Two sides of the stream: the politics of belonging between foreign ex-farm workers and A1 farmers on a fast track farm in Zimbabwe

Land-Based Livelihoods and the Covid-19 Challenge: Navigating the Social Capital-Social Distancing Tension on A1 Villages in Zimbabwe

“…The contribution of the FTLRP to livelihoods creation of small-scale A1 beneficiaries has been widely documented. Crop and livestock production were primary land-based livelihoods of beneficiaries (Hanlon et al, 2013;Moyo et al, 2009;Ncube, 2018;Scoones et al, 2010) and there is evidence of livelihood diversification (Chadambuka & Helliker, 2022;Mkodzongi & Spiegel, 2019). Various studies demonstrate that access to land through the FTLRP contributed significantly to fulfilling subsistence requirements of A1 beneficiaries (Matondi, 2012;Scoones et al, 2010).…”

Care and caring among ageing migrant workers in two informal settlements in Harare

“…Urban life was viewed as the preserve of white people, with black Africans expected to return to their rural homes upon retirement (Potts and Mutambirwa, 1990). Workers from Malawi, Zambia, Angola and Mozambique employed on commercial farms, mines and in domestic service were the most affected by this arrangement, being without rural homes in Zimbabwe (Potts, 2015;Chadambuka and Helliker, 2022).…”

“…Zimbabwe's colonial heritage also shaped the citizenship options for commercial farm workers, whose formal identity was anchored to the commercial farm at which they worked (Rutherford, 2001). Most foreign farm workers migrating before independence either faked the loss of their identity documents from their country of origin or destroyed them in order to enter the country (Mayavo, 2004;Chadambuka and Helliker, 2022). Documents were not a prerequisite for getting a job on the commercial farms and the colonial borders were not seen as important but regarded as colonial creations that had inadvertently separated families.…”

“…The position of rural migrant workers was also materially affected by Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), which began in 2000 and was supposedly completed in 2002 (Chadambuka and Helliker, 2022). This programme acquired farmland from white commercial farmers for redistribution to poor and middle-income landless black Zimbabweans.…”

“…There is a growing body of scholarly research on the lives of older people in Zimbabwe showing ageing to be a major risk factor for social work and care (Nyanguru, 2007;Gutsa and Chingarande, 2009;Hungwe, 2011), climate change SPECIAL ISSUE • Family care of older people in Southern Africa (Gutsa, 2017), social welfare and housing (Ncube and Nhapi, 2022), and living in conditions of informality (Ncube, 2022). However, while displacement and migration profoundly shape the lived experiences of older people, older migrants remain largely invisible in this literature (Daimon, 2014;Bhanye, 2022;Chadambuka and Helliker, 2022;Hungwe, 2022). The focus of this qualitative study is on migrant workers aged over 50 living in two informal settlements in Harare, coming from both rural areas within Zimbabwe and surrounding countries, all now ageing far from their place or country of origin.…”