LAND AND LAND REFORM POLITICS

The events in question and similar struggles by households over land in parts of Matabeleland can be understood only in the context of a decades-old history of colonial land expropriations and state policy (Alexander et al. Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000; Moyana Reference Moyana2002), together with the development and consolidation of capitalism (Arrighi Reference Arrighi1970; Mosley Reference Mosley1983), post-colonial land politics and socio-economic crisis (Carmody & Taylor Reference Carmody and Taylor2003; Moss Reference Moss2007), and how these impacted on livelihoods and households' decisions.

Colonial conquest resulted in massive land expropriations and the eviction of natives to reserves of marginal agricultural quality. The first two native reserves (the Gwayi and Shangani Reserves) were established for the Ndebele in 1894 under provisions of the Matabeleland Order-in-Council (Youe Reference Youe1986; Moyana Reference Moyana2002).These reserves were big, remote, and as Sir Richard Martin later recognised in his 1897 study, agriculturally marginal and unsuitable for human habitation (Youe Reference Youe1986).

The Ndebele began to move into these reserves in the early 20th century (Alexander et al. Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000).While smaller reserves were designated until 1914, the occupation of white and Crown land continued well into the 1940s when the state finally enforced the Land Apportionment Act of 1930. Alexander et al. (Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000) showed how the enforcement of the Act led to more forced evictions to eastern Lupane District.Footnote ¹ The brutality of these evictions was captured by Rupert Meredith Davies, the new Assistant Director of Agriculture in 1948:

More people were moved into the Shangani Reserves following the forced removal of groups from Filabusi, Fox Rixon and Matopo in the 1950s. As would be expected, these people had been greatly assimilated into the capitalist world – some had received western education, some were workers, others were entrepreneurs, while others had engaged in ‘kaffir farming’ (Alexander et al. Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000; Worby Reference Worby2001: 480).

Reserves were also created as a labour reservoir for emerging capitalism (Arrighi Reference Arrighi1970; Bush & Cliffe Reference Bush and Cliffe1984). The goal was to extract African labour through tax levies and the destruction of African agriculture, and to dislodge ‘kaffir’ farmers by relocating them to ‘much-diminished reserves – distant from markets, but near enough to migrate to farms to sell their labour’ (Worby Reference Worby2001: 481). Alongside these measures, extra economic means of coercion became a central mechanism to extract cheap labour, although labour needs were also achieved through market mechanisms (Arrighi Reference Arrighi1970; Mosley Reference Mosley1983).

In the light of subdued rural agriculture, it was not uncommon for both married and unmarried men to migrate to the city in search of work, and to spend most of their time there. These migrant men would still retain rural land rights and hope to return to the rural home when their days in the capitalist sector were over (Potts & Mutambirwa Reference Potts and Mutambirwa1990; Potts Reference Potts2000). After all, the migrant labour system was premised on such migrants retaining rights to rural land that would subsidise the urban wage (Potts Reference Potts2000). The system put pressure on rural land since migrants' land rights competed with those of people in rural areas who depended solely on the land for livelihood survival.

Late arrivals to the reserves brought with them herds of cattle and ploughs, and while land was initially available, settlements were concentrated on valley and riverine areas. An immediate result of these activities was that the reserves became overpopulated with humans and animals and became heavily degraded (Prescott Reference Prescott1961). One of the consequences was a demand for additional land, and the other was a looming environmental and agriculture crisis in the reserves – both of which requiring a solution. The solution came in the form of the enactment of the Native Land Husbandry Act in 1951. But such a solution did not involve ceding additional land to the reserves. Instead its solution was to impose limits to people and livestock that could utilise land, introduce soil conservation methods and agriculture improvement schemes (Phimister Reference Phimister1993; Thompson Reference Thompson2007).

The Native Land Husbandry Act also incorporated the policy of centralisation – reorganisation of village settlements and land into different land-use types – and oversaw its coercive implementation (Wolmer & Scoones Reference Wolmer and Scoones2000; Thompson Reference Thompson2007). While the NLHA was strenuously resisted until it was abandoned in 1962, centralisation and conservation efforts were not completely abandoned as the Rhodesian Front administration merely shifted the authority over rural areas from the bureaucracy to traditional structures through the Land Tenure Act of 1969. Although the Land Tenure Act formalised the racial division of land, it also increased land allocated to Africans by about 2% and designated African reserves into 165 Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs) of about 16,268,000 hectares (Mlambo Reference Mlambo2014; Williams & Hackland Reference Williams and Hackland2015).

