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Delivering land and securing rural livelihoods: Synthesis and way forward?¹
Michael Roth, Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison²
March 2003

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Paper Presented at the: Symposium on Delivering Land and securing Rural Livelihoods: Post Independence Land Reform and Resettlement in Zimbabwe,³ Mont Clair, Nyanga, 26-28 March 2003

Introduction
I first came to Zimbabwe in 1990 on a World Bank mission to participate in a land sub-sector study. There was virtual agreement even then among Zimbabweans and the international community that land reform needed to be accelerated to redress Zimbabwe’s unequal and racially biased land distribution. But, there was also the sense, from my point of view, that government, in addition to enabling land reform, was also unwittingly obstructing it through excessive centralisation and monopolisation of land acquisition and resettlement (Roth 1993). It is not an issue of capacity and skills, for the land administration machinery within Zimbabwe has an abundance of both. Rather it is an issue of a patriarchal land administration that has asserted far more controls over land allocation, land use, land management and resettlement than it can satisfactorily deliver, but it avoids creating space for private market solutions that would help complement its own efforts (see also Chigumete, Masendeke).⁴ This chapter aims to synthesise key findings of the research papers and perspectives in this volume, and from plenary discussions at the conference, and then proceeds with proposing a strategic policy roadmap for reengaging government, donors and civil society in land and agrarian reform in Zimbabwe.

Incoherencies
A number of contradictions in land policy have become evident that confound the coherency of Zimbabwe’s land policy framework, most notably:

• Land reform has been completed according to some in government, yet compulsory land acquisitions on the ground continue
• Land access for the poor has been enhanced by Fast Track, but poor settlers live in a tenure void (absent secure property rights) and lack secure livelihoods
• Deeds registration and survey confers secure rights, but the durability of these rights and the utility of the system have been cast in doubt by compulsory acquisition and Fast Track occupation
• Fast Track Land Reform while providing land to new-found beneficiaries has also led to the collapse of the private land market that until the late 1990s was successfully redistributing land to black emerging farmers, including women (Rugube et al, Petrie et al)⁵
• Results of Fast Track land reform, while applauded by some for helping to redress the land question in Zimbabwe, has also created economic regress, agricultural productivity decline, severe capital depreciation, disinvestment, and collapse of land values and agricultural markets for seed, fertiliser and credit
• There has been and continues to be subdivision restrictions which have denied the downsizing of farms from 400 to several thousand hectares in size based on grounds of economic threshold or viability (Sukume and Roth), yet farm size limits have been waived under Fast Track resettlement resulting in rapid and sometimes ad hoc fragmentation of commercial farms into small parcels
• Careful beneficiary selection or traits are needed to ensure good land husbandry on model A2 farms (Mukute, Gonese and Mukora), yet many beneficiaries under Fast Track, who have been self-selected, are poor and lack the farm management skills and wherewithal to do little more than engage in subsistence agriculture⁶
• Land reform is intended to help equalise land and uplift those in poverty, yet farm workers who are among the most impoverished and vulnerable have suffered from displacement, destitution, lost employment and violence (Magaramombe)⁷

It is these multiple facets of land reform that are polarising the land policy debate in Zimbabwe and are creating confusion over intent, motives, and actions on the part of government. For it is inconsistency, incoherency and selective application of law that erode confidence in government's ability to govern, and to protect individual interests. The land policy framework is thus in need of reformulation, and the issues above are key starting points for considering change.

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1. Synthesis presentation prepared for the conference Delivering Land and Securing Rural Livelihoods: Post-Independence Land Reform and Resettlement in Zimbabwe held 26-28 March 2003 at the Mont Clair hotel, Nyanga.
2. Michael Roth is senior researcher with the Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, fax: 608-262-2141, email: mjroth@facstaff.wisc.edu. The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The author gratefully acknowledges the comments of Kudzai Chatiza, Charles Chavunduka, Renson Gasela, Francis Gonese, David Hasluck, Daniel Ncube, and Kizito Mazvimavi. However, all views and opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the author unless otherwise cited.
3. This volume was made possible in part through support provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), under the terms of USAID/ZIMBABWE CA 690-A-00-99-00270-00. The Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe provide technical assistance, training, capacity building, and research in support of Zimbabwe's Land Reform and Resettlement Program II. Project website: http://www.wisc.edu/ltc/zimpfl.html
4. All citations refer to chapters or perspectives in this volume with the exception of references included in the bibliography.
5. Rugube et al documents the collapse of the land and financial bond markets beginning in the 1990s but accelerating after the onset of Fast Track. They also show the acceleration of the market for public leases as government has begun to unload properties acquired through the 1990s.
6. According to Daniel Ncube (personal communications), the broad policy of decongesting communal lands for resettlement (outside A2 schemes) is administered on a first-come, first-served basis.
7. Magaramombe notes that while it is not government policy to displace farm workers, the reality on the ground is contradictory. There is resurgence of the perception that farm workers are aliens and do not warrant equal rights or consideration. Unfortunately, despite lost employment, low levels of education make it difficult for them to secure other forms of employment, hence many have been driven into poverty.

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