The Party-State in the Land Occupations of Zimbabwe: The Case of Shamva District

Abstract

There has been significant debate about the land occupations which occurred from the year 2000 in Zimbabwe, with a key controversy concerning the role of the state and ruling party (or party-state) in the occupations. This controversy, deriving from two grand narratives about the occupations, remains unresolved. A burgeoning literature exists on the Zimbabwean state’s fast-track land reform programme, which arose in the context of the occupations, but this literature is concerned mainly with post-occupation developments on fast-track farms. This article seeks to contribute to resolving the controversy surrounding the party-state and the land occupations by examining the occupations in the Shamva District of Mashonaland Central Province. The fieldwork for our Shamva study focused exclusively on the land occupations (and not on the fast-track farms) and was undertaken in May 2015. We conclude from our Shamva study that involvement by the party-state did not take on an institutionalised form but was of a personalised character entailing interventions by specific party and state actors.

Keywords

Zimbabwe land occupations Shamva party-state war veterans

Introduction

Ever since the land occupations in Zimbabwe began in the year 2000, there has been considerable debate within Zimbabwean literature about the character of the occupations. One of the main controversies relates to the role of the state and ruling party (or party-state) in the occupations, a controversy which remains unresolved. Remarkably, despite the fact that the views on the occupations as embodied in the literature are in large part quite fixed, there is an absence of focused and in-depth fieldwork on the occupations. A burgeoning literature exists on the Zimbabwean state’s fast-track land reform programme, which was announced by the government in July 2000 and which arose in the context of the occupations. But this literature is concerned with post-occupation developments on fast-track farms (often, about farm-based livelihoods) with the occupations merely given a cursory glance as historical background. This article does not discuss fast-track reform. Rather, it seeks to contribute to resolving the controversy surrounding the role of the party-state in the land occupations by examining the occupations, specifically during the year of their emergence (2000), in the Shamva District of Mashonaland Central Province. The fieldwork for our Shamva study focused exclusively on the land occupations (and not on the fast-track farms) and was undertaken in May 2015. In seeking to address the question of the relationship between the occupiers and the party-state, we do not discuss key dimensions of the occupations which would otherwise be of significance, such as the relationship between the occupiers on the one hand and the farmers and farm workers on the other. In this article, then, we focus on certain themes pertinent to understanding the party-state engagement with the occupiers, including the motivations of occupiers and the organisation underpinning the occupations. In considering this, we interrogate the grand narratives about the ‘fast track’ land occupations prevailing in the literature. But we first outline our fieldwork.

Shamva fieldwork

This article is based on original fieldwork conducted in Shamva district during the entire month of May 2015. It is part of a longer-term fieldwork-based study of the occupations in the country. Shamva was chosen as the initial study because one of the authors lived on a white commercial farm in the district during the occupations and was sensitive to some of the key local dynamics requiring investigation. Entry into Shamva district was first negotiated with the Provincial Administrator’s office in Bindura, the capital of Mashonaland Central. At the district level, access was pursued through the chairperson (named Manduna) of the District War Veterans’ Association. The study collected information from war veterans who commanded the land occupations, fast-track farmers who participated in the occupations or who were present at the time of the occupations, as well as from government officials. In terms of sampling, the research adopted a purposive sampling technique. To locate the specific war veterans who led the land occupations, the research relied on referrals and snowballing. It should be noted that some of the key war veterans taking place in the occupations are now deceased. The research was primarily qualitative and evidence was collected through life histories, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The purpose of the study and the questions that it sought to address could only be qualitatively answered. Some of the war veterans enthusiastically provided their war autobiographies and this was critical in understanding their motives and strategies during the land occupations. All in all, the study interviewed 14 war veterans, six fast-track farmers, the chief executive officer of the Chaminuka Rural District Council, one communal area chief, and three government officers from the Ministry of Agriculture. The three focus group discussions varied in size, from seven to 26.

Land occupations and the subsequent fast-track land reform remain contested and hence not easy to research. The political and sensitive nature of these issues was apparent during the fieldwork in Shamva. Some war veterans were suspicious of the whole research endeavour, for example, stating that the research was some kind of spying mission. This was particularly the case because of ruling party factionalist politics and purges that were being manifested within local party structures at the time of the fieldwork. All government officials repeatedly stated that the land issue is political; hence they were reluctant to be interviewed. Access to female participants (as war veterans and occupiers) proved to be difficult as well. It was not only access to women which was difficult; their voices in focus group discussions were also muted and they mostly supported and validated male views. This was not entirely surprising, considering the patriarchal character of Zimbabwean society which, besides domesticating women, also curtails their voices in the public domain. Methodologically, it could have been necessary to have separate focus group discussions with women to obtain their views. However, the councillor of ward 20, where all the focus group discussions were conducted, indicated that it was not possible to organise more groups because people were already wary of the research.

Land occupations in Zimbabwe

Two grand narratives about the land occupations exist. The first, and by far the dominant, narrative is that the occupations were simply an electoral ploy driven and directed by an authoritarian ruling party (Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, ZANU-PF) to garner rural support for the national parliamentary elections which were to take place in June 2000, particularly given the emergence of a vibrant opposition party (the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC) with white, commercial farmer backing. In particular, the narrative claims that the rejection of constitutional changes in a national referendum in February 2000, which signalled a victory of MDC over ZANU-PF, led the ruling party to call upon the war veterans to occupy farms. This narrative has been propagated quite forcibly by the MDC and commercial farmers. To quote a group of Zimbabwean farmers organised as Justice for Agriculture (2008: 62), ‘the invasions of white-owned farms were neither spontaneous, nor were they led by the landless poor [as claimed by ZANU-PF]. The groups of settlers consisted largely of ZANU PF youth led by one or two war veterans. The fact that this structure was so widespread shows that there must have been an organising entity behind the invasions’ (see also the memoirs of Buckle (2001), whose farm was occupied).

