Land concentration and accumulation after redistributive reform in post-settler Zimbabwe

Introduction

At a time when foreign land grabbing was escalating in Africa, Zimbabwe had in 2000 embarked on the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) to redress settler–colonial land dispossession, and the renewed land concentration and foreign land ownership that emerged in the 1990s (Moyo 1995, 2000). The FTLRP redistributed 10 million ha of prime agricultural lands held by 4500 mainly white large-scale commercial farmers (LSCFs) to over 145,000 peasant families and over 20,000 middle-scale capitalist farmers, while retaining some LSCF farms and large-scale farming estates (Moyo et al. 2009, Scoones et al. 2010, Moyo 2011b). This redistributive reform goes against the spread of capitalist accumulation by dispossession inspired by the neoliberal agenda of export-oriented large-scale food and agro-fuel production, despite the persistence of some land concentration.

The recent foreign land acquisitions in Africa are rarely examined in terms of their diverse historical and sub-regional contexts of colonial rule and capitalist penetration to decipher the varied forms of dispossession, and the state ideologies and projects which enable land grabbing, as well as the diverse sources of popular struggle against it. By the 1930s, Africa had in diverse ways experienced its first wave of colonially inspired land expropriations, on an extensive scale in settler–colonial Africa and on a smaller scale in scattered enclaves in non-settler colonial Africa (Amin 1972). After independence, African states attempted to ameliorate land concentration and foreign land control through nationalisation, resettlement and limited redistribution of land (Shivji 2009). A second sporadic, scattered and smaller scale wave of land grabbing emerged from the mid-1980s, when structural adjustment programmes reigned (Moyo 2008, Federici 2001). National land policies were reformed in the 1990s and land privatisation initiated (Manji 2006, Moyo and Yeros 2005, Boone 2007), paving the ‘legal’ way for the recent land concessions. The current third and more extensive wave of land grabbing targets various former non-settler and settler Africa countries, through long land leases and purchases involving diverse foreign capitals (GRAIN 2009, Borras and Franco 2010), in collaboration with domestic ‘elites’ and ‘comprador’ states (Petras 2008, Alden Wily 2008). Together with the rise of mining and other resource concessions, a comprehensive scramble for Africa is underway (Yeros 2009).

The Bretton Woods and some international research institutions consider this land grabbing more of an ‘opportunity’ than a threat to African agricultural development and food security (World Bank 2010, von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009, Cotula et al. 2009, Collier 2007). The land deals allegedly represent a supply response to the recent ‘world food price crisis’ mainly by emerging economies, a rational response by investors to the rising profitability of farming (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009, Wahenga 2007), and demands for ‘clean’ agro-fuels (Mitchell 2008). The failure endogenously to increase agricultural productivity in Africa due to discredited neoliberal marketisation (Mkwandawire and Saludo 1999) is conveniently forgotten, and foreign land investments are considered the sine qua non of agricultural growth, despite the negative social effects, including landlessness, and iniquitous agrarian relations.

The gradual dispossession of African peasantries has so far resulted in their incomplete separation from the social means of production and permitted their resilience and differentiation, but in varied national patterns it compelled numerous Africans into cheap wage and informal labour in towns and the countryside. Alongside the pervasive external transfer of value through an unequal world trade regime, which disarticulates African development, the recent land grabbing intensifies a process of ‘continuous (primitive) accumulation’ by dispossession (Amin 1974, De Angelis 2001). Moreover, the export of capital towards possession of African land, water and natural resources represents an endemic speculative tendency of financialised capitalism, which during the recent economic crisis, increasingly focuses on agricultural commodities (Tabb 2008, Ghosh 2008; Patnaik 2008).

Land grabbing in former settler colonial Africa also deepened under neoliberalism (Moyo 2008), but unlike in non-settler Africa, the process is largely built upon historically alienated lands owned privately by racial minorities and foreign corporations. Land concentration is being retained in pre-existing ownership patterns, and leased or sold to new foreign ‘investors’. Land reforms to redress the colonial, racial and social injustices of unequal land and natural resources ownership had hibernated. Zimbabwe's FTLRP was thus labelled a ‘violent and chaotic land grab’, which allegedly benefited only a few cronies, leading to the destruction of agriculture (Hammar et al. 2003, Raftopoulos 2009, Scarnecchia et al. 2008).

The language of ‘land grabbing’ creates a moral and political equivalence between the restitutive appropriation of colonially dispossessed lands for state-led land redistribution and the recent externally inspired land grabs in Africa, despite the latter's neoliberal roots. Preoccupation with a ‘chaos’ perspective conceals the structure and agency that evolved during the FTLRP, including a failure to evaluate the residual extent of land concentration and the developmental objectives and political imperatives which shaped the redistributive outcome. Although some elites grabbed land during the FTLRP (Moyo et al. 2009, Scoones et al. 2010), by overstating domestic elite agency the political dynamics of competing land interests between these elites and the landless vis-à-vis foreign and white domestic capital, are overlooked. Indeed, the literature missed the fact that substantial large-scale estates, owned by foreign and white domestic capital, indigenous public trusts and the state, were not subdivided for redistribution.

Despite its radicalisation (Moyo and Yeros 2007), the Zimbabwean state made concessions to some sections of capital at the height of its confrontation with the ‘West’. Did the economic crisis and related sanctions, and/or a developmentalist project, shape the privileging of estate farming at the expense of land redistribution? How did capital and the state mediate such an outcome against popular and elite struggles for more land? What accumulation trajectory does this portend? These questions are explored, beginning with the settler–colonial legacy of land dispossession and accumulation.