The Land Tenure Act remained in force in rural Zimbabwe until the 1970s when the liberation war intensified and guerrillas made it difficult for the state to function effectively (Alexander et al. Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000; Nyambara Reference Nyambara2001). The guerrillas completely discredited the authority of traditional leaders; they also introduced ‘madiro’ and encouraged people to plough on contours and to settle on formerly forbidden land (Nyambara Reference Nyambara2001).

A host of literature has expounded on the land distribution problem at independence and the centrality of land in the agenda of negotiations that brought about the country's independence. While this body of literature attests to the highly skewed racial division of land where only 6,000 whites owned over 42% of land, it also identifies the constraints imposed by a negotiated settlement (Moyo Reference Moyo1995; Palmer Reference Palmer1990).

The literature has demonstrated the new government's commitment to redistributing land – a target to resettle 162,000 households in five years – and the disappointments that followed (only 52,000 households were resettled on 2.7 million hectares by 1989) (Palmer Reference Palmer1990; Moyo Reference Moyo1995). Performance on the land distribution front in the 1990s is also well covered in the literature. Despite the enactment of the 1992 Land Acquisition Act, which empowered the state to acquire land compulsorily, very little land accrued to small farmers. During the whole period government policy shifted towards the development of an indigenous capitalist class (Moyo Reference Moyo1995; Sachikonye Reference Sachikonye2003).

The period also coincided with Zimbabwe's liberalisation experiment under the donor-initiated Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), which resulted in the destruction of urban-based livelihoods and erosion of workers’ incomes. The consequential impact was felt in rural areas where there was added pressure on land as the unemployed returned home. ESAP contributed to chronic underemployment and open unemployment and increased the vulnerability of households (Bird & Shepherd Reference Bird and Shepherd2003). These factors made the issue of land even greater, and as the lack of progress became apparent as the 1990s drew to a close, land occupations gained momentum (Moyo Reference Moyo2001; Moyo & Yeros Reference Moyo and Yeros2004). Associated with these, there was further economic decline and unemployment as the economic crisis spurred by ESAP spiralled out of control.

Land reform thus re-emerged in the policy agenda through the launch of the 2nd Phase of Land Reform and Resettlement in 1998, but this was overtaken by events before and after 2000 leading to the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (Chaumba et al. Reference Chaumba, Scoones and Wolmer2003; Marongwe Reference Marongwe, Hammar, Raftopoulos and Jensen2003; Moyo & Yeros Reference Moyo and Yeros2003). A substantial amount of scholarly work emerged after the FTLRRP. This work has been noteworthy for passing the process as a success and using quantitative statistics as evidence of success (Scoones et al. Reference Scoones, Marongwe, Mavedzenge, Maherehere, Murimbarimba and Sukume2010; Moyo Reference Moyo2011). Such interpretations of the land reform process, however, can be misleading since they fail to capture unique regional experiences (Alexander Reference Alexander1991; Cliffe et al. Reference Cliffe, Alexander., Cousins and Gaidzanwa2011).

LAND REFORM IN MATABELELAND

A recurring theme in Matabeleland is the general lack of progress on the land reform and resettlement front, ‘despite the relatively extreme extent of colonial land alienation in the region’ (Alexander & McGregor Reference Alexander and McGregor2001). During the 1980s, the interlinked features of lack of abandoned farms and need for grazing land, meant that very few people moved from communal areas to resettlement areas (Alexander Reference Alexander1991). But, there were also instances were land became available and was acquired by the state, but either remained undistributed or was taken over and leased to government officials and political elites (Alexander Reference Alexander1991; Cliffe et al. Reference Cliffe, Alexander., Cousins and Gaidzanwa2011).