This view has been reproduced repeatedly within the Zimbabwean literature (Raftopoulos, 2006; Raftopoulos and Phimister, 2004). For instance, Angus Selby, who negotiated with occupiers as the son of a farmer in the Concession area of Mashonaland Central Province and wrote his doctorate on the history of commercial farming in Zimbabwe, argues that the occupations were centrally coordinated involving the ‘orchestration of the land invasions using the state apparatus’ (Selby, 2006: 286). Importantly, he notes that dynamics at the local level influenced the form of the occupations but this does not take him away from his broader point. It is to Selby’s credit that his claim is based on fieldwork evidence, as the literature embodying this narrative is rarely based on such evidence. But, besides Selby, there are other fieldwork-based claims about the pronounced role of the party-state. For example, Sithole et al. (2003) draw a line between the 2000 land occupations and those in the late 1990s. For these scholars, earlier land occupations which occurred in Svosve and Nyamandlovu (and sparked other occupations in areas such as Nyazura, where 60 villagers occupied Beestkraal farm in Odzi) reflect genuine peasants’ disenchantment with the political elites and the slow pace of land reform. Yet, in 2000, there was a replacement of genuine peasants by ‘manufactured’ peasants comprising state and party-financed militias (referring to war veterans, unemployed youths and party supporters). Prosper Matondi (2001: 189) who has done extensive research in Shamva, including during the occupations and again more recently, initially adopted this narrative in claiming that the Shamva occupations were ‘well orchestrated by the ruling party and the war veterans’. His later research in Shamva led to conclusions which shifted away, although not entirely, from this narrative (Matondi, 2012: 22).

The counter grand narrative is that the occupations, though not spontaneous, were in the main decentralised at least in the early stages of the occupations. This position has been consistently argued by Sam Moyo and his colleague Paris Yeros (Moyo, 2001; Moyo and Yeros, 2005, 2007; Yeros, 2002; see also Masuko, 2013). Yeros (2002: 244) conducted his doctorate in Shamva in the early 2000s, though not on the occupations, and argued that ‘dismissal of the [occupation] movement as a merely “orchestrated” affair is unfounded’. Again, like Selby though, he spoke about local particularities. In his original article about the occupations from 2001, Moyo (2001: 316) in fact claims that ZANU-PF leaders ‘instigated as well as supported the land occupations’ but he then goes on to argue that this point should not be overplayed. Ultimately, he highlights the ‘organic and deep-seated local pressures for land reform’ and notes that people were not ‘cajoled, paid or even forced to join occupations’ (Moyo, 2001: 323). The notion of ZANU-PF ‘instigating’ the occupations is less prominent in his later work. But he has always recognised, in certain instances, the prominent role of local ZANU-PF leaders in the occupations. Perhaps the most in-depth study of the occupations – and one undertaken by an ex-guerrilla or war veteran engaged in the occupations (in Mashonaland Central) – is by Wilbert Sadomba. Sadomba, in his doctorate, concludes that the land occupations were not centrally initiated or organised (either by ZANU-PF or the national war veterans association) and argues that the occupations ‘were organised horizontally rather than vertically, with each local group employing its own tactics, determining its own boundaries of operation, and mobilising its own manpower and resources’ (2008: 150). In a similar way, in his recent study on landscapes in the Mutirikwi area in Masvingo Province, Fontein (2015: 30) argues that the occupations were ‘far more complex’ than the first narrative posits, as ‘people engaged with a myriad of different discourses and practices … The complex aspirations, motivations and subjectivities of people involved in land occupations matter’.

The narratives have different understandings of the relationship between the war veterans and the party-state. The first narrative conceptualises the war veterans as the storm-troopers of the ruling ZANU-PF party (which initiated the occupations) while the second narrative perceives them as leading de-centralised occupation movements and sometimes in tension with the ruling party. Nevertheless, both narratives recognise the centrality of war veterans (consisting of ex-guerrillas from the 1970s) in the occupation movement, and specific studies highlight this. For instance, in February 2000, the Chiredzi District War Veterans Association mobilised people largely drawn from local communities to occupy a number of properties in sequence across the district (Chaumba et al., 2003). In another example, the Nyabira-Mazowe War Veterans Association was formed at the onset of the land occupations to organise the occupation process in its area (Masuko, 2013). In Chipinge, Zamchiya (2011) found that, during the land occupations, war veterans made an alliance with ZANU-PF local leaders, war veterans from the adjacent Buhera district and traditional leaders.

There is no doubt that local ZANU-PF leaders and state functionaries were involved in the occupations in many cases. Thus Sadomba (2008: 120) says that, in the occupations he studied, war veterans ‘interacted with forces within ZANU-PF’ (at least at district level), and they at times ‘lobbied ZANU-PF politicians for financial contributions’ (Sadomba, 2008: 133). Further, local politicians like district administrators assisted the occupiers with, for example, transport. However, the claim by Sadomba is that ZANU-PF politicians and state functionaries did this in their own individual capacity and not as sanctioned by the party or state (Moyo, 2001). As the occupations developed in the year 2000, particularly after the introduction of the fast-track land programme (in July 2000), there was certainly more explicit institutional involvement by the party-state in the occupations.

For us, the second narrative’s overall claims about the war veterans, ZANU-PF and the state in relation to the occupations seem more plausible, particularly given the often tension-riddled relationship which existed between the guerrilla and nationalist movements in the 1970s and between the war veterans and the party-state nexus since 1980, including in the years leading up to the occupations. Further, the existing fieldwork evidence tends to support more forcefully the second narrative. No clear evidence exists, at least yet, that the ruling party in any way directed the war veterans to occupy farms. In fact, when the occupations began, the Home Affairs minister, Dumiso Dabengwa, and vice-president, Joseph Msika, both ordered the occupiers to vacate the farms. In this regard, Fontein (2015: 43) argues that the war veterans were not co-opted into ZANU-PF’s political project as they had their own sets of grievances which led to the occupations. In this sense, the occupations could be understood as existing in some way in opposition to ZANU-PF and the latter’s failure to address the colonial land structure even 20 years after independence. This view is shared by Chitiyo (2000). In this respect, he highlights the fact that many of the ‘squatters’ who occupied farms sporadically in the 1980s and 1990s (as well as many of the rural poor more broadly) were demobilised war veterans and hence they had deep and persistent land grievances against the ruling party. As well, Zamchiya’s study in Chipinge reveals that, whereas war veterans have predominantly been portrayed as deployed by ZANU-PF to spearhead the land occupations, there were in fact significant tensions between the war veterans and ZANU-PF. As an illustration, some war veterans were reluctant to join the land occupations citing their allegiance to ZANU-Ndonga, rather than the ruling party, ZANU-PF. More broadly, there were war veterans who denounced the land occupations, notably those linked to the Zimbabwe Liberators’ Platform which was formed soon after the initial occupations in 2000 and which argued that the occupations ‘negated and betrayed the aims, objectives and values of the liberation struggle’ (Zimbabwe Liberators’ Platform, 2005: 39).

