2. 2000 – the eve of the November 2017 coup The year 2000 proved to be one of the key landmarks in Zimbabwean politics. In that year, Zanu-PF lost a referendum around its attempt to impose a new constitution against popular pressure. The constitution submitted for a vote contained several progressive elements. These included limits of presidential power and lengths of mandate, as well as broad measures of accountability regarding state power that, if implemented, would have placed more restraints on the ruling party’s conflation of state and party. Mugabe’s party clearly understood this and moved to mobilise against its implementation. In addition, the newly formed opposition party, the MDC, made major electoral inroads in the 2000 elections, despite state repression and internal organisational, accountability and strategic challenges.51 Faced with a combination of growing pressure for land reform from its own constituents, particularly the war veterans, the stepping back of the Blair government from the support for land reform formerly promised by the Thatcher government, and the increasing pressure from opposition forces for democratic reform, Zanu-PF embarked on a major land acquisition process in 2000, which came to be known as the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. There is ongoing debate about the process and outcomes of this policy intervention in a vast literature that is beyond the scope of this paper. In short, however, some of the major outcomes of a violent acquisition process that deepened the authoritarian and militarised forms of state rule included: • While in 2000 there were approximately 4 500 white commercial farmers occupying 11 million hectares of land and producing over 70% of agricultural outputs, by 2008 this number had been reduced to about 500. This
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Faced with a combination of growing pressure for land reform from its own constituents, particularly the war veterans, the stepping back of the Blair government from the support for land reform formerly promised by the Thatcher government, and the increasing pressure from opposition forces for democratic reform, Zanu-PF embarked on a major land acquisition process in 2000, which came to be known as the Fast Track Land Reform Programme.
resulted in the establishment of ‘new pettycommodity-producing establishments’ that accounted for 93.7% of the new farming establishments.52 However, this redistribution was also accompanied by ‘forms of exclusion and subordination’ with regard to farm workers and women.53 • In some areas, the land reform also led to the recasting of racialised production systems and commodity chains, and the reconfiguration of the ‘relationship between the state and informal market systems’.54 The expansion of small and medium scale farmers resulted in the growth of trade between the latter and informal sector traders and the
Raftopoulos, 2006 Moyo & Yeros, 2005, p. 195 Helliker & Bhatisara, 2018, p. 11 Mavedzenge et al., 2008, p. 619
CASE STUDY: NAVIGATING TURBULENCE IN ZIMBABWE
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