Reconfigured Agrarian Relations in Zimbabwe, by Toendepi Shonhe

Abstract

Zimbabwe’s Fast-Track-Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) at the turn of the century has generated much scholarship and heated debate in both academic and policy circles. Two major schools of thought have emerged: first is a group which has portrayed the FTLRP as a disaster of unmitigated proportions; the second strand is dominated by scholars like Ian Scoones, Sam Moyo and others, who have sought to identify its “positive outcomes without endorsing violence and abuses that accompanied the seizure of farms” (p. 150). It is partly to the latter school that Toendepi Shonhe makes a contribution. Through his case study of the Hwedza district in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland East Province, Shonhe adds his voice to works that have sought to evaluate policy outcomes of the FTLRP. The book—a qualitative evaluation of the impact of the FTLRP—examines policy outcomes of land reform, including shedding light on the reinsertion of capital into Zimbabwe’s agrarian productivity, accumulation and class formation processes after the FTLRP.