Both narratives are agreeable on more specific matters. They recognise that a diverse range of social groupings occupied farms to varying degrees, including male and female communal farmers, farmers from old resettlement areas (established in the 1980s), urban workers, the urban unemployed, agricultural labourers and civil servants. Youth were also usually amongst the occupiers, with farmers often seeing them as the most antagonistic. As well, it is recognised that coordination of occupations took place across farms within districts, with war veterans (mostly men) being particularly important in this respect. However, few studies seek to understand the actual motivations of war veterans and other groups in occupying farms across the country. From the few empirical studies conducted, there are variations across different localities. Nyandoro (2012) found that, in Gowe-Sanyati, the 2000 occupations were a response to frustrations instigated by the 1950 Rhodesdale evictions, the Native Land Husbandry Act of the 1950s and overall past disruption of livelihoods. In many other areas, at least in other areas studied, restitution-based arguments underscored land occupations. As noted by Marongwe (2003: 184) ‘restitution claims based dispossessions were a strong rallying point for participants in the occupations’. A study by Fontein (2009) of occupations along Lake Mutirikwi in Masvingo resonates with Marongwe’s argument. Likewise, Mujere (2011) highlighted that the return to ancestral lands explains why certain farms were occupied in Gutu in Masvingo. Wolmer et al. (2004) also found that the occupation of Save Conservancy and Gonarezhou National Park in 2000 was partly motivated by the fact that the Gudo and Chitsa people deeply resented their earlier eviction and that independence did not bring restitution of their ancestral land. Similarly, Zamchiya (2011) noted that during the occupation of Wolfscrag farm in Chipinge, claims to ancestral lands were strong, particularly from chiefs displaced in 1974. Based on fieldwork in Chiweshe, Sadomba (2009) also revealed restitution-based claims regarding land occupations by the Hwata people. Apart from these, practical and logistical considerations were also important regarding the patterns which farm occupations assumed (see Wolmer, 2005). As well, responses of white farmers determined how occupations unfolded (see Zamchiya, 2011).

Although the role of war veterans is widely recognised (and also contested), the actual occupations themselves are riddled with images of chaos and decay. However, few empirical studies to counter this particular narrative (which is part of the broader first narrative) have emerged. Land occupations in fact were far from being chaotic; they were orderly and principled argues Sadomba (2013). For instance, Chaumba et al. (2003) revealed that in Chiredzi District the broad-brush representation of the farm occupations (and subsequent fast-track resettlement process) as chaotic and unplanned is misleading. Self-imposed technical land-use planning was evident in the layout of the new homesteads and demarcation of plots in occupied farms. Although the occupations were marked by substantial district-level and local farm-level variations, formal structures also were generally put in place to coordinate the activities on occupied farms (Chaumba et al., 2003), particularly the formation of a ‘committee of seven’ on each farm. The committees of seven differed in composition on farms across the country (see Scoones et al., 2010). However, these tended to have a patriarchal form. The committees, which emerged as a form of local authority on the occupied farms, included a women’s representative, although the critical position of chief of security on farms was nearly always a man.

Overall, women normally played a subordinate role in the occupations, much like they did during the liberation struggle in the 1970s. But, in certain instances, women led the occupations or occupied farms on their own in the absence of men (Chingarande, 2010). Marongwe (2008: 49) argues that the participation of women was varied with ‘some farms, particularly those close to communal and resettlement areas’ showing ‘balanced numbers of male and female occupiers’. However, in her study of Mwenezi district in Masvingo province, Mutopo (2011) shows that women were not able to engage fully in occupying farms because of family responsibilities in the nearby communal areas, but many single, divorced and widowed women did occupy farms (Scoones et al., 2010: 52). At times, women as war veterans or with important political party affiliations spurred on the occupations, such as in Mazowe district. Perhaps more importantly, the men-women relationships, in terms of social reproduction activities, tended to confine women to the domestic sphere. In relation to Masvingo Province, Scoones et al. (2010: 55) note that women ‘often took on highly gendered roles in the base camps [on the occupied farms] (including cooking, collecting firewood and water), and were rarely in top leadership positions’.

In presenting our Shamva findings on the land occupations, we recognise the existence of diversity across occupations and localities such that our study of Shamva may not be representative of the occupations more broadly. In fact, the occupations also took different forms across time (Wolmer 2005; Wolmer et al., 2004). Rutherford (2005) observed differences between provinces. In some provinces, the majority of the white farmers were displaced almost immediately through evictions but, in other provinces, it took much longer for displacement to occur as negotiated arrangements between land occupiers and white farmers emerged (see also Sadomba, 2013). Thus comparative studies become quite significant in this regard (Scoones et al., 2010). What is particularly important in our study of Shamva and which is in large part absent from the literature, is an attempt to understand the actual processes and sequences of land occupations, as this contributes to addressing the question of the involvement of the party-state in the occupations.