Accumulation by land dispossession under colonial and neoliberal rule

The dispossession of indigenous Zimbabweans of their land and natural resources from the 1890s led to a highly skewed agrarian structure and racially discriminatory land tenures (Palmer 1977, Moyana 2002), crowding the majority into marginal Tribal Trust Lands, now called Communal Areas (Shivji et al. 1998). Institutionalised racial and class inequalities in the largely agrarian economy, backed by mining and a faltering import-substitution industrialisation, depended on migrant black labour subsidised by a stunted peasantry and landlessness. Rhodesia's agricultural transformation strategy entailed large-scale farming supported by the state, including individual white settlers with average land size of 2000 ha, and foreign and domestic estates, with average landholdings well above 5000 ha. From 1966, state support to large-scale irrigated estate farming through dams, rural electrification and other infrastructures was increased (Rukuni et al. 2006) to expand exports and reduce sugar and wheat imports (Stoneman 1988). By the 1970s, state-owned farm estates were created, including through the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority, which succeeded the Tribal Trust Lands Development Authority,¹ the Cold Storage Commission and other parastatals.

In 1980, 6000 existing white large farms and estates were recognised by the state. By 1999, the state had promoted the creation of over 1000 large black farmers alongside 4500 large white farms, and 8000 small-scale black commercial farmers, following a market-based land redistribution, which added over 70,000 peasant families to the existing one million peasant families. Multiracial and transnational land concentration escalated (Moyo 1998), while over 250 large farms and estates were by 1999 supported by Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements (BIPPAs). Thus, about 500,000 ha amounting to 3% of the large farming area and 1% of the agricultural land were foreign owned (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2007).²

Large private estates before the FTLRP were largely owned by South African-based transnational corporations, such as Triangle Sugar Corporation and Hippo Valley (Sugar) Estate (European Union 2007), and European and domestic white capital (e.g. Miekles, Tanganda Tea, Liebigs, Mazoe Estates, Ariston Holdings). Domestic agribusiness conglomerates and estates included pioneer white family owners, some of which held mining exploitation licences.³ The sugar estates had created white large-scale outgrower farmers called independent commercial growers, who were mainly Mauritian and South African immigrants, with average landholdings of 217 ha (European Union 2007). Around 1971, Mkwasine Estate, owned by Triangle and Hippo Valley estates, created black sugar outgrowers each with 10 ha (European Union 2007). The tea estates had also created about 1000 white and black outgrowers (USAID 2010).

By 1999, numerous large farmers had created seven wildlife conservancies at over 900,000 ha in the drier lowveld region, and these involved European shareholdings (Moyo 2000, Government of Zimbabwe [GoZ] 2010). In the early 1990s industrial forest plantations (owned by the state and private capital) covered about 110,000 ha, with 16 private forestry plantations holding about 70,000 ha, owned largely by foreign companies such as Border Timbers, Mutare Pulp and Paper Mills and Allied Timbers (Bradley and McNamara 1993). Over 100 timber outgrowers existed by 1999 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 2001).

Some agricultural estates were owned by public trusts, such as the Development Trust of Zimbabwe (DTZ) which owned 385,000 ha (DTZ 2010) – the largest single entity owned on freehold tenure. Various schools and churches owned over 145,000 ha. Such public trusts engaged in commercial farming and realised profits which in theory were accrued for reinvestment into ‘development’. By 1999, the state held over 40 large estates, with the Agricultural Rural Development Authority (ARDA) holding 18 highly capitalised large estates, which produced commodities such as tea, wheat and cotton, while the Cold Storage Commission held 110,000 ha to rear livestock, for domestic and foreign markets, and the Forest Commission owned 44,830 ha of forest plantations. About 20% of Zimbabwe's entire land included parks and indigenous forests held by the state since 1972 (GoZ 2009).

Altogether, large faming estates comprised over 273 establishments covering over 1 million ha (GoZ 2009) or about 4% of the national agricultural land by 1999, about 80% of which was privately owned. This extent of land concentration and foreign ownership in an individual country is relatively larger than the scale of foreign land grabbing that is underway in most African countries without a settler–colonial history (GRAIN 2009).

The FTLRP: land reform, popular land self-provisioning and elite grabs

The FTLRP evolved in the context of intense domestic political conflict, following the failure of market-based land reforms, the social reproduction crisis generated by a structural adjustment programme in the mid-1990s, succession struggles within the ruling party and the emergence of an opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change as well as escalating foreign interventions in domestic politics and sanctions (Moyo and Yeros 2007, Sadomba 2008, also Raftopoulos 2009).

The FTLRP entailed numerous ‘illegal’ occupations of large farms by landless people, in a form of popular ‘land grabbing’ including some violent confrontations on the farms and in concurrent election campaigns. The state endorsed these occupations through structured legal–bureaucratic procedures to expropriate and apportion land to peasants, under an ‘A1’ Scheme intended for the landless and poor (Moyo 2005). Some elites also illegally occupied land, but most of them relied on state allocations to gain land in an ‘A2’ Scheme intended to create new middle-sized black-owned commercial farms. Between 2000 and 2006, state land expropriations bordered on (il)legality, as the land-acquiring authority continuously allocated land to beneficiaries following expropriations which were contested and faced incessant litigations by white farmers. The state enacted a law to protect the ‘illegal land occupations’ (in 2001), amended the land expropriation law (in 2004 and 2006), and amended the constitutional land clauses (in 2000 and 2005) to legalise land transfers within domestic jurisdiction.⁴

The fast-track land redistribution expanded the numbers of small and medium-scale farmers, while diminishing the numbers and hectarages of large farms and estates (Table 1). Over 70% of the agricultural land is now held by over 1.3 million peasant families within the Communal Areas and among FTLRP beneficiaries, who hold below 30 ha each, combining arable plots ranging from 0.2 to 10 ha with grazing commons. About 20% of Zimbabwe's farming land is now held by about 30,000 middle-scale farmers, including the 8000 pre-existing small-scale black commercial farmers and new beneficiaries, with land sizes ranging from 50 to 200 ha (Moyo 2011).

The larger capitalist farmers, allocated average land sizes of between 500 and 1000 ha by the state, comprise about 3000 individual farmers, operating on one-third of pre-2000 average larger-scale landholding sizes. Eighty per cent of these are blacks, including urban and rural-based professionals, public and private sector executives, other petty bourgeoisie elements and black capitalists. Despite the bimodal land reform design, these may be considered land grabbers! Their farms are differentiated in terms of capital intensity and hired labour. Some engage former white landowners as partners or managers, which some perceive to be a ‘fronting’ mechanism.

Social differentiation is evident within and between the peasants, middle capitalist farmers, and larger-scale farmers, based on differential access to means of production (inputs and machinery), non-farm incomes, private credit, and private and state subcontractual inputs and marketing arrangements, alongside tendencies to sublet land (Moyo and Yeros 2005). Expanded agrarian petty-commodity production imposes new structural conditions for capital accumulation, and the agrarian reform agenda, with competing demands for interventions ‘to enhance agricultural productivity and investment’ (Inclusive GoZ 2009). In addition to the potential trajectory of capital accumulation implied by this agrarian class formation, the retention of large farming estates preserve enclaves of accumulation from above and remnants of the colonial land grab.

The reconstitution of estate farming after the fast-track land redistribution

Zimbabwe's land reform policy prior to the FTLRP was ambiguous about the subdivision and redistribution of existing large-scale agro-industrial estates, wildlife conservancies and forest plantations, and silent about creating new privately or publicly owned estates. Many of the estates were not located ‘near congested communal areas’, partly because they had been established in remote and previously ‘uninhabitable’ areas, and were buffered by smaller outgrower farms around them. This made them less accessible to ‘illegal’ land occupations. They were not prioritised for redistribution and their acquisition was more reactive to popular occupations than planned.

The economic logic used by policy-makers to justify retaining agricultural estates was their alleged superior (micro-economic) efficiency and productivity over small farms (GoZ 1998a; Tupy 2007). The advantages of ‘scale economies’, ‘efficient use of technology’ and preserving ‘bulky investments’ (such as infrastructure for irrigation and agro-processing) already ‘sunk’ into the estates were highlighted (Sukume and Moyo 2004). Subdividing the estates with their ‘integrated infrastructures’ was considered not only dysfunctional, but also a cause of disputes among new farmers (Utete 2003). Others argued that land tenure insecurity prevailed on the estates due to uncertainty over expropriation, and that this discouraged investment (European Union 2009). But the agro-industrial estates were considered by the state as critical to export growth, employment promotion and agro-industrial development (GoZ 1998b).

Around 2003 government officials and ‘stakeholders’ reviewed the FTLRP policy on forest estates and wildlife conservancies (GoZ 2004), and proposed ‘indigenising’ their ownership through redistributing their shareholdings rather than subdivision. Negotiated land reform processes (Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative (ZIJRI) 2001) were by then concerned with ‘saving’ highly productive and specialised farms involved in ‘strategic products’ such as seed, citrus, dairy and timber. The delisting in 1998 of large estates which had been designated for expropriation in 1997 had set this policy parameter with regard to agro-industrial estates (Moyo 1999). Thus, many estates which had been listed for expropriation during the FTLRP, including those ‘illegally’ occupied, remained on the expropriation lists but were not appropriated by the state.

Land redistribution during the FTLRP significantly whittled down the large-scale ‘foreign-owned’ estates, but retained many (Table 2). Most of the estate expropriations occurred in the Mashonaland provinces and Matabeleland, while smaller amounts of the core estate lands were expropriated in Masvingo and Manicaland. The white family-owned estates, involved in tobacco, livestock, wheat and grain production (e.g. the Charter Estates, Ariston Holdings, Nicolle Brothers in Mashonaland, and the Oppenheimers' estate in Matabeleland South) were subdivided and redistributed. The core Triangle and Hippo Valley sugar estates retained almost all of their land. Mkwasine Estate lost all of its core estate of 16,643 ha, of which 9000 ha were allocated to A2 cane growers (with average plots of 30 ha), and the remainder allocated to A1 farmers. The tea estates in Manicaland lost over 50% of their estates, although over 1000 black outgrowers were already being promoted by Tanganda Tea Estates. Smaller sections of the forest plantations were expropriated and about 113 private and state plantations covering over 80,000 ha remained.

The white outgrower farms in the Hippo Valley estates in Masvingo had most of their land transferred to many smaller sized black outgrowers. By 2010 the 47 white estate outgrowers had been replaced by over 239 black outgrowers through an A2 sugarcane scheme, with an average plot size of 29 ha each, while only one white outgrower with 61 ha remained by 2010. Altogether there were now 560 black sugar outgrowers with average plot sizes ranging from 10 to 30 ha.

