Abstract
The complex politics of Zimbabwe’s multifaceted land issue calls for a nuanced approach to unravelling the overlapping layers of the country’s land question. The thesis acknowledges the specific complexities of how the politics of land and state making processes have been intertwined from the beginning with a gendered, racialised, and hierarchical colonial past. Thus, the thesis traces the legacies of past policies and contests over land through the lived experiences of elderly women farmers whose realities present an analytical lens across these different epochs. A gaze through their life histories re-frames the gendered impacts of past land policies and contests between the colonial state and the colonised which linger on and re-emerge in post-colonial Zimbabwe. The thesis tracks down how gendered racialised hierarchies inherited from the colonial past were re-deployed in the post-colonial state as new situations emerged and structures of authority, power and land itself radically changed. By focusing on 21 elderly women farmers’ narratives, collected through in-depth life history interviews, a complex mix of shifting dynamics, and sometimes contradictions within government land policies and resettlement programmes with their gendered impacts emerges. The study site in Mashonaland Central, one of the poorest and politically charged provinces, gives perspectives on the situated peculiarities of elderly farmers whose diverse backgrounds contribute to how each experienced the complex land trajectories as they materialised. Through an intersectional analysis embedded in a feminist standpoint, this thesis explores and frames in great empirical detail the economic and social impact of different land reforms on elderly women farmers’ livelihoods. Access to human, social, political and financial capital and markets are differentiated across the varied historical timelines to unveil how gender impacts on access to resources, which in turn impacts capabilities for productivity and accumulation patterns for women farmers at different stages of their lives. In weaving the national trajectories on land, conflicts and consequent reforms with the gendered realities faced by women farmers, the thesis brings out the challenges of resettlement for elderly women farmers whose productivity is hampered by the failing economy and limited government support. The thesis highlights the agency with which elderly women navigate this space to try and ensure sustainability of their livelihoods. In line with the African feminist standpoint, the findings in this thesis call for a re-imagining and re-conceptualising of land reform policies, as well as gendered processes in Zimbabwe for the benefit of all members of society, including marginalized groups such as elderly women farmers.
D.Phil. (Sociology)