The access, control, and ownership of land and the means of production is an enduring frontier of conflict in post colonial settler states. Whilst racially tinged, colonialism created “structures of feeling” that sanctioned epistemic violence and created an economy of entitlement and belonging that sustained imperial designs. Zimbabwe’s independence meant the redistribution and proprietorship of land became a central leitmotif of cadastral politics. The article explores the interplay of the contested tropes of race, entitlement, and indigeneity as they informed the highly polarized land redistribution discourse. The discussion takes stock of the dominant narratives of post-colonial state predations, patronage, populism, and megalomania in contradistinction to the various ways in which whiteness and its prejudices and stereotypes nurtured some hubris of entitlement and belonging that retrogressively not only perpetuated colonial settler values and identities but also entrenched racial distance and indifference. The polarized contestations on land redistribution discourse coalesce around concepts such as restitution, indigeneity, nativity, patriotism, race, and class. Therefore while critiquing state excesses that have masked the honorable intentions of land redistribution, the article underscores the complex ways in which white Zimbabweans contributed to the enduring crisis by obdurately fixating their energies on colonial settler entitlements, values, and identities.
AchebeC. (1988). Hopes and impediments: Selected essays. Doubleday.
2.
Africa All Party Parliamentary Group. (2009). Africa All Party Parliamentary Group report. U.K. House of Commons.
3.
AlaoA. (2007). Natural resources and conflict: The tragedy of endowment. University of Rochester Press.
4.
AldenC.AnseeuwW. (2009). Land, liberation and compromise in Southern Africa. Palgrave Macmillan.
5.
AldenC.MakumbeJ. (2001). The Zimbabwe constitution: Race, land reform and social justice. In CornwellH. G.StoddardE. W. (Eds.), Global multiculturalism (pp. 215–237). Rowman and Littlefield.
6.
AlbertusM. (2015). Autocracy and redistribution: The politics of land reform. Cambridge University Press.
7.
AlexanderJ.McGregorJ. (2013). Introduction: Politics patronage and violence in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(4), 749–763.
8.
BallingerW. A. (1966). Call it Rhodesia. Mayflower.
9.
BarkerJ. (2007). Paradise plundered: The story of a Zimbabwean farm. Author.
10.
BeachD. (1980). The Shona and Zimbabwe, 900–1850: An Outline of Shona History. Africana Publication.
11.
BernsteinH.ByresT. J. (2001). From peasant studies to agrarian change. Journal of Agrarian Change, 1(1), 1–56.
12.
BlairD. (2002). Degrees in violence. Robert Mugabe and the struggle for power in Zimbabwe. Continuum.
13.
BondP. (1998). Uneven Zimbabwe. A study of finance, development and underdevelopment. Africa World Press.
14.
BuellR. L. (1928). The native problem in Africa. Macmillan.
15.
ChennellsA. (1982). Settlers myths and the Southern Rhodesian novel (PhD dissertation). University of Zimbabwe.
16.
ChungF. (1989). The land issue: What is to be done? (pp. 8–11). SAPEM.
17.
ClaphamC. (2012). From liberation movement to government: Past legacies and the challenges of transition in Africa. The Brenthurst Foundation Discussion Paper 8.
18.
CesaireA. (2000). Discourse on colonialism. Monthly Review Press.
19.
CrononW. (1983). Changes in the land: Indians, colonist and the ecology of New England. Hill and Wang.
20.
DashwoodH. S. (2000). Zimbabwe: The political economy of transformation. University of Toronto Press.
21.
De VilliersB. (2003). Land reform. Issues and challenges: A comparative overview of experiences in Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and Australia. Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
22.
DidionJ. (1979). The White album. Simon and Schuster.
23.
DiopC. A. (1974). The African origin of civilisation: Myth or reality. Lawrence Hill Books.
24.
DubeL. M. (2019). Restitution versus Populism: Revisiting the Dorminant Tropes of the Land Question in Zimbabwe. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 203–219.
25.
FanonF. (1967). The wretched of the Earth. Penguin Books.
26.
FisherJ. L. (2010). Pioneers, settlers, aliens, exiles: The decolonisation of White identity in Zimbabwe. Australia National University Press.
27.
FonteinJ. (2006). The silence of great Zimbabwe: Contested landscapes and the power of heritage. University College London Press; Weaver Press.
28.
GoneseF.MarongweN.MukoraC.KinseyB. (2002). Land reform and resettlement implementation in Zimbabwe. An overview of the programme against selected international experiences. Mimeo.
29.
GordonL. R. (1997). Existential dynamics of theorizing Black invisibility. In GordonL. R. (Eds.), Existence in Black: An anthology of Black existential philosophy. Routledge.
30.
GwekwerereT.MutasaD. E.ChitofiriK. (2017). Settlers, Rhodesians and supremacists: White authors and the fast track land reform program in post 2000 Zimbabwe. Journal of Black Studies, 49(1), 3–28.
31.
HarrisonE. (2006). Jambanja. Maioio Publishers.
32.
HegelG. W. F. (2004). The philosophy of history. Dover.
33.
HegelG. W. F (2010). The Science of Logic (GiovanniG. D. Trans). Cambridge University Press.
34.
HeideggerM.GendlinE. T. (1967). What is a thing? (BartonW. B.DeutschV. Trans). Henry Regnery.
