Land Reform and Human Rights in Contemporary Zimbabwe: Balancing Individual and Social Justice Through an Integrated Human Rights Framework

www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

World Development Vol. 32, No. 10, pp. 1785–1805, 2004 Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0305-750X/$ - see front matter

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2004.07.001

Land Reform and Human Rights in Contemporary Zimbabwe: Balancing Individual and Social Justice Through an Integrated Human Rights Framework ANNE HELLUM University of Oslo, Norway

and BILL DERMAN * Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Summary. — We examine conflicting land claims through the lens of a human rights perspective. A human rights framework that balances individual property rights with social and economic rights is set out. This perspective calls for a concerted strategy to protect peopleÕs livelihoods through a wider protection of property rights ranging from land to work. Because the government of Zimbabwe argues that law is an obstacle to historical and social justice, the current accelerated land reform program in Zimbabwe constitutes an important site to explore conflicts between international law, regional law, national law and political contestation. We ask how and if this land reform program is protecting the needs of vulnerable groups such as farm workers, children and women. We conclude that the government is engaged in serious human rights violations and that it is appropriating land to distribute to its followers for political not social justice ends. The land reform program is indeed a political process but one which entails recentralizing of power and resources in the hands of an undemocratic elite. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Key words — Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, human rights, land reform, governance

1. INTRODUCTION This land is your land. DonÕt let them use the courts and the constitution against the masses (A ZANUPF advertisement, November 6, 2000).

Zimbabweans. The slogan for the ruling partyÕs electoral platform for the parliamentary elections of June 2000 was ‘‘Land is the economy and the economy is land.’’ In late 2001, almost all white-owned commercial farmland had been

Land distribution and access to land have been issues since Zimbabwe became independent in 1980. Land for the land-hungry, landless and poor emerged as President Robert MugabeÕs centerpiece for staying in office during the parliamentary elections of 2000 and the presidential election of 2002. He has stated repeatedly that it is time to settle the land question ‘‘once and for all.’’ To that end, members of the war veteransÕ association, along with other supporters of the ruling party, occupied numerous commercial farms owned by white

* Bill Derman has been supported in related research by a Fulbright-Hays Research Grant, a Wenner-Gren Foundation grant for Anthropological Research and the BASIS CRSP for Water and Land Research in Southern Africa. Anne Hellum has been supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Norwegian Research Council Program Development Related WomenÕs Law Research (Bistandsrelevant kvinnerett) based at the Institute of WomenÕs Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. Final revision accepted: 11 June 2004.

1785

1786

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

designated. What began as land invasions has led to the resettlement of virtually all ZimbabweÕs former commercial farm land and to the dispossession of most farm workers who had formerly lived and worked in farm worker villages located on the farms. It has been accompanied by a sharp decline in food and export crop production, dramatic inflation, loss of jobs, food shortages and a collapsing health and education system. 1 In this paper, we examine conflicting land claims through the lens of a human rights framework. We do so because ZimbabweÕs current government has signed several international and African regional human rights instruments and because this examination reveals interesting tensions between the significance of law and governmentsÕ efforts to declare the law as irrelevant in relation to land. 2 From its very inception, Zimbabwe has been characterized by a relatively independent judiciary, a strong law faculty and law society emphasizing traditions that can be characterized as rule by law (Dumbutshena, 1990; Gubbay, 1997). There has been an enormous change since February 2000 when the land question was declared ‘‘political,’’ not legal, by the government. In the governmentÕs view, courts cannot be trusted and must be bypassed since they are enforcing ‘‘white manÕs law’’ and are blocking land reform. To ensure their loyalty, judges, administrators and police officers at all levels have been subject to threats, harassment and physical violence. Yet law continues to play an important role. Indeed, even in violating the law, the ruling party seeks to justify its actions by writing new ones and by appointing new judges that are assumed loyal to the ruling partyÕs land policy. 3 We are persuaded that the current political and economic crises cannot be resolved through international and regional African human rights law alone. Only the commercial farmers and their union, the Commercial FarmersÕ Union (CFU) have attempted to make use of these instruments to defend their land rights in the courts. 4 Other groups that as a consequence of ‘‘fast track’’ have been dispossessed—commercial farm workers, women and children—have not had the resources and access to the courts. This is partly due to the nature of the rights being lost, the experience of lawyers in bringing human rights cases, and the lack of precedent in having international and regional African instruments concerning social and economic rights, such as