Land occupations in Shamva

Shamva District is located north-east of the capital city of Harare in Mashonaland Central Province. It currently consists of communal areas (Bushu and Madziwa), old resettlement areas (dating back to the early 1980s), fast-track farms, and remaining white and black commercial farmers. In the late 1990s, and thus before the occupations, Shamva District had numerous ‘marginal lands and extreme land pressure and shortages’ (Moyo, 2000: 41) with ‘growing “squatter” trends in the district’ (Matondi, 2001: 71). There had been localised and diverse conflicts around land, water and natural resources in Shamva District ever since independence in 1980, such that the land occupations from the year 2000 were ‘an epitome of a long gestation period of conflict building up’ (Matondi, 2001: 175). The exact relationship between the pre-2000 land conflicts and the later occupations though remains unclear.

Prior to fast track, there were 74 commercial farms in the district, mostly owned by white farmers. The most recent statistical overview (from the late 2000s) indicates that there are now 12,400 communal farmers, 1406 old resettlement farmers, 1737 small-scale farmers (on about 34 fast-track farms), 92 commercial farmers (on about 13 fast-track farms) and 15 black and four white commercial farmers (Sukume, n.d.: 4, 110). The remaining white commercial farmers farm on a smaller scale than they did prior to fast track. In large part, the communal areas and the old resettlement farms are located in Shamva North and the former commercial farms (now fast-track farms) in Shamva South. The land occupations thus took place in Shamva South with the occupiers coming from diverse places. But ‘most … were from communal and old resettlement schemes from within and outside Shamva. Shamva district contributed two-thirds’. Another 25% came from neighbouring districts such as Mount Darwin and Bindura, and the rest ‘from districts further afar’. For those emanating from within Shamva, 30% came from old resettlement areas (in Mufurudzi Valley) and 50% from Madziwa and Bushu communal areas (Sukume, n.d.: 7,11,111).

Invoking historical grievances

Understanding the motivations of occupiers is crucial as it speaks to the relevance or irrelevance of the party-state in initiating the land occupations. In this regard, the occupiers invoked historical grievances of both a broad nationalist and specific experiential kind. Thus, in considering the motivations behind the occupations, it becomes crucial to focus on colonial dispossession of land and subsequent developments under white rule (as well as post-colonial developments) because of the vivid memory amongst occupiers of initial land loss and related colonial practices as well as ongoing post-colonial dispossession. The occupiers lost their ancestral lands through imperial conquest and then concessions made after the Second World War (which saw a number of white ex-soldiers such as Captain Mobil acquiring land in Shamva). As well, after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the Rhodesian government in 1965, a significant number of white people engaged in land grabbing in Shamva. When people in Shamva moved onto farms in 2000, they were reclaiming what had been taken from them. As one war veteran noted, ‘We took them [farms] for the sole purpose of us repossessing what belonged to us’ (Focus group discussion, Mushambanyama Village).

Memory does not simply refer to a sweeping nationalist-inspired memory as it is also based on localised personal experiences as well. A number of occupiers had direct encounters with the colonial system. They worked for white employers and experienced racism, discrimination, abuse and aggression. They remembered how they lost their sense of belonging, as mwana wehvu (a child of the soil), through land alienation. The loss of land intertwined with the loss of other entitlements which a real child of the soil ought to have. They were forcibly relocated to reserves or tribal trust lands (now called communal lands). Dating as far back as the 1930s, there was a ‘deliberate state sanctioned process that involved the systematic relocation of people from areas such as Mazowe-Bindura to Bushu … [and] … Madziwa’, with these people ‘dumped in the present communal areas without due regard to basic means of survival’ (Matondi, 2001: 117). As Matondi (2001: 179) highlights, older people in Shamva have ‘vivid memories’ of this ‘painful experience’ of forced removals and other events from the past. Villagers were also restricted in terms of how much livestock they could keep or the crops they could grow.

Stories of chibharo (forced labour), involving no remuneration, were also narrated by many occupiers. People in the communal areas would be rounded up and then brought to the farms by the farmers for periods of up to four months. Those who resisted working on the farms under such conditions were forced to make madhunduru (contour ridges) which today are scattered all over the farms. Thus dispossessed blacks, living in overcrowded reserves such as Bushu marked by pfukarushesha (sandy, unproductive soils), became sources of cheap labour. Villagers were also placed in ‘protected villages’ during the war of liberation in the 1970s, including the 10 villages constructed in Madziwa in 1974 under Operation Stronghold. Other villagers fled the area during the war or were forcefully removed (as far as Beitbridge along the South African border) for supporting the guerillas. Another war experience was provided in a focus group discussion (Mushambanyama Village): ‘I recall sometime in 1975, could have been 1976 in the Madziwa area, they put poison on a small plane and sprayed all our crops. All the crops wilted and died and all our domestic animals including cattle perished. We were left with nothing.’ These memories are also reiterated in an empirical study in three villages on now fast-track farms in Shamva (North Star, Golden Star and Chiraramo). James (2014) found that it was the deep memories of the occupiers and their experiences of the war – or the experiences of others retold – that drove them to ‘take the land’.

Overall, the core values of the war of liberation remained etched in the minds of dispossessed people in Shamva. Most war veterans in Shamva indicated that the idea propagated during the war of liberation was ‘from bush to office’ (war veteran Kashiri), meaning that when the war (bush) was over and independence (office) won, black people would take over everything, including land. But the war of liberation culminated in the Lancaster House Agreement. The war veterans felt betrayed by this and were effectively claiming that they did not spend years fighting to be given terms by others for their own independence. For the Shamva occupiers more broadly, the agreement symbolised a betrayal of the ideologies of the war of liberation and marked the continuity of colonial domination. What made it more treacherous was that the agreement was an alliance between representatives of settler capital and black nationalists. Consequently, the terms of the agreement (i.e. willing buyer and willing seller for purposes of land distribution) privileged white farmers. As well, it became apparent that white farmers had every intention of holding onto their prime land. Apart from this, generally white farmers were cunning and clever as they sold land that was infertile and unproductive to the government for resettlement of blacks. They sold land that was exhausted from years of monoculture, particularly in growing cash crops such as tobacco. The land they gave up for resettlement was in undeveloped areas, with no significant infrastructure such as roads, schools and clinics.