The estates owned by public trusts were largely spared. Although some DTZ land was gazetted for expropriation in 1997 and again in the early 2000s, its transfer into state property for redistribution was stopped, ostensibly because it is owned by indigenous people (meaning black nationals). The DTZ was until 2008 subletting some of its land to 21 tenant graziers, including corporate entities, former white farmers and some elite black cattle owners, but it has ceded over 60,000 ha, while over 700,000 ha of the conservancies had been resettled (GoZ 2010).

Some of the expropriated large farmlands were allocated to ARDA, increasing the state-owned estates by five. Originally, this was justified on grounds of their capital-intensive infrastructure, which putatively required one large-scale operator. By 2010 the total hectarage held by ARDA decreased by 7150 ha to 115,601 ha on 24 estates (Table 3), as other ARDA estates were redistributed. ARDA still owns about 1% of the former LSCF lands and 0.5% of all farming land. However, other state parastatals, such as the Cold Storage Commission of Zimbabwe and National Railways of Zimbabwe, lost about 55,277 and 7099 ha (or 33% and 57%) respectively of their land, while various local urban and rural authorities lost over 30% of their land (17,222 ha). Conversely, security organs (defence, prisons and police) gained over 20,000 ha.

Altogether, therefore, the FTLRP led to a slight decline of state-owned farming estates of about 18%, while the area of estates and conservancies was reduced by over 26% and 76% respectively. It almost eliminated the independent sugar and tea producers (white outgrowers), but substantially increased the number of black outgrowers. The level of foreign ownership of land was substantially reduced, but retained among the sugar, tea and timber holdings, while the shareholdings of the conservancies were partly transferred to some black elites. The range of actors involved in estate and outgrower farming, conservancies and forestry has been diversified in terms of race, nationality and class, and public holdings. Thus, some concentration of land, water, wildlife and woodlands resources was retained to preserve large-scale, specialised and integrated enterprises, to meet the state's wider development agenda.

Resistances and struggles against estate landholdings after the FTLRP

The large landed estates were always sites of fierce land struggles before and after independence (Murombedzi 1994, Moyana 2002, Hughes 2001), with the contestation going beyond farming land to include water (Hellum and Derman 2004), woodlands (Bradley and McNamara 1993), and wildlife (Wolmer 2003, Wolmer et al. 2004) resources. Wildlife was increasingly exploited for tourism by the mid-1990s, having effectively been privatised on white farmlands from 1975 (Moyo 2000). The retention of some large estates meant that land concentration continued to exclude some landless people and elites who aspired to gain land during the economic crisis. Thus various social forces in the different estate localities lobbied in different ways for their redistribution, leading in some cases to their belated subdivision for apportionment.

The formal politics of land was otherwise preoccupied with the black elites who had benefited ‘excessively’ from state land redistribution and inputs subsidies, although some organisations called for more farm workers, women and youths to be given land. ‘Security of land tenure’ among beneficiaries also became an issue, with demands for freehold tenure being largely a middle- and upper-class demand (Moyo et al. 2009). Whereas ZANU-PF incessantly pronounced the irreversibility of land redistribution, its rhetoric on the fate of large estate lands was vague. Meanwhile, civil society called for the ‘rationalisation’ of FTLRP land allocations through a land audit (Movement for Democratic Change 2004, 2007), but did not explicitly call for the redistribution of remaining estates, thus standing aloof of this distributional bias (Moyo et al. 2009). By 2005, the black elite were turning towards acquiring the shareholdings of unexpropriated conservancies under the indigenisation mantra, to the chagrin of landless people living around them.

At the peak of the FTLRP between 2000 and 2002, a large hectarage of the private estates and ARDA, DTZ and state parks lands was ‘illegally settled’ (Utete 2003). The focus of such occupation on the sugar estates was on the ‘white outgrowers’' farms, which physically shielded the core transnational corporation (TNC) estates. At Mkwasine estates, which already had black outgrowers, and in the tea and forest estates near Communal Areas in Manicaland, the illegal occupation of core estate lands became rampant. Interestingly, European Union consultants (European Union 2009) implicitly proposed the ‘reversal’ of the Mkwasine core estate's land acquisitions (to bring it from 440 to at least 1000 ha), to enable it to supply the nucleus quantity of sugar required by its mills, putatively so that it could afford to rehabilitate the local railway and siding. In the end the core estate was further reduced to about 250 ha.

The GoZ was from 2003 discouraging popular ‘illegal settlements’ around the estates (Utete 2003). It did expropriate some of the plantation crop estates' land as recommended from the provinces, but it focused more on redistributing individually owned large farms, and the mixed farming estates and ranches in Mashonaland, Matabeleland and Midlands. Indeed it did expropriate some of their unutilised lands, such as the 5000 ha ranching land belonging to Triangle Ltd (European Union 2007) and some unplanted ‘reserve’ land owned by Border Timbers (field observation). Some local authorities turned to ‘formally allocating’ estate land to ‘beneficiaries’, contradicting central government's evolving land and agricultural investment policy, fuelling local grievances over foreign land ownership and highlighting the loss of an opportunity to finally redress this inequity.

Some of Border Timbers' forest estates (48,000 ha) land had been ‘pegged’ for resettlement by 2001, but the Forest-Based Land Reform Policy, adopted in 2004, brought a moratorium to ‘illegal’ timber estate occupations. The state's Forest Commission of Zimbabwe (FCZ) actually evicted the occupiers, who sought acceptance as formal outgrowers, promising to prevent new land invasions.

