The political economy of Zimbabwe’s communal land (1890–2024)

Abstract

This article employs a political economy perspective to analyse the political and economic trajectories that have shaped communal land tenure in relation to land grabs and displacements since their colonial creation. Using an integrative literature review, the paper focusses on three definitive phases in Zimbabwe’s history, that is, the colonial period (1890s up to 1980 when the country got its independence from Britain, the post-independence period from the 1980s up to the year 2000 when the country embarked on the Fast Track Land Reform Programme and finally the post fast track era (2000 to 2024). The paper brings to the fore the idea that the deliberate tenure insecurity of Zimbabwe’s communal land is historically rooted in colonial primitive accumulation by dispossession and that the post-colonial state inherited communal land administration that allows for arbitrary dispossession of land from communal land holders.

This article employs a political economy perspective to analyse the political and economic trajectories that have shaped communal land tenure in relation to land grabs and displacements since their colonial creation. Using an integrative literature review, the paper focusses on three definitive phases in Zimbabwe’s history, that is, the colonial period (1890s up to 1980 when the country got its independence from Britain, the post-independence period from the 1980s up to the year 2000 when the country embarked on the Fast Track Land Reform Programme and finally the post fast track era (2000 to 2024). The paper brings to the fore the idea that the deliberate tenure insecurity of Zimbabwe’s communal land is historically rooted in colonial primitive accumulation by dispossession and that the post-colonial state inherited communal land administration that allows for arbitrary dispossession of land from communal land holders.