As the next generation seeks out land-based livelihoods in the land reform areas and beyond, many of the standard ways of thinking about land are being reinvented for a new generation. This may be around the nature of a ‘farm’ and what place is called ‘home’. These themes are explored in this blog, as they have big implications for how young people are reinventing Zimbabwe’s agricultural landscape.
What is a farm?
Ideas of land ownership no longer follow the old pattern of having a single farm, with a homestead plot. Since land is not available, then more hybrid arrangements have to be adopted. As previous blogs have discussed, young people must make use of subdivided plots, lease, borrow, share, even purchase parcels of land through various levels of formalisation, putting together land portfolios for living in ways that their parents who acquired substantial, single plots through land reform could not imagine.
For example, it may be that a young person may get a stand to build a home perhaps on a parent’s plot, but have no field, or only a small piece of home garden. They then must find other land, using land by rivers or streams illegally, or finding a patch to rent. A complex bricolage is thus constructed, reconfiguring standard patterns of ownership. As a result, the idea of ‘a farm’ is no longer the ideal envisioned by planners and extension agents, from the colonial era onwards. The idea of land registration and titling in such variegated land use settings in A1 areas is simply pie-in-the-sky.
During land reform around 2000, land areas were planned and pegged with a particular notion of a ‘viable’ farm in mind. Boundaries were vague and plots were not well demarcated. However, despite all the revolutionary rhetoric of the time, the ‘fast-track’ villagised A1 settlements bore a strong resemblance to the plans instituted under the much-detested Native Land Husbandry Act. Villages were often pegged in ‘lines’, with fields and grazing areas allocated in other areas. Since this formalisation in the early 2000s, land use is much changed, and with this the idea of a ‘farm’. Many people have extended home fields beyond the original stands so that labour can be deployed on a limited area (see previous blogs).
Meanwhile, the dryland outfields are often under-used and sometimes allocated for homesteads and subdivided for fields for children or rented out to others. Grazing areas have contracted too, as more people have been offered land, often illegally, within the resettlement areas. As irrigation has become an increasing feature of agriculture, with reduced costs of equipment and as an adaptation to climate change, gaining access to water is crucial. For this reason, farms are reconfigured around where water is or can be drilled for, with irrigated plots near boreholes at homesteads or by rivers, streams and small dams.
Thus, the conventional pattern of homestead, main make-controlled outfield and a small garden managed by women has been refashioned dramatically. ‘Farms’ are now a variegated patchwork of land uses, spread across an area and responding to water availability and are very far from the standard plans. Young people – both men and women – must be responsive to this and develop their land-based activities within these new settings, often moving between sites, shifting plots and adapting to opportunities in ways unimaginable before.
Where is home?
All this has implications for what is understood as ‘home’. Immediately following the land invasions, the land reform areas were not regarded as ‘home’. Many maintained their original homesteads and fields in the communal areas, fearing that the land reform would be temporary and that they would be evicted. Homes are where ancestors come from, where spirits reside, and the new invaders could not imagine this happening on what was a ‘white’ farm, even though ancestral claims were mobilised during the invasions. This insecurity has long disappeared and most have abandoned the strategy of straddling across sites, and most regard the resettlements as ‘home’, where people are buried, spirits reside and where families will live for generations. That said, connections with the communal areas persist and some have ‘homes’ in these areas too, even if used only by a caretaker.
Having multiple places that can be called ‘home’ presents a challenge for the next generation. Can they gain access to land in the land reform areas where they were born, or should they seek options in the communal areas, where their parents came from? The ‘traditional’ system of land allocation to young people was that homes were established upon marriage with land allocated by a village headman in the area where a young man’s parents lived.
This was classically a patrilocal system of residence, where wives followed husbands on marriage. This old-style communal area system of land allocation was the expectation of many in the resettlement areas, but officially there were no more plots available and new offer letters could not be issued without the intervention of the land officer and the approval of the District Land Committee. Instead, different authorities competed, and people could only get land by ‘forum shopping’ across jurisdictions.
The real challenges of getting land and establishing homes in the A1 areas have encouraged many young people to seek land outside the strictures of the resettlements and avoiding being behoven to parents for allocating subdivisions, which many feel is not ‘their’ land. For this reason, some are moving back to communal areas, making use of land for their lineage (perhaps abandoned by their parents when they joined the land invasions in the early 2000s). This, some comment, offers more independence and security than trying to make deals in the A1 areas where many rules apply. ‘Stands’, often just for homesteads, are available for purchase in the communal areas, even if illegal (see earlier blog on land markets), so establishing a home is a first step to get a foothold in the area; thereafter people can seek land through leasing, borrowing or further purchase. Some continue to make use of the connections in both places and continue businesses in the A1 areas where opportunities are greater.
‘Home’ therefore may not be where they grew up (in the A1 areas), but in areas where parents or uncles had or have connections (in the communal areas), or in combinations of the two, where straddling between sites allow livelihoods to be generated. The cases below illustrate these dynamics.
Case 1, NM, Wondedzo Wares, Masvingo
I was born in 2004 and grew up here. My grandparents acquired land here before I was born. I completed Form 4 in 2023 and got married the same year. My husband is originally from Renco but has been working as a labourer for various people here. Last year, we bought a ‘stand’ (acre in size) in Chimedza area in Serima communal areas from a war veteran for US$450 using income from my husband’s wages. We are still in the process of building our homestead, so we are still based here as my husband works for Mrs M who is in the A1 area.
Case 2, NM, Vimbi, Matobo
I was born in 1999 and grew up here. I did Form 4 in 2016, but I did not write the final exams as I got pregnant. After falling pregnant, I realised that the man was married with a family elsewhere. I remarried in 2023 again. My husband and I then decided to look for a place to build our own homestead. Here, you can’t build a homestead wherever you want as the rules are very strict here. So, my uncle who has a homestead in Chapo area in Kumalo communal areas then allocated us a piece of land behind his homestead. We only have a homestead, but no arable fields. It’s very hard to do crop farming in Chapo as there are too many baboons that raid crops, and the soils are very infertile. My mother has since given us 1ha to do farming here in the A1 farm. We currently straddle the two places, as I have also set up a tuckshop here at the A1 farm.
Others try their luck in the A1 areas, cobbling together a bricolage of land parcels linked to a homestead. Others have abandoned traditions of patrilocal land allocation with husbands following wives to resettlement areas where land is available, with men living together with their wives’ families, following ‘money’ (and land) rather than traditional ways of using it, as we explore further in the next blog.
A new rural landscape
In sum, the conventional ways of thinking about land and its use are being up-ended as the struggles to make a livelihood by the next generation refashion how a ‘farm’ is thought about and what ‘home’ means. Due to the demands of combining land parcels and different forms of production across time and space with off-farm work in complex combinations and sequences, the standard patterns that existed amongst previous generations have been disrupted.
As we try and understand what land, agriculture and farming look like in the next generation of land reform, old assumptions have to be unravelled. Today it is much more complex and dynamic, but through incredible ingenuity and much hard work (and hardship) today’s young people are creating a new rural landscape 25 years after land reform.
This is the fourth blog in a series exploring young people and land in post-land reform Zimbabwe. The blog has been written by Ian Scoones and Tapiwa Chatikobo, with inputs from Godfrey Mahofa (data analysis), Felix Murimbarimba (field lead) and Jacob Mahenehene (field assistant), amongst others. This blog first appeared on Zimbabweland