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Emerging Challenges in Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme

Rudo Gaidzanwa*

Introduction

In 1980 at independence, land distribution in Zimbabwe was as follows:

Table 1. Showing land distribution in 1980

Source: Government of Zimbabwe

The table above shows the concentration of land amongst approximately 4,000 white farmers owning freehold land in the large scale farm sector, while black farmers dominated the small scale farm sector and the communal areas.

Zimbabwe’s government engaged in a land reform programme in 2000 after twenty years of piecemeal efforts to acquire land previously held by white farmers through market mechanisms. As part of the Lancaster House Agreement, Zimbabwe’s negotiated independence settlement, the government, any Zimbabwean government, was bound to acquire land for redistribution to blacks on a willing-buyer-willing-seller basis for the first ten years of independence. This arrangement resuscitated a land market that had slumped as a result of the war for national liberation, which had been concentrated in the rural areas where commercial farming took place. Those farmers who wished to get rid of excess, underutilized and usually, badly watered and exhausted land, were able to sell it at relatively high prices, offering it first to government which had an ongoing resettlement programme from 1980. Alternatively, some farmers decided to hold on to their land for speculative purposes as demand for land by black commercial farmers and government increased. (DERUDE, 1985) Despite the goal enunciated by the government to resettle 162 000 families on 9 million hectares constituting 57% of white-owned land, by 1990, only 50 000 families had been resettled on 3.7 million hectares of land which had changed hands. Just over 500 black farmers had purchased freehold land or acquired leases to state land for commercial farming.

The expiry of the ten-year moratorium on market-based land acquisition resulted in the enactment of Amendment No. 11 of the constitution and the passing of the Land Acquisition Act of 1992. Through these pieces of legislation, the government was able to divest itself of the willing-buyer-willing-seller clauses of the constitution, to list or acquire and designate land for compulsory acquisition. However, the provision for contestation through objections to compulsory acquisition of land through the administrative court slowed down land acquisition. By 1997, government had designated 1471 farms for compulsory acquisition and received 1393 objections, 510 of which were upheld through the legal system. Thus, the slowing down of the process of land acquisition through the judicial system by the landed white minority proved frustrating for the peasantry and the government. Erratic and inconsistent funding of land reform by the British government throughout the nineteen nineties also compounded the problem, culminating in the disavowal of any responsibility for financing land reform by the British government in 1997.

There was an upsurge in unauthorized land occupations, which had been taking place on a sporadic basis since 1980. (Herbst, 1990) The sporadic and unauthorized settlements of land had previously been dealt with decisively by the Zimbabwe government, which used the riot police to move squatters and illegal settlers off the land. After 1997, unauthorized land settlements accelerated, culminating in the Svosve occupations of land in 1998. In the Svosve, Nyamandhlovu, Nyamajura and Nemanwa communal areas, the settlers refused to vacate settled land, challenging the government to evict them or undertake to resettle them. Government did not have much choice since evicting militant peasants would have been politically suicidal in the context of looming parliamentary elections in 2 000. Instead, government made the required undertakings, resulting in the peasants vacating the land. However, there was growing moral pressure on the government by peasants, the landless and others, to accelerate land redistribution and to desist from forcibly evacuating the militant unauthorized settlers as before.

The Zimbabwe government also pursued donor funding as an alternative to British funding for land. The United Nations Development Programme and the bulk of the European Union and other western governments again insisted that the land acquisition process had to be backed by donors on a market basis. What this really meant was that intervention by the state in land acquisition had to be minimized; donors had to be wooed to invest in land acquisition on conditions that secured their confidence and interests. Effectively, such land acquisition was likely to be slow and vulnerable to donor conditionalities, which were likely to delay land redistribution through technical and administrative strictures. In any case, the capacity problems of the Zimbabwean civil service and private sector had already impinged negatively on rapid land redistribution, resulting in prolonged consultations with foreign experts funded by the donors. (Herbst, 1990) The Zimbabwe government was running out of time by 1998 when these consultations were taking place. Already, land occupations were accelerating and increasingly, the Zimbabwe government was not in a position to halt these occupations and still win popularity and votes in the impending 2000 parliamentary elections. The land occupations were discomfiting the western community, which was very concerned about the repossessions of land from white farmers.

The Land Reform and Resettlement Programme Phase 2, was launched in 1999, aiming at resettling landless households on 120 farms and on 223,112 hectares that were available to the government at that time. It was anticipated that 77,000 farm families would be resettled on 700,000 hectares of land. Civil society was also expected to participate in organizing 41,000 families to settle on 300,000 hectares over a two year period. In this process, action research was to be conducted as part of the process of developing a National Land Policy, which would address and resolve issues of land distribution, land tenure, land use, institutional support mechanisms and the legal framework for land reform. Thus, at the inception of phase 2 of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme, land distribution patterns were as follows:

Table 2. Showing land distribution patterns as of June 2000

Source: Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement

Thus, very little change had taken place in landholding by race and class between 1980 and 2 000. The only significant shift that had occurred was the resettlement of peasant farmers on land transferred from derelict farms and willing buyer-willing seller arrangements in 20 years of independence.

