Conversations on Zimbabwe’s land reform: “well, it’s a bit more complex than that….”

I am often involved in conversations with people who are intrigued that I work on land issues in Zimbabwe. Such conversations frequently lead off with something along the lines ‘Oh it was such a terrible thing, wasn’t it?’. Their assumptions and biases are clear from the start and the lack of knowledge is disconcerting. I take a deep breath (having been doing this for over 20 years it takes some control). ‘Well’, I say, ‘it’s a bit more complex than that; there are positive and negative outcomes, and things have changed over time.’ Usually at this point, people’s eyes glaze over and an easier subject is tackled or they wander off. Sometimes, however, people are genuinely interested, and (yes still) surprised.

Over the years we have produced a vast amount of research that challenges the myths surrounding land reform through solid empirical research, documented now in many journal articles and several books. If you add the huge body of work by others, then the evidence base is substantial and growing; and across this a (largely) similar story is told. There are few contrarians with other axes to grind and some outlier cases that tell an interesting but not generalisable story, but overall there is a growing consensus around the more complex, more ambiguous and much more interesting story of Zimbabwe’s land reform. This is important, as the Zimbabwe story is one that is looked at more widely (too often with biased perceptions) and the lessons learned have important things to say for others struggling with land redistribution.

Overarching findings

When I was putting together our compilation of 20 articles in the monster book Researching Zimbabwe’s Land Reform that we released last year and have since distributed around universities and resource centres across Zimbabwe (you can buy it here and here and download for free here), I wrote a new introduction. In addition to reflecting on the process of the research and the challenges we have faced, I wanted to lay out what the overarching conclusions were from this now huge this body of work. They proved difficult to summarise as there are differences across sites, between people and over time (the temporal dimension is what I pick up next week), but nevertheless, the listing below offers some headlines, which are taken from the book.

• Farmers on the new resettlement areas are producing and accumulating from investments in agriculture. Patterns vary widely between farms and across years, but a distinct pattern of ‘accumulation from below’, particularly in the A1 smallholder land reform sites, is seen. However, political and economic conditions over the past 20 years have seriously limited opportunities for most.
• Farmers who gained access to land during the land reform came from many different backgrounds. In the A1 smallholder areas, the majority were previously poor, small-scale farmers from the communal areas or were un(der)employed in nearby towns. In the A2 areas, there was a mix of those who applied through the formal route (mostly civil servants, including teachers and agricultural ministry staff) and those who gained access to land through patronage arrangements, drawing on close connections with the party and security services. Outside this latter group, which is a small minority, the beneficiaries were not ‘cronies’, nor even necessarily ruling party supporters.
• Many of the new farmers are investing in their farms. First this was focused on land clearance and building new homes, but since this has extended to investing in new technology (notably irrigation pumps), as well as tractors and diverse forms of transport for marketing. Some are able to invest off-farm and there has been a growth in investment in real estate in nearby towns, especially in the tobacco-growing areas.
• Over time, there has been a distinct process of social differentiation, within both smallholder (A1) and medium-scale (A2) farms, with some accumulating, while others struggle. This results in new social relations between farms and between sites, as those who are not surviving from farm-based income must seek employment on other farms or develop off-farm income earning options.
• There are major contrasts between A1 and A2 farms in all of our sites. A1 smallholder farms have performed relatively well, often producing surpluses, with investment flowing back to the farms or supporting relatives in other areas, including the communal areas and towns. A2 farms have by contrast struggled. As larger medium-scale operations, they require finance and capital investment, and this has been difficult to secure due to lack of bank finance or government support. Beyond a few years when the economy stabilised, the economic conditions over 20 years have not been conducive to successful farm business investment. That said, some have managed, and again there is substantial differentiation among A2 farms.

• The spatial restructuring of rural economies through land reform has resulted in new patterns of economic activity, with the sharing of labour, equipment and other resources across A1, A2 and communal areas. The concentration of locally-based economic growth driven by agriculture has had important effects on small towns, and many of these have grown significantly.
• During the land reform, resident farm labour on farms especially in the high-potential areas largely lost out on the allocation of new land. Farm labour has had to reincorporate in a new agricultural economy and has faced many challenges. Gaining access to even small pieces of land is crucial for survival, as the demand for labour varies and the working conditions are poor.
• Twenty years on from land reform, there is a next generation of young people who are seeking out agriculture-based opportunities. They may benefit from subdivision of their parents’ land, but many must survive on small patches. Investment in small-scale irrigation through the purchase of small pumps, linked to horticulture production, is a favoured activity.
• Finance for agriculture is extremely limited, constraining opportunities for small- and medium-scale resettlement farmers alike. Banks have so far rejected either permits to occupy in the A1 areas and leases in the A2 areas as a basis for lending. State investments have been limited, and are often misdirected and subject to corruption. Western donors have not supported land reform areas as these are deemed ‘contested areas’ and are subject to ‘sanctions’.
• The dynamics of agriculture is highly dependent on the type of crop. Some crops, such as tobacco and sugar, are linked to contract finance arrangements, supported by private companies. This allows farmers to invest in their production and some have been highly successful, although the terms of the contracts are not always favourable. Other crops, including grain crops and most horticulture, require self-financing or reliance on very selective government schemes, and so are more challenging business propositions; although again there are important successes, notably around small-scale irrigated horticulture.
• The contrasts between A1 and A2 areas and the differentiation of farmers within each mean that there is a highly heterogeneous farming population. There are different classes of farmer emerging, ranging from emergent rural capitalists to petty commodity producers to diverse classes of labour, only partly reliant on agriculture. This results in a new politics of the countryside, with quite volatile political affiliations; not necessarily as often assumed with everyone in the land reform areas allied to the ruling party.
• The new agrarian structure, centred on a smallholder-based agriculture and complemented by medium-scale farms, requires a very different policy approach to agriculture, with new forms of support, including a revamped and revived agricultural administration system to encourage investment. Economic and political instability, combined with wider sanctions, has massively restricted the potential of land reform farmer to drive rural economic growth, but the potentials are clearly apparent, along with many, on-going challenges.

For long-time readers of this blog these will not be new or startling, but they offer one encapsulation of where we are in our still-emerging understanding. You will have to read the 20 chapters of the book to get a sense of where the evidence comes from and how these ideas emerged. Of course, others would come up with a different summary from their own work, but I suspect that there is a convergence, even if not a complete consensus.

New questions

This summary of course suggests important new questions to tackle, meaning new research is vital. For example, how will farmers negotiate with capital in the form of joint ventures, contracting companies and so on? Will the A2 farms finally take off and how will they ally with smallholders, practically and politically? What will the long-term outcomes of differentiation within resettlements be, especially for new entrants, such as younger people wanting land and women? Will there continue to be a turnover of land or will resettlements become increasingly congested with the productive benefits of larger land areas eroded? And so on.

These themes (and many others) will continue to energise research on land and rural dynamics in Zimbabwe into the future, and I hope that the conversations I have on our work will continue to offer insights – and that fewer people will glaze over and run away!

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Livelihoods analysis and agrarian political economy: a new podcast

At the end of last year, I had a great week at PLAAS (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies) at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town discussing with a great cohort of post-grad students working on agrarian change issues in the region. The question of how ‘livelihoods approaches’ – including the ‘sustainable livelihoods framework’ – fitted into such studies and whether it could be integrated with an agrarian political economy perspective came up again and again.

Emerging from these discussions, I recorded a podcast with Ruth Hall and Boa Monjane, now out in the Agrarian Politics series. You can listen to it via the link below. This blog offers some context.

The continuing relevance of livelihoods approaches

From classic studies of seasonality, livelihood change and vulnerability in the 1980s and 90s, to the presentation of more synthetic frameworks, first in Robert Chambers’ and Gordon Conway’s classic IDS discussion paper of 1991, which was followed by my 1998 paper (now 25 years old!) that proposed a Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, based on work on-going at the time with colleagues in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Mali, and led by Jeremy Swift.

These perspectives contributed to a major change in aid programming and funding approaches, and many agencies adopted various forms of a ‘sustainable livelihoods approach’. There followed multiple responses: huge numbers of studies, consultancies, trainings and communications efforts, as the interest in livelihoods approaches took hold.