35.
HughesD. M. (2010). Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, landscape and the problem of belonging. Palgrave Macmillan.
36.
HuntingtonS. (1968). Political order in changing societies. USA: Yale University Press.
37.
KennedyD. (1987). Islands of White: Settler society and culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939. Duke University Press.
38.
KwashiraiV. C. (2006). Dilemmas in conservationism in colonial Zimbabwe, 1890–1930. Journal of Conservation and Society, 4, 541–561. Wolters Kluwer India Pvt.
39.
LaurieA. C. (2016). The land reform deception: Political opportunism in Zimbabwe’s land seizure era. Oxford University Press.
40.
MalkkiL. (1992). National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialisation of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24–44.
41.
MandazaI. (1986). Zimbabwe: The politics of economic transition. CODESRIA.
42.
MasseyD. (1992). A place called home? In AllenJ.MasseyD. (Eds.), Geographical worlds (pp. 3–51). The Open University.
43.
MayhewS. (2004). Governmentality. In A dictionary of geography. Oxford University Press.
44.
MazruiA. A. (2002). Africa and other civilisations: Conquest and counter conquest. Africa World Press.
45.
MbembeA. (2001). On the post colony. University of California.
46.
MbembeA. (2017). Critique of Black reason (DuboisL., Trans.). Duke University Press.
47.
McClintockA. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge.
48.
MelberH. (1993). Namibia: The Case of a Post Colonial White Society. Southern African Political and Economic Monthly, 6(7), 25–28.
49.
MelberH. (2015). In the footsteps of Robert Gabriel Mugabe: Namibian solidarity with Mugabe’s populism-(bogus) anti-imperialism in practice: In Ndlovu-GatsheniS. J. (Ed.), Mugabeism?: History, politics and power in Zimbabwe. Palgrave Macmillan.
50.
MeredithM. (2002). Robert Mugabe. Power and plunder and the Struggle for Zimbawe Zimbabwe. Public Affairs.
51.
MoyoS. (1995). A gendered perspective of the land question. Southern African Feminist Review, Harare. Vol 1(1).
52.
MoyoS. (2011). Three decades of agrarian reform in Zimbabwe. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(3), 493–531.
53.
MoyoS.YerosP. (Eds.). (2005). Reclaiming land: The resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Zed Books.
54.
MugabeR. G. (2001). Inside the third Chimurenga. Department of Information and Publicity.
55.
Ndlovu-GatsheniS. J. (Eds.). (2015). Mugabeism?: History politics and power in Zimbabwe: African histories and modernities. Palgrave Macmillan.
56.
PalmerR. (1990). Land reform in Zimbabwe, 1980–1990. African Affairs, 89(338), 163–181.
57.
PazvakavambwaS.HungweV. (2009). Land redistribution in Zimbabwe. In Binswanger-MkhizeH.BourguignonC.Van de BrinkJ. E. R. (Eds.), Agricultural land redistribution: Towards greater consensus on the “How” (pp. 137–168). World Bank Publications.
58.
PilosoffR. (2012). The unbearable whiteness of being: Farmers’ voices from Zimbabwe. Weaver Press.
59.
PrimoracR. (2006). The place of tears: The novel and politics in modern Zimbabwe. Tauris Academic Studies.
60.
RaftopoulosB.HammarA.JensenS. (2003). Zimbabwe’s unfinished business: Rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis. Weaver Press.
61.
RamoseM. B. (2002). Justice and restitution in African political thought. In CoetzeeP. H.RouxA. P. J. (Eds.), The African philosophy reader (2nd ed., pp. 461–463). Routledge.
62.
RangerT. O. (1960). Crisis in Southern Rhodesia. Fabian Commonwealth Research Series 217. Fabian Commonwealth Bureau.
63.
RodneyW. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Bogle L’Ouverture.
64.
SachikonyeL. (2003). From “growth with equity” to “fast track” reform: Zimbabwe’s land Question. Review of African Political Economy, 30(96), 227–240.
65.
SaidE. (1993). Culture and imperialism. Knopf.
66.
SamasuwoN. (2003). Food production and war supplies: Rhodesia’s beef industry during the second world war, 1939–1945. Journal of Southern African Studies, 29(2), 487–502.
67.
SatreJ. P. L. (1943). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (BarnesH. E., Trans.). Methuen and Co.
68.
St JohnL. (2007). Rainbow’s end: A memoir of childhood, war and an African farm. Scribner.
69.
StockelyC. (1911). The claw: A story of South Africa. Grosset and Dunlap.
70.
StonemanC.CliffeL. (1989). Zimbabwe: Politics, economics and society. London: Pinter Publishers.
71.
TafiraC. K. (2015). Mugabe’s land reform and the provocation of global White anti Black racism: In Ndlovu-GatsheniS. J. (Ed.), Mugabeism?: History, politics, and power in Zimbabwe. Palgrave Macmillan.
72.
WhaleyW. (1973). Race politics in Rhodesia. Zambezia, 3(1), 31–37.
73.
ZvousheH.UwizeyimanaD. E.AuriacombeC. J. (2017). Indigenisation, Politics of Exclusion and the Problematics of Autochthony in Zimbabwe’s Redistribution Agenda. Administratio Publica, 25(4). ASSADPAM.