The lack of movement from communal areas, coupled with the return of people formerly displaced by war, meant that some communal areas experienced population pressure and growing discontent over the slow pace in land distribution, which manifested through the land invasions in Nyamandlovu in 1999 (Sithole et al. Reference Sithole, Campbell, Dore and Kozanayi2003). While large-scale land occupations spearheaded by war veterans later followed, these came late in Matabeleland, and ‘attracted a smaller communal area constituency’ (Alexander & McGregor Reference Alexander and McGregor2001: 514).

Political party support, unemployment and the associated perceptions of the benefits from land informed participation in these land occupations in numerous ways, but generally people outside the ruling party condemned and shunned the land occupations and left them to war veterans and members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Collaborators’ Association (see Alexander & McGregor Reference Alexander and McGregor2001). The turbulent relationship between the Matabeleland region and Zanu (PF) together with other grievances against the ruling party and government, had seen the shift in political support towards the new Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the late 1990s (Alexander & McGregor Reference Alexander and McGregor2001; McGregor Reference McGregor2002). Alexander & McGregor (Reference Alexander and McGregor2001: 515) noted:

An important reason, however, was that land was marginal for small farm agriculture and in the context of the region's past land politics, there are possibilities of people preferring land for grazing rather than resettlement (Alexander Reference Alexander1991; Cliffe et al. Reference Cliffe, Alexander., Cousins and Gaidzanwa2011). Alexander & McGregor (Reference Alexander and McGregor2001) also observed that most communities in Matabeleland North did not have historical claims to neighbouring farms since they were evicted from land elsewhere, which may explain the reason behind the occupation of farms in Bubi and Umguza districts (see Sithole et al. Reference Sithole, Campbell, Dore and Kozanayi2003; Thebe Reference Thebe2011).

THE GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE AND ITS HUMAN INHABITANTS

The Menyezwa Ward in Lupane District lies on the southern fringes of the former Shangani Reserves, bound by the Gwayi River to the south; the tract of forest spreading across the A8 (main Bulawayo/Victoria Falls Road) towards the Shangani River further north, the Shabula River to the east and the intersection of the old and new roads to the west, is a communal area about 180 km west of Bulawayo.

Between the village settlements and the Gwayi River lies another forest of mostly mopane trees, separated from the settlements by the old road, which runs parallel to the Gwayi River until it meets the A8 at the Fatima Mission further north. The physical terrain described above presented a perfect setting for the implementation of centralisation measures, with the forest between the old road and the Gwayi River being designated as an arable zone, the land between the old road and the new road as a settlements area and the forest north of the new road as the grazing zone, shared between communities in the Gwayi and those in the Shangani. Typical of former reserves, the area is by all characteristics (economic and geographic) rural.

The land divides into the four major types of soils found in these former reserves – the Kalahari-type sandy soils, which are by far the most dominant; a mixed combination of clay and sandy soils; red clay loams; and black clay loams, mostly along the river plains and riverine areas. Over most of the area, the ‘gusu’ of Kalahari sands is well represented – very prominent over large sections of the settlements and fields, and on the ascend (spreading into the northern forest) – but being significantly dissected by red clay loams, and black loams along rivulets and the land from the old road and spreading into the commercial ranching areas. Only the land within the settlements and an insignificant part of the northern forest were utilised for crop production.Footnote ² This means that a significant proportion of fertile land (between the river and the old road) was undeveloped for crop production.Footnote ³

Located in agro-ecological region IV, it has the least favourite agricultural conditions and is characterised by semi-arid climatic conditions and occasional droughts. In general, region IV is considered most suitable for semi-extensive ranching and not ideal for crop production without irrigation, although drought-resistant crops may still be produced with some degree of success. Through the provisions of the 1931 Land Apportionment Act, land south of the river was designated for commercial ranching and as a Forest Reserve further south (Sikumbi Forest Reserve).