But what has happened since? ‘Livelihoods’ is no longer the buzzword. The fickle faddism of development has been taken over by others since. Even at IDS, where much of the thinking that led to the approach originated, ‘sustainable livelihoods’ barely appears in the curriculum. Most of our students have never even heard of the approach and not read the papers and books associated with it. This may not matter as the same ideas are being invented in new guises, but sometimes genealogies of ideas are important and we can all learn from past debates.

In my view, the underlying arguments of livelihoods analyses still have relevance, perhaps more so as the interconnections between different ways of making a living are increasingly important, as I discussed in a 2009 paper and reinforced in an excellent new edited collection Livelihoods in the Global South.

The message of the ‘small book’ – Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development (now available open access in English, and also translated into multiple languages, see below) – is clear: livelihoods approaches are an essential lens on questions of rural development, poverty and wellbeing, but these need to be situated in a better understanding of the political economy of agrarian change.

Power and political economy: extending the livelihoods approach

Some of the very legitimate critiques of the early versions of the sustainable livelihoods framework – and particularly the versions that were adapted for use by development agencies – focused on the lack of attention to politics, power and political economy. Some argued that the approach was too deterministic and too technocratic and contestation, dispute and patterns of winners and losers were not made clear. Politics of course appeared in discussions of the ‘institutions and organisations’ acting as mediating between resources and activities, and so affecting outcomes; but in many of the more operational applications, this element became side-lined in favour of a rather mechanistic institutional or policy design focus, rather than attention to the contestations around access and control, as originally intended.

The ‘small book’ therefore aimed to link the original framework with a wider concern with agrarian political economy, making politics, power and control central. The result was an extended framework diagram, articulating key questions in agrarian political economy. Following Henry Bernstein (and his superb book in the same ‘small books for big ideas’ series – Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change), four core questions are asked:

• Who owns what (or who has access to what)? This relates to questions of property and ownership of livelihood assets and resources.
• Who does what? This relates to the social divisions of labour, the distinctions between those employing and employed, as well as to divisions based on gender and age.
• Who gets what? This relates to questions of income and assets, and patterns of accumulation over time, and so to processes of social and economic differentiation.
• What do they do with it? This relates to the array of livelihood strategies and their consequences as reflected in patterns of consumption, social reproduction, savings and investment.

In addition to these four, we can add two more, both focused on the social and ecological challenges that characterise contemporary societies:

• How do social classes and groups in society and within the State interact with each other? This focuses on the social relations, institutions and forms of domination in society and between citizens and the State as they affect livelihoods.
• How are changes in politics shaped by dynamic ecologies and vice versa? This relates to questions of political ecology, and to how environmental dynamics influence livelihoods. These in turn are shaped by livelihood activities through patterns of resource access and entitlement.

Taken together, these six questions – all central to critical agrarian and environmental studies – provide an excellent starting point for any analysis when seeking to link rural livelihoods with the political economy of agrarian change in any setting. The ‘extended livelihoods framework’ offers a way into such an analysis.

Long-term, historical patterns of structurally-defined relations of power between social groups are central, as are processes of economic and political control by the state and other powerful actors, together with differential patterns of production, accumulation, investment and reproduction across society. Such an analysis allows analysis to move beyond mere empirical description of multiple cases to explanations rooted in understandings of wider structural relations, patterns and processes.

A differentiated and longitudinal approach

Taking a differentiated view of rural livelihoods in any context, we see that rural dwellers may be farmers, workers, traders, brokers, transporters, carers and others, with links spread across the urban–rural divide. Classes are not unitary, naturalised or static. Given this diversity of hybrid livelihood strategies and class identities, accumulation—and, therefore, social differentiation and class formation—takes place through a complex, relational dynamic over time.

Indeed, only with a longitudinal perspective, rooted in an understanding of the political economy of agrarian change, can longer-term trajectories of livelihoods be discerned. Rural livelihoods are not isolated and independent, amenable to narrow development interventions, but tied to what is happening elsewhere, both locally and more broadly.

As we discuss in the podcast, a wider political economy perspective is therefore essential for any effective livelihoods analysis, and indeed for any development intervention. And it’s for this reason that I think livelihoods analysis – allied and integrated with other perspectives – remains important today.

You can read the short book in different languages, which are available via the following links (a Chinese version is coming soon…):

English: https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/2123/sustainable-livelihoods-and-rural-development (including OPEN ACCESS)

Spanish: https://icariaeditorial.com/perspectivas-agroecologicas/4549-medios-de-vida-sostenible-y-desarrollo-rural.html

Italian: http://www.rosenbergesellier.it/ita/scheda-libro?aaref=1495

Portuguese: http://livraria.ufrgs.br/produto/15300/meios-de-vida-sustentaveis-e-desenvolvimento-rural

Japanese: https://akashi.co.jp/smp/book/b420384.html

Indonesian: https://insistpress.com/katalog/penghidupan-berkelanjutan-pembangunan-pedesaan/

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Livestock populations decimated by ‘January disease’ in Zimbabwe: diverse local responses

In the last few years, Zimbabwe has lost around half a million cattle to the tick-borne disease, theileriosis, better known as January disease, or in our study areas as ‘cattle covid’. This loss has had a huge impact on people’s livelihoods and their ability to farm. The severe draft power shortages across our study sites are as a result of animals having died or being sick and weak. The government has announced a ‘war on January disease’ for 2023.

Changing disease and vector ecologies

Theileriosis is spread by the brown tick (Rhipicephalus appendiculatus) and results in a swelling of the lymph nodes, running eyes, rough skin and loss of appetite and later almost certain death, especially with older, weaker animals. In periods of relatively good rainfall, as has been experienced certainly in parts of the country, tick populations explode and if they are not controlled through dipping, then the disease spreads.

In the last few years, nearly all parts of the country have been affected including in areas in the notionally drier areas where usually ticks do not survive. Climate change and animal disease is a big topic worthy of another blog, but there are important impacts, especially as weather events become more extreme, with big downpours resulting in sudden increases in tick populations as grass grows rapidly. A new distribution of tick populations and associated population dynamics – both over time and space – is being seen leading some to speculate that there may be new tick species carrying the disease. New selection pressures also change the vector and in turn the disease, making theileriosis today very different to before.

There has been much research on theileriosis and the brown tick in Zimbabwe and southern Africa more broadly. It should be an easy disease to control and indeed in the past it was so. The regular dipping programmes that were instituted across the country since colonial days kept the tick and so the disease at bay. Occasionally there were new outbreaks, but they were soon under control. The recent devastation of cattle populations is very different, and the Veterinary Department and ministers of agriculture are constantly beseeching people to dip, whether through the conventional immersion dip or through spray dipping.

As the officials point out it’s important to have the right chemicals, to ensure that animals are properly soaked, to add tick grease to parts of the body where ticks attack that are not usually dipped (such as ears) and to increase dipping frequency if the disease emerges. The 5-5-4 dipping regime is usually recommended, with dips spaced five, then four days apart. But it isn’t working and although the government is investing in vaccine development, with 20,000 already being tested, this is a costly alternative to vector control.

Why is January disease so bad these days? Some hypotheses from the field

So, what is going on? Discussions with livestock keepers as well as Vet department officials highlighted a number of hypotheses:

• The tick vectors are much more widespread and prevalent, with tick challenge high in nearly all areas. This is the result of periods of high rainfall in recent seasons with lots of grass growing. Following land reform, there is more grass, so more ticks in more places where people’s animals graze, resulting in a new distribution of ticks and disease.
• With the new configuration of land use following land reform, there are more animals spread across the country, but few dips especially in the resettlement areas. Along with the relaxation (or actually lack of implementation) of dipping regulations, animals are dipped infrequently and often not thoroughly.
• Some argue that the dip chemicals are not as good as they were with some being ‘fake’ and many being adulterated, although importers and manufacturers and Vet officials deny this. With the lack of foreign exchange, government has had to import dip chemicals from a number of sources. Senior officials in the Vet department have in the past bemoaned the lack of quality control. Whether it is the chemical or its mixing or application remains unknown, but this remains a possibility as fake drugs and chemicals are widely available in agro-supply stores (we visited one in Chiredzi and the very informed shop assistant pointed to which was which as we enquired about dipping chemicals. Not surprisingly the low efficacy alternatives were much cheaper and as he admitted the ones that sold most).
• Infrequent dipping and misapplication of dips may have resulted in resistance to dip chemicals (acaracides) by the ticks. Compared to the heavily grazed communal areas, ticks survive better in the new resettlements. In the past it was the commercial farms that suffered the disease most, but now it’s widespread. Grazing animals are exposed to ticks that survive in refuges and spread fast when sudden rainfall occurs. Others argue that there are new vectors among the wider array of ticks found in these grazing environments, extending the range of tick vectors.
• The mixing of breeds in both the communal and resettlement areas that resulted from the dispersal of commercial breeds across the country following land reform has probably meant less overall resistance to ticks and tick-borne disease. Hardy, small Mashona cattle could survive nearly anything, but this is less the case with exotic crosses, resulting in declining resistance in the population. With some investing in pure breeds as they stock their A2 farms – many succumb very quickly as farmers explained.

