Livelihoods fragility and land tenure in the post-fast track land reform era in Upper Guruve, Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper seeks to document the experiences of and challenges experienced by farmers resettled according to the communal/villagised model of resettlement in Upper Guruve district in Zimbabwe. The paper is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2009 to 2017. Almost two decades have passed since Zimbabwe’s popular and yet controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme was introduced in 2000. An analysis of the experiences of resettled farmers reveals challenges borne out of unresolved tenurial rights, unforeseen generational population pressures and conflict erupting between resettled farmers and existing residents from nearby communal areas. This has birthed competition over resources, boundary conflicts and contestations over authority, ultimately leading to livelihood fragility. Compounding the resettled farmers’ predicament is the recent discovery of minerals, the mining of which destroys their farms. The paper addresses the three interrelated issues of tenurial conflicts, challenges faced by resettled farmers, and the major contributors of livelihoods fragility in order to examine the causes, context and implications of livelihood fragility on resettled farmers in Upper Guruve.