About 4255 local peasant families had continued to occupy DTZ land ‘illegally’ (Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement [MLRR] 2009), although this included about 2000 families who are expected to be displaced by the construction of the Tokwe-Mukorsi dam, which will supply water to numerous estates. About 232 families among those ‘illegally’ settled on the DTZ land claimed to have been officially allocated it under the A1 scheme, while about 23 new farmers held A2 land offer letters (allegedly provided by GoZ officials) for the DTZ plots they occupied. The police ended up arresting eight ‘illegal land occupiers’ for assaulting a policeman and Ministry of Land and Rural Resettlement (MLRR) officials, who tried to evict them (Newsdays 2010). Central government ‘mediated’ the dispute between DTZ, the Masvingo Rural District Authorities and the land occupiers over land to be ceded by DTZ to some settlers and encouraged the MLRR to find alternate land for the others. Masvingo province wanted 150,000 ha of the DTZ's land for redistribution, while the DTZ offered about 60,000 ha to accommodate the land demands (MLRR 2009).

By 2009 most of the conservancies had been occupied by Communal Area residents, with over 10% of these lands ‘settled’ by about 20,000 families who resisted government evictions (MLRR 2009). Besides the private conservancies, Public Parks and Forest Lands, including Gonarezhou Park in southeast Zimbabwe, were also occupied (Wolmer 2003, Wolmer et al. 2004). Numerous half-hearted attempts by the Parks Authority to evict them failed. Local government administrators and central government officials remained at loggerheads over subdivision of conservancies for redistribution via the shareholding redistribution or indigenisation policy.

Disputes also arose between the GoZ and some former owners of the conservancies. The latter were claiming compensation for the expropriated land and fixed improvements, as well as wild animals which they considered their ‘movable’ private assets, with a market value. State officials argued that the natural resources (including wild animals) on LSCF farms were public property, and that wild animals would constitute part of the share-holdings of black entrants into the conservancy partnerships with former landholders (GoZ 2004). By 2010, about half of the conservancies' shareholdings had been allocated to blacks, including some ‘belonging’ to ‘other’ provinces. This fuelled an intra-elite class struggle for access to shares coloured by ethno-regional sentiment (Moyo 2011b), as provincial politicians and businessmen competed for such shareholdings amongst themselves and against ‘outsiders’. Meanwhile some excluded landless people and black middle-class people perceived the retention of conservancies as prioritising animals in a tourist industry dominated by white and foreign operators, to their disadvantage.

The scale of publicly owned agricultural estates' land and natural resources remains extensive enough to be considered to deprive some landless and poor families of access to land and autonomous ‘livelihoods’. Their legitimacy depends on improving public well-being through profit-sharing with communities, improving the availability and popular access to food at affordable prices, and providing ‘decent’ work (also Moyo 2011b; Borras 2005). The very existence of state-owned estates was always contested, because it arose from colonial land grabbing, the perceived corruption and incompetence at ARDA estates, and more recently the perceived ‘negative reputation’ of local white investors. Moreover, apparently a few black (and white) elites, including some state officials, use some of the Cold Storage Commission's (CSC's) and ARDA's underutilised grazing lands for their private livestock. The potential redistributive public benefits from the ARDA estates had not yet materialised by 2010, since most of them remained underutilised until 2008, due to various constraints.

Recently, Communal Area farmers in Chisumbanje and Chipinge areas of Manicaland alleged that the ARDA sugar plantation was encroaching on their territory and disregarding boundaries, despite protestations from villagers and traditional leaders (Sunday Mail 2010). There was uncertainty over the welfare of numerous peasants in Musikavanhu and neighbouring villages, who feared loss of ‘their land’ to ARDA investments (Mujeyi and Moyo 2010). The GoZ was reportedly assessing the compensation due to villagers who were being affected by this ARDA Ethanol project (The Herald 2010a ).

Farmers' organisations representing the new black sugarcane outgrowers in Chiredzi soon emerged, as race-based struggles between new black and former white outgrowers escalated. The latter contested the rights of the former to existing sugarcane crops, irrigation facilities and services from the core estates, and had litigated to stop payments to the new farmers for their cane crop sold to the Chiredzi sugar mills. They also continued to litigate for repossession of ‘their’ land. The black outgrower association resisted this. Later they challenged the European Union aid policy of only supporting the holders of ‘uncontested’ land (i.e. excluding redistributed plots), the methodology proposed for the proposed National Land Audit, and the European Commission-funded National Sugar Adaptation Strategy, intended to redevelop the sugar industry, since they felt it marginalised them.

Struggles over access to water for irrigation, which the remaining large estates currently dominate, also raised wider regional and institutional questions, beyond the TNC estates and new sugar outgrowers (European Union 2007). A future scramble for water is expected, and it involves the private sugar estates, outgrowers, the DTZ estate and the ARDA estates, as well as other new black farmers upstream and downstream, given their expansionary plans.

A new agrarian politics, based on class, race and ethno-regional cleavages, is brewing around the reconstituted estate farming sector, as demands for access to land, water, wildlife and woodlands resources have broadened. It involves pervasive pressures placed on the state by international and domestic capital, new black and former white large farmers who envision expanding the agro-industrial estates and conservancies for elite accumulation, and various classes opposed to this. Meanwhile, wider inter- and intra-class struggles among blacks over the control of redistributed and retained lands have the potential to escalate, as more ‘elites’ seek to gain access to land or to enlarge their landholdings, including on the estate lands and public parks, at the expense of the landless and smaller farmers. In some localities these struggles assume an ethno-regional character. Yet the state has increasingly justified the retention of large estates through a broader agro-industrialisation campaign discussed below, which has emboldened it to ‘attract’ more foreign investors into estate farming.

