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Legacies of ‘madiro’? Worker-peasantry, livelihood crisis and ‘siziphile’ land occupations in semi-arid north-western Zimbabwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2017

Vusilizwe Thebe
Vusilizwe Thebe*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, P. Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa
*
Email: vusi.thebe@up.ac.za
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Abstract

This paper examines acts of land ‘self-provisioning’ (‘siziphile’ land occupations) and ‘radical land restitution’ (of land previously annexed from people by the local authority for a pilot grazing project) by villagers in a communal area in Lupane District in north-western Zimbabwe. Situating these occurrences within the wider and historical context of ‘madiro’ (freedom farming and unauthorised development of settlements) and Matabeleland land politics and semi-proletarianisation, it stresses the livelihood history of households, the disappointments with local job opportunities and destruction of urban-based livelihoods in a crumbling economy, and the accompanying crisis of communal area agriculture. It concludes that these factors provided a real threat to semi-proletarianisation. By self-provisioning of the land the overriding concern of villagers was to maintain a certain level of livelihood survival, even if it was at odds with their livelihood strategies, while they sought opportunities to maintain semi-proletarianisation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 201 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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