This land became home to mostly Ndebele households, victims of colonial land expropriations for commercial agriculture and mining, although there were also indigenous forest lineages like the sili. The groups that settled in these parts of the reserves originated from different parts of what was referred to as ‘white land’. Chief Menyezwa Gumede arrived in the area from Figtree in 1948, his arrival coinciding with that of groups from Bubi/Insuza, Inyati and Nyamandlovu, which initially submitted to his authority, while groups from other contested areas joined later.Footnote ⁴

Alexander et al. (Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000) pointed out that the land occupied by immigrant groups was not uninhabited, but was home to some forest tribes. In the study area one of these indigenous lineages under the leadership of Ngabetsha – Alexander et al.'s (Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000) big tall sili man who was a good hunter – remained and integrated with the newcomers. It would seem, then, that Ngabetsha maintained control of a particular section of the valley and submitted to the Menyezwa chieftaincy.

Migrant groups, coming mostly as kin lineages with authority lines developed at places of origin, first settled under a kraal system on the valley plain, with only distant relatives occupying the periphery around the main kraals. As O'Flaherty (Reference O'Flaherty1998: 548) noted elsewhere, the kraals were not associated with ‘well demarcated and permanent tracts of land but … represent[ed] the collective right of the households that were allied with the [senior lineage leader]’. These kraals later transmuted into villages with the disintegration of kraals as members established their own homes, the arrival of more households seeking land in the reserves, and the bureaucratisation of kraal leaders into osabhuku (headmen) for purposes of maintaining the tax register for the colonial administration (see O'Flaherty Reference O'Flaherty1998).

These people had been exposed to the capitalist world at their places of origins. We can count among them a proletarian class that worked in the emerging industries in Bulawayo, entrepreneurial individuals, people who had retired from their jobs, but had accumulated assets and saw the relocation to the reserves as an opportunity to begin a new life as farmers, and others who were between jobs and took the opportunity in the reserves to build themselves homes before re-establishing themselves as urban workers again. Alexander et al. (Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000: 50) captured these immigrants vividly:

At the new place, the basic patterns of life that had been established at their places of origin were maintained, which also informed their agricultural practices and land needs. This was a society of worker-peasants, and from the early days women became de facto heads of households. The rate of semi-proletarianisation actually increased because of two factors: first, were the labour needs of the commercial ranches south of the Gwayi River and the Forestry Commission policing the Forest Reserve, and the second had to do with the referral system adopted by certain headmen in accepting newcomers.

Even without data, evidence points to a complex system of relationships between early households and late arrivals where men who had already acquired land recommended colleagues from their work places to their headmen for land.Footnote ⁵

The people, despite their high levels of semi-proletarianisation, also made all possible attempts to exploit the natural resource base (see Prescott Reference Prescott1961; Alexander et al. Reference Alexander, McGregor and Ranger2000). Each household had a field, or more in the case of extended households, allocated by their leaders (osabhuku). The land allocations were often liberal, which allowed households the latitude for extension, to release exhausted land and to allocate land to members and outsiders (Thebe Reference Thebe2012). The village heads retained the responsibility for land allocation at village level. As noted elsewhere (Thebe Reference ThebeForthcoming), the allocation formula was simple: people identified their preferred land and the head confirmed such claims through rudimentary branch pegs in a process called ukutshay’ ihlahla.

However, the topography of the land between Lupane District's two major rivers (the Gwayi and the Shangani) was always going to pose major ecological and production challenges even in the most prudent of land husbandry regimes. First, the Kalahari-type sandy soils that are prominent on the ‘gusu’ forest that also acts as a watershed between the Gwayi and Shangani rivers are denuded of grass cover, which leaves them exposed to run-off water. Second, the clayey, red soils and black loams are vulnerable to gully erosion as the gentle gradients release strong water flows both on the south and north-easterly gradients. Through continuous cultivation, the soils lose fertility, forcing people to clear new land to allow initial fields to revert to bush.

The Ndebele were also livestock herders, and each household owned at least a livestock herd – be it cattle, donkeys or goats – and these were grazed not far from settlements, on common land that was awaiting allocation. It was these realities, combined with the livelihood practices of the population, and perceptions about the disruptive nature of these practices on the natural environment, that made a case for centralisation and rational planning and sound land husbandry.

SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION, WORKER-PEASANTS AND FARMING

Within the occupied territory, patterns of differentiation were very much determined by access to opportunities in the formal job sector rather than access to land and other natural resources, which were accessible to all households in a village. It would appear that the wage from the formal sector allowed households to accrue assets, and most households had invested in agriculture-based assets including livestock and ploughs. Households headed by non-working men were often poorly resourced and depended mainly on agriculture for sustenance and survival.