In view of the above, it was unanimous among war veterans and ordinary land occupiers in Shamva that there was no directive given by the ruling ZANU-PF party to people to occupy land in the district. And most interviewees claimed that the rise of the MDC and the rejection of constitutional changes in the February referendum were non-events in the emergence of the occupations. One occupier noted: ‘The fact that a new opposition party had been formed in Zimbabwe was not a factor in us taking over the farms. The war that we waged against our former colonisers was about land, and it is just the land that we wanted’ (Focus group discussion, Chiraramo Village). Not all occupiers though argued this so forcefully. As well, Matondi (2001: 165) refers to a war veteran interviewed in Shamva district in August 2000 who indicated that a key priority was to ‘uproot’ MDC supporters who had ‘infested’ the area. White farmers in Shamva had publicly aligned themselves with the MDC soon after the latter’s formation, including during a well-attended meeting of farmers at Insingisi farm just outside Bindura (the capital of Mashonaland Central) at which the president of the MDC spoke and received donations from farmers. Some farmers in Shamva became actively involved in local MDC party structures and they sought to mobilise their farm workers in support of the MDC. This included transporting them en masse in the back of eight-tonne farm trucks to MDC rallies in Bindura. But the intricate entanglement of the MDC and the white commercial farmers in Shamva and elsewhere implies that the uprooting of the MDC was primarily about isolating and weakening the political power of the farmers.

Memory is not only crucial for spurring on the land occupations in 2000, as it also provides insights into the character of the occupations in Shamva including why particular farmers were targeted. As well, providing an overview of the character of the farm occupations in Shamva and their organisational dynamics (as we do in the next two sections) contributes to understanding if, or the extent to which, the occupations were in any way directed (or orchestrated) by the ruling party, either initially or throughout the occupation process.

Overview of farm occupations

Despite the often-made claim that the ruling party directed the occupations, the land occupations are also viewed regularly as chaotic and anarchic. At first sight this may be true. But, certainly in the case of Shamva, it is possible to discern some semblance of order regarding, for instance, the sequence of farm occupations. When the occupations began, war veterans and others occupied the farms in a systematic and tactical manner though with some flexibility. Most of the occupiers’ explanations regarding the farms which were occupied first centred on overall relations with specific white farmers and their treatment of blacks (including of farm labourers) and previous encounters they had with the current white farmers or even previous farm owners.

By early March, at least four farms had been occupied in Shamva (including Robin Hood, Douglyn and Lion’s Den) at least on a temporary basis, with claims that some occupiers on one farm came from Mashonaland East Province (Zimbabwe Situation, 2000a). The first farm to be occupied in February 2000 was Robin Hood farm, followed by Douglyn and then Lion’s Den. The sequence of the occupations is aptly summarised as follows by one war veteran:

The first farms we occupied were for David Hastings [Robin Hood]. We occupied two farms there. Then we moved to Magobo farm [Douglyn farm owned by Doug Bean] and stayed there thinking we got the farm but he was still there. Then we moved to Keith’s farm [Lion’s Den] and then proceeded to Mupfurudzi. From there we went to Bata and next to Francis’s farm at Kanjinga. Then we moved southwards to Rutherdale, [then] proceeded to Soma [owned by Burnleigh] and then to Harmish Logan who had two farms. Our intention was just to say we have taken this land and deploy people. (War veteran, Kajauta)

The war veterans in Shamva also extended their occupations to nearby Matepatepa, Mazowe and Bindura and for two main reasons. First of all, some were of the view that no boundaries were set in terms of where people should or should not occupy. Secondly, war veterans from Shamva had to move into other areas because war veterans leading occupations in these areas were either too few or they were not creating base camps on the occupied farms (as was happening in Shamva) to ensure a firm presence on the farms. Further, the Shamva war veterans sometimes communicated with war veterans in nearby districts without significant numbers of commercial farms to send people to Shamva. At the same time, there was no clear inter-district coordination by the war veterans in Shamva, and this is perhaps one reason why the occupations often are regarded as chaotic.

Broadly speaking, those white farmers who were regarded as ill-treating blacks were targeted by the occupiers. A comment from a focus group discussion highlights this:

There were other farmers, Mr Peters and Kevin Walters, who were responsible for the deaths of a lot of comrades during the war of liberation. They once put poison in the comrades’ [war veterans’] food, some died immediately after consuming the food while others died in the Mazowe area. Mr Peters and his friends went on to cut off the heads from the corpses only to hang these as trophies in their farm houses. Can you imagine, the skulls were only recovered at Mr Peters’ farm when we took over the farms? (Mushambanyama Village)

David Hastings of Robin Hood farm (the first farm occupied) was seen as particularly cruel. It was believed that Hastings received his farms as a reward for his father fighting during the Second World War and this irked the war veterans because, while white soldiers were rewarded with land, ex-guerrillas received nothing of significance after the war of liberation. Indeed, although many ex-combatants were successfully reintegrated into urban or rural life after 1980, a substantial number slipped into deep destitution and social ostracism (Chitiyo, 2000). Hastings’ parents were also killed by guerrillas during the war of liberation and this made him particularly spiteful towards blacks. As well, he served in the Rhodesian army during the war (as had many members of farmer families in Shamva). Further, it was perceived that Hastings or his wife served on the Rural District Council and that he was deeply involved in the oppositional politics of the MDC, and thereby had significant influence over other local farmers. Indeed, the MDC had made ‘tremendous in-roads in the district’ (Matondi, 2001: 90) by early 2000. Occupying Hastings’s farms first was a way of neutralising his influence and also sent a clear message to other white farmers that the war veterans were serious about acquiring land.

There were other considerations which applied to specific farms, such as Lion’s Den. It bordered communal areas and white farmers near communal areas were perceived as particularly hostile to communal people. They confiscated communal area cattle that strayed onto their farms and prohibited crop farming near their farms for fear their crops would be polluted. Thus, based on their encounters with particular farmers or farms, local people had deeply personal reasons for occupying a specific farm. For instance, one occupier indicated that he decided to occupy Lion’s Den because the water canal there was dug by his father. His father had been taken as chibharo to dig the canal so it only made sense to him (the son) that he occupy Lion’s Den and farm on land near the canal and use the water for farming.