The problem is that these all remain conjectures, we don’t really know what’s happening. There are complex questions of evolutionary ecology, the economics and regulation of veterinary chemicals and ones of investment (in dipping infrastructure) and farmer (and veterinary) practice. What is clear is that livestock keepers and veterinarians are facing a very different challenge to before and are ill-equipped to respond.

Local response and innovation

While these questions need answering by some sustained research (which as far as I am aware is not happening at least to the extent needed given the national disaster unfolding), what are people doing now? Farmers we interviewed last year were desperate. Some had lost their whole herd; others had sick animals and were expecting the same. Those selling were getting pathetic prices, with traders coming to collect sick animals for a pittance. Cattle are vital assets – for ploughing, transport, manure, milk, meat and so on – and have great cultural and social value – as savings, foci for sharing, exchanges for bridewealth and so on, so this sort of loss is devastating.

The overall statistics that Zimbabwe has lost half a million animals worth USD$150 million over the last four years are shocking. But this still does not compute with the real consequences of loss of animals by individual households. Those we talked to did not know how they would cultivate. Many had reverted to farming just their small pfumvudwa (no till) plot, but that they said was insufficient to survive off and in the resettlement areas with around five hectares of arable land it meant that most of it was left as fallow if tractors could not be hired (see last blog). The result of course was more ticks in fallow fields and the cycle repeats itself.

As ever though Zimbabwean farmers do not give up. We discovered a huge amount of detailed epidemiological knowledge and an array of innovative practices. Some had become specialists in developing concoctions for giving to sick cattle, and they claimed it worked. One farmer had lost no animals at all, yet his neighbours had lost many. In the absence of support from elsewhere, indigenous veterinary practice had exploded. All sorts of remedies were suggested. They included feeding sick animals chibuku beer, giving them cooking oil (or combinations of beer and oil, soaking medicinal plants for infusions and administering smoke from certain plants.

Livestock keepers also had views on how to treat animals with available drugs. One had begun sharing his prescription through local WhatsApp groups. It was a complex combination of Hitet, Butachem and several antibiotics given in sequence after preventing animals from drinking. Once the treatment started extra molasses and multivitamins were offered to boost strength, he explained. He swore by it as an effective solution. It required rigorous timely application, and he complained that others were not following it well, berating the veterinarians for not experimenting and only following the standard prescriptions. As he put it, “you have to try different things out, diseases change, we cannot just follow the standard ways – that’s the colonial mindset.” Others had got dismayed by the locally available medicines and had imported alternatives from South Africa. They were expensive, headteacher observed, but they were worth it, as all his animals had survived.

A new veterinary response?

Simply beseeching people to dip properly or to administer drugs in line with recommendations is all well and good, but actually people were having to improvise and develop alternatives to the standard veterinary department recommendations. Rather like in the case of human COVID-19, the efficacy of some could be questioned, but currently we don’t know and a more collaborative enquiry into what works and doesn’t and why is urgently needed.

Local treatments give a sense of control and some hope in a desperate situation. Simply arguing, as a senior government vet did to us, that the problem lay in people’s lack of education and inability to follow recommendations, misses the point. What is needed is more research into the hypotheses outlined above, together with livestock keepers who have been living with the disease. And crucially in an engaged participatory way, taking seriously local understandings of tick ecology, livestock disease patterns and disease treatments.

Only then will a more effective veterinary response emerge. The January disease being faced now is very different to what was faced before – in terms of epidemiology as well as social-ecological dynamics – and new thinking is needed. Hoping that a tech-fix vaccine will solve the problem is insufficient.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

How some tractors and a dead lion met in Harare: a new geopolitics in Africa?

In a bizarre ceremony recently, Zimbabwe’s president Emerson Mnangagwa offered a stuffed lion to the visiting Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko. In exchange, Zimbabwe received $66m worth of agricultural equipment for the agricultural mechanisation programme, notably tractors made at the famous former Soviet plant in Belarus (check out this wonderful BBC Crossing Continents radio programme on the tractor factory).

In the speeches that followed both praised each other’s countries, noting their commonalities as both being subject to sanctions by western ‘imperial powers’ and both with an interest in agricultural mechanisation, with the Belarus delegation invited back for the international trade fair in April. Such is the isolation of Zimbabwe these days that international diplomacy amounts to this!

This of course is not the first time that Zimbabwe has benefited from Belarusian tractors. Several years ago, another shipment arrived with great fanfare, again part of the on-going diplomatic manoeuvres that countries shunned by most must deploy (see the Belarus official take on the recent visit).

Tractor politics

Of course, the tractors could be very useful, and particularly given the draft power shortages that have emerged due to the mass mortalities of cattle due to tick-borne diseases over the last few years (the next blog will look at this). Many farmers across our sites are investing in tractors as here in Wondedzo near Masvingo.

As farms upgrade, mechanisation is essential, especially on the larger A1 and A2 farms in the resettlements. As our work has shown investments in tractors have been a central to boosting production for many, although maintenance, spare parts and so on continue to plague tractor owners. Some have taken up hiring out tractors as a business and A2 farmers with machinery often rent out ploughing services to their A1 and communal area neighbours.

The More Food Africa scheme supported by the Brazilian government has also provided tractors to small cooperative groups (see picture below), with mixed results as Toendepi Shonhe found in our study area of Mvurwi (see also the JPS Form on tractor politics in Africa edited by Lidia Cabral and Kojo Amanor, which this paper came from).

Tractors are of course political, as I have noted before on this blog. And the performance between Mnangagwa and Lukashenko was clearly so. But as a source of patronage tractors are unsurpassed. From the infamous mechanisation scheme of Gideon Gono to handing out these gifts from abroad, where they end up will inevitably relate to who is connected to who, despite what the worthy policies from the ministry say.

While there are only a few of them and overall they make little overall difference, they help oil the wheels of patronage in rural areas, favouring those who can return political gains, especially in the build-up to elections as now. However, sadly, most end up broken within a few years, depressing symbols of failed aid programmes and their politics. I fear the same fate awaits the shiny red machines that have come from Belarus.

A wider geopolitical context

The exchanging of dead lions and tractors in Zimbabwe was somewhat overshadowed by the rather more high-profile diplomacy going on across Africa at the same time. And they are not unrelated. For example, the South Africa government received the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, demonstrating to the world that Russia, despite the war in Ukraine, is ‘not isolated’. Meanwhile, to some international outcry, South Africa announced joint naval operations and military drills in its waters with the Russians and Chinese. Elsewhere, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was touring Africa hot on the heels of President Biden’s US-Africa Summit in December. And not to be outdone, the new Chinese foreign minister, Qin Gang, was touring African countries during January, continuing a long tradition of high-profile African visits at this time of year.

In the build-up to the next BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) gathering in Durban in August this year, South African offers of olive branches to the Russians and Chinese make sense. However, since the heady days when the BRICS grouping was launched, things look very different, with economic fortunes changing and political complexions shifting (although of course Lula, one of the great proponents earlier, is back in Brazil). What does this all mean in terms of shifting geopolitics in Africa?