THE CHANGING LAND AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT

The rural areas are places where traditional leaders – from the headman at the lower level to the chief at a broader level – were vested with uncontested power after the recall of the NLHA in 1962. After about a decade in the wilderness during the tenure of the NLHA where the state through the District Commissioners interfered extensively in rural affairs, traditional leaders finally retained their authority over land through the Tribal Trust Land Act (TTLA) of 1967. In the study area village heads (osabhuku) exercised authority over land and natural resources including their conservation. One of my informants remembered:

He particularly remembered one particular headman, who was known for his strictness in allocating land and his conviction in technical land-use planning. He would travel the whole village checking and monitoring adherence to conservation measures – whether the contour ridges and storm drains were in position, and they were of the correct specifications and numbers. He would ensure that cattle were grazed in the correct zone and that there were no unauthorised extensions of fields and that people did not use sledges for transport.

Much has been made about people's reaction to land-use and conservation measures, and traditional leadership (see Phimister Reference Phimister1993; Thompson Reference Thompson2007). In the study area, reactions differed across different aspects of the land-use planning package. Generally, everyone dug contours, dipped their cattle, and adhered to the grazing schedule. While transgressions were common, these were punished through fines administered through the headmen's court. I was informed:

For valid reasons, people loathed dipping sessions and the grazing zone. As highlighted in Nkomo (Reference Nkomo2001), it was at the dip where cattle numbers were monitored following a carrying capacity formula. As for the grazing zone, it was a great inconvenience since smaller animals could not be grazed in the zone. It is important to highlight here that households did not openly object to these measures and neither were there recorded incidents of hostility against headmen for their part in the system.

More commonly however, people appeared to accept the status quo until the peak of the liberation war, when the political propaganda turned against the system and traditional institutions. This is not surprising since most households were part of the same lineage with the headmen, while others owed their allegiance to the headship for accepting them in his place.

It was in 1976 that changes started to occur in this area following the arrival of Zipra guerrillas and the killing of the farm owner of the Sotane Ranch. The death of the farmer and the closing of the ranch affected the livelihoods of many households who saw their livelihoods destroyed with the loss of jobs, but also, it opened the ranch for access by the villagers who used it to poach-graze their cattle. Following this incident, the guerrilla operations affected centralisation and conservation measures as they encouraged the practice of ‘madiro’.

Osabhuku lost their authority over land and the communities as the power shifted from the traditional leaders – dynasties that held administrative power, often through structures of lineage headship, first at places of origin, then in the reserves – to informal political community structures. While one would expect a spate of violations and a chaotic process as people engaged in ‘madiro’, there was a resemblance of order and there was minimum encroachment of settlements on pastures. This was also not surprising since in these communities, there was no idle land: land belonged to households.Footnote ⁸

Further changes took place after independence as the gap in the governance of the area allowed households to expand their land holdings and to develop garden plots. An important factor affecting land in the area was the land needs of the new adults. Some newly married household members, relatives from other areas and people previously displaced by war acquired land in the communal area. This group was not only able to occupy land for farming purposes, but also for residence, which increased the demand for land.

Unlike household members, whose land rights rested with the household concerned, outsiders were often allocated land from the communal stock by the sabhuku. After 1983, the land challenges were further compounded by the lack of movement to the resettlement areas as resettlement stalled in Matabeleland (see Alexander Reference Alexander1991), and the Sotane Ranch resumed operations as a safari ranch, leaving livestock and people contesting for space in the communal area. Moreover, there is some evidence from my ethnography that in one of the villages some people were able to exercise ‘madiro’, for completely new settlements mushroomed on common land.Footnote ⁹

It was the annexation of the fields on the northern forest for a cattle grazing programme in the 1990s, however, rather than new settlements, that squeezed the land as people scrambled for fields within the settlement zone. Where fields were not lost to the project, as in other parts of the ward, rampant erosion developed and reduced cultivatable areas.

