I N D E L A L O T 4 A L O T 5 L O T 5 E X T E N S I O N B O N S T E A D V I L L A G E 1 3 B O N S T E A D V I L L A G E 1 2

Figure 6.6 shows that in villages, all the beneficiaries reside at the plots they were allocated. The research observed that these villages are made up of former farm workers and individuals who came from communal areas. Those who came from towns did not accept to be given villagised A1 farms. The farms with highest numbers of people who are not based at the farm are those that are close to the high way where transport to and fro is not difficult to find. Some of the push factors for those with options of staying in urban areas include non-availability of electricity on most plots. All the households of Umlala farm are not connected to electricity. Some of the households have invested in solar panels that can mostly charge the phone and play the radio for some time. Furthermore, access to drinking water is a problem. Water has to be collected from Sebakwe River which is an average of 5 kilometres from most residences.

6.14 Conclusion

This chapter interrogated the redistributive social policy outcomes of the FTLRP. In the chapter, I demonstrated that one of the major outcomes of the FTLRP was the changed agrarian structure from a bi-modal arrangement to a tri-modal structure. The new agrarian structure has about 150 000 households settled under the A1 scheme and 30 000 under the A2 scheme with some transnational agro estates still operating in the country. The new agrarian structure has created a broad base for the peasantry in its variegated categories. Indeed the process had its own shortcomings since it was mostly a revolution from below. As a result women did not get access to land on equal footing as men. This was mainly pronounced in A2 resettlement scheme where in Sherwood Farm there are no women who received A2 plots. There is consensus among scholars that between 13-22% of the land beneficiaries are women. The majority of the women then access land through their husbands, which reinforces the patriarchal nature of the society. I observed that the land beneficiaries brought their cultural relationship with the land. As a result, the allocated plots are subdivided by the households to make provision for tsewu

for the women and the main field for the household. I however observed that this increases the women’s burden of labour as they are supposed to work on their tsewu and contribute to the household plot.

The chapter also provided detailed accounts of how the land beneficiaries accessed the land. Some of the beneficiaries got the land during the informal farm occupations, which were mainly orchestrated by the war veterans similar to other districts studied by scholars such as

inter alia Scoones et al (2010), Murisa (2007, 2010), Sadomba (2011) and Mkodzongi (2013). The majority of the land beneficiaries in Kwekwe District got the land through formal allocation by the government. The chapter also provided profiles of the land beneficiaries. The data I collected and that of AIAS refutes the narrative that only the elite benefited from the FTLRP. Civil servants, former farm workers, senior politicians, war veterans and ordinary citizens all benefited from the FTLRP. The beneficiaries also had varied education levels ranging from no formal education to degrees. The average age of the land beneficiaries is 55 years. Lastly, I explored farm residency trends in a bid to contribute to the debate around farmers who got land for speculative reasons as well as the notion of absentee farmers. I observed that most beneficiaries in A1 type of farming, especially the villagised type, can be said to be resident on the farms. Having appreciated the new agrarian structure that was brought about by the FTLRP, the next chapter interrogates production outcomes of the FTLRP. The chapter will endeavour to answer the question of what the land beneficiaries are doing with the land.

CHAPTER 7: PRODUCTION OUTCOME OF THE FTLRP