The Zimbabwe-Belarus relationship is a slightly sorry side-show, but how South Africa positions itself definitely matters. Initially seemingly critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but like many African nations, including Zimbabwe, South Africa has since offered a more conciliatory tone, positioning itself as ‘neutral’. With the decline of US/western hegemony, African nations know full well that good relations with Russia, China and India are essential.

The forays by Russia into Africa are growing, although not in any way matching the Chinese. However, their diplomatic position is less subtle and so has the ability to make waves. Always willing to foment divisions with the West, recently Russian flags were seen being waved by protesters in Burkina Faso who were condemning the effects of what they see as continuing French colonialism. Russia will continue to look to Africa for support as the Ukraine war drags on and Russian investment will be a key part of their bargaining position.

So, an exchange of a stuffed animal with a bunch of red, metal machines was certainly bizarre, but has to be understood in a wider context. Zimbabwe, like Belarus, are bit-part players in a bigger geopolitical game, but intimately bound up in it…. as is the dead lion and the tractors.  

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Negotiating ‘belonging’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas

Much of the debate about land reform in Zimbabwe focuses on the material, livelihood consequences of getting new land and its politics, but what does it feel like? How does land reform alter the sense of belonging to a place, the forms of identity and the nature of citizenship? These themes are explored in a number of great new papers (and some older ones too) that I briefly review in this blog.

Competing claims

All these papers of course pick up on long-running discussions about rural identities and belonging in Zimbabwe, most notably as explored by Blair Rutherford in his books on farmworkers. As people often of ‘foreign’ origin, at least a few generations back, and with ambiguous associations with place, either as precarious employees in a white farm before land reform or as workers living in old compounds in new resettlements, ‘belonging’ has never been easy, despite living on a farm often over generations. There is, as Rutherford explains, a ‘cultural politics of recognition’.

This theme is taken up in a paper by Patience Chadambuka and Kirk Helliker, which documents the nature of disputes on ‘two sides of the stream’ between ‘foreign’ farmworkers (who had been resident on the farm before it was taken over) and new A1 settlers in Shamva district. Despite attempts at exclusion by the new settlers, the former workers also have claims to belonging and have tactics to negotiate these, as their settlement has gold deposits that the A1 farmers also wish to use. With their labour power and skills, as well as territorial access to resources near their settlement, farmworkers have agency, even if little formal power.

As Malvern Marewo explains for an A1 case study from Zvimba, a continuous negotiation of social relations around labour with A1 settlers is vital for former farmworkers to gain a new, reconfigured sense of connection with the farm, and some stability that comes with a feeling of ‘belonging’. This is often fraught and contested, but, as we have shown in our work in Mvurwi, can result in them gaining access to land, inputs and piecework.

A similar dynamic is seen as land is contested between settlers within A1 areas, highlighted in a nice paper based on a case from Bubi district by Senzeni Ncube and Malvern Marewo.  Here different types of claim are evident – with ancestral claims of ‘indigeneity’ competing with those that do not claim autochthony. In this case, there was one group that got the land in 2000, following the land invasions – including some with ancestral claims to the land – and another group that were added by administrators in 2014, as demands for land continue. This is quite a common phenomenon, as those often displaced from other state infrastructure or mining projects are squeezed into existing A1 schemes and where ‘I was here before you’ becomes the simple basis for claims-making.

Reshaped authority and the role of ‘tradition’

Land reform has reshaped not only land but also patterns of rural authority, with chiefs and headmen often tussling over who is in charge of land reform areas with competing versions of where graves and other ancestral sites are, as Grasian Mkodzongi, Joseph Mujere, Joost Fontein and others have discussed. Even though the resettlement areas were supposed to shed the limitations of ‘traditional authority’ with new revolutionary institutions – the Committee of Seven and so on – these soon were replaced by new, often invented, forms of tradition, as Malvern Marewo and Senzeni Ncube explore for a case in Zvimba. As they show, lineage and totem ties to their original areas remain strong in A1 resettlements. As we have found across our sites, even 22 years after the ‘fast-track’ land reform, such disputes over land, authority and who is a ‘citizen’ in the new land reform areas are far from settled.

The liberatory possibilities of land reform were claimed by many women in the early 2000s, escaping (at least for a while) the patriarchal limitations of ‘tradition’, as well as being able to farm and earn income independently. In many publications, Patience Mutopo documents this for a case study from Mwenezi, where women not only claim land (both independently and as part of marriage contracts) and are able to use this as a basis for mobile livelihoods based on trading to South Africa. The ‘belonging’ to the new land claimed as women, unlike in the communal areas, was she found central to how they were able to construct their livelihoods, and deal with conflicts with others, both at home in the new settlements and when on the move to South Africa.

Ethno-regionalism

How land reform affected populations on the margins, especially those of ‘minority’ ethnic groups is especially telling. Here land is firmly linked to cultural identities – whether of the Shangaan in the southeast or the Tonga in the Zambezi valley, as Felix Tombindo and Simbarashe and Gukurume discuss in their chapter in the recent book on Tonga Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe, edited by Kirk Helliker and Joshua Matanzima.

The claims of belonging have given rise to tensions across land reform areas, as locals with territorial and ancestral claims were squeezed out by those claiming the land in what was always touted as a national programme (Zimbabwe unlike South Africa did not undertake ‘restitution’ but only ‘redistribution’ and reform). This ‘ethno-regionalism’ as Walter Chambati and Freedom Mazwi dub it is centred on claims of belonging – to a place, to a region/ethnicity/language, to the nation.

White identities and belonging

The new identities of displaced white farmers are discussed by Rory Pilosoff and Sibanengi Ncube, focusing in particularly on tobacco farmers, many of whom – both former farmers and their children – have found new roles in the industry, working for the major leaf companies, on auction floors or in a diversity of contracting companies. No longer on the land, many have struggled with a new sense of belonging and identity, even if the work is sometimes better paid and easier than farming was. Quite a number of those who left the country have returned, citing the sense of belonging to Zimbabwe, rooted in social networks and the (continued) privilege of the white minority.

This is reflected in memoirs and journalistic writing by white farmers and others that have come out over the past 20 years. These often offer angry memories of displacement – and with this the reiteration of racist, colonial tropes portraying the new black farmers as unskilled, backward and so on. As David Hughes described in his 2010 book, Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging, how those of European descent negotiate their sense of belonging is often at odds with local understandings of nature, wilderness, environment and farming, bringing them into conflict. Of course, as Rory Pilossof and Amanda Hammar have pointed out, not all ‘white’ experience is the same and not all whites in Zimbabwe were farmers. For former farmers, finding a new sense of belonging in urban-based office jobs, even if linked to agriculture, has been especially challenging for some, making the dislocation even harder.

Where is home?

‘Belonging’ is always negotiated and is always changing. As the land reform areas have become ‘home’ to new people over the last 20 years, others still have memories of them that are part of their identity, even if they no longer live there. Different people associate with a new place through different processes – links to ancestors, political allegiance or just through living there and delinking from other places that were once ‘home’. Indeed, today many settlers in the ‘new’ land reform have lived most if not all their lives there. As an A1 settler in Bubi explained to Senzeni Ncube and Malvern Marewo, “Things have changed. I no longer buy property and take it to my parents’ home for safekeeping. Now I have my own home where my property is. I have a place where I belong”.

Preparing for the next pandemic: lessons from Zimbabwe

There is a lot of talk about pandemic preparedness, but what does it mean? Too often there are narrow, medicalised versions – focused for example on drug stockpiling, vaccine banks and so on. A COVID Collective report – Pandemic Preparedness for the Real World – has critiqued this view, offering a wider perspective on pandemic preparedness. What might a more locally rooted version of pandemic preparedness look like? Can wider understandings of how building resilience within communities can assist? There have been many important lessons emerging from the pandemic experience, but are they being learned? The relatively quiet and calm inter-pandemic period is crucial, as there will surely be a next one.

During November and December 2022, we tested the ideas in the then forthcoming COVID Collective report with different communities in six sites across Zimbabwe in a series of dialogues. This built on real-time research in the same settings from March 2020 to February 2022. From Chikombedzi in the dry, far south, via the sugar estates of Hippo Valley and Triangle to the livestock farming area of Matobo and the maize/horticulture zone of Masvingo and Gutu to the tobacco growing area of Mvurwi, we engaged with a real diversity of rural settings (see map). There has been remarkably little commentary or research on rural contexts and we aimed to fill this gap. Our work did not rely on snapshot surveys, but on real-time discussion and reflection – involving six field researchers living in the sites, a field coordinator and Ian Scoones at IDS.

