Madness, corruption and exile: On Zimbabwe's remaining white commercial farmers

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 747-762

  Kalaora, Léa ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL WORKER; BLACK POPULATION; COHABITATION; CORRUPTION; LAND REFORM; OCCUPATION;

ZIMBABWE;

EID: 84858374949     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2011.609341     Document Type: Article

References (94)

1. Political and economic aspects of land reform in Zimbabwe have received much attention. With regard to the establishment of a 'white' agriculture.
2. R. Palmer, Land and RacialDomination inRhodesia (London,Heinemann, 1977)
3. I. Phimister, An Economic and SocialHistory of Zimbabwe 1890-1948: Capital Accumulation and ClassStruggle (London, Longman, 1988).
4. On the politics of land
5. J. Alexander, TheUnsettled Land: State-making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1893-2003 (Oxford, James Currey, 2006)
6. 'The Historiography of Land in Zimbabwe: Strengths, Silences, and Questions', Safundi, 8, 2 (2 April 2007), pp. 187-198. For a good summary of agrarian reform since 1980,
7. R. Palmer, 'Land Reform in Zimbabwe, 1980-1990', African Affairs, 89 (1990), pp. 163-181,
8. N. Kriger, 'Liberation from Constitutional Constraints: Land Reform in Zimbabwe', SAIS Review, 28, 2 (Summer-Fall 2007).
9. These issues are tackled from various angles in a special issue of the Journal of Agrarian Change on 'New Agrarian Conflicts and Questions in Zimbabwe', 1, 4 (October 2001).
10. At independence they owned 45 per cent of the agricultural land.
11. Former 'reserves' (later Tribal Trust Lands) were renamed 'communal lands' in 1982.
12. The veterans are the former fighters of the liberation struggle (1970-80). In 1988, they founded the Zimbabwe National War of Liberation Veterans Association, which called for pensions to be paid and land redistributed.
13. For a good analysis of the actors and modalities of land occupations in south-eastern Zimbabwe,
14. J. Chaumba, I. Scoones and W. Wolmer, 'New Politics, New Livelihoods: Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe', Review of African Political Economy, 30, 98 (December 2003), pp. 585-608,
15. 'From Jambanja to Planning: The Reassertion to Technocracy in Land Reform in South-Eastern Zimbabwe', Journal of Modern African Studies, 1, 4 (2003), pp. 533-554.
16. Chaumba, Scoones and Wolmer, 'From Jambanja to Planning', p. 540.
17. During the time of the presidential elections in 2008, the period between the two rounds was marked with violence and intimidation directed at MDC supporters. ZANU(PF)'s militants were intimidating people and pressuring them to vote for them during pungwes, while accusing those who did not attend of being opposition (MDC) supporters.
18. For white farmers in Mozambique,
19. A. Hammar, 'Ambivalent Mobilities: Zimbabwean Commercial Farmers in Mozambique', Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 395-416.
20. C.J. Greenhouse, 'Introduction: Altered States, Altered Lives', in C.J. Greenhouse, E. Mertz and K.B. Warren (eds), Ethnography in Unstable Places. Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change (Durham, NC, & London, Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 8-9.
21. The association's name must remain confidential; I will refer to the source of these interviews as 'CS' (Confidential Source). I have also changed the names of all of my informants.
22. For a history of Matabeleland
23. J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe (Oxford, James Currey, 2000).
24. During Gukurahundi (1980-8), a series of politically motivated killings organised by ZANU in Matabeleland against the civilians and sympathisers of the Zimbabwe's African People Union, the other main political force, more white farmers were killed than during the liberation war. In total, more than 20,000 people were killed during Gukurahundi. About farm occupations in Matabeland.
25. J. Alexander and J. McGregor, 'Elections, Land and the Politics of Opposition in Matabeleland', Journal of Agrarian Change, 1, 4 (2001), pp. 510-533.
26. A. Selby, White Farmers in Zimbabwe, 1890-2005 (Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford University, 2006)
27. a very complete history of white farmers. About white farmers' identity,
28. D.M. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
29. Selby, White Farmers in Zimbabwe, which addresses the English-Afrikaner divide.
30. S. Nuttall, 'Subjectivities of Whiteness', African Studies Review, 44, 2 (September 2001), pp. 115-140.
31. D. Jeater, Law, Language, and Science: The Invention of the 'Native Mind' in Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1930 (Portsmouth, NC, Heinemann, 2007).
32. For more on how boundaries were managed, discussed or brought into question,
33. A.K. Shutt, '"The Natives Are Getting Out of Hand": Legislating Manners, Insolence and Contemptuous Behaviour in Southern Rhodesia, c. 1910-1963', Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 3 (2007), p. 655;
34. 'Debating Manners and Politics in Federation-era Southern Rhodesia, 1953-1963', a working draft presented at NEWSA 2010.
35. Jeater, Law, Language and Science.
36. Jeater, Law, Language, and Science, p. 18.
37. Shutt, '"The Natives Are Getting Out of Hand"', pp. 653-672.
38. Before the 1920s.
39. Jeater, Law, Language, and Science, p. 19.
