Echoes From the Rocks: Contextualising Land Reform and Resettled Farmer Experiences in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article seeks to characterise and contextualise land reform, and the experiences of resettled farmers, in the under-researched Matabeleland South. It does so through a historicised, landscape approach to changes in the post-Fast Track Land Reform Programme agrarian structure in two wards in Matobo District. While new land dispensation is still consolidating, outcomes are varied, and while beneficiaries are vulnerable to drought in mixed farming there is also notable resilience. Importantly, we argue that changes in the landscape ‘echo’ the past, where material and discursive changes play out at the same time as agrarian livelihoods evolve.