comparativo Empresarial del VANy EVA Perú 2008 2012

Social policy has been defined as ‘collective interventions directly affecting transformation in social welfare, social institutions and social relations’ (Mkandawire, 2007; UNRISD, 2006). This definition is corroborated by Adesina (2007a: 1) when he also defines social policy as ‘the collective public efforts at affecting and protecting the social well-being of the people within a given territory’. Both of the aforementioned definitions presuppose the idea of a minimum permissible standard of living for every human being in a given context. Titmuss (1974:31) quotes Hagenbuch's definition of social policy where he noted that 'the mainspring of social policy may be said to be the desire to ensure every member of the community certain minimum standards and certain opportunities (Hagenbuch, 1958:205). This ‘minimum standard’ is ensured through ‘elements of social policy’ (UNRISD, 2006) such as direct government provision of social welfare through, for example, broad-based education and health services, subsidies and benefits, social security and pensions, labour market interventions, land reform

[italics for emphasis], progressive taxation and other redistributive policies. At the core of social policy is the need to guarantee that every citizen in a certain ‘territory’ lives a life of dignity regardless of status, ethnicity, age, etc.

Adesina (2009) reinforced the case for land reform when he noted that the land reform program that had happened in Zimbabwe needed to be viewed also from a social policy perspective. Researches that have been done by the Moyo (2005, 2007, 2009, 2011), Scoones (2010), Mutopo (2011), Murisa (2010), Chiweshe (2014) have proven that the FTLRP achieved social policy outcomes. This body of literature does not necessarily make a deliberate effort of looking at the outcomes of FTLRP from a social policy perspective. It can be argued that even though the land reform program might not have been conducted with a full consciousness that it was addressing social policy outcomes, but a thorough interrogation of the aforementioned literature demonstrates that the five social policy functions namely production, protection, redistribution, reproduction and social cohesion have been realised to varying extents. The land reform provided the space for the beneficiaries to enhance their productive capacity, which

subsequently will protect them from the vagaries of the market (Moyo, 2009). The FTLRP also was redistributive in nature, though there have been debates on who benefited, there has been convincing empirical research that the land reform benefited all classes of society (Moyo, 2009; Scoones, 2010). Mutopo (2011; 2012) has been vocal in identifying the reproductive outcomes of the FTLRP. There has been also research on the extent to which social cohesion or nation building has been achieved in the resettled areas (Chiweshe, 2014). This research therefore intends to provide a self-conscious analysis of the FTLRP from the social policy perspective to understand the extent to which the five tasks of social policy have been achieved.

One of the reasons for the unavailability of self-conscious social policy take on the land reform has been the dominance of the literature on social policy by scholars from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, resulting in the literature having an OECD bias (Mkandawire 2007). Understandably, these scholars have written on the experiences and debates of social policy from their contexts. They have also endeavoured to write on social policy in developing countries albeit wearing their lenses hence unable to put premium on social policy instruments relevant to the developing world like the land reform. As a result, some of the social policy tools mentioned above, which are not dominant in the OECD contexts have not been given due consideration on how they have contributed to the well-being of the people. The UNRISD (2006)’s unpacking of social policy elements included land reform and yet there is little to no self-conscious literature that makes the connection between land reform and social policy, except for Gough (2004) and Chung (2014). While the former scholar made cursory reference to land reform as a social policy tool, Chung (2014) devoted a segment of his chapter to the land reform in South Korea as a specific case of social policy. Despite all the available disparate literature on social policy and land reform, there has not been literature that appreciates land reform as a social policy instrument save for the researches by Gough (2004); Huch-ju Kwon & Ilcheong Yi (2008); Nitya Rao (2014); Mark Alan Hughes & Peter M. Vandoren (1990) and Yi et al (2014).1 This gap has been caused by focus on social safety nets or social assistance instead of the transformative role that social policy should have (Mkandawire, 2011). Mkandawire (2005:1) laments this shortcoming when he notes:

Social policy has always played redistributive, protective and transformative or developmental roles. Although these different roles always work in tandem and synergistically, the weight given to each of these elements of social policies has varied widely across countries and, within countries, over time. In the context of

development, there can be no doubt that the transformative role of social policy needs to receive greater attention than it is usually accorded in the developed countries and much more than it does in the current focus on ‘safety nets’.

Ben Fine (2009: 2) echoes the above observations when he notes that social policy has been flawed by ‘over-generalising across ideal types which are insufficiently sensitive both in method and empirically to the differences in context and content of different social policies within and between both countries and programmes’. It is this ‘thinness’ (Mackintosh and Tibandebage, 2005: 144) of the literature on social policy on the one hand and of land reform on the other, which this research intends to address by focusing on contextually relevant social policy elements like land reform in Zimbabwe.

Furthermore, some of the available literature consists of attempts to find ad hoc solutions to the social consequences of both economic decline and economic policy (Mkandawire, 2001). Subsequently, social policy is reduced to social assistance or social safety nets, (Holzman and Kozel, 2007) resulting in literature focusing more on ex post interventions not ex ante social policy tools(Adesina 2011). This ‘mono tasking’ (Mkandawire, 2005: 6) of social policy has reduced it to social protection as promulgated by scholars like Koehler (2011), and Sabates- Wheeler and Devereaux (2004). The proposed study intends to use the transformative social policy conceptual framework in appreciating the multiple tasks or functions of social policy, not only as a mechanism to be used on the vulnerable in society (Adesina, 2011) but as a conduit for development in its holistic sense.

As has been noted earlier, there has been a lot of literature that has been generated on land reform. Unfortunately, most of this literature has been produced using neopatrimonial narratives which reduce African politics and the state to endemic ‘corruption’, ‘patronage’, and ‘tribalism’ (see de Grassi, 2008; Olukoshi, 2011; Mustapha, 2002; Mkandawire, 2012), while overstating the virtues of neoliberal good governance (Richardson, 2005; Campbell, 2008; Bond, 2008). In this narrative, empirical researchers on land reform in Zimbabwe who found contrary evidence to the dominant narrative were labelled as partisan to the ruling party Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) (Cliffe et al., 2011; see also Hungwe, 2011; Chiweshe, 2012). Moyo (2012) argued that such literature suffer from ‘conceptual malaise’ and empirical deficiencies (Moyo et al., 2012:18). Most literature on the FTLRP in Zimbabwe took a Manichean perspective where it gave attention to political party

struggles that were ensuing during the land reform without focusing much on the social struggles of the time. The available literature (Scarnecchia et al., 2008; Marongwe, 2011; Zamchiya, 2011; Dekker and Kinsey, 2011; Cliffe et al., 2011) also took a rights and governance approach building on this Manichean perspective to vilify land reform in Zimbabwe. There have been attempts however of producing empirical literature and these attempts have been primarily led by the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS) led by Moyo (2001, 2005, 2011, 2012). Scoones et al (2010); Matondi (2012); Hanlon et al (2013) have also demonstrated many of the positive outcomes of the land reform process.