the right to livelihood, tried in Zimbabwean courts. Almost all human rights cases in Zimbabwe have focused on civil and political rights guaranteed in the Constitution or the countryÕs laws. These cases have been brought by local human and civil rights organizations and have mainly been claims around rights of speech, association, and political freedoms in general. WomenÕs rights claims have focused on inheritance, maintenance rights, property rights. The right to equal property rights within these areas has, however, been severely hampered by the ConstitutionÕs Section 23, which gives customary law a privileged position when it conflicts with equality principles. Despite these limits of the law, we argue that international and regional African human rights instruments contain guidelines and principles that will enable future governments to more fairly and equitably address ZimbabweÕs colonial legacy and current economic structures. The rights discourse, if broadened to include social and economic rights, would lead to new and different claims relating to land— with very different policy outcomes. These include rights to livelihood brought by farm workers; the right of equal protection of tenure and access to resettlement land for women; and the right of farm workersÕ children to education, health and physical security. We see respect for citizensÕ right to livelihood, equal treatment and participation in development as central to fairer processes with respect to resolving highly inequitable land holdings. Thus, the land invasions raise significant new human rights concerns for broad sectors of ZimbabweÕs population. This paper shows that property rights are a part of a general right to a decent standard of living and to life and dignity. It is based upon the understanding of human rights as an integrated whole, which sees property rights as linked to the realization of broader social and economic rights. The Government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) assumes that international human rights impede land reform. Our perspective is the reverse. International and regional African human rights instruments provide the basis for reconciling protection of private property and individual rights with social justice. While it is relatively easy to demonstrate that the fast track resettlement program is illegal, unconstitutional and a violation of human rights standards that Zimbabwe as a nation has agreed to, nonetheless the land issue will not be addressed adequately unless other rights-based ap-

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

proaches are included. Our paper is thus futureoriented, looking to a time when priorities driven by immediate political gain give way to envisioning a more just and economically viable Zimbabwe. The paper is divided into five main parts: In Section 2, we examine the key international and regional African human rights conventions and treaties signed and to a large extent ratified by the GOZ. In Section 3, we briefly explore the legal framework and policies underlying the governmentÕs changing policies of land reform, land acquisition and resettlement. Section 4 focuses on land reform policy with emphasis on the fast track program. In Section 5, we explore the ramifications of the fast track program for those people who should be or have been the beneficiaries of land reform. In Section 6, we link disregard for human rights standards to questions of citizenship and the changing nature of the Zimbabwean state. The conclusion indicates what could be gained through utilizing an integrated human rights-based approach linking land and livelihoods. 2. INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS RELEVANT TO LAND REFORM IN ZIMBABWE There are a series of relevant treaties and conventions signed by the GOZ since 1980 that might influence the understanding and later the direction of ZimbabweÕs current land reform. The following are the international instruments signed by the GOZ that have direct implications for the land reform: 5 —Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948; —International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966; —International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966; —The African Charter on Human and PeoplesÕ Rights, no date; —International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1966; —African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 1990; —Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1988; —Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979 (usually known as CEDAW, or the WomenÕs Convention);

1787

—Protocol to the African Charter on Human and PeoplesÕ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, 2003. Access to basic resources such as food, health, education, water and land is regarded in current development discourse as central human rights issues and included in the three general categories of rights sometimes referred to as the three generations of human rights. 6 These are —the civil and political rights such as the right to participation, the right to protection of bodily integrity and property and the right to equality and nondiscrimination; —the social, cultural and economic rights such as the right to health, the right to food, the right to water and the right to livelihood; and —the solidarity rights such as the right to development and the right to healthy environment. A number of these human rights principles are of critical significance for the creation of a land reform program that is both equitable and economically sustainable. Here we focus on the instruments that have a bearing on the ongoing process of redistribution in Zimbabwe. 7 (a) Balancing individual property rights and people’s right to livelihood The Zimbabwean case, as with other former settler colonies in Africa, epitomizes the tension between human rights instruments that oblige the state to protect established property rights and those that oblige the state to ensure peopleÕs right to livelihood. The unequal distribution of land between white commercial farmers and black farmers gives rise to a series of complex considerations as to how to reconcile individual and social justice. The obligation to protect established property rights is embedded in Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states (i) everyone has to right to own property alone as well as in association with others; (ii) no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. The right to livelihood is embedded in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which obliges the state to ‘‘. . .recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and

1788

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to continuous improvement of living conditions.’’ All states party to the Covenant are under an obligation to take appropriate measures that promote the right to livelihood. With a view to specify the content of this obligation, Article 11(a) suggests measures such as improvement of production methods and land reform: To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principle of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development an utilization of natural resources.

