One of the major criticisms of Zimbabwe's fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) was that it led to the ‘unravelling’ of local state institutions (Hammar 2003; Alexander 2006). Political events that characterized the watershed moments of 2000 when land occupations took place across the Zimbabwean countryside were captured in apocalyptic terms. It was claimed that the violence witnessed across the Zimbabwean countryside during the land occupations signified the end of ‘modernity’ and that Zimbabwe had entered a fascist cycle (Scarnecchia 2006; Worby 2003). A discourse centred on state collapse which was largely influenced by the media representation of the land reform process emerged. This discourse acquired currency in academia, especially during the jambanja phase of land reform, and influenced the way in which Zimbabwe's changing agrarian structure was conceptualized (Hammar et al. 2003). Competing arguments about the dynamics of land occupations and their impact on local state structures also polarized academia (Hammar et al. 2003; Moyo and Yeros 2005; Mamdani 2008; Scarnecchia et al. 2008). However, these arguments were undermined by the absence of empirical data to support them as well as counter claims. The increase in field-workdriven studies during the so-called planning phase of land reform after 2004 provided the much-needed evidence on the outcomes of land reform and the way it had an impact on rural governance (Moyo and Yeros 2005; Moyo et al. 2009; Scoones et al. 2010, 2012; Matondi 2012).

Data from these studies suggest that the FTLRP fundamentally transformed rural authority structures. During the onset of land occupations in 2000, chiefs and war veterans who led them emerged as prominent actors in the rural polity with some authority over land. Local state structures such as Village Development Committees (VIDCOs), Ward Development Committees (WADCOs) and District Administrators (DAs) had to contend with having to share their role over rural administration with war veterans and chiefs who in some places had become powerful political figures. In the aftermath of land reform, the emergence of actors such as war veterans in the new authority structures has had a bearing in the way authority over land is claimed and exercised by diverse actors, both state and non-state. State making in the context of Zimbabwe's agrarian reform has thus been shaped by competing claims of authority over land as land occupations ‘marked a transformation of the state and political sphere’ (Alexander 2006: 187).