Not surprisingly, dominant media and non-governmental organisation discourses focus their protests on the absence of transparency and accountability in the negotiations over the investment deals on DTZ and state-owned estates. This is an important concern, which has not yet been examined in terms of developmental goals. Criticism is also correctly placed on the governments' callous eviction of some ‘illegal settlers’ on the ARDA and DTZ estates, alongside its failure to eradicate multiple farm holding in general and to ensure the equitable redistribution of the shares of remaining estates. Few have called for the redistribution of remaining private estate lands, nor commented critically on the accumulation strategies and exploitative practices of remaining foreign and state-owned estates.

Estate farming and renewed developmentalism during the FTLRP

The reconstitution of large-scale estate farming and wider agrarian reform during the FTLRP period was structured by the imperatives of a changing agrarian structure, and its competing accumulation strategies, and an increasing crisis of social reproduction, in the context of the deteriorating economic situation, exacerbated by sanctions, which limited access to multilateral concessional loans, leading to a balance of payments crisis. Agricultural production had declined rapidly but variably from 2002, and agricultural inputs supplies were diminishing, while food prices rose sharply (Moyo 2011b), highlighting the transitional decline of production that is expected after relocative land redistribution, but which in Zimbabwe's case was prolonged (Moyo and Yeros 2007, Moyo 2011b). By 2003, the state had adopted various heterodox economic plans (National Economic Development Priority Programme [NEDPP] 2006, Moyo and Yeros 2007) replacing the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme's (ESAP's) liberalisation with state interventions. These were aimed at a more auto-centred inward looking strategy, in order to address the fuel and food shortages and import price hikes, improve domestic production and access to credit, conserve foreign exchange through capital controls and tame escalating inflation. Agricultural policy was focused on ‘Command Agriculture’ (GoZ 2003), which sought to direct agricultural production towards set targets, largely through subsidised state inputs and credit, price and agricultural commodity market controls and trade protection.

The GoZ compelled and persuaded capital through various policy measures to support the new farmers, while appealing to the patriotism of the latter to prioritise food production for self-sufficiency. Farming increasingly depended on state finance and credit, although capacity to subsidise inputs and outputs marketing was limited (Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe 2007). The printing of money and state purchases of foreign exchange on parallel markets escalated, including subsidies for agriculture, but this fuelled hyperinflation. The GoZ escalated price controls between 2005 and 2007 by arresting managers of non-compliant firms, but capital withdrew goods from formal markets, while private supplies of agricultural inputs and credit continued to dwindle. The GoZ also sought to influence production on the large private and public agricultural estates towards expanding food and agro-fuel production, partly by ‘allowing’ them to retain their land and to incorporate more black outgrowers into their enterprises. Some remaining estates and LSCFs responded positively to this, inter alia to avoid being perceived as undermining land reform and supporting ‘regime change’. From 2007, contract farming was encouraged (e.g. Chinese tobacco contracting and some remaining pre-2000 agricultural merchants) through new export earnings retention incentives. These policies however only shored up agricultural production to an average of below 50% of the pre-2000 peaks (Moyo 2011a), although by 2010 oilseeds, tobacco, sugar beans and cotton production had reached 60%, 65%, 90% and 80% of the pre-2000 average levels (Moyo 2011).

In practice, the decision to preserve some estates was influenced by declining food and agricultural exports production and rising imports, particularly after the 2002/3 drought, and increasing world prices of imported food grains and the proposed use of large state-owned estates to fill the production gap, as well as rising oil prices from 2001, as national import cover declined. This generated government debates on selective land expropriation and by 2006, a renewed import substitution industrialisation strategy was emerging. Aimed at reducing fuel imports through local agro-fuels, cutting food imports and dependence on food aid, it was also in defence against sanctions from the west. By 2007, the state was courting new foreign ‘investors’ and domestic capital towards financing production on public farming estates, while in 2008 a neoliberal strategy was adopted to liberalise the currency, trade and agricultural markets, and to attract foreign investment.

Production trends on the farming estates after FTLRP

The production of plantation crops on private estates had experienced limited decline until 2005, but following hyperinflation between 2006 and 2008 they fell by about 50% of the pre-FTLRP levels (Table 4). Sugar outputs, of which 70% were produced by the core estates, had declined by over 30% in 2010.⁵ Thirty-eight per cent of the 450,000 tonnes of sugar produced in 2006 was being exported, compared with 53% being exported in 2002 (European Union 2007).⁶ Tea output, of which 95% is exported, had declined by about 40% in 2009/10, mainly on the core estates which had been providing 86% of the commodity, with the rest produced by about 100 white and black outgrowers and ARDA's Katiyo estate. Coffee declined by over 97%, having been dominated by the estates and white outgrowers.

The sugar production decline was allegedly due ‘to the effects of the Land Reform process and to a lesser extent the effects associated with the present economic and inflationary conditions in Zimbabwe’ (European Union 2007, p. ii). Since production had declined mostly among outgrowers, the volatile currency markets and inflation had led to reduced supplies of subcontracted inputs to them by the estates. Sugar export prices were also deteriorating with the European Union reforms leading to a 67.5% reduction of raw sugar prices between 2005/06 and 2010 (European Union 2007), while the prices of imported fertilisers and transport fuel rose during the period. There was a slight shift in land use by black outgrowers away from sugar towards food production for family consumption and sales, and by 2006 they increasingly focused on maize, millet and beans, vegetables and cotton (Scoones et al. 2010, European Union 2007). However, by 2011 overall sugar production on the estates and among outgrowers was recovering, reaching about 65% of their 2002 output (Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe 2011).