The result was a series of 20 blogs published from March 2020, when the first case identified in Zimbabwe,  to February 2022. They are all available on Zimbabweland, and also in a new book, which can purchased or downloaded online (see cover, below; full details in sources).

About 20 people who had engaged with our real-time learning during the pandemic were invited to the dialogues, each of which lasted around 3 hours, with discussions following on over lunch. Participants included farmers, local leaders, church leaders and government personnel. In one dialogue we had representatives from five ministries: Agriculture (Agritex), Health (a nurse and village health worker), education (teacher), local government (a councillor) and Home Affairs (police), along with farmers and others. We invited participants to reflect on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications for preparing for a next pandemic.

Following the wider COVID Collective report, we discussed three themes: the diverse forms of knowledge, the role of reliability professionals and how formal and informal institutions interact. These combined to generate an understanding about how resilience – and so preparedness – can be built.

Knowledge

A key theme from our real-time reflections and from the dialogues was the importance of making use of multiple knowledges. Under conditions of uncertainty, using varied, plural knowledges is essential, people argued.

In one of the dialogues there was an interesting exchange around how local knowledge about treatments (which became really essential during the pandemic) was devalued by formal medical knowledge systems. A particular concern was vaccines, around which there many concerns expressed. Were these being used to experiment on or worse exterminate Africans? What was the role of the Chinese in this? This raised in particular the whole question of trust in knowledge and how it carries authority – and particularly trust in the state. This was clearly lacking for much of the pandemic and remains a big challenge for preparedness plans.

During the pandemic people felt very much on their own, without the help of the state, but the processes of local innovation and information sharing were impressive. The huge array of local remedies – centred of course on the famous plant Zumbani – became central to how people managed the disease. These were shared rapidly through WhatsApp groups, allowing knowledge for example of the Omicron variant to spread from our sites in Chikombedzi near the SA border to Mvurwi and on to the UK within a week or so – far, far faster than the published scientific information and public health advice.

So, what are the implications for pandemic preparedness. The dialogues confirmed that it is vital that different knowledge systems work together – not just informally but formally. This means more investment in assessing local treatments and integrating them into pandemic responses. Also important is the task of reinforcing the knowledge networks that allow the exchange of validated information (not just from public health sources) across communities and into the diaspora. And all of this exchange must help build trust between different sources of expertise, avoiding the dangers of vaccine anxiety for example experienced this time. 

Reliability professionals

When health systems are weak and ineffective in the face of an unknown threat, then certain key professionals on the front line, embedded in networks become key. This is an important lesson from Zimbabwe. Literatures on critical infrastructures (for example water or electricity supply systems) tell us that it is ‘reliability professionals’ – not standardised protocols and routines – allow for the services to be delivered, even in contexts of high input variability. They can scan the horizon for impending dangers, while attending to day-to-day responses on the ground.

Who were these reliability professionals during the pandemic? In our real-time research we met one – a young nurse at a rural hospital. He had been training at the very beginning of the pandemic in a large hospital in Harare and had learned some of the features of COVID-19. His superiors in the hospital were fearful as they knew that COVID was coming – particularly given the proximity to the South African border. The Ministry had cut and pasted some instructions from WHO – it was all they had – but these were not enough.

When the first disease arrived in the area (during the delta phase), he worked with other local officials – traditional leaders, church pastors, heads of women’s groups – to share information but also learn from the ground. He had a good idea of the big picture, but also a sense of what was happening locally. As the pandemic changed (as it soon did), then he instituted new arrangements at the hospital and helped patients in the wards and at home. He was allowed to do this by his superiors, but it wasn’t in his job description. Crucially, he was given the latitude to use his professional skills and his networks to generate reliability in a difficult setting. But this work was not recognised or rewarded.

There are always people like him. In one of our dialogues, we heard of a Village Health Worker and an Environmental Health Technicians, who played similar roles. But it could equally have been a church leader, a party official, a councillor or whoever. The important point is that to generate reliability in the face of uncertainty –and so assured preparedness – you need these people, and their networks. And they need to be rewarded and recognised.

Institutions                                                                  

There was some quite heated debate in our dialogues about the role of formal institutions in the pandemic. As in our real-time reflections, there was much critique of heavy-handed, unthinking approaches to lockdowns. Everyone appreciated why COVID was a disease of crowds, but did not understand why this meant livelihoods being undermined through lack of transport, closed markets and so on and the education and mental health of children compromised through closed schools, leading to wider social problems of drug taking, teenage pregnancies and crime?

Many thought it was these lockdown measures that caused more hardship than the disease itself. Why couldn’t the Ministry of Health relax the form of lockdown over time as the disease changed with different variants? Why couldn’t the police allow for certain types of marketing (say door to door not large market gatherings)? Why couldn’t the education ministry allow classes to be held in smaller groups for shorter periods, so kids at least had something to do? Why couldn’t the police allow some church services if they were safe, without large crowds? Why couldn’t the ministries speak with each other, so people could make the case that lockdowns were causing untold hardship.?

We always talk about cross-sectoral coordination and integration, but the tendency to centralise and control is strong, especially in an emergency. However, such interaction does happen at the local level (all the people from the five different ministries at one of our dialogues knew each other – but they rarely met together). The problem is that decentralised decision-making is often restricted from on high. The opportunities to negotiate compromises at the local level was because the lockdowns were national requirements (often simply replicating global advice) and implemented with a military style, top-down approach. But global even national advice may not make sense – a pandemic is always local and the politics of response must be local too.

So, a key lesson for preparedness is to decentralise, to trust local negotiations and to be flexible in implementation, responding to local conditions. This may help (in part) address the lack of trust people had in formal institutions because of the nature of an often predatory, autocratic state. In our real-time discussions there was no love lost between farmers and the police who were endlessly taking bribes, preventing marketing and so on. But interestingly in our dialogues, after some barbed exchanges, there developed more of a compromise; an acknowledgement that during the pandemic the police were following orders, working absurdly long hours and were barely paid. Talking together and building relationships helps institutions function better. This work is vital for being prepared for the next pandemic.

Rural people in all our sites have a good understanding of the epidemiology, which improved impressively through the pandemic (often again rather faster than the science). But they also knew how their livelihoods had suffered. Making sure that pandemic responses are livelihood-compatible – perhaps working out a series of options – is vital, and public health and livelihoods more generally must be seen in one holistic approach with local people and formal institutions working together. 

Resilience

These three themes together offer insights into how to build resilience in ways that allow people to be prepared for the next pandemic. There is a lot of lip service paid towards ideas of community resilience in the health sector. Indeed, resilience is a development buzzword that often lacks meaning, even if it attracts donor dollars (see our BMJ-GH paper for a reflection). 

So, from our studies what is resilience? First, resilience isn’t a thing that can be planted, implemented, created as part of a project, it’s a process, emerging from relationships. Second, resilience isn’t just about bouncing back to what existed before (often vulnerability and poverty), but it’s about transforming structural relations – yes, it’s political. Third, building resilience at community level is essential, but it’s not a panacea, or an excuse not to build the staff, stuff, space and social support central to health systems, as Paul Farmer liked to put.

The ‘communities’ in our research sites are not uniform – contests exist between those with different religious beliefs, between men and women, young and old, rich and poor. Finding a collective way through the pandemic was always negotiated politically, and some were left behind. As with all pandemics, COVID-19 accentuated already existing inequalities and vulnerabilities – meaning that local solutions through romantic visions of community action were not enough and external intervention and support was needed.

What emerged through our discussions was the understanding that the resilience building was all about relationships. The work of reliability professionals focused on relationships and networks (even if centred on a skilled individual), while debates about knowledge were about how different knowledge systems need to relate. Equally, innovation for a more resilient outcome had to involve multiple actors interacting with each other. And, in relation to institutions, again it was all about working together, between ministries and between the state and local actors, with different interests.

