Reconfiguring rural authority after land reform
Empowered by the Traditional Leaders Act, which once again gave power to chiefs, reducing the role of civil administration of rural local government and village development committees, following land reform, “chiefs have instrumentalised ancestral autocht
GRASIAN Mkodzongi’s excellent paper - “I am a paramount chief, this land belongs to my ancestor’: The reconfiguration of rural authority after Zimbabwe’s land reforms” - recently won the Ruth First prize in the Review of African Political Economy.
The paper explores the reconfiguration of rural authority in the aftermath of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme, particularly the way chiefs were able to deploy ancestral autochthony as a way of contesting State hegemony. The paper argues that “chiefs cannot simply be viewed as undemocratic remnants of colonial rule; instead, a nuanced understanding of their role in rural governance is required”.
Chiefs frequently get a bad press. Seen as hangovers from the past, and the colonial attempts at indirect rule, as foci for the imposition of patriarchal (invented) “tradition”, or lackeys of the ruling party, in the pay of the political elite, offered free houses, cars and other benefits in order to control the rural vote.
These narratives, Mkodzongi argues, are too simplistic. Building on the excellent earlier work by Joseph Mujere, and long-standing research on chiefs and land recently by Jocelyn Alexander, Joost Fontein and many others, and going further back to the classic colonial era reflections by J. F. Holleman and A.K.H Weinrich, this paper tries to pick apart the complex roles chiefs have in land control.
Empowered by the Traditional Leaders Act, which once again gave power to chiefs, reducing the role of civil administration of rural local government and village development committees, following land reform, “chiefs have instrumentalised ancestral autochthony as way of claiming land”.
Of course, ancestral claims are highly contested, especially on land that had only been occupied by white farmers for many years. As we discussed in our 2010 book, many disputes arose as contests over chiefly territory emerged. This is equally the case in the Mhondoro Ngezi area discussed in the paper, where three chiefs compete, with contests over who is paramount, where. “The question of who owns the newly resettled territories depends on who you are talking to and their place of origin before the land reform,” the paper explains.
Chiefs gained further power through the “indigenisation” programme, whereby companies were required to have 51 percent local ownership. As the paper shows in Mhondoro Ngezi district “chiefs have become powerful political figures responsible for multimillion-dollar Community Share Ownership Trusts (CSOTs) created under the indigenisation programme”, linked to the Zimbabwe platinum mining company.
Chiefs have argued that “mining interferes with makuva emhondoro (graves of royal ancestors) and can cause misfortunes such as accidents (even at mines) and droughts. Thus, the chiefs have demanded that rituals to appease such mhondoro should be done before mining starts. While these quasi-official rituals are embedded in local custom, chiefs have instrumentalised them to their benefit. These rituals are often contested among the chiefs within a locality, who compete to prove that they are the “genuine autochthon” with a legitimate claim over the land endowed with minerals.”
Asserting control over an area is not straightforward. Land was acquired during land reform through a number of routes, but the relationship was largely with the party state, not via chiefs. The paper explains: “In order to entrench and legitimise their authority, chiefs should first win the allegiance of their new subjects with whom most lack kinship. Many of these land beneficiaries came from areas further away.”
The new resettlements therefore present very different challenges to the communal areas. However, over time, as chiefs gained control, their power to offer resources, including land, increased, and a shift in land governance occurred, away from the land committees, base commanders and committees of seven of the land invasion era to incorporating “traditional” leaders in positions of authority. Links to the CSOT arrangement was key in shifting power to the chiefs in the Ngezi area it seems.
Read the full article on www. herald.co.zw