By 2 000, when the fast track land reform programme gained momentum, the Zimbabwe government was involved in a bruising parliamentary election in which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change won 56 of the 120 seats under contestation. The strength of support for the MDC spurred the government too accelerate the land reform programme amidst accelerated land occupations by peasants and continuing diplomatic and technical consultations with the United Nations, the Commonwealth and the European Union. Under the fast track land acquisition and redistribution programme, 5 million hectares of land were to be compulsorily acquired for resettlement, settled with simultaneous provision of infrastructural and agrarian support.

Two land resettlement models were adopted, namely, the A1 and A2. Model A1 was based on existing communal area organization whereby peasants produced mainly for subsistence with small surpluses for the market in good seasons. This model was intended to de-congest the existing communal areas. Model A2 focused on creating a new cadre of black commercial farmers who would use their own resources, with concessionary financing, to grow commercial crops and enhance the country’s capacity to feed itself, generate foreign currency and support agro-industry in Zimbabwe.

The fast track land reform programme resulted in significant shifts in landholding by race, class and to a lesser extent, by gender. The table below shows the land allocation patterns and the take-up rates by province.

This pattern of land allocation shows some differences in the intensity of land distribution as a result of the absolute numbers of farms available in provinces and the hectarage of land redistributed. For example, in the more arid provinces such as Matebeleland North and South, Masvingo and Midlands, ranching is more prevalent than cropping so land sizes per ranch tend to be relatively large. In Mashonaland Central, East and West, the breadbasket provinces characterized by intensive cropping, farm sizes are relatively smaller and land is used more intensively per unit area.

This pattern of land allocation shows some differences in the intensity of land distribution as a result of the absolute numbers of farms available in provinces and the hectarage of land redistributed. For example, in the more arid provinces such as Matebeleland North and South, Masvingo and Midlands, ranching is more prevalent than cropping so land sizes per ranch tend to be relatively large. In Mashonaland Central, East and West, the breadbasket provinces characterized by intensive cropping, farm sizes are relatively smaller and land is used more intensively per unit area.

Responses by settlers varied as a result of the types of land allocated, bureaucratic snarl-ups, settler resource base, and endowment for commercial and subsistence farming. The high take-up rates for Model 1 farms across the board reflect the high levels of need for land amongst the small and subsistence farmers in rural Zimbabwe. In Matebeleland North, the A1 farms were oversubscribed hence the 120% take-up rate, while the A2 take-up rate also reflects the high need for ranch and farm land amongst farmers in the two Matebeleland provinces generally.

Broadening the base of the landowning social group

By the end of the fast track land reform programme in July 2003, there had been a significant shift in land ownership patterns. The table below shows the shifts in landholding, indicating that large-scale commercial farms had been reduced both in number and size while the area farmed by small peasant and commercial farmers had increased.

The land reform programme effectively changed the composition of the commercial farming class by targeting white-owned land for distribution and allowing black farmers who had purchased their land prior to or during the fast track land reform programme to retain their land. In addition, the black A2 beneficiaries swelled the numbers of the commercial farmer class, breaking the monopoly of white farmers over the best commercial farmland in Zimbabwe. The table below shows the provincial racial distribution of the farmers and commercial farmland worked by individual farmers. There still remain some commercial farmland that is currently owned and worked by churches, parastatals, corporate entities and other bodies.

In July 2003, 509 companies still owned 743 farms totaling 1,364,173 hectares while 45 churches owned 64 farms totaling 41,902 hectares. And 42 parastatal organizations owned 153 farms totaling 572,736 hectares.

Thus, the land reform programme accomplished its objective of redistributing land to black people although the internal composition of the black beneficiary population is still skewed by gender. The programme was less successful in availing black women land in both Model 1 and Model 2 schemes. The table below shows the provincial allocation of land by gender.

There was a very large disparity in land allocations to men and women countrywide despite the presence of over 35% women-headed and women-managed households nationally. Only Matebeleland South province managed to allocate land to at least 20% of the households headed or managed by women because of the high migration rate by men to South Africa.

Table 3. Showing land allocation and take-up rates by province

Source: Provincial Profiles compiled by the Presidential Land Review Committee, 2003

Gender and Land Reform: Problematic issues emerging from the fast track land reform

Gender issues arising from the fast track land reform relate to land and farming systems, land sizes in allocations, access to and control over labour, water and other factors of production, diverse forms of income, credit, markets and control over decision making over crops, time, and devolution of land generationally. The processes preceding the fast track

land reform, namely, the demonstrations and spontaneous land settlements were male dominated affairs since women with small children were not able to leave them for the long periods of time necessary to occupy the land until it was designated, surveyed and allocated. In Mashonaland East for example, presence on the land enhanced a settler’s chances of accessing and facilitating the allocation of land to A1 land claimants. War veterans successfully campaigned and lobbied for a 20% quota of all land allocations to be made to them. Thus, male war veterans were able to ensure that their interests were not compromised and their land quotas were met because they were able to settle land and stay on it long enough to ensure that it was allocated to them.

Table 4. Showing land ownership patterns as at July 2003 after the fast track land reform programme

Women were less successful in acquiring land because of the gender politics of rural and urban households which prioritise men as holder s of land and as the people who had to engage the state in the struggles for land. Thus married peasant women assumed they would share their husbands’ lands as required by custom. Single women who desired land applied for it but apart from war veteran women who joined their male counterparts in land occupations, the majority of women stayed home and looked after the fields, the children, livestock and other domestic concerns. Politically active women especially in the ruling party, ZANU (PF) were able to access land through the party while urban women activists in civil society took either a conflicting and ambiguous stance or actively opposed land reform and urged other women not to apply for land or take part in land occupations. In the event, the land reform programme rolled on with a minority of women who constituted minorities or junior functionaries in the land administration bureaucracies at national, provincial, district and village levels.

Table 5. Showing the racial distribution of land to individual farmers in all provinces

Source: Provincial profiles drawn up by the Presidential Land Committee, 2003.

* The total hectarage of 68 farms in Mashonaland West could not be established at the time of reporting.

In a daily paper, The Herald of 8th June, 2004, a female war veteran, Lethina Sidimeli, was reported to have taken the governor of Mashonaland Central province to court after the governor allegedly cancelled the offer letter for a farm allocated to her under the A2 resettlement model in February, 2004. This case demonstrates the perceived and actual vulnerabilities of women in comparison to men, in struggles over land. Single, widowed or divorced women, especially those with small and school-going children who could not be left for months on end without supervision, fared less well than all other claimants to land. Men and women who lived in the communal areas far from the farms targeted for designation were similarly disadvantaged.

Table 6. Showing provincial allocation of land by gender

Source: Provincial profiles, Presidential Land Committee, 2 003.

* The breakdown of A2 land allocations by gender for Mashonaland East Province was not available at the time of reporting.

In the A2 land, the processes of establishing entitlement were biased in favour of those people in the government and other bureaucracies where knowledge about commercial farms was high. In Mashonaland Central, this complaint was very frequently articulated and Chiweshe peasants complained about being sidelined in the land allocation exercise. Thus civil servants, political activists, and other people in the local bureaucracies were able to target farms for allocation to themselves. The farms with the best infrastructure were allocated to these functionaries, the majority of them male, who claimed them before others who did not intervene in the surveying and designation processes. The A2 claimants were expected to have savings, business plans and some farming knowledge, effectively ruling out most women from applying. In the civil service, the Agriculture Research and Extension and local government and other machineries are male dominated especially in the middle and higher grades where decisions, on and implementation of land allocations took place. Thus, even within the civil service itself, women’s access to A2 land was significantly lower than men’s. The same applied to war veterans and other groups, resulting in very low allocations to women applicants in the A2 land.

According to the findings of the field teams of the Presidential Land Review Committee, a higher proportion of women accessed land in A1 in comparison to A2 areas. In general, the bulk of the beneficiaries were men. Different gender issues arise with respect to A1 and A2 agriculture.

A1 gender and age issues

Land in the A1 farming areas is held through permits/leases and the registrants are usually men in households. However, women and children usually provide labour in cropping and irrigating households while men generally provide the cash to invest in technology, livestock, seed, fertilizer and other inputs on land. Thus, if land is privatized or individualized through titling or other measures, women are likely to be marginalized in the agricultural economy since their names are not usually registered on land leases or title deeds. This is likely to diminish women’s stake in the land within households especially where they have little control over the cash realized from crops, livestock and other benefits related to land. Gaidzanwa (2001) cited cases of suicide by peasant farmwomen in disputes over cash realized from cotton crop sales. The holding of land through registration of men as heads of households is likely to weaken women’s identification with the land while strengthening men’s land claims and power over women and children in peasant households. This has been the experience of women in the post-independence resettlement schemes as indicated in research by Gaidzanwa (1985) and the Women’s Land Lobby Group of Zimbabwe.