Organisation of the farm occupations

Farm occupations in Shamva were spearheaded and organised by local war veterans without ruling party directives, although later we address more explicitly the involvement of party and state personnel. This of course goes contrary to the views of local white farmers. For instance, Kevin Walters (a former commercial farmer from Shamva) indicated that ‘all levels’ of government were involved in ‘a high[ly] organised campaign’ and with ‘the full knowledge and sanction’ of the ZANU-PF portfolio with the main purpose to break the MDC (email dated 18 June 2015, to one of the authors). War veterans and ordinary occupiers in the district invariably deny this.

A central figure in the occupations in Shamva was undoubtedly the district war veteran commander, who had his office under a tree near the sub-office of the Rural District Council in Wadzanai township in Shamva town (which is located 30 kilometres from Bindura). The commander was war veteran Manhambara, who initially was base camp commander at Lion’s Den. Manhambara describes himself as the Land Possession Commander. He was in fact the acting district war veteran chairperson as the chairperson (Ziteya) was a teacher at Chindunduma School and was away most of the time. Manhambara, who was 44 years old in 2000, remembers a national war veterans’ meeting in late 1999 (either in November or December) in Harare where they talked about the need to undo the ongoing land dispossession in the country. Other war veterans also refer to this meeting, and note how it led to a cascading down of war veteran meetings at provincial and district levels at least within Mashonaland Central. At Shamva district level, ‘we sat down as a district association to strategise and agree on where to start’ (war veteran, Muzavazi).

The command centre in Shamva was commonly referred to as the HQ (headquarters) and it is where all the decisions regarding which farms to occupy were made. Additionally, the HQ was the receiving centre where people who were interested in occupying farms gathered before being deployed onto farms. To shed more light on this and the overall organisation of the occupations, we quote the following from a focus group discussion:

At our HQ, this is where everyone came to register … We had very strong and capable leadership at the HQ headed by war veterans. They are the ones who would dispatch people to different base stations scattered around the farms. As you moved down to the base stations [on each farm], we had structures made up of war veterans, women and youths … Those seeking land would first get to the HQ where if necessary they would spend the night there; they would then be referred to the base stations the following day. Once they got to the base stations, they would donate the food that they would have brought with them and contribute money towards the upkeep of those standing guard at the farms. Within the structures we had those responsible for stores [storing the food], cooking and security. We needed the security because we had misguided fellow blacks who in connivance with the MDC and white farmers would come to the base station to fight us. Their aim was to remove us from the farms. (Chiraramo Village)

As well, there were senior war veterans under the command of the district war veteran commander who moved between a few occupied farms each to check on progress and problems on these farms and to report back to the district commander. Overall, then, there was a loose structure led by war veterans which commanded and coordinated the land occupations (including war veterans Kamoto, Makasha, Mukunga, Chando and Muhomba). The provincial war veteran commander (Muropa), who was a nurse in Madziwa communal area, at times moved around farms to check on how the occupations were going.

The process of occupying farms involved (though not always in this order) identifying the farm, approaching the white farmer, deploying people and setting up bases (or base camps). War veterans identified the farms. When a farm was targeted, they would go to the farm with a group of people. The farm owner was then approached by the war veterans and asked to produce a map of the farm. The farmers would either resist or surrender the map. In either case, people were deployed on the farm and a base camp was established. The number of people deployed on a farm varied but at times reached between 150 and 200 occupiers. The deployment of people fundamentally signalled that the farm was occupied. All these aspects are further noted in the following:

When we got onto farms as war veterans, we would ask for a map or other questions like how big the farm was. Our intention was not to remove the white farmers but to share the land … So as the commander I asked the white farmers which part of land they wanted to retain and which part they wanted to give us. When they showed us the land, we occupied the part that they wanted to retain instead of the part they wanted to give us. I also instructed base commanders that the deployed people could use resources at the farm like water but they should remain camped outside farm houses. (War veteran, Manhambara)

The presence of occupiers at the farm houses was a constant reminder to farmers and their families that the occupiers had invaded their personal space and it also served to intimidate farmers (see Buckle, 2001). At times, as the circulating war veteran leaders visited occupied farms, they requested that some occupiers move to other farms to bolster the occupying presence there or, alternatively, people were simply requested to take part in a particular occupation to add to the size of the initial occupying force.

Each and every occupied farm had a base camp (or local authority structure) involving a committee of seven people which was led by a base camp commander or chairperson, who was invariably a war veteran. The committee of seven coordinated the activities on the farms. Members of the committee would oversee certain tasks, such as food provisions, transport and pegging of plots as well as security and maintaining discipline. Pegging, involving the measuring and allocation of plots for the occupiers, was an important activity in laying claim to the farm and in giving occupiers a sense of permanency on the farm. But the issue of security was considered as especially crucial. War veterans were of the view that white farmers were armed and they were not sure how the farmers would react, hence the need to be prepared for any eventuality. It was necessary that base commanders maintained discipline on the occupied farms. This had two facets. Firstly, it was to ensure that people remained committed to the nationalist discourse which ultimately underpinned the land occupations. Secondly, it was meant to ensure that people did not engage in violence and property grabbing. On the whole, the base commanders operated, or were expected to operate, according to the ideals that were supposedly propagated during the war of liberation in the 1970s, though the relationships between guerrillas and villagers during the war were often deeply troubling.

