Abstract
Before the land reform, farm workers were the responsibility of their employers on white-owned commercial farms. The power dynamics between the employer and employees on commercial farms were described as 'domestic government'. These power relations varied across farms, influencing farm workers' access to resources, primarily based on hierarchy and gender. The land reform in 2000 dismantled the 'domestic government' and had significant consequences for farm workers, who were often marginalised in the national discourse and labelled as the 'forgotten people'. These consequences included loss of identity, loss of waged labour and ‘declarations of dependence’. They had to find new employers while some had to start ‘new lives’ and search for off-farm livelihood strategies. Several studies by ‘patriotic agrarianists’ have indicated positive outcomes of the land reform on farm worker livelihood strategies and the changing power dynamics on former white-owned commercial farms. In this thesis, I explore these new livelihood strategies in the post-Mugabe and COVID-19 era, characterised by economic challenges reminiscent of the 2008 crisis and renewed heightened political control. I will delve into concepts such as modes of belonging, afterlives, kukiya-kiya, and weapons of the weak. Given the volatile political environment due to the general elections and COVID-19, I adopted a patchwork (zvigamba) ethnography approach to conduct fieldwork in Mashonaland West Province, focusing on A2 farms and peri-urban areas. This zvigamba approach integrated diverse experiences of farm workers and former farm workers to provide a comprehensive understanding of the changing power dynamics on A2 farms, the cultural politics of livelihood strategies, and kukiya-kiya in peri-urban areas. Its goal is to contribute to a more nuanced comprehension of power relations in resettled areas, kukiya-kiya, and modes of belonging. The findings of this study show that the FTRLP disassembled the domestic government on the farms that had been reformed during the first two decades of post-colonial rule, working with regulatory authorities such as the state, non-governmental organizations, and trade unions. On the ‘new’ farms, this was replaced by a more authoritarian form of domestic government, where productive forms of power, such as biopolitics were replaced with pure sovereignty – but in the hands of the ‘new settlers’ not the colonial conquerors. In contrast, farm workers and young people who moved to peri-urban areas had to adopt ‘kungwavha-ngwavha’, an extension of ‘kukiya-kiya’, emphasising survival over morality. This has become the way of living under the new dispensation.
Keywords: Farmworkers, domestic government, mode of belonging, weapons of the weak, kungwavha-ngwavha and kukiya-kiya.