In the A1 schemes with emphasis on livestock production, the gender issues arising relate to access to and ownership of cattle, pigs, donkeys, goats, sheep and poultry. Men tend to own the bulk of the large livestock and women the small stock and poultry. Land sizes and carrying capacities are calculated on the basis of cattle carried per unit of land. Women’s cattle in patrilineal societies are retained in their homes of birth as well as in the homes of marriage depending on how these cattle are acquired. Drinkwater (1991) and Moyo (2000) note that overgrazing discourses in Zimbabwe normally ignore women’s small livestock such as goats and poultry. In situations of land scarcity where there are pressures to de-stock or where there are restrictions on grazing land for livestock husbandry, the gender dimensions of livestock holding are problematic because women’s livestock may be sacrificed or neglected to safeguard men’s livestock, especially in those households where both men and women hold livestock individually.

The relatively large land holdings in A1 schemes, in comparison to communal areas, necessitate large labour inputs in stumping, clearing and preparing new land. However, the escalating costs of farm inputs in Zimbabwe’s hyperinflationary economy are likely to encourage male absenteeism for income purposes. In most of the new A1 schemes, there is poor or no infrastructure for communication, health, education and other services. In these new farming areas, the co-residence of parents and children is difficult since children, pregnant and lactating women tend to be left behind in the communal areas where there are schools, clinics and diverse sources of food. This practice, necessitated by the fast track land reform programme, continues the colonial tradition of split households, separating women from men and from their school-going children, and creating new forms of dependence of children on relatives other than their mothers. It also deprives women of the labour of their school-going sons and daughters, saddling them with very young, dependent children. There are heavy labour demands placed on men and women in the resettled areas and this does not provide a very propitious start for many households already burdened by heavy cash, labour and other demands. It makes children vulnerable to neglect or abuse by relatives. These male-dominated new villages place men in a position to engage in casual sex and risk infection with HIV/AIDS.

A problematic aspect of the A1 and small scale A2 farming models is the labour procurement strategy historically effected through marriage of additional wives as farm labour. (Cheater, 1984) and (Weinrich, 1975). This is due to the inability or unwillingness of new male black farmers to pay the market wages for farm labour. This skills procurement strategy is only useful in the short term and tends to facilitate and accelerate the fragmentation of land generationally, to tie land in disputes over inheritance and to increase the insecurity and vulnerability of women and children in these households. The constant jostling for favours and affection by children, women and other family members takes a heavy toll on farm operations because non-inheriting sons, wives and daughters have little interest in investing their labour or incomes on land that is likely to be lost to them on the death of the man/father who is the head of such a household. These categories of people have historically been shown to migrate out of the farming sector, diminishing the labour available on the farms. This issue was raised by the Rukuni Land Commission in 1984, but has not been tackled effectively on the ground. In the absence of affordable and widely available tillage services, resettled farmers on new lands will most likely not be able to utilize all the land available to them. In areas such as Masvingo, the provincial governor perceived land allocations to some A1 farmers, to be very large so it is necessary to limit farm sizes according to farmers’ ability to utilize the land. As indicated by research by Cheater (1984), Weinrich (1975) and Gaidzanwa (1985) higher rates of polygyny in the rural areas are sponsored by land allocations that are too large for the landholder to utilize effectively.

Gender Issues in A2 farming areas

The relatively low take-up rate for A2 land indicates problems in the fast track land reform programme. The significantly low allocations of land to women in A2 land are cause for concern, given the interest expressed by women in farming nationally. The high proportion of civil servants, wage earners and other people who were allocated land suggests that the absentee male farming model in the communal areas is likely to be replicated on a larger scale on commercial farmland. This farming system also has gender dimensions given that investment in land by the majority of the new black farmers is most likely to be through the proceeds of wage employment and concessional commercial financing. A significant proportion of black farm families organize their farming enterprises so that wives act as farm managers. However, in the A2 areas where wives may have jobs too, there are new gender dynamics that need to be confronted and planned for. In some families, wives may be required to reside on the farms as managers. In others, wives may also be wageworkers off the farm in order to raise investment funds for the farm enterprise. In others, both spouses may choose to reside on the farm, adopting the white commercial farm model. The farm organization models based on absentee landowners or lessors demand the availability of a large cadre of qualified farm managers who can efficiently run the farms for their absentee or weekend owners.

Land holding and sharing by spouses is an important aspect of this farming system if land is to be transferred and used optimally in the generational devolution of land. Polygyny has been a problematic aspect of the small-scale commercial farming experience in Zimbabwe. This has fragmented commercial farmland and facilitated its degradation as disputes amongst wives and different sets of children played themselves out in the legal arena. The Rukuni Commission of 1994 researched this reality and found that the average disputed farm was tied up in litigation for up to nine years during which time farm operations ceased and farm assets were dissipated. This issue needs to be resolved through clear policy guidelines about commercial farms, responsibility for debts, leases, inheritance and related matters. This issue was not as problematic with freehold land amongst white farmers most of whom had wills determining the devolution of land. With new black farmers entering the sector, new cultural and marital dynamics arise and these have to be dealt with legally and socially as policy on land evolves.

On June 8th, 2004, the government is quoted in a daily, The Herald, as having decided on nationalization of all farmland, abolishing title deeds and replacing them with 99 year leases for farmland and 25 year leases for game and wildlife ranching. Effectively, all land will become state property preventing or reducing speculation in land and avoiding the lengthy legal and administrative processes of land acquisition through listing, designation and other measures. This decision will also reduce litigation on land, which has hampered the fast acquisition of land in Zimbabwe.

In spite of the nationalization of land, titling through leasing and registration of land, gender issues within households still have to be tackled as an issue on the farms regardless of the adopted mode of farm organization. Where wives are farm managers, farm operations benefit from constant and committed supervision. Where both spouses are absentee farmers, higher expenditures on management are necessary and extension workers are needed to train both spouses on farm issues and requirements, during weekends or short block courses, to synchronise their understanding of farming issues. Where both spouses stay on the farm and give their time and labour to the farm, extension work can be organized on a continuing and regular basis on the farm. In any event, it is necessary for both spouses to feel secure enough to invest their resources, time and effort on the farm through legal safeguards on the devolution of the farm in cases of widowhood or marital dissolution.

Mining and Agriculture: Emerging competition and conflicts over land use

While the fast track land reform programme has focused on agriculture and related activities, few questions have been raised around the relationship between agriculture and other uses of land in the Zimbabwean economy. A problematic issue surrounding the fast track land reform process is the economic crisis in Zimbabwe while the rural and urban populations have secured increased access to land. When Zimbabwe was colonised, it was expected to be a mining colony in the same way that South Africa was. (van Onselen,1990 and Palmer and Parsons, 1977) Therefore, mining legislation in Zimbabwe has always assured miners of maximum access to agricultural and other types of land except land on which there were buildings and other infrastructure of a fixed nature. Miners’ rights have always and still are protected by the Mines and Mineral Act, Chapter 21:05 of 1996, whose provisions allow prospectors to peg claims and hold mining lease. The rights of miners include the following: the right to use some timber, firewood and water, to erect dams, machinery, plant and equipment for ore treatment, compounds for employees, sewage disposal works, recreation grounds and roads on land held by another person for farming purposes. These rights are subject to the approval of the Mining Commissioner and such approval is normally granted.

These provisions within mining legislation did not pose a problem throughout the colonial period when white land portions were large and underutilized. White farmers accommodated small white miners and large mining concerns with a minimum of friction. White agricultural land comprised 15.5 million hectares out of a national total of 39.6 million hectares in 1980. After agriculture, the mining sector is the largest employer and contributes over 40% of the foreign currency earnings in the Zimbabwean economy. The significance of mining in the economy resulted in stringent influx control, racially segregated land policies empowering the state to remove black populations from areas where white agricultural, mining and other entrepreneurial activities were expected to take place. (Palmer and Parsons, 1977)

After independence in 1980, the large scale mining sector remained closed to black entrepreneurs because of the heavy capital and technological requirements for entry into that sector. In addition, multinational corporations and large mining conglomerates held exclusive prospecting orders of many decades’ duration, effectively preventing indigenous miners from prospecting for minerals on land under these orders. Thus, small black miners accessed only those areas with small ore deposits, which were uneconomic for large players to exploit. Thus, indigenous miners could never become significant players in the mining sector.

The fast track land reform resulted in the large-scale occupation of previously white land by black, landless and other people in Zimbabwe. These land occupations created new opportunities for miners, farmers and other entrepreneurs to use land and service large numbers of new land holders in Zimbabwe. In the context of an embattled economy under sanctions by the west, where the structural adjustment programme of the 1990s had undermined local manufacturing capacity, eroded jobs and increased poverty, the new opportunities created by access to land were quickly seized by the rural and urban poor. By 1995, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions had already indicated that growing poverty was forcing wage workers to turn to non-wage activities such as informal trade, gold panning, and other activities in order to earn and supplement incomes. According to the Small Scale Miners’ Association, the mining sector continued to provide employment for over 56 000 people in the formal sector and over 300 000 in the informal mining sector where gold panning is prevalent.

Gold panning became the most attractive economic activity to a broad range of workers, professionals and other social groups in Zimbabwe. In a survey by Gaidzanwa (1988) rural people were found to be panning for gold along riverbeds during the dry season when peasant farmers had finished tilling their land and harvesting their rain-fed crops. Gold panning was carried out through digging, amassing, washing and securing small quantities of gold that are carried along by water in alluvial riverbeds and gold-bearing soils. The incidence of gold panning increased after 1995 as the effects of unemployment in an adjusting economy intensified. Peasants and the unemployed usually carried out gold panning illegally, without mining licenses or permits. The mobility of gold panners and amorphous nature of gold panning made policing difficult. Gold panning creates problems of siltation in river beds, leaves holes in the ground through which gold-bearing soils are extracted and maims and kills livestock that fall into holes in badly mined areas. Malaria incidence is increased by stagnant pools of water left in holes left by panners who have no training in sustainable and environmentally friendly mining techniques. These problems have created a bad image for gold panners known as makorokoza.