A state may, depending of the consequences of an unequal distribution of land, be obliged to undertake land reform. Debating the outreach of Article 11, the Third Committee 8 was of the view that, if a just agrarian system existed, then the state was not obliged to undertake land reform; in such cases only the improvement of farming methods would be required (Craven, 1995, p. 300). Agrarian reforms that, like the ZimbabweÕs fast track program, produce a failed economy and undermine the economic foundation for basic human rights, such as the right to health, the right to education and the right to food, clearly fall short of international standards. Agrarian reform resulting in agriculturalistsÕ losing their jobs represents a contravention of the right to livelihood by depriving large segments of the population of work, shelter and food. The Zimbabwean GovernmentÕs decision to acquire commercial farms without providing alternative sources of income and shelter for the farm workers falls short of the right to work, the right to health and the right to housing embedded in Article 6, 11 and 12 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Land reform aimed at social justice and poverty alleviation clearly falls within the scope of basic human rights standards. Striking a balance between property as an individual and social good, Article 14 of The African Charter of Human and PeoplesÕ Rights states that ‘‘The right to property shall be guaranteed. It may only be encroached upon in the interest of public need or in the general interest of the community and in accordance of the provisions of appropriate laws.’’ 9 It is an established principle in international law that the owner of the land, in the event of expropria-

tion, should be compensated. The South African Constitution seeks to balance the conflicting concerns between property as an individual and common good by stating that the amount, time and manner of compensation in the event of expropriation be ‘‘. . .just and equitable, reflecting equitable balance between the public interest and the interest of those affected having regard to circumstances. . .’’ including the current use of the property, the history of the acquisition and use of the property and the market value. 10 Amendment 16A of the Constitution, of July 2000, facilitating expropriation without compensating the owners for the value of the land, falls short of the African Charter. 11 (b) Due process, participation and nondiscrimination Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights implies that land reform must be carried out without any discrimination based on race, class, sex or ethnicity: All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

The principle of nondiscrimination is also embedded in the African Charter of Human and PeoplesÕ Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the WomenÕs Convention and Protocol to the African Charter on Human and PeoplesÕ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. Article 14 of the CEDAW obliges states to ensure equal treatment between men and women in land and agrarian reform including land resettlement schemes. 12 The obligation to refrain from discrimination based on race, class, ethnicity and gender in resource allocation encompasses both direct and indirect discrimination. In order to achieve real equality, the CEDAW recognizes utilizing affirmative action in favor of women. Recognizing existing inequalities in marriage and inheritance law with regard to land rights, the article 16 of the CEDAW requires that they be based on the equality principle. Land reform should thus establish registration procedures such that free-

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

hold or leased land should be registered in the name of both spouses. The protocol to the African Charter on Human and PeoplesÕ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa 13 deserves special attention. The Protocol 14 seeks to protect married women, divorcees and widows against discrimination in relation to land. Article 6 j states that ‘‘during marriage, a woman shall have the right to acquire her own property and to administer and manage it freely.’’ Article 7 on divorce asserts that ‘‘women and men shall have the right to an equitable sharing of the joint property deriving from the marriage.’’ Widows, according to Article 21 have the right to an ‘‘equitable share in the inheritance of the property of her husband. A widow shall have the right to continue to live in the matrimonial house.’’ Another significant implication of applying the nondiscrimination principle to race, class, gender, ethnicity and political belief is that both the properties to be acquired and the beneficiaries of the reform must be selected without bias. Furthermore, the nondiscrimination principle calls for clear selection criteria and a transparent selection procedure. Article 2(c) of the WomenÕs Convention obliges parties to ‘‘establish legal protection of the rights of women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national tribunals and other public institutions the effective protection against any act of discrimination.’’ The implication is that those charged with reallocating land and administering resettlement programs should be conversant with the rights of women. Legal remedies, procedures and institutions are important for protecting rights. In accordance with Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights everyone has the right to an effective remedy by competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him or her by the constitution or by law. The right to remedy is also embedded in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Article 7 of the African Charter of Human and PeoplesÕ Rights and states: ‘‘Every individual shall have the right to have his cause heard,’’ including ‘‘the right to an appeal to competent national organs against acts of violating his fundamental rights as recognized and guaranteed by conventions, laws, regulations and customs in force.’’ These instruments form a concerted whole, which, taken together, articulates the basic principles that any land reform must incorpo-

