UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SOCIAL RESEARCH SEMINAR PAPER TO BE PRESENTED IN THE RICHARD WARD BUILDING SEVENTH FLOOR, SEMINAR ROOM 7003 AT 4PM ON THE 26 MAY1997. TITLE: A History of Land Acquisition, Commercialisation of Agriculture and Socio- Economic Differentiation among Peasant Farmers in a Frontier Region: The Gokwe District of Northwestern Zimbabwe: c. 1945-1990s. BY p. NYAMBARA NO: 421 A HISTORY OF LAND ACQUISITION. COMMERCIALSATIQN OF AGRICULTURE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DIFFERENTIATION AMONG PEASANT FARMERS IN A FRONTIER REGION: THE GOKWE DISTRICT OF NORTHWESTERN ZIMBABWE: c. 1945 - 1990S. A paper to be presented to the Institute for Advanced Social Research: University of the Wirwatersrand* Johannesburg on 26 th May* 1997. Pius S. Nyambara PhD Candidate, Northwestern University. A history of land acquisition, commercialisation of agriculture and socio-economic differentiation among peasant farmers in a frontier region: The Gokwe district of northwestern Zimbabwe, post 1945-1990s. Introduction Until the 1950s, Gokwe was once perceived as the wild, remote and economically 'backward' domain of the 'Shangwe1 people, but since the influx of immigrants from the south into this region, and the introduction of small-holder cotton production in the early 1960s, Gokwe has been represented as a miracle of agrarian transformation, a frontier of commoditization, and more broadly, as an exemplar of the transition to modernity. From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s Gokwe alone accounted for more than half the country's cotton production from the African areas, and about 15% of the national output. Today(1996), Gokwe contributes about 60 percent of the nation's cotton output and its high market price has spurred even the smallest farmer to master the art of growing the million dollar crop. The population of Gokwe has increased dramatically from an insignificant sparsely populated region of the 'Shangwe' to being one of the most populous districts in the country with a population of over 400 OOO.p] Thus, once constituted as a negation of national progress, Gokwe has miraculously asserted itself as a fecund, energetic symbol of primeval development. Its emergence as the fastest growing district in the country in terms of both population and agricultural commodity production especially since independence in 1980 has made Gokwe a palpable emblem of the economic potential of the nation. If, as many now think, Zimbabwe stands as the beacon of hope for salvaging small-scale agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is Gokwe that provides its most dramatic and compelling example. The agricultural performance of Gokwe, just like that of many communal areas of Zimbabwe, especially after 1980, has been variously termed in Zimbabwean literature as the 'peasant miracle'or as 'Zimbabwe's Agricultural Revolution'.[2] However, less attention has been paid to the fact that increased cotton productivity and high levels of marketed cotton were achieved by only a minority of producers. I hypothesize that differential access to land was in part responsible for differential levels of production among small-scale farmers in Gokwe. Unlike other rural areas of Zimbabwe where land pressure from the 1950s on was excessive, in Gokwe land was relatively abundant for a long time after that. However, with the introduction and intensification of commodity production, especially cotton agriculture and with the increase in immigrant population especially from the south, access to land has become a critical issue. In a study carried out by L.de Swardt in 1982 in the communal areas of Gokwe, he discovered that an informal land economy existed in Gokwe. His evidence showed that most households started with a base of approximately 10 acres allocated by the colonial state under the notorious Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951. However, by the early 1980s land had been subsequently traded to such as extent that some households had as much as 30 acres or more while others had as little as 2 acres. Since his informants insisted that land could not be bought or sold, Swardt speculates that this redistribution of land occurred through various informal transactions.^] My observations during field work carried out recently in the Njelele area in south-eastern part of Gokwe South District confirmed some of Swardt's findings, but I must add that the land situation in some parts of Gokwe has become even more skewed in the 1990s than before. While on the one hand some households have accumulated up to more than 100 acres of land, on the other hand, a fairly large proportion of young married household heads are either landless or have as little as two acres. In fact, today, according to a recent Herald report, out of a total population of 400 000 people in Gokwe, over 60 000 are on the waiting list for resettlement. [4] Conflicts over land have become the order of the day between village heads as people of one village have encroached on the grazing area of another village and have cut down trees, erected houses and ploughed. At three meetings that I attended in Wards 1 and 2 in Chief Njelele's area, half of the cases brought forward and issues discussed involved the registration for resettlement of young household heads who are either landless or have insufficient land; village heads selling grazing land illegally to immigrants and the deposition of village heads whose cases were considered very serious; and cases of land conflicts between village heads over grazing areas as young men of different villages compete to occupy common grazing area. My study is an investigation of how and why this uneven distribution of land observed by Swardt and myself took place. 