Soon after 2001, exotic timber-producing companies (e.g. Border Timbers) stopped planting new trees, apparently because the ‘illegal land occupations supported by big politicians’ had brought uncertainty to their land tenure (Abu-Basutu 2010). Timber (sawn) outputs decreased from 374,779 m³ in 1998/99 to about 194,181 m³ in 2008/09, with over 90% of this coming from the core estates (Timber Producers Federation 2009).

The FTLRP did not directly lead to a substantial loss of formal waged agrarian labour among the estates because most of their core production land had not been redistributed and they also retained most of their permanent workforce. When high inflation reigned, however, estate labour wages deteriorated further, as plantation commodity prices fell and labour shortages increased (Chambati and Moyo 2009). Agrarian reform had not fully overhauled exploitative large-scale agrarian labour relations.

By 2002, production at the ARDA and CSC estates had declined substantially. ARDA attempted to revamp its agricultural production, first by expanding the area under various seeds, wheat and maize, based on cheap credit and foreign exchange allocations, supplied by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. ARDA in ‘alliance’ with the Nuanetsi Ranch owned by DTZ and Masvingo province authorities, began in 2003 to clear some DTZ lands for maize production through a state-supported contract issued to a Chinese firm. These initiatives floundered due to inadequate financing. Around 2005 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was contracting locally based food-processing and inputs-supply agribusinesses (e.g. National Foods, INNSCOR, Chemco, Seedco etc.) to produce seed, wheat and oilseed. This also floundered due to disagreements over product pricing and profit sharing, since agribusinesses invested little of their own cash, but made profits from ‘free’ state land and financial subsidies (National Economic Recovery Council (NERC) minutes, 2006⁷). The GoZ's attempt to turn around production on ARDA and DTZ estates, through annual domestic land leases and subcontractual production relations had not succeeded. Moreover, the expansion of production on these estates required the repair and construction of new dams and irrigation infrastructure, which it had failed to secure local financing for, leading to a rethink of the land utilisation strategy on hitherto insufficiently utilised public estates.

New foreign investments in estate farming

In this situation, the recovery of agricultural production on the large private and public farming estates increasingly relied on foreign investments. The export-oriented production of the foreign estates lingered on. They planned to increase sugarcane production to 1 million tonnes per year, based on cropping 30,000 more ha (on top of the 45,000 ha owned by the estates and outgrowers), to meet Zimbabwe's European Union quota and other markets in the context of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) under the ACP-EU Lomé Convention. The European Commission offered aid towards a National Sugar Adaptation Strategy, which proposed to leave the home market with 28% of such output and to export the rest. ‘Dollarisation’ in 2008 created even more ‘incentives’ for increased external financing of the foreign estates' sugar export plan, backed by European Union aid and private domestic bank credit, despite the decreasing price of exported sugar, which consumes much of the scarce national water supplies, vis-à-vis domestic food and agro-industrial raw material needs.

The search for new foreign financing for agriculture had since 2002 focused on new loans and barter deals, and tentative negotiations on the forward sales of mining concessions, largely to import agricultural inputs and machinery, whose direct provision by the GoZ was central to ‘targeted production’ (Moyo 2011a). Foreign ‘investors’ were being encouraged by 2004, under the Look East Policy (focused on the Chinese) to engage in subcontractual buying of tobacco and cotton. Substantial Chinese state trade credit to import fertiliser, agricultural chemicals, tractors, generators and pumps was realised from 2006. Other foreign capitals, including from Russia, Indonesia and Malaysia was from 2007 being brokered by white domestic capital to invest in the public estates.

By 2009 ARDA had signed a 20-year joint-venture agreement with two private Zimbabwean companies (Rating Investments Ltd and Macdom Investments Ltd, owned by local whites and blacks), to lease over 50,000 ha of ARDA's Middle Sabi and Chipinge estates, in a build, operate and transfer scheme, intended to establish 40,000 ha of sugarcane and revive the irrigation infrastructure within eight years, and later to develop 10,000 more ha (The Herald, 2010b). A two-year rent-free grace period was provided for, ostensibly to allow the sugarcane to gestate, while some outgrowers are to be contracted to supply sugarcane. Construction of the US$600 million sugarcane to ethanol distillery plant with a capacity to produce 35,000–40,000 litres/day (GAIN 2010) through another foreign ‘investor’ (Green Fuels (Pvt) Ltd) was underway. By the end of 2010, over 3000 new ha of sugar were being reaped for processing at Triangle Ltd Mills, while ARDA's ethanol processing begins in early 2011. No share was provided for the peasants from the adjacent Garahwa Communal Lands, who originally owned the land, while those deemed ‘illegal’ occupiers of that land were being evicted.

In 2008, the DTZ leased over 140,000 ha of its land to a joint firm between DTZ and Custa Pvt Ltd, called Zimbabwe Bio Energy (ZBE) project. Cutsa (Pvt) Ltd, which is owned by a large white Zimbabwean capitalist (Billy Rautenbach) and foreign investors (from Russia and Spain) holds 70% of the shares, and had invested US$15 million. About 100,000 ha are dedicated to sugarcane production towards producing 500 million litres of ethanol per year, the rest of the land is intended to increase cattle from 5000 to 25,000 head, as well as to increase its 100,000 crocodiles to 300,000 by 2012. Over 2000 employees were taken on by DTZ. This deal led to the non-renewal of the DTZ's grazing leases with black elites and unsuccessful attempts to evict ‘illegal’ land occupiers, since central government has pressed the DTZ to allow 263 settlers to retain some land, dissociating itself from dispossessing this constituency.