In the mean time, the resumption of operations at the Sotane Ranch provided the first disappointment for an expectant community. According to one of my informants:

Two other companies (Sawmills Companies) had started operations in the community, logging timber from the northern forest and the ranch in the late 1980s, and these provided the bulk of local employment and business opportunities for people in the area and neighbouring communities. These operations, although they had succeeded in cushioning livelihood vulnerability and lasted well into the mid-1990s, later folded leaving the majority of households in a livelihood crisis.

At the broader national level, the adoption of ESAP and the resultant retrenchments had led to the destruction of urban-based livelihoods, and the effects were felt particularly by worker-peasants. The job losses did, therefore, affect households' livelihood options. Many worker-peasant households had to face the prospect of joining the ranks of the poor households whose livelihoods were made more vulnerable through their overdependence on unreliable agriculture. Not only was there more pressure for land at the time of the FTLRRP, but also there was perennial rain failure and below par harvests, at a time where people had seen any ‘prospects of formal sector employment diminish’ (Ncube 2005 int.).Footnote ¹¹

However, when war veterans attempted to directly occupy the Sotane Ranch, there was no invitation to people outside the local Zanu (PF) branch, in this case in an attempt to confine the occupations within Zanu (PF). Not that the people were willing and ready to support the occupation of the farm, which (when available) had historically served the grazing interests of households. To the villagers the ranch did not, therefore, constitute a crop production or settlement area, and when it was finally reallocated as an A2 model safari ranch to a consortium of three black business men, there were hopes for job opportunities. However, the resumption of Safari operations under the new ownership proved inadequate and, despite guarantees by the new owners of preferential employment for community members, the ranch had only employed eight individuals by 2010, when it was abandoned, allowing villagers the liberty to poach-graze their cattle.

RECLAIMING THE ANNEXED LAND AND ‘SIZIPHILE’ LAND OCCUPATIONS

Throughout the second half of the 2000s, there remained unsolved the issue of land annexed by the Kusile District Council for the pilot grazing project in the late 1990s. Then in 2011, following yet another drought and harvest failure, villagers moved into the project area and reclaimed their former fields. By 2013 vast areas, even those that had not been cultivated before, had been developed for fields and were put under cultivation. State authorities in Zimbabwe are known for their discomfort with unauthorised land occupations, but in this case the Kusile District Council was conspicuous for lack of action.

Even before the first harvest was obtained from the reclaimed fields, another land occupation of a similar nature was taking place on land south of the settlements – what was the former arable zone. After the winter of 2012 a group of villagers, mostly unemployed adults between the ages of 30 and 45 and acting independently, moved into the land and began developing land for cultivation, without informing the chief of the area. As one of the field owners explained:

Initially, there were relatively few people involved (around 10 people started the occupations), since others remained apprehensive of the repressive state. However, land occupiers believed they were right and had points of reference:

Other people were wary of moving into land dominated by crop-eating animals such as baboons, monkeys and wild pigs, and there was also the issue of the community roaming livestock herd. After all, villagers had raised concerns about the new fields, the potential conflict they would bring, and had expressed their unwillingness to change their grazing patterns.Footnote ¹² But for those who took the risk, there were opportunities to determine field sizes (tema madiro) and the quality of the soils (black clay loams) were a major pull. In reality land sizes were relatively smaller and located on a variety of soil types, ranging from salty clay to the fertile black clay loams.

The following year, however, after the chief appeared to endorse the new developments on condition that field owners fenced their fields, more people moved in to clear fields for themselves until all cultivatable land was occupied. Others even crossed the river and developed fields on the southern river bank, but all land occupiers continued to hold onto land in the village, despite its poor quality. Land occupiers also went to great lengths to build brushwood fences around their fields, although some also maintained a visible presence to guard against baboons and monkeys.

Primarily as a result of the farmers’ past farming experiences, crops such as maize, sorghum, pumpkins, melons and sugar cane were cultivated following the intercropping system. For those occupying land on the river bank, vegetables and tubers such as potatoes and sweet potatoes were also produced under supplementary watering.