Anatomy of occupiers

Examining the anatomy of occupiers, and their sheer diversity, brings to the fore the broad-based character of the occupations and their irreducibility to directives emanating from the party-state. In this respect, it is unquestionable that war veterans were the main agents in the land occupations in Shamva. Most of them were from Shamva district but others came from other districts in Mashonaland Central Province (such as Murewa and Mt Darwin) or neighbouring provinces (particularly Mashonaland East Province). One prominent war veteran who was responsible for security in the local Shamva war veteran structure came from Uzumba in Mashonaland East. It also turned out that a number of the war veterans leading the occupations had shared personal histories that dated back to the war of liberation. Although the circumstances leading them to join the war as guerrillas were different, many of them had met either in Zambia or Mozambique, had trained together and came to the front to fight under the same unit or branch. During demobilisation (after the ceasefire was announced), they had also gone to the same assembly point called Dzapasi. After the war, many were integrated into the newly formed Zimbabwe National Army. Others had gone to take on civilian jobs in different parts of the country. However, in later years, most of them came back to the district to live and often in the communal areas of their birth. Therefore, it was not difficult for them to regroup in 2000 to occupy land in the district. Many of the war veterans were never fully integrated into post-colonial Zimbabwean society and their lives were far removed from the elite war veterans (and nationalists) who took over the reign of state power from 1980 onwards. Besides the monthly pension they received and encouragement to form self-help co-operatives and/or receive skills training, there was only minimal attempt by government to ensure socio-economic reintegration of ex-guerrillas (Chitiyo, 2003).

Although war veterans (mostly male) played a significant role, the occupations were not possible without other types of occupiers whose motivations are also based seemingly on localised experiences and events. Amongst the occupiers were mujibhas and chimbwidos (former war collaborators, male and female respectively), and ordinary women, men and the youth who came from diverse backgrounds. Many of these occupiers came from other parts of the province (such as Mt Darwin, Rushinga, Guruve and Uzumba-Mamba-Pfungwe) but the occupiers interviewed were mainly from communal areas in Shamva. Local war veterans regularly engaged with traditional leaders and headmen in the communal areas for purposes of mobilising villagers to occupy farms. As Chief Bushu highlighted, ‘war veterans approached us as community leaders and they explained why they needed to take land and why support was needed from communities. Then youths from villages were urged to join’. Many of the interviewed occupiers indicated that they learned about the occupations through these engagements.

The youth, locally referred to as vana vedu (our children), were part of the occupiers deployed on the farms. Their roles are, however, described as supportive. These included singing, beating drums, helping with cooking and carrying items (such as pegs used to demarcate the occupiers’ plots). However, there were sentiments that the youth did not participate in the occupations as much as they should have, owing to the formation and subsequent presence of MDC in the district. It is believed that the opposition party coerced young people and led them astray (and made them abandon the virtues of the land struggle as espoused by the ZANU-PF party). The very few respondents who admitted to violence perpetrated by the occupiers on the farms indicated that the youth, who often carried knobkerries and axes, were used as the ‘army’ to intimidate the white farmers and, if there was resistance by farmers and farm workers, the youth would be centrally involved in countering this resistance.

It is clear that male war veterans were the ones who commanded the occupations in Shamva. Women war veterans were largely sidelined. One male war veteran (Manhambara) clearly put it: ‘In terms of women, women were not really involved in leadership but were active in the occupations.’ Women moved around farms with war veterans and were part of the groups deployed on the farms in Shamva. A number of women lived for extended periods on the occupied farms. While some women, especially young unmarried women, did so in their own right, most married women did so on behalf of their spouses who were away at work or attending to other commitments. Overall, women’s work on the farms was limited and related to reproductive roles such as cooking and cleaning. They also sang and danced during the pungwes. Both men and women confirmed the foregoing. One women occupier said:

So as women, we were there in those groups that went around repossessing the farms. We would sing loud and clear and informed the white farmers that we were not going back in terms of taking over the farms. Our comrades would usually lead from the front. We would sing and dance in solidarity with them. (Focus group discussion, Chiraramo Village)

A male occupier (Gandidze) made the same point:

Women did what they always do and even did during the liberation struggle [in the 1970s]; they sang and cooked like they did for freedom fighters who came to the villages [during the war]. There were women war veterans but these did not get into the same positions as those men war veterans leading the occupations.

Undoubtedly, women played very specific and marginalised roles during the land occupations and – like both female guerillas and female civilians during the war of liberation – they took no pronounced leadership role.

Three examples from Lion’s Den farm speak to the experiences of women. Chihuni was 25 when the land occupations took place. She lived in far away Kwekwe and followed her brother who had gone to Shamva to occupy a farm, ending up at Lion’s Den farm with her brother. For her, it was as if someone had called ‘handei kuminda’ (‘let’s go to the farms’) and at once people left for the farms. She highlighted the fact that women, including women war veterans, did the cooking and cleaning on the farms. Munyoro occupied a farm in Shamva in April 2000. She found her way to the Shamva town command centre and ended up at Somer farm. However, she asked the Somer commander to be moved to Lion’s Den nearer to Shamva town as she had a baby. In the case of Karichi, her husband had gone to Lion’s Den and had his name registered as an occupant by the farm commander. Karichi made her way to the farm only in September as she cared for her young baby, with her husband only staying on weekends because he worked at Jiti School. There were many female occupants at Lion’s Den and in fact both the base commander (Musora) and deputy base commander (Chanaiwa) were women war veterans. The deputy commander spoke about shortage of land in the communal areas as the reason for joining the occupations, as she was ‘farming in the fields of my in-laws’. Her main role at the farm was to maintain order, give instructions and work on logistical matters.

Although war veterans used various means (and notably nationalist discourses around land) to mobilise people to occupy farms, women (perhaps more than men) had their own very personal reasons for occupying farms which in no way emanate from the party-state. Therefore, personal aspirations were articulated by women, even though tied to the broader historical grievance over land. To quote one woman: ‘We decided to join the war veterans in land occupations because my husband’s father has a polygamous marriage so there is no land for farming. We have been farming on a very small piece of land’ (woman occupier, Karichi). Another woman added that: ‘I came to the farm in Shamva in April 2000 with my two [communal] neighbours. I came to take part in the land occupations because I was facing problems. My husband and I had no land of our own, as we were living with my parents. I did not feel okay staying on my parents’ land whilst my husband was away working at the mine’ (woman occupier, Munyoro). These points speak to the problem of landlessness in the communal areas of Shamva but also to the specific challenges married women faced without primary rights to land but only access to it through their husbands. Of course, unmarried women also have their own sets of problems in this regard. As James (2014) also noted for Shamva, people’s reasons and motivations for occupying land were multiple and overlapping, and perhaps best thought of as situational.