In other words, while focusing on the community (broadly understood, and often stretching far through knowledge networks), community resilience should not result in a reification of indigenous knowledge or local ‘community’ practice, somehow isolated from the world. Instead it involved diverse communities interacting with a range of players, including the formal health system. In other words, a hybrid, plural health system was envisaged as the basis for long-term resilience, and the cornerstone of pandemic preparedness.

Lessons and priorities

Where does all this leave us? How has learning in a pandemic and convening dialogues about it afterwards help us develop more effective approaches to pandemic preparedness?

We need to do better than last time. Those countries that were according to WHO the most prepared for a pandemic, had some of the worst outcomes (including the UK and the US). Why was this? It was because they relied on a narrow form of preparedness, reliant on a particular type of knowledge (mostly epidemiological modelling) and a standardised approach to pandemic response (movement control, lockdowns etc.). What they didn’t do was listen to local reliability professionals in decentralised institutions (the doctors and nurses and local government workers in the British Asian communities in the UK Midlands, for example). Nor did they work with the most vulnerable communities (in the case of the UK/US, densely packed multigenerational urban households) to help build resilience (of networks and relationships).

The four themes that emerged from Zimbabwe are therefore as relevant in the UK or the US. But they need to be thought about and implemented in different ways, with local contexts in mind. This is the job now – in the inter-pandemic period when things are calmer and lessons still fresh in the mind. It’s too easy to forget and go for knee jerk responses that replicate past mistakes when a new emergency arises. The impulse to centralise through a securitised, authoritarian response is strong, but other alternatives are essential and need to be fostered now.

Three priorities to help build resilience for preparedness emerge:

• Support knowledge networks that connect formal and informal, local and scientific knowledges, and carry out research on local treatments and the processes by which they are developed and shared.
• Identify and map reliability professionals and their networks across communities, and provide support and recognition to them
• Encourage the decentralisation of decision-making across ministries, including convening cross-sectoral fora for emergency pandemic response.

All of these priorities need to be addressed now. There’s an important role for donors in this, including providing contingency funds at the local level to allow for rapid response around knowledge sharing, reliability professional support and decentralised institutional interaction.

Virtually none of these things are being done in Zimbabwe yet (or indeed anywhere else), and it will require significant finance both to local communities and the state in ways that are flexible and crucially with finance arriving in advance of the inevitable next crisis.

Further sources:

Bwerinofa, I.J.; Mahenehene, J.; Manaka, M.; Mulotshwa, B.; Murimbarimba, F.; Mutoko, M.; Sarayi, V. and Scoones, I. (2022) What is ‘community resilience’? Responding to COVID-19 in rural Zimbabwe, BMJ Global Health

Bwerinofa, I.J. et al. (2022) Living Through a Pandemic: Competing Covid-19 Narratives in Rural Zimbabwe, IDS Working Paper 575 https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/17593

Bwerinofa, I.J et al. (2022). Learning in a Pandemic. Reflections on COVID-19 in rural Zimbabwe. IDS: Brighton, 160 pages (colour) Amazon (£12.72, paper, £1.25, Kindle) or download in high- or low-resolution versions here and here).  

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and Felix Murimbarimba and was originally a presentation at FCDO Harare in November 2022. It draws from research on the impacts of COVID-19 in rural areas of Zimbabwe carried out from March 2020. The dialogues held in November and December 2022 were supported by the FCDO-funded COVID Collective.

Why livestock keeping can be good for the environment

At the end of last year, together with colleagues at IDS, I spent quite a bit of time making the case for a more balanced view on livestock and the environment. We tried to raise the debate during the two big COPs – first in November at COP27 on climate change and then in December at COP15 on biodiversity. We produced a series of reports, briefings and videos to help share our (and many others’) research.

Why is this necessary? Unfortunately, livestock have been cast as the villains, contributors to environmental destruction and a major driver of climate change. While some livestock systems are obviously damaging, lumping all systems into one argument makes little sense. The result is a confused policy debate – including at the COPs – that often points the finger of blame in the wrong direction. This results in major injustices for those livestock keepers who are guardians of nature and have limited climate impacts, as we argue in a new article in the IDS Bulletin.

So through the PASTRES programme, which I co-lead, and in alliance with a range of different organisations, we’ve been trying to encourage a more sophisticated, nuanced debate. The materials shared below are just some of a growing body of evidence that offers a different narrative.

In places like Zimbabwe livestock production is integral to mixed farming systems and in the drier areas, extensive grazing is vital for people’s livelihoods. Meat and milk production is vital for income earning for many – whether from cattle or from goats and sheep. And while animal sourced foods are not consumed in huge quantities, except by a small consumption elite, such products are essential for people’s nutrition, health and well-being.

For many readers of this blog it may seem odd to have to make such a basic argument about the importance of livestock. But believe me if you read the comment columns of many newspapers, listen to activists’ proclamations about the evil of livestock production and hear how such views get wrapped up in policy-making and donor funding, then such efforts – basic as they may seem – are urgently needed.

A recent attempt at offering a clear and simple statement about the importance of extensive livestock keeping and links to the climate change debate and wider resource politics is a Primer we produced together with the Transnational Institute and the World Alliance for Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Pastoralists (WAMIP). The Primer is available here and the launch event can be viewed again here.

Livestock are not always bad for the planet

During the COPs, we made the case that livestock can be good for the environment. The effect of livestock on the climate and biodiversity depends on which livestock, where. Pastoral systems can show neutral or positive carbon balances, especially for mobile systems that distribute manure/urine and incorporate it, adding to carbon cycling.

For the climate COPs in 2021 and 2022, we produced a report called “Are livestock always bad for the planet? Rethinking the protein transition and climate change debate“. A short 2-min video explains the basic argument, and a series of briefings outline some of the key findings, which you can watch here. And further materials can be found through the following links:

– Are livestock always bad for the planet?

– The truth about livestock

– Placing livestock in context through a systems approach

– Centring livestock-keepers

In addition, a briefing linking the climate and biodiversity debates was produced on the role of pastoralists in addressing the linked crises of climate and biodiversity. And the a blog offered a round-up of debates at COP27 in Egypt.

Moving on to COP15 on biodiversity, we produced another short 2-minute video that summarises some of the key arguments in a series of briefings. You can view it here. The following sections offer some overviews and links of the six briefings.

Why tree planting in rangelands can be bad for biodiversity and the climate

Mass tree planting schemes are proposed as a way to combat desertification, improve biodiversity and address climate change through ‘carbon offset’ schemes. Initiatives funded by international donors such as the AFR100 and the ‘Great Green Wall’ are deeply problematic, yet have targeted over one billion hectares of rangelands across the world.

This briefing explains how such initiatives can exclude people, livestock and wildlife and can seriously undermine plant biodiversity.

Enhancing biodiversity through livestock keeping

Carefully managed grazing in extensive (especially in mobile) livestock systems is essential for biodiversity conservation in many ecosystems across the world. Mobile pastoral systems can create bio-corridors through transhumance routes, disperse seeds, create fertile hotspots or mitigate against fires.

A briefing produced for COP15 offers eight examples of how pastoralism and conservation can work together.

How livestock keeping can reduce wildfires

Regular fires are essential for ecosystem health in rangelands. In rangeland ecologies, fire is important for conservation, but it must be limited and controlled, and this requires grazing. In meeting the challenge of increasing wildfires, supporting pastoral systems is likely to be much more successful than just focusing on fire suppression and more firefighters.

This briefing sets out how extensively-grazed livestock with more people looking after them can reduce the risk of fire.

Rewilding and ecosystem restoration: what is ‘natural’?

What is ‘natural’ and what is ‘wild’ is deeply contested. Rangelands are not simply degraded forests, as some assume. Plans for conservation must include pastoralists and other land users who have created valuable landscapes through use by people and their animals over many years.

This briefing sets out how different values and understanding of ecosystems are used in debates on rewilding, and why a more sophisticated debate is required.

Pastoralists as conservationists

Pastoralists and other livestock keepers are too often pitted against conservationists. Pastoralism is not compatible with a style of conservation that encloses and excludes, but extensive livestock-keeping can be central to more people-centred conservation approaches.

This briefing sets out how creating mixed use, integrated landscapes and emphasising co-management a can build a conservation approach that works for both people and planet.