In the context of past behaviour, the radicalisation of attitudes was unexpected. It is evident that land occupations, taking place as they did in the second decade of the 21st century, combined aspects of livelihood and other frustrations. Since the redistribution of the ranch in 2000, expected job opportunities never materialised, yet on the agriculture front villagers continued to struggle for a decent harvest. As has become apparent, the land occupiers were people whose livelihoods were vulnerable – they were mainly unemployed and had seen their agricultural production frustrated in the village.

Unlike the popular ‘jambanja’ land occupations of 1999 and 2000 (Chaumba et al. Reference Chaumba, Scoones and Wolmer2003), these land occupiers were a mixed lot (political orientation, lineage groupings, asset endowment), and superficially, they were all united by the attraction of fertile clay loams (isidaka), and possibly, a better harvest (at least for those more able to utilise the land).

Many of the field owners tended to be young and owned no assets of their own, and after clearing the land they left to seek jobs elsewhere. Lukas, for example, was only 21, recently married and employed as a herd boy locally. He had no assets and came from one of the poor families that relied on resource-pooling arrangements with neighbours to till their land. While he held no land in the village, the family had large fields and had inherited fields left behind by relatives who had relocated to the resettlement farms. He joined the land occupations in 2014, but left for South Africa in 2015.

Whilst recognising that land occupiers were diverse, I want here to focus on certain individuals and the role they played in the ‘siziphile’ land occupations. Some of these individuals represented institutions of governance in rural areas through the Traditional Leaders Act of 1998, which conferred traditional structures of chiefs and headmen with authority over land. Here I provide a brief account of how certain individuals acted.

Tyson, for example was 46 years old, unemployed and the elder of three brothers. A descendant of a sili lineage that headed one of the villages in the ward, he was appointed headman after the death of his father, and was the custodian of land and natural resources (including the former arable zone) in his area as outlined in the 1998 Act. Being headman, he presided over disputes and passed judgements. After assuming the headship, he had developed fields adjacent to the former arable forest matiro-style. When the land occupation first began in the summer of 2012, and despite his position as headman, he had helped himself to land on black clay soils in the contested forest. In January 2016, he joined his brother in South Africa, leaving the land to his wife.

Similarly Reginald, 38 years old and married with three young children, was the acting headman in a neighbouring village. He was related to a lineage that controlled the largest amount of land in the whole of the Menyezwa area. As part of the village lineage, he had access to land in the village, and in 2000 he had taken over land from relatives who had relocated to the resettlement areas in Umguza District. The late headman, who led the village from late colonialism to the 1990s, was known for prudence in land-use and allocation practices, so that the village remained the most under-populated and environmentally protected to date. Reginald had never held a permanent job, although he had been to Botswana and had also occupied part-time jobs locally, and owned only a herd of donkeys inherited from his late parents, which he used for draft power. However, even with all the land at his disposal and his position of trust, he was among the first people to occupy the former grazing zone.

The situation of Jericho Mpofu, 28 years old, married and with a young family, was rather different from the two in that he did not hold a position of authority in his village although he was next in line to the headship. His brother was the substantive headman of one of the crowded villages that had faced challenges of land for cultivation since the annexation of fields in the northern forest. But land had since become available after the radical reassertion of land rights after 2011, and Jericho had access to land in the forest. He was not employed, and depended mainly on casual jobs. In 2012, he and a few other men from his village started establishing homes on the occupied land. He even went further than others by crossing the river into the Sotane Ranch where he developed his fields.Footnote ¹³

Leo Gwebu, 50 years old, was a good example of those who joined the occupations late, either because they thought the occupation would be short-lived or they were bound by a sense of responsibility. Leo was an acting headman, and was related to the kraal lineage that he currently leads. In 2011 he had led his people to reclaim the land that was annexed for the grazing project in the northern forest, and had redeveloped his parents’ old fields, which he was still cultivating in 2016. Although he had never held a formal job, he had inherited the family estate including a herd of cattle.

However, he lacked farming acumen, having confined his livelihood activities to subsistence production and off-farm activities that included fishing, gambling and beer brewing. When the occupation of the former arable forest began, he had condemned the acts, which he referred to as ‘acts of stupidity’ (Gwebu 2014 int.). But after realising that the land occupiers had a better harvest, he joined the occupations in 2014 and established fields on the southern bank of the river.