Transcending Global and National (Mis)representations through Local Responses to Displacement: The Case of Zimbabwean (ex-)Farm Workers

Hartnack, Andrew

doi:10.1093/jrs/fep022

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…How former farmworkers have been incorporated into the new agrarian system has been the subject of much debate in Zimbabwe (Hartnack, 2009;Magaramombe, 2010;Moyo, Rutherford, & Amanor-Wilks, 2000). The simple narrative that workers were displaced (often in situ) and that they remain unemployed is not supported by the evidence (Chambati, 2011).…”

Section: Farmers and Workers: New Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tobacco, contract farming, and agrarian change in Zimbabwe

Scoones

Mavedzenge²,

Murimbarimba³

et al. 2017

Journal of Agrarian Change

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The growth of smallholder tobacco production since 2000 has been one of the big stories of Zimbabwe's post-land reform experience.Yet the implications for agrarian change, and the consequences for new relations between farmers, the state, and agribusiness capital have rarely been discussed. The paper reports on work carried out in the Mvurwi area of Mazowe district in Zimbabwe with a sample of 220 A1 (smallholder) farmers and 100 former farmworkers resident in compounds on the same farms. By going beyond a focus on operational and business dimensions of contract farming, the paper concludes with reflections on the implications for understanding agrarian relations and social differentiation in those areas of Zimbabwe where tobacco growing is now significant, with lessons more broadly on the political economy of contract farming, and the integration of agribusiness capital following land reform. KEYWORDScontract farming, land reform, tobacco, Zimbabwe | INTRODUCTIONTobacco production has become central to patterns of accumulation by small-scale farmers in some new land reform areas in Zimbabwe, particularly in the wetter Highveld areas. This has occurred through engagement with agribusiness, including through contracting arrangements, as well as direct sales to companies and auction floors.The tobacco industry has been transformed following the radical land reform in 2000, with production now taking place among a far wider group of often small-scale farmers, resulting in new relations between farmers, labour, agribusiness capital, and the state. This paper examines the implications of this transformation, and asks who wins and who loses from this major reconfiguration of the agrarian landscape. Understanding these patterns of agrarian change, and the accommodations as well as conflicts with diverse forms of capital in the context of tobacco production, sheds important light on the post-land reform agrarian setting, offering hints of longer-term dynamics of social differentiation and class formation, as well as linkages between farming, capital, and the state in Zimbabwe.More generally, the case offers an insight into agrarian transition following land redistribution, highlighting different paths of accumulation and differentiation. In his review of particular national and historical paths of agrarian transition, Byres (1991Byres ( , 1996 argues that agrarian transitions to capitalism from below are possible if the state and an organized peasantry can challenge the power of capitalist, landlord classes. In South Africa, Neocosmos (1993) argued that a democratic state could facilitate "accumulation from below", and others have made the case that this is occurring on the margins, although without significant support (Cousins, 2013). Mamdani (1987) explores paths of accumulation in Uganda, contrasting accumulation from below with accumulation from above. He shows that there is no clear separation between different paths of accumulation; indeed, the role of the state, including bureaucrats and political patrona...

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Section: Farmers and Workers: New Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tobacco, contract farming, and agrarian change in Zimbabwe

Scoones

Mavedzenge²,

Murimbarimba³

et al. 2017

Journal of Agrarian Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Despite these challenges for farmworkers, resettlement areas remained a place called home, a source of livelihood and generational memories. Hartnack (2009) argues, the farm workers who remained on farms used their agency to respond to different scenarios they found themselves in to survive (p. 357).…”

Section: Agrarian Labour and Social Relations In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Social Relations and Agrarian Labour’: Exploring the Dynamics of Relations Between Former Farm Workers and A1 Beneficiaries in Zimbabwe’s A1 Settlements

Marewo

2022

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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This article examines the evolving nature of social and agrarian relations between A1 villagised beneficiaries of the Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe (FTLRP) and former farm workers. Using a case study from Zvimba District, Mashonaland West, I investigate how after FTLRP farm workers are accessing land and a host of livelihoods through social relations with the A1 beneficiaries. The article argues that after FTLRP, farm workers have established social relations with beneficiaries of FTLRP, which have enabled them to access land, agricultural inputs, and other socioeconomic benefits.

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“…NGOs, and particularly GAPWUZ, had difficulty working with farmworkers, as the land occupiers and ZANU–PF cadres in the area saw them as supportive of the MDC. The tens of thousands of farmworkers who were displaced and who moved into urban centres also faced potential discrimination because of their presumed allegiance to the MDC, or were assumed to be the most vulnerable and impoverished because they had been farmworkers (Hartnack ). The new political terrain has meant that struggle for farmworkers has had to follow the narrow paths defined by ZANU–PF leaders, even if there may be contestation between different ruling party authorities (e.g.…”

Section: Agrarian Labour In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For farmworkers in Zimbabwe, those still working and those displaced, this most inevitably entails working through various dependencies, some of which could be precarious and highly unequal in terms of gender, nationality, ethnicity, race, age and, especially, class (see also Hartnack , 364ff.). Organizations such as political parties, trade unions and NGOs engage through such dependencies, while bringing their own sets of assumptions, power relations and particular social projects.…”

Section: Agrarian Labour In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the majority of farmworkers who did not receive land, some were displaced by the violence (Sachikonye ; Hartnack , ), while others remained in the former commercial farming areas. Of the latter, Magaramombe () estimates that between 50 and 70 per cent of the former farmworker population remains on the farms on which they used to work or in other former commercial farming areas.…”

Section: Agrarian Labour In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

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Organization and (De)mobilization of Farmworkers in Zimbabwe: Reflections on Trade Unions, NGOs and Political Parties

Rutherford

2014

Journal of Agrarian Change

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This paper examines the 'labour question' in light of the wider agrarian questions, with a focus on the ways to understand activities of trade unions, NGOs and political parties as key actors in seeking to mobilize farmworkers. Drawing on research on farmworkers in Zimbabwe and engaging with literature concerning farm labour in the drastic changes to large-scale agriculture in this country since 2000, the paper emphasizes the importance of examining the wider terrain of politics that influences the actions and abilities of extrafarm organizations to operate with farmworkers. Through critically engaging with the wider literature concerning the political economy of farm labour, the paper proposes the importance of attending to what it calls the 'cultural politics of belonging', which strongly shapes both the forms of attachment of farmworkers and farm dwellers to the farms and the strategies of mobilization and demobilization taken by these organizations. Through attending to such relationships and the wider terrain of politics, this paper proposes an alternative analysis to those currently found in the polarized literature on farmworkers and the Fast Track Land Redistribution Programme in Zimbabwe.

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Transcending Global and National (Mis)representations through Local Responses to Displacement: The Case of Zimbabwean (ex-)Farm Workers

Cited by 13 publications

References 7 publications

Tobacco, contract farming, and agrarian change in Zimbabwe

Tobacco, contract farming, and agrarian change in Zimbabwe

‘Social Relations and Agrarian Labour’: Exploring the Dynamics of Relations Between Former Farm Workers and A1 Beneficiaries in Zimbabwe’s A1 Settlements

Organization and (De)mobilization of Farmworkers in Zimbabwe: Reflections on Trade Unions, NGOs and Political Parties

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