40. B. Rutherford calls it 'domestic government' and makes a very good analysis in Working on the Margins: Black Workers, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001).
41. For more about white post-colonial identity
42. J.L. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles: The Decolonisation of White Identity in Zimbabwe (Canberra, Australian National University E Press, 2010).
43. J.L. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles, p. 193
44. In Matabeleland white farmers' discourses are probably very different because of Gukurahundi.
45. Interview with Lisa, Harare, July 2008.
46. During the war, they were protected by the police, the army and their own community. During farm occupations,
47. They have no protection. No matter how good their relations with police have been, the police do not help. In fact, the police were instructed not to intervene in the farm occupations because land issues were political and therefore not a legal matter. Police who did try to intervene were punished; for example, they lost their jobs and were deemed 'sell-outs'.
48. Interview with John, Harare, May 2008. John, a farmer from Guruve, Mashonaland Central, moved to Harare in 2005.
49. 'Desperation Stalks Zimbabwe's White Farmers', ZWNEWS (23 September 2009).
50. Peter explained that the South African Minister of Labour came to his farm in 2003 because 'they [the South African government] were being shown the success of the land reform programme'.
51. Interview with Peter, CS, 2008.
52. Kriger, 'Liberation from Constitutional Constraints'.
53. Interview with Peter, CS, 2008.
54. Interview with Geoffroy, CS, 2007.
55. Geoffroy moved in town in 2002 from his farm situated in Murewa, Mashonaland East. Interview with Roy, CS, 2007. Roy is a farmer from Mashonaland West who left his farm in 2002.
56. Shutt, 'The Natives are Getting Out of Hand', p. 653.
57. Interview with Jane, CS, 2008. Jane lived on a farm in Mashonaland East with her husband. In 2005, they had to leave their farm after two years of battle.
58. Farm occupations and their consequences had a strong impact on gender relations, a theme that calls for further exploration.
59. Interview with Trevor, CS, 2008.
60. Interview with Lisa, Harare, May 2008.
61. Interview with Lisa, Harare, May 2008.
62. Interview with Jane, CS, 2008.
63. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles;
64. Hammar, Ambivalent Mobilities;
65. J. Taylor, The Politics of Uncertainty in a White Zimbabwean Farming Community (MA Dissertation, Oxford, 2002).
66. The uncertainty or ambivalence these authors write about, however, is more about 'waiting', as defined in a different context by V. Crapanzano in Waiting: The Whites of South Africa (London, Paladin, 1986). The cases described by Hammar fall in the middle, but, in Mozambique, farmers are again trying to work as they used to do.
67. Hughes, In Whiteness in Zimbabwe, claims that the ones who stayed say that they are 'playing the game'.
68. The expression 'lost his head' is also ironic as he is also no longer head of the farm
69. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe, pp. 119-120.
70. 'Sell-out' (vatengesi) is the epithet used by ZANU(PF) hardliners for black Zimbabweans who are on the 'other side'.
71. Interview with Mary, Harare, May 2008. Her husband grew tobacco and roses on their farm in Mashonaland Central. They came to Harare in 2004.
72. As Harris writes, 'Ironically, Mugabe's revocation of the discourses of reconciliation has allowed for a white reimagining of the past that, in this instance, exculpates white Zimbabwean involvement in racial tensions through de-historicizing that white identity'. A. Harris, 'Writing Home: Inscriptions of Whiteness/Description of Belonging in White Zimbabwean Memoir/Autobiography', in R. Muponde and R. Primorak (eds), Versions ofZimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture (Harare, Weaver Press, 2005), p. 107.
73. Interview with Charles, Harare, May 2008.
74. Interview with Charles, Harare, May 2008.
75. Interview with Peter, CS, 2008.
76. Interview with Richard, CS, 2008.
77. Richard left his farm in Concession, Mashonaland Central, in 2003 and moved first to Harare, then to Zambia.
78. Interview with Jane, CS, 2008.
79. J.L. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, 'The Madman and the Migrant: Work and Labor in the Historical Consciousness of a South African People', American Ethnologist, 14, 2 (1987), pp. 203-204.
80. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 264
81. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (London, Tavistock, 1967).
82. Comaroff and Comaroff, 'The Madman and the Migrant', p. 194.
83. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe.
84. Interview with Howard, Harare, July 2008.
85. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe
86. Hammar, 'Ambivalent Mobilities',
87. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens and Exiles.
88. T. Ranger, 'Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle Over the Past in Zimbabwe', Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (2004), pp. 215-234
89. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens and Exiles.
90. As an Afrikaner, he doesn't feel any connection with Europe.
91. Interview with Tim, Harare, May 2008.
92. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens and Exiles.
93. Comaroff and Comaroff, 'The Madman and the Migrant', p. 204.
94. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe, also analyses this.