Competition and conflicts over labour and other resources

A significant proportion of new farmers cannot afford to finance their new farming operations in a hyperinflationary economy. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate stood at over 550% in June 2004, making capital and technological investment in agriculture costly and risky. Some new farmers who were interviewed and observed by the Land Review Committee in Mashonaland Central, Midlands and Matebeleland provinces in 2003, indicated that they allowed gold panners onto their lands in exchange for a percentage of the gold panned on their land. Another facet of the conflict between gold panning and agriculture is the encroachment by small gold miners onto the lands of new farmers. According to the Mines and Minerals Act, miners have rights to peg their claims and conduct their mining operations on virtually all land except that on which dwellings and other immovable structures are located. While large miners may monopolise claims, they normally clear land and build compounds when they establish mines, relocating villages at their own expense. On the other hand, small miners move onto farmlands and establish temporary shelters and structures on the lands of small and medium commercial farmers, generating conflict between miners and landowners over water, labour, firewood and other resources.

The sheer numbers of new miners, numbering over 20 000 in Mashonaland Central alone and the new farmers numbering 5 000 in the same province indicate the magnitude of the problem. The new farmers, with limited resources usually from wage work, use indigenous trees for firewood, for building pole and mud houses and cattle pens, for curing tobacco and selling firewood for income. New miners compete on the same farms for firewood for timber to prop the shafts in their mines, for building pole and mud houses and for cooking. General environmental degradation occurs amidst conflicts over natural resources such as water and firewood.

More dangerous has been the proliferation of gold panners not only in the rural areas but also in the urban ones. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s news bulletins of May 15th and June 23rd, 2003, carried reports that gold panners had dug under bridges, railway lines, schools and other public buildings in Shurugwi, Kadoma, Bindura, Chegutu and other areas around the country. Livestock losses have been reported in the popular press countrywide as a result of falling into holes dug by gold panners on farms. The state has little capacity to police and regulate the activities of miners country-wide especially in a context of opening up entrepreneurship to black people in Zimbabwe. Thus, peasants, the landed, the landless professionals and other groups participate in gold panning, creating labour shortages and increasing conflicts over land by people seeking gold-bearing ores.

Disparities in agricultural and mining incomes

In Matebeleland South, 100 new farmers surveyed by the District land Committees, reported that in the post-settlement phase in 2003, they have continuous problems securing agricultural labour because peasants and the landless prefer gold panning where the returns are higher. This sentiment was repeated countrywide and affected those areas of the Great Dyke where mineral deposits are concentrated. In Shamva, by 2003, the daily wage for agricultural labourers was Z$4,000 to 4 500, preferably in kind, incorporating food items such as sugar, cooking oil and other commodities that were in short supply in the economy. In August, 2003, a gold panner could easily realize one gram of gold per day or two and earn over $30 000 in the illegal gold market prevalent in Shamva at that time. Thus, the returns to a peasant or labourer through gold panning were over three times what they could earn as agricultural labourers, making agricultural work unattractive. Gold panning is preferable to other types of work because of ease of entry into the work, low initial investment in digging tools and a pan, the relative autonomy of the panner, the flexible time and control over the pace of work. The regimentation of the formal workplace and the farm compound, subject to the farm owner’s rules, is not attractive to the panner. The panner is also mobile and can follow the gold-bearing ores wherever they are all year round, regardless of the weather.

The gold price has risen and the gold market formalized as leakages are plugged through state action. The state has gone some way towards regulating the informal gold trade since December 2003. The official price for a gram of gold in June 2004 is Z$71,000. The parallel market in gold still operates albeit at higher risk, raising the unofficial gold price to over Z$180,000 per gram in March 2004. In contrast, the official farm wage minimum is Z$57,000 per month, a sum that an experienced gold panner in a rich ore-bearing area can earn easily in one day of panning. Under these conditions, new farmers in gold mining areas have little capacity for meeting farm wages for labourers in these areas.