Unlike the private sugar estates, the government's plan is to resuscitate and expand ethanol and agro-industrial raw materials production. Triangle Ltd stopped producing ethanol for petrol blending in 1992, but in 2006, the GoZ's National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) contracted Triangle Ltd to supply it with 20 million litres of ethanol (European Union 2007). Thus, in addition to Triangle Ltd's supply of ethanol for industrial, potable and pharmaceutical requirements, and other sugar by-products, including molasses and bagasse, ingredients for yeast, carbon dioxide, livestock feedstock and fertiliser substitutes from vinesse. While generating more electricity generated at the mills, the new foreign investments are meant to triple these industrial inputs. Sugarcane production for agro-fuel will soon dominate foreign investments in the south-eastern region's estate lands, which are expected to produce 90% of Zimbabwe's agro-fuels on over 150,000 ha by 2012.⁸ Thus, the substantial reorientation of estate production towards substituting domestic transport fuel imports with agro-fuels runs counter to the European Union's extroverted strategy. Although the ecological benefits of this are not yet calculated, and foreign investment is still relatively low, reducing fuel imports and local agro-industrial capacity and rising agricultural outputs create scope for some national sufficiency.

The liberalisation of the foreign exchange market, capital account and trade, as well as political stabilisation and the reversal of hyperinflation, were by late 2009 leading to increased domestic agro-industrial processing from capacity utilisation levels of below 20% to over 40% (Ministry of Finance 2010). Some foreign export crop merchants had returned, while formal cross-border trade increased the imports of foods, beverages, farm inputs. Local agricultural products soon faced stiff ‘competition’ from cheaper (genetically modified and duty free) imports from South Africa, Brazil, China and the ‘West’, leading to new demands for protection. After two years of good rainfall the production of maize, cotton, small grains and tobacco were rising, while wheat and oilseed outputs remain in substantial deficits (Ministry of Finance 2010, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe 2011). Speedier recovery remains constrained by limited accesses to private credit, related to low levels of liquidity and associated high interest rates.

The gradual recovery of plantation crop (sugar and tea) production on the estates and their outgrowers suggests that deepening neoliberal policies enable the foreign estates to reinvest and borrow locally to finance expanded production more readily, while continuing to control the sugar and tea ‘commodity chains’. The retention of estates owned by the state and public trusts was intended to simultaneously counter agricultural production deficits and import dependence, while extending the state's capacity to direct development towards an articulated trajectory, including increased local beneficiation of agricultural raw materials and agro-industrial growth. Full-scale agricultural production recovery is however yet to be realised.

The scale of social and ‘developmental’ benefits that can be expected from the increased profit sharing and products that are expected from new foreign investments into the public and private estates are as yet unclear, but trading these off against deeper land redistribution is certainly not generally popular. The overall goal to shore up the sanctioned state's relative autonomy from ‘Western’ capital and the Bretton Woods institutions has also not been fully realised (various interviews). This vision of state accumulation and autonomy, alongside nurturing a national bourgeoisie, was also pitted against less influential provincial contestations of estate land ownership, reflecting local political and business leaders' desire to control sub-national accumulation processes.

Conclusions

Substantial areas of large-scale foreign and state-owned agricultural estates were retained, despite the extensive fast-track land redistribution process. This was in the context of increasing prices of imported foods, fuel and farm inputs, and slow agricultural production recovery, as well as economic sanctions. The state justified the retention of large agricultural estates through a developmentalist narrative, including the ‘indigenisation’ of the shareholdings of foreign-owned firms, to sustain import substitution and agro-industrial recovery, alongside broad-based agricultural production among differentiated land beneficiaries, while reintroducing neoliberal ‘incentives’ to promote increased agricultural production. While the private estates are resuscitating their export sugar, timber, tea and wildlife operations and the state estates lead new agro-fuel production to supply the home and foreign markets, overall agricultural recovery has been slow, albeit faster among exports such as tobacco and cotton, suggesting continued dependence on foreign capital and speedier global reintegration. This agrarian accumulation outcome, also underwritten by exploitative agrarian labour relations, faces cheap food imports and open foreign exchange markets, thus reinforcing the neoliberal leaning of the Zimbabwean economy, although it provides marginal room for state intervention in domestic markets. The persistence of land concentration under foreign, multiracial domestic capital and state ownership – at the expense of more comprehensive redistributive land reform – continues to be resisted, including through popular ‘illegal land occupations’ and intra-elite ethno-regional advocacy, which sections of the state condone. In historical perspective, however, even this relative retention of land concentration, with all its contradictions, places a brake on foreign-led land grabbing and inequality, offering scope for further land struggles in a former settler–colony.

Note on contributor

Sam Moyo is Executive Director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS), Harare, Zimbabwe, and current President of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He received his doctorate in environmental and rural development issues, with a focus on land reform and agrarian change. His works include African Land Questions, Agrarian Transitions and the State: Contradictions of Neoliberal Land Reforms (2008), Land Reform Under Structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe (2000), and Land and Sustainable Development in Africa (2008; co-edited with Kojo Sebastian Amanor).