Occupiers and the party-state

In examining the motivations of occupiers based on historical grievances, the general character of the occupations and their organisational form, as well as the broad social base of the occupations, there is no clear evidence which suggests that the Shamva occupations were orchestrated by the party-state, and not even in a mediated way (for instance, through the war veterans). In this context, we now examine the question of the party-state more directly, as one of the key controversies surrounding the occupations in the Zimbabwean literature. The evidence presented so far from Shamva suggests a de-centralised land occupation process in which people joined the occupations for their own personal reasons and independently of any directive from the ruling party or state. In Shamva, the involvement of party and state was significant but politicians and officials were acting in their personal capacity, although perhaps drawing upon state resources at times in doing so. The occupiers were well aware that, by occupying land, they were acting against the law. Hence, they indicated that they did not necessarily expect support from the ruling party, government and state. And nor, according to them, did they act at the behest of the ruling party or even on its behalf. In fact, war veterans claimed that government departments distanced themselves from the occupations.

Of course, given the heightened mobilisation of war veterans and the intense pressure they had placed even on the office of the presidency in the late 1990s, the ZANU-PF government ‘knew it had reneged on the land issue’ (war veteran, Manhambara). However, the ruling party and government did not know what the war veterans were intending to do about the unresolved land question. Hence, they watched the land occupations unfold from afar until they realised that the war veterans were seriously committed to recovering land. Most of the Shamva interviewees opined that the government later intervened to legitimise or formalise the process when white farmers had already been defeated and the war for land had been successfully concluded. Even the chief executive officer of the Rural District Council seemed to suggest this:

During the actual occupations, the government remained aloof because it did not want to appear to be supporting invasions but when it saw people had occupied farms in large numbers it formalised the occupations. Government had a clever way of doing it – it said people have demonstrated and they cannot go back home just like that. That is when it brought the [fast-track] land policy.

Nonetheless, war veterans received support from prominent politicians, notably Border Gezi (the provincial governor of Mashonaland Central Province and the ruling party’s national political commissar) and Nicholas Goche (a war veteran, as well as national minister of state security and local ZANU-PF member of parliament) who had owned a farm in Shamva district since the 1980s. Some local state officials were also involved (including from the Rural District Council). The local war veteran command structure led by war veterans was assisted by ruling party politicians at times with food, cars, fuel (from Goche’s farm) and fines (for those who were arrested by the police). On the matter of the police, war veteran (Kajauta) argued that the police officer in charge (Gopo) ‘actually followed people in farms and arrested them’ and ‘so we had him transferred’, which speaks to the possible influence of war veterans within the security establishment. High profile security personnel in central government at times assisted with security and surveillance: ‘Although they did not give us instructions, security officials – Chihuri [national police commissioner] and Shiri [air force national commander] – were also involved because it was not clear how the whites were organising their resistance’ (war veteran, Sori). Further, some of the leading war veterans at district level in Shamva were important local ZANU-PF elites. For instance, the vice-chairperson of the district war veterans association (Kanengoni) was at the same time the Secretary for Security in the ZANU-PF branch and he was responsible for transport during the occupations in part because, by the time he had retired from the Zimbabwe National Army, he had two trucks. Likewise, war veteran Kajauta was the Secretary for Administration in the local branch of the ZANU-PF party.

At a ZANU-PF rally in Shamva in April or May at which Border Gezi spoke, it was reported that Gezi indicated that the farms of certain farmers in particular should be occupied and, because of this, Walwyn farm (leased by two local farmers, including a well-known MDC supporter) was subsequently occupied. At Glencairn farm, the occupiers apparently informed the owner that Border Gezi told them that no crops are to be grown on the farm during the coming agricultural season (Zimbabwe Situation, 2000b). The occupiers in Shamva however underlined that politicians and government officials supported them in their own individual capacity as people interested in land repossession. They were not acting in their official capacity. This is mentioned by agricultural extension officers who occupied farms and assisted the occupiers in particular ways. As one officer said: ‘The war veterans had no technical background and proper records or documentation, so they relied on people who worked in government departments and others who knew about land use to advise them on the types of farms that existed and what was being done in farms. These people helped war veterans in an independent capacity.’ In this sense, the party-state did not initiate, orchestrate or direct the land occupations. Rather, individual party and state agents engaged with the war veterans as the occupations unfolded, or were engaged by them. However, with the introduction of fast track in July 2000, the ruling party and state moved in on a very pronounced institutional basis. In fact, by mid-year, this more institutional intrusion was becoming increasingly apparent.

Conclusion

Significant research, and specifically in-depth fieldwork, still needs to be undertaken on the land occupations in Zimbabwe in order for a more nuanced understanding of the occupations to emerge. With reference to the grand narratives of the land occupations, and specifically the controversy around the involvement of the party-state in the occupations, our Shamva study concludes that the party and state were not involved as such in the occupations in any institutionalised manner. This is also supported by our examination of the motivations of occupiers in terms of personal and local historical grievances, the actual organisation underpinning the occupations as they unfolded, and the anatomy of the occupiers and specifically the rationale for the involvement of women in the occupations. One critical area which needs further research is a comparative analysis of the war of liberation in the 1970s and the land occupations from the year 2000, as there are striking parallels between the two sets of conflicts. In particular, the relationship between the guerrillas and the nationalists during the 1970s as compared to the relationships between the war veterans and party-state during 2000 (and in the years leading up to 2000), as well as the marginalised role of women in both conflicts, would likely deepen our understanding of the occupations.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors acknowledge funding granted by Rhodes University which facilitated the fieldwork for this study.

Author biographies

Sandra Bhatasara is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe. She writes on agrarian issues, rural and environmental sociology, and women’s studies.

Kirk Helliker lectures in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University in South Africa. He has co-edited three books in recent years within the realm of Land Studies, including a book titled Contested Terrain, on civil society and land reform in Zimbabwe. He is also the Director of the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies at Rhodes University.

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