The blog draws from an article on the IDS website and links to work undertaken by the ERC funded PASTRES programme based at IDS and EUI.

Zimbabweland’s top posts of 2022

As is traditional at this time of year, it’s time to review the top blogs of 2022. Below is a list of the top 15 by views on the website. Of course this doesn’t count all those who have read the blog through the email alert (do sign up if you haven’t – there’s about 1000 of you who receive an alert every time a blog has posted). And then there are also those who read the posts when they are republished in Zimbabwean newspapers, including the Zimbabwe Mail, The Chronicle, The Zimbabwean and the Zimbabwe Independent (along with a host of different websites). Thanks to all those publications plus those on Twitter for reposting.

As you will see, some of the blog series were popular this year, most notably the one on urban agriculture. Another series on conservation dilemmas in the Lowveld following our visits to Gonarezhou and the Chikombedzi field sites earlier in the year also got a lot of attention (and comment). The series on ‘drought’ and ‘disasters’ picked up on earlier posts, and continues to be an important theme of our work. The most recent series on religion hasn’t been up for long enough to get so many views, but has been widely appreciated as an under-studied topic. These series are initial digests of on-going research across our sites in Mvurwi, Matobo, Chatsworth, Wondedzo, Hippo Valley/Triangle and Chikombedzi. We’ve got more themes – and so more blog series – planned for next year.

The blog also focused on a number of new books this year, including ones on ‘neoliberal restructuring’ and ‘ethnicity’ featured in the top 15, as well as an important journal special issue on contract farming. Each year I try and review new books and articles coming out on land, agriculture and rural development in Zimbabwe. It’s a reflection of the vibrant research culture in the country that our team is happy to be contributing to in a small way. Our own books also featured on the blog, including the huge compilation of past articles in ‘Researching Zimbabwe’s Land Reform’. This was produced so as to make available journal articles that are scattered across different publications and are often unavailable in libraries in Zimbabwe. We have distributed a copy to most university libraries in the country now.

The COVID-19 pandemic dominated our research and blogs over the past couple of years and we have produced another book – Learning in a Pandemic – which is a compilation of 20 blogs, with an overview introduction. We have been distributing this book around our field sites and handing it to key institutions across the country as a reminder of the important lessons that we learned during the pandemic.

As ever the blog has been read widely across many countries, with Zimbabwe, the US, the UK and South Africa seeing the most visitors. As a source of information and an archive of research over many years, many visitors arrive through search engines at old posts (the ones on agricultural entrepreneurs continue to be some of the most read each year). There are now about 475 blogs on the site, so do have a look around. And look out for more in 2023!

1. View The growth of urban agriculture in Zimbabwe
2. View Urban agriculture in Zimbabwe: a photo story
3. View Omicron for Christmas: what was the experience in rural Zimbabwe?
4. View Why COP27 needs a more sophisticated debate about livestock and climate change
5. View The neoliberal restructuring of land and agriculture in Africa: two new books
6. View The trouble with elephants: why limits on culling are bad for conservation
7. View NEW BOOK: Researching Land Reform in Zimbabwe
8. View ‘Living under contract’: reflections after 25 years
9. View Ethnic minorities in rural Zimbabwe: identities and livelihoods
10. View Rethinking disaster responses: from risk to uncertainty
11. View Failing institutions: the challenge of governing natural resources in Zimbabwe
12. View Changing food systems in Zimbabwe: shifts from rural to urban production
13. View What is drought? Local constructions, diverse perceptions
14. View The changing face of urban agriculture in Zimbabwe
15. View What is environmental degradation and what should we do about it?

Navigating uncertainty, predicting the future: the importance of religion in Zimbabwe

In today’s uncertain world, having a sense of what the future holds is vital. This is why biblical predictions and prophecies hold so much cachet, offering hope in times of turmoil. While religion may be the ‘opium of the people’ it can provide a sense of direction when none seem available. This is of course religion’s power, and why those who claim they can foretell disasters and cataclysmic events are held up high, attracting followers and sometimes great wealth.

Responding to drought and keeping the spirits happy

Our discussions on drought and how people manage uncertainty (see a previous four-part blog series) highlighted many examples of how farmers made use of natural signs as a source of prediction – bird song, particular trees, clouds and so on. And when these failed – as they often do – then everyday adaptation and attuned response based on accumulated experience is necessary.

In the past, as discussed in the previous blog, people would rely on rainmaking ceremonies conducted in relation to wider territorial cults to assure good harvests. Paying respect to the ancestral spirits, brewing beer and offering libations and providing contributions to the rainmaking cult shrine in Njelele were all part of the annual cycle. Only some key people were involved, led by the spirit mediums (svikiros) and assisted by the rainmaking messengers (nyusa) and supported by the traditional leadership. Only men and post-menopausal women and pre-pubescent girls could be involved in the ceremonies. Ritual purity was essential to please the spirits and assure good rains and harvests.

As discussed before, such practices are declining across our study areas, and nearly completely absent in some such is the dominance of diverse forms of Christian religion described in an earlier blog in this series. But this does not mean that appeasing spirits or a Christian God is not central to dealing with uncertainty.

Indeed, all churches pray for rain as part of their services, while the spiritualist churches go further and call on spirits to assist their followers (whether the Holy Spirit or some others linked to the ancestors), using a whole array of ritual objects and practices to cement the relationship, whether anointed oil, holy water, sacred beer or burning candles and incense.

Prophecy and hope in challenging times

The prophets of the indigenous African churches are especially important, offering hope and salvation to their followers. They offer predictions on coming seasons, as well as suggesting what agricultural practices to follow. For individuals who have suffered mishaps, particular advice can be offered, sometimes for a fee.

While some of our informants condemned these new Johanne Masowe churches as just ‘false prophets’, in it for the business and sometimes sexual favours, there are others who are firm believers, arguing that such prophecies will be fulfilled, and the directions should be followed.  

When there is no one else to turn to and when such prophecies offer some surety and hope in difficult times, then it is no surprise that such prophet-led churches have many followers. It is perhaps a reflection of the times that such churches have become so popular – and indeed politically influential. If the state and ruling party cannot provide and provide the basic protections, then other sources of succour must be sought.

During the pandemic the role of prophets became significant. With Apostolic churches rejecting modern medical explanation and intervention, the COVID-19 pandemic was interpreted in different ways. Predicted in the bible and representing a scourge on humans by God, it was accepted as fate rather than as an epidemiological challenge. Prophets offered support to those who were fearful and treatment for those who became sick. In the absence of other forms of support, given the parlous state of the health system, such alternatives were often seen as the only alternative and people flocked to the prophets, with many more appearing during the pandemic.

Waiting for the rain

The annual agricultural cycle is centred on waiting for the rain, and anyone who can offer predictions for the season and ways of preventing disaster have great power. The power of the territorial rain cults in the past and the prophets today is witness to the importance of this role. An agricultural extension worker joked that they are the ‘scientific prophets’, providing meteorological information during the season and advice on how to adapt agricultural practices, but they often cannot compete with the church prophets; or at least people will consult both to inform their decisions.

Warnings of impending apocalypse as well as salvation are recurrent themes in Christian doctrines, but how these are interpreted and explained to followers differs widely. Such events may seem inevitable, resulting in a sense of despair but also dependence on religious intervention. In the case of the prophets this becomes a source of income as well as an opportunity to garner more followers. While not rejecting external support and recognising the value of science, the state and wider development, other churches – whether the Pentecostals or the Seventh Day Adventists – foster a view that disasters cannot be averted but for the grace of God, making prayer, religious commitment and doctrinal adherence essential.

For others, a sense of hopeless inevitability only offset by divine intervention is rejected with a focus on people’s empowerment and transformation. This too is seen as a religious vocation. The liberation theology of the Roman Catholic church has had influence in Zimbabwe through Silveira House, and a progressive alternative for development, centred on peace and justice, is promoted.

Religion in turbulent times

Religion therefore offers many different compasses for navigating uncertainty in a turbulent world, based on different doctrines and interpretations. The rise of the ‘new’ churches and the role of prophets however is especially important in many of our study areas, with important implications for how people confront uncertainties and adapt their agricultural practices.