New farmers with little financing usually start off by growing maize, a high bulk and low value crop that can be grown easily and disposed off through the official marketing channels as well as through private sales. The maize price is Z$700,000 per tonne while sugar beans fetch Z$1,000,000 per tonne. A farmer in a moderately wet ecological area can grow one tonne of maize on 1hectare of rain-fed land. After paying labourers and deducting expenses, the average profit of such a farmer is around Z$300,000 per tonne. This represents less than two days’ work by a gold panner selling gold in the unofficial gold market and about one week’s work by a gold panner selling ore at the official gold price. These economics make it difficult for some poor new farmers to resist gold panning on their farms. The incomes by panners also preclude any possibilities of new farmers in gold mining areas of Midlands, Mashonaland and Matebeleland procuring farm labour at the official wages. Thus, the opening up of new land and the relaxation of controls over the movements of black people has reduced the chances of new farmers resisting the gold trade and succeeding in agricultural ventures. Farm labourers have now turned to gold panning, forcing farmers to raise wages substantially or procure farm labour from further afield on a daily basis.

Farmers from Shamva, Bindura and Mazoe now routinely ferry farm labour from the high density suburbs of Harare and surrounding peri-urban areas where there are large pools of unemployed and underemployed labour. New farmers are also forced to travel into the communal areas to procure labour if they can offer better wages that the communal farmers. By June 2004, farm workers in Mashonaland Central were demanding wages based on a piecework of $2000 per 100 meter row of crops for weeding, planting and similar operations. Thus, gold panning has increased wage levels for all other types of manual work in rural and urban Zimbabwe. It is only those people who have no access to gold panning opportunities who continue to perform lowly paid manual labour.

Gender and age dimensions of gold panning

The attractiveness of gold panning as an economic activity has gender and age dimensions which need to be analysed. Gold panning communities are predominantly young and male, segregating older men and women in the rural areas. In gold mining areas, young men and women get involved in gold panning to the detriment of agricultural activities, leaving the older men and women to struggle with growing food. In a context of 20-30% infection by HIV/AIDS of the 19-40 year old group, the burdens of agriculture on the aged are growing. In a short survey conducted by Gaidzanwa in Bindura in 2004, it emerged that young women with small children often conduct their panning operations as near their homes as is feasible to enable them to care for their young children. When they have older children, they are as likely as the young men to venture further afield in pursuit of gold-bearing ores.

Men are free to pursue gold ores to a greater extent than women because of the gender division of labour in urban and rural households, which allocate child minding, cooking, cleaning and food preparation to women. Thus, gold-panning camps tend to have larger numbers of men than women. The preponderance of men in the gold panning camps has generated a market for food, clothes, cooking and other utensils, a market that is ably exploited by women traders.

Gold panners are popularly perceived and observed to be lavish spenders with little regard for quality and value for their money in commercial transactions. They also prefer goods to be brought to their camps. Male gold panners have also generated and sustained a vibrant market for casual sex in the peri-urban areas around gold mining towns and cities such as Bindura, Shurugwi, Kwe kwe, Shamva and Chegutu as well as in rural areas where gold mining takes place. The transmission of HIV/AIDS through gold panning incomes is a social issue and a problem that merits serious attention.

Women in the commercial sex market have benefited from the lavish spending of male gold panners, many of them operating away from home and in need of sexual and domestic services. However, the risks of contracting HIV/AIDS amongst these women increase with exposure to itinerant men with many sexual contacts. In addition, these young women do not feel the need to engage in agricultural labour in rural areas or in domestic and other manual labour in the urban and peri-urban areas. Women who head households and engage in gold panning have discovered faster ways of earning significant incomes, freeing themselves from the gender politics of village life in rural Zimbabwe. Gold panning camps do not have the stringent male controlled politics and social life of village life. Therefore, women who head households perceive gold panning as an alternative way of escaping both poverty and the severe gender subordination prevailing in village, farm and other communities.

Gold panning and the devaluation of other occupations and professions.

The large difference between gold panning and other incomes has generated severe labour shortages in gold mining areas in Zimbabwe. In addition, gold panning has severely accelerated the devaluation of professions such as teaching and nursing and is entrenching an anti-schooling culture. Linda Mpofu, writing for a weekly, The Tribune in March 2004, noted that in Gwanda, a town in Matebeleland South, teachers were leaving their profession to become full time gold miners. A primary school teacher with a three year diploma after “O” levels earned about Z$600,000 in March 2004. In an interview with this author, Mpofu also pointed out that student nurses in Matebeleland South were deserting their training before attaining their diplomas because of the lure of gold incomes. This practice was wasteful because it denied young potential student nurses places at nursing schools since deserting students’ places could not be offered to other students mid-stream. Mpofu noted that in Gwanda, new farmers were forced to perform their own agricultural labour and it was only the herd-boys who performed both gold panning and cattle herding. This was due to the fact that cattle herding does not demand the continuous presence of the herd-boys who normally put the cattle to pasture in the mornings and then go off to pan gold. In Gwanda, rainfall is low and gold panning can be carried out throughout the year. In the wetter cropping provinces of Mashonaland, when heavy rains fall, some panning activities slow down or stop, allowing panners to tend their fields and grow food. Thus, in the more arid areas, gold panning has presented opportunities for different types of workers to diversify their income sources without resorting to migration to South Africa, the traditional route to economic empowerment for poor men in that province. As one gold panner in Bindura noted, it was no longer necessary for people to migrate to the United Kingdom or to the USA to earn hard currency when a panner can earn the same or higher income through gold panning in Zimbabwe. Thus, gold panning, as presently organized, is a serious competitor to agriculture as well as a significant source of primary incomes for a cross section of Zimbabwe’s population. The empowerment of indigenous entrepreneurs in the mining sector has succeeded beyond the intentions of the government but also in a manner not anticipated when the land reform programme was developed.

