Selección de cuchillas

In Kwekwe District, land redistribution took place mainly between 2001 and 2002. At the national level, this was when government gazetted the farms that were to be acquired. Key informant interviews with the leadership of war veterans in Kwekwe District who led the land occupations indicated that these were targeted and organised. The war veterans in Kwekwe did not occupy all the large-scale commercial farms that were owned by Whites. Instead, selection was done primarily on the basis of how the white farmer had been treating his employees and cooperating with the governance structures of the area. There were those farmers who were targeted first because they had a reputation for racism and exploitation of farm workers.

One farmer was known in the district for having ordered women whom he had found fetching firewood to strip naked for his amusement. He took photos of these women and shared them with his colleagues. The photos unfortunately got into the hands of political leadership of the area. When the farm occupations started, he was one of the first to be targeted. He did not want to negotiate with the war veterans. When he heard that the war veterans were scheduled to occupy his farm, he hired rangers from fellow white farmers who were given the instruction to shoot the team of war veterans that were coming. The war veterans had intelligence that had informed them about the rangers. They then strategized on how they would subdue the rangers since they were only seven to an entourage of about 300 war veterans. This narrative corroborates Sadomba (2011) and Scoones (2010) that war veterans played a key role in the occupations. It further confirms that the occupations were not done in ad hoc fashion. There were reasons that justified the farms that were occupied before the government regularised the occupations.

Umlala Farm was not targeted by the war veterans in their occupations. There are several reasons proffered. The first was that the farmer, whose father was a reverend, treated his staff with dignity. The other reason given was that the farmer was the only producer of oranges in the periphery of Kwekwe town. The thinking was that occupying Umlala Farm was going to disturb the supply of the oranges to the town. Moreover, the farmer understood political dynamics in his area so once in a while he supplied both traditional and political leadership with oranges. In May 2001 when the government gazetted farms that were to be taken over, to the surprise of the war veterans’ leadership, Umlala Farm was on the list. As a result, the farm

was partitioned into 44 A1 plots. The character of the occupants of these plots will be explored later.

The story of Umlala Farm is corroborated by the AIAS 2014 Surveys which indicated that 64.5% of the beneficiaries in Kwekwe District had obtained access to land by 2003. Umlala Farm was allocated in 2001 through the Land Committee that had been established. Names of the people who had applied for land in this area were put in a hat. Randomly, the names were picked simultaneously with the plot number. This explains why a poor peasant who does not have equipment like ploughs and any livestock is located next to the dam on the farm. This presents opportunities for the poor peasant households to undertake horticultural farming and get money from the better off neighbours.

The graph below shows that 17.1% of the occupations happened before formal allocation. This was when the government had not gazetted farms that were to be redistributed. The majority of the redistribution happened under the government land allocation programme through the District Administrator’s Office. It is worth noting that before 2008, redistribution had reached the lowest figure as there was little activity going on. Through key informant interviews, the researcher realised that there were farm abandonments that occurred after the 2008 elections. An agricultural extension officer in one ward posited claimed that:

Before the 2008 elections, all parties preached peace and tolerance. People’s true political ideologies came out. Some even started wearing the regalia of their parties every here in Kwekwe. But when the results were announced and there was no clear winner, things changed. In building up to a run off, the tone of the political parties changed. ZANU PF wanted to win in areas they had not done well. Kwekwe District was one such area. The process brought with it violence targeted at those in the farming communities who were known to support MDC. In my district, two land beneficiaries abandoned their land in fear of being victimised (Key Informant Interview, 14/04/15, Umlala Farm).

Figure 6.1: Year of formal land allocation of newly resettled land beneficiaries in Kwekwe District

Source: Adapted from AIAS Household Survey, 2013/14

Figure 6.1 above shows that the number of new land allocations declined after 2002, to the lowest level in 2008. There was however a 6.3 percent surge in the number of new allocations after 2008. The Extension officers attributed this trend to the politics of the day where there were abandonments and forced evictions. As a result, new land beneficiaries were identified to take over the plots that had be left vacant. As was noted by the agricultural extension officer in one of the wards, the scenario was the same in the other ward. The extension officer noted that:

In my ward, there was one person who left their farm after the general elections. The farmer was very vocal speaking about need for change. The ZANU PF leadership told him to vacate since he did not understand that the land came at the barrel of the gun. Voting for MDC would reverse the land reform so the leaders of ZANU PF wanted to make sure that ZANU PF wins in the resettled areas since they would be accountable to their superiors (Key Informant Interview, 20/08/2015, Female, Sherwood Block). The initial general election results for Kwekwe District saw MDC-T gain a lot of ground against ZANU PF. In preparation for the runoff, the district was targeted by ZANU PF as one they needed to get back, especially the resettlement areas. By the time the runoff election happened, the district had so much tension with ZANU youth mobilising the farmers against MDC-T. That created unprecedented polarization that forced the farmers who had shown

27 41 34 10 11 ₉ 7 7 2 10 17.1 25.9 21.5 6.3 7 5.7 _{4.4 4.4} 1.3 6.3

support for the MDC-T to abandon the farms. ZANU PF leaders seized the opportunity to replace those farmers with another one who was on the waiting list.

Using the AIAS 2014 Baseline findings, for A1 famers, the majority obtained 5.1-10 hectares of land. These are mainly self-contained plots where the maximum number of cattle permissible is 6. For those in more arid areas, they accessed 10.1-20 hectares.

Figure 6.2: Kwekwe District land holding for A1 beneficiaries

Source: Adapted from AIAS Household Survey, 2013/14

The A2 farms are fewer compared to A1 allocations. These farms are meant for the small to medium capitalist farmers who have their tools and can access their own capital to engender production on these farms. The research noted however that some of the people who obtained these farms did so for speculative reasons, hoping that the state would provide them with support to work on the land. It must be noted that from the start, the state had made it clear that this group of farmers were meant to support themselves or be able to outsource support. This is important because there are some narratives that criticise the state for not providing any

2 59 28 18 1.9 55.1 26.2 16.8 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0.1-5 5.1-10 10.1-20 20.1+ N UM BE R O F BE N EF IC IA R IE S

LAND SIZE IN HECTARES

Kwekwe District land holding for A1

beneficiaries

support or A2 farmers, yet this was not part of the terms for taking these A2 farms. As a result, ideally, A2 farms are not supposed to receive any inputs from the state. This research however observed that some of the A2 farmers, because of their political connections, are able to leverage these to get government inputs.

Figure 6.3: Kwekwe District A2 land beneficiaries

Source: Adapted from AIAS Survey 2013/14

The sizes of the A2 farms depend on the natural region in which the farm is located as provided for by the farm size guidelines (see Moyo et al, 2009). Kwekwe District, which is predominantly in NR III, does not have any small-scale A2 farms. The chat shows that those occupying farm sizes of 250 hectares or larger are the single largest group. Over 83% have farms that are 120 hectares or bigger. These are mostly small sized A2 plots in NR III and IV and those with 100-120 hectares are considered to be medium scale in NR I. A reflection on the two graphs above confirms Moyo’s (2011a) assertion that the FTLRP increased the size of the peasantry; 48 households obtained A2 farms compared to 107 households in A1.