1 will examine the history of land acquisition and the landholding practices that prevailed in this frontier region since the resettlement of immigrants from the 1950s. More specifically I will focus on the interface between legal codes and the actual practices of land holding on the ground. 1 will argue that between the legal paradigms and the actual practice on the ground there existed many conceptual gaps. While on one hand the legal codes were unevenly enforced, on the other 'customary' paradigms were ambiguous. This situation created many conceptual gaps in which both the legal and 'customary' paradigms were manipulated by various groups of people who maneuvered to acquire access to land through various channels. My paper will focus on the various kinds of transactions, negotiations and conflict over land that occurred in this region. By doing so my paper will enhance out understanding of the way in which rapid commercialization of cotton agriculture shaped people's strategies to gain access to land and how this in turn determined patterns of socio-economic differentiation in this region. The most important political issue in the history of Zimbabwe is land. This was true when the British South Africa Company (BSAC) colonized the country in the 1890s. It remained true throughout the early protest movements of the inter-war period and in the advent of mass nationalism. It was central to the war of liberation. And indeed it remains true for post-colonial Zimbabwe especially with the current debates on the redistribution of land to achieve "growth with equity' in the communal areas. However, most writings on the agricultural sector and agrarian differentiation have focused on the racial division of land and on the inequalities between white 'commercial' farmers and an increasingly marginalized 'subsistence1 sector; the rural population has usually been conceptualised as a 'peasantry' or 'proletariat\[5] These conceptualizations tend to assume agrarian homogeneity with a singular class identity, which is problematic. [6] Even the new Zimbabwean leadership, while it has been acutely aware of the racial disparities and some associated rural-urban differences, has shown little awareness of differentiation or inequalities within the communal areas themselves.C. Brand has observed that "Master farmers and successful cash crop farmers are held up instead as models to be emulated, without questions being asked, for example, about how some of them managed to gain access to more arable land than others in the community."^] Recent writings on Zimbabwe have however, enhanced our understanding of the process of agrarian change and differentiation in rural areas. They have argued that most rural areas experienced considerable commercialisation during and after the colonial period, and that commercialization gave rise to various forms of socio-economic differentiation among rural households and communities. Scholars in this group have advanced various arguments about how rural differentiation occurred in rural Zimbabwe. They point to differences in access to land between freehold and communal area and within communal areas; differences in households' access to off-farm income; the privileged position and political maneuverings of chiefs; differences in quality of land and differential access to labor, which again is related to various factors including access to off-farm income, polygany and various forms of co-operative labor. [8] However, even studies that recognize patterns of differential landholdings have not shown clearly how such differences developed over time. Several scholars[9], for instance, have argued that the distribution of land in the communal areas is less skewed than that of other variables and acts as a brake on individual accumulation and on the process of differentiation. They argue that this is so because the majority of the communal areas are in semi-arid and drought prone regions and that population pressure is near ecological carrying capacity. Gokwe presents a different picture to that given by scholars cited above because Gokwe was a frontier region and therefore land was relatively abundant long after other communal areas had suffered from excessive land pressure. As noted above, in Gokwe most men have between 2 and 120 acres of farmland whereas in most communal areas of Zimbabwe the range is between 2 and 10 acres.