Gold leakage through smuggling

The drive by the government to earn foreign currency through the export of crops, minerals and manufactured goods and the dispersal of panners countrywide makes it difficult to police and regulate informal mining. The higher prices for gold paid by illegal gold buyers who smuggle gold out of Zimbabwe, stimulate the illegal mining sector wherein there is no payment of taxes and other overheads by illegal gold operators. The government of Zimbabwe is forced to constantly compete with illegal gold buyers for the gold produced by the informal mining sector. The rise in international gold prices sustains these developments, creating some contradictions in policy on land in Zimbabwe. While it is essential to earn foreign currency, the government of Zimbabwe has also staked its survival on the land reform programme and this programme risks compromise as long as gold earnings to peasants and workers outstrip those from agriculture many times over. There is therefore a need to find a mode of co-existence between mining and agriculture, which sustains both activities. Alternatively, agricultural policy needs to be fine-tuned in such a way that it prioritises the earning of foreign currency in the first instance in which case the incentive structure will also need to change to reflect these priorities. In that event, there has to be planning for food production sufficient for meeting national needs without the expenditure of foreign currency.

Conclusion

The competition for labour between mining and agricultural sectors in Zimbabwe replays similar sectoral struggles in colonial Zimbabwe when the colony was diversifying from mining into agriculture and manufacturing. In that era, farmers assured their labour supplies through what was called kaffir farming, that is, breeding and keeping their migrant labour on the farms so that the miners and manufacturers were not able to access it. (van Onselen, 1980) and Phimister (1988) The land reform programme has effectively freed captive farm labour, a significant proportion of it labour of foreign extraction which might have become naturalized in subsequent generations. Fractions of this labour have become gold panners together with the landless, poor peasants, wageworkers, the unemployed as well as segments of professional groups. The land reform programme gave land predominantly to men, further marginalizing women especially those who are widowed, divorced or single heads of households. Members of these groups often find a niche in the gold panning sector in those areas where there is gold. Where there is no gold bearing rock in their areas, they have, nevertheless, benefited from the rise in wages resulting from the desertion of farm labour by those peasants who prefer the higher earnings accruing from gold panning. Other occupations have also become increasingly devalued and less attractive to educated youths because of the relatively high incomes offered by gold mining in the informal sector. The resulting devaluation of education and professions, training and skills acquisition is problematic in the short and long run if the economy is to move beyond extraction of and export of primary products. While gold panning has stemmed labour migration from the rural to urban areas and from the rural areas to the west, it has also stimulated urban to rural migration by the unemployed, the underemployed and some of the employed whose incomes are perceived to be too low.

It is possible that the trend for new farmers joining or sponsoring gold panners in gold-mining areas may create a new trade-off whereby mining income is used to sponsor farming activities where even concessional loans are subject to interest rates of 100% or over per year in a hyperinflationary economy. It is worthwhile to re-examine the relationship between mining and agriculture to develop workable synergies that safeguard the environment and the land while enabling both miners and farmers to earn viable incomes and create employment for themselves and others.

Whatever the final forms landholding may take in Zimbabwe, it is critical to secure the continuing, equitable and profitable participation of men and women in both agriculture and mining in Zimbabwe. The present trend where the young emigrate from rural Zimbabwe has been stemmed somewhat by the land reform programme and the informal mining boom. However, the co-existence between agriculture and mining needs further regulation and refinement so that it does not threaten the base of agriculture or destroy the environment. Both commercial and communal agriculture have depended on the labour of black women and children but with the advent of HIV/AIDS and the mining boom, this labour may become less available. The growing numbers of young men, women and children in gold panning may give rise to the mechanization of agriculture as labor costs escalate. Increasingly, it may no longer be possible to structure a land reform and agrarian programme based on the cheap labour of the young and of women in rural Zimbabwe since these groups may no longer be willing to tolerate badly paid and/or unpaid family labour in isolated rural households. The mining boom has created alternatives such as trading gold, food, clothes, tools and other commodities that are in demand in gold panning camps. This aspect of the national economic restructuring merits more attention that has been given so far in agricultural and economic planning policy in Zimbabwe.

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* Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe, P. O. Box MP 167, Harare, Zimbabwe,  E-mail: rgaidzanwa@mango.zw

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