Understanding how religious belief influences agricultural practice – and particular adaptation to climate change and addressing wider uncertainties – is a crucial theme, but still remains rarely discussed.  

This blog was first published on Zimbabweland and was compiled by Ian Scoones. This is the fourth and final blog in this series. It is informed by contributions from Judy Bwerinofa (Triangle), Jacob Mahenehene (Chikombedzi), Makiwa Manaka (Chatsworth), Bulisie Mlotshwa (Matobo), Felix Murimbarimba (Masvingo/Hippo Valley), Moses Mutoko (Wondedzo) and Vincent Sarayi (Mvurwi)

The politics of religion in Zimbabwe: land, agriculture and citizenship

Religion and politics have always had a close relationship. The early European missionaries provided a platform for the establishment of the colonial state and a modernising vision, while today the Pentecostal denominations along with the prophets from indigenous African churches are influential both in national politics and in local land politics. Meanwhile, although not as visible as before and to some extent incorporated into syncretic forms of Christian religious practices, traditional forms of religion remain significant to livelihood practices, informed by their connections with the spirit world.

Traditional, ‘ecological’ religion

In different ways religions of all stripes are deeply connected to land and resources. Traditional forms of religious practice highlight the importance of ancestral and wider territorial spirits. In some important ways, traditional beliefs are deeply ecological, with spirits defining territories, controlling rain and protecting particular sites – whether sacred groves or pools, where spirit mermaids (njuzu) reside. Angry spirits can destroy lives and livelihoods it is believed and must be appeased through appropriate forms of supplication and strictly managed religious ceremonies led by spirit mediums.

Across large swathes of the country, collections (rusengwe) were made led by spirit messengers (nyusa) who would travel to the Njelele shrine in Matabeland near one of our sites in Matobo. Such contributions would assure good rains and successful harvests for those communities. During the liberation war, the enlistment of key territorial spirits (mhondoro) provided the support for the guerrilla fighters as they fought to liberate the country. Meanwhile, hunters would draw on the assistance of particular ancestral spirits during the expedition, allowing them to hide from their prey before the kill. Land and resource control were centrally about religious adherence and practice, as the material and spirit world were always connected.

As people have converted to Christianity, such beliefs and practices are not so obvious today, but as a subterranean set of beliefs deeply rooted in culture they are never far away. The appeal of some of the new prophets lies in particular with mimicking traditional practices, dress and ritual as a way of extending their appeal. Spiritual forms of Pentecostal Christian religion show many overlaps, and even Roman Catholic fathers are reported to link their preaching in a flexible way to traditional forms.

Many churches are incorporating kurova guva ceremonies (bringing the spirit back some time after death to be sure it is not angry and revengeful) into their practices, ensuring peace and harmony with the spirit world – an important contributor to successful agricultural livelihoods. Syncretism and hybridity are the watchwords today.

Religion and the politics of the domestic sphere

The politics of religion are also evident in the domestic sphere, influencing in particular gender relations and inheritance. This has important implications for access to land and resources, especially for women. While Zimbabwe has progressive legislation on inheritance on the statute books, how this implemented varies widely.

For some churches accepting that women can inherit land on the death of husband is anathema, as women are assumed to take on subservient roles to men. Justified by ‘African tradition’, this is especially obvious in the Johanne Marange Apostolic church, where polygamous practices mean husbands often have multiple wives, all of whom work together for the family, along with their children. Amongst the wider network of Apostolic prophet churches similar beliefs are held, but this does not prevent entrepreneurial women become prophets themselves, often with significant church followings.

Conservative views on gender relations are evident too amongst the Pentecostal churches and some Protestant churches, but how inheritance plays out in practice is often involves a political tussle at the family level and outcomes vary. By contrast, more progressive views are expressed by other churches, with women involved in religious activity, although often in a minor role compared to men despite proclamations about empowerment and transformation.

Gender relations therefore remain a site of political contention across churches, and whether women gain access to resources and are empowered independently varies greatly.

Politics, parties and religion

Given the importance of religion in everyday life in Zimbabwe, it is no surprise, then, that politicians position themselves carefully. For example, the former president Robert Mugabe was a committed Catholic, educated by Jesuits in mission schools, while the current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa has deep associations with the Methodists, while regularly praising other churches. Meanwhile, Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the opposition, and notably from a different generation, is a pastor and preacher linked to the AFM, and has become embroiled in the church’s in-fighting.

All political leaders make a point of being visibly present at significant events held by other churches than their own, and regularly consult with church leaders. The Pentecostal churches, as noted in the first blog in this series, often attract an educated elite often with business and professional connections. With significant funds at their disposal and with powerful, influential followers they cannot be ignored. Church leaders’ sermons (such as from Prophet Walter Magaya PHD (Prophetic Healing and Deliverance) Ministries and Emmanuel Makandiwa for UFIC (United Families International Church) are listened to attentively for their political proclamations. The same applies to the ZCC, an African indigenous church again with huge assets and influence and important followers. The Apostolic churches have a rather different following and so political constituency but remain very significant politically in many parts of the country, making mobilising church leaders and followers a key part of any election campaign, as happened in 2018.

Church leaders with significant followings are sometimes drawn into political wrangles, such as during the establishment of the Government of National Unity. Arbitration and brokerage are all part of the role of church leaders in order to maintain national peace. As one of our informants commented, the practices associated with the death of Queen Elizabeth II were all about assuring peace and stability (and of course the maintenance of a ruling elite) but managed through religious ritual authorised by to the state.  

Most of the new churches studiously ally themselves with the government of the day, gaining benefits in terms of political patronage as a result, as well as protection of their assets from expropriation, including land. Mobilising followers in advance of elections is often a feature of this association with political authority.

Troublesome priests

However, this supportive relationship with the state is not a certainty. The appeal of opposition politics among the more urban, elite Christian protestant and Pentecostal churches is a case in point. Other churches have taken a stridently independent stand, especially in recent years, although different factions and struggles over co-optation exist.

Some Anglican bishops spoke out over the violence following the 2018 election, calling for calm; others towed the ruling party line, resulting in serious divisions within the community. The Roman Catholic church has had a long tradition of association with struggles from below, including very visible support to the liberation struggle.

The Catholic Commission of Justice and Peace spoke out early about the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland through its landmark report, Breaking the Silence, in 1997. The publishing houses associated with the church have long offered outlets for critique of the state, whether through popular magazines such as Moto or the string of publications that came from Mambo Press in Gweru.

Changing religious and so political landscapes

Religious and political affiliations are closely connected therefore and so religion has a huge impact on how state authority is claimed and citizenship defined. As the religious landscape changes, notably with the rise of Pentecostal and African indigenous churches, so does politics and citizenship.

For example, the preaching of self-reliance and autonomy by the Apostolic faith churches affects people’s relationships with the state, with followers rejecting standard medical advice (rejecting medicine and vaccines in the pandemic, for example) or not committing to formal education, a feature of most Zimbabwean’s aspirations since the colonial period.

In these debates, land and agriculture are never far from the surface. As discussed in the previous blog, many institutionalised Christian churches have significant land holdings, with major investments linked to agriculture, as well as other businesses. Some of these holdings were inherited from the colonial era, while others have been established more recently. All reflect a particular relationship between church and state, which has changed over time. Some church lands were taken during the land reform, but churches that were in political favour lost little, and some have continued to accumulate through close connections to the party-state.

While the forms of territorial land control and ancestral spirit supplication are no longer as evident, certainly within the African indigenous churches the role of the spirit world is central and biblical teachings on land and agriculture remain significant across all denominations. Religious beliefs thus construct relationships to land and resources in particular ways, with important political implications – which is why all politicians from whatever background must pay close attention to how religious identities and positions are changing, particularly as elections loom.

This blog was first published on Zimbabweland and was compiled by Ian Scoones. It is the third blog in a short series – see also here and here It is informed by contributions from Judy Bwerinofa (Triangle), Jacob Mahenehene (Chikombedzi), Makiwa Manaka (Chatsworth), Bulisie Mlotshwa (Matobo), Felix Murimbarimba (Masvingo/Hippo Valley), Moses Mutoko (Wondedzo) and Vincent Sarayi (Mvurwi)