1789

rate in its policies and practice. This integrated approach is best illustrated by the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and PeoplesÕ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. In addressing the Right to Sustainable Development Article 19(c) obliges States Parties to ‘‘promote womenÕs access to control over productive resources such as land and guarantee their right to property.’’ Addressing the Right to Food Security, Article 15(a) obliges States parties to take appropriate measures to ‘‘provide women with access to clean drinking water, sources of domestic fuel, land, and the means of producing nutritious food.’’ Participation rights form part and parcel of the right to development in Article 19(c) stating that ‘‘participation of women at all levels in the conceptualization, decision-making, implementation and evaluation of development policies and programs’’ shall be ensured. To further ensure that womenÕs access to justice is put into practice Article 8e states that ‘‘law enforcement organs at all levels are equipped to effectively interpret and enforce gender equality rights.’’ We now turn to the issue of how the GOZ has considered and acted upon land inequalities. 3. ‘‘RULE OF LAW OPPRESSIVE TO THE POOR:’’ THE LEGAL AND POLICY FRAMEWORK ADOPTED BY THE GOZ The Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, has tried to explain the Zimbabwean governmentÕs approach to the land question. When he first took office, Minister Chinamasa stated that a critical problem of the judicial system was the dependence of judges upon international donors which prevented them from finding justice. The Minister was quoted as saying: ‘‘If justice is absent, we must not expect peace. The rule of law that is based on unjust laws is founded on quick sand and will not last’’ (The Herald, July 10, 2000). The Minister of Justice contended that Zimbabwe was governed by unjust laws, by which he meant laws dealing with protection of property, civil liberties and other human rights. These unjust laws—which upheld the unequal distribution of land—and the legal decisions that keep them in place were, in his view, due to ‘‘foreign’’ influences. Accordingly the land question called for a political solution that went

1790

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

beyond law. Thus the Minister stated a little more than a year later: The dispossession of land and the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe had not been done in the courts and similarly the re-possession of the land would not go via that route. We did not apply through the judiciary that we now want our country back. There are things which are issues of war or peace (The Herald, August 3, 2001).

The wider political and judicial environment in which the current government is carrying out fast track resettlement is thus very different from the past. It equates the fast track program to a continuation of the war for liberation. The enemies are virtually the same: ‘‘Rhodesians,’’ black collaborators, the British, and anyone else who supports white farmers, farm workers and the opposition party—in short, anyone who disagrees with the ZANU-PF government. Zimbabwe has not seen such levels of violence and terror since the liberation war. 15 This current period has been called the Third Chimurenga by President Mugabe not without reason. We now briefly review the legal and policy frameworks adopted by the GOZ with respect to land. The conventional history of Zimbabwe recounts that the government was blocked from carrying out far-reaching land reforms after independence due to the constitution agreed to at the Lancaster House conference. This agreement imposed restrictions on the new stateÕs ability to nationalize land through a constitution that could not be altered for a decade. Land could be bought by government but only on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis. A constant complaint of the government was that it was unable to obtain resettlement land due to lack of money and the successful use of the courts by white farmers to block acquisition of their farms (Bowyer-Bower & Stoneman, 2000). In the 1990s, a series of constitutional and statutory changes weakened the protection of private property rights. The Land Acquisition Act of 1992 empowered the President to compulsorily acquire rural land where ‘‘the acquisition is reasonably necessary for resettlement for agricultural and other purposes’’ (S.3). The owner was, in terms of section 16, entitled to fair compensation. A compensation committee made up by the Secretary of the Ministry, the Director of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services, the Chief Government Valuation Officers and three other members appointed

by the minister was established to determine the compensation payable. While the compensation issue could be appealed to the Administrative Court, no legal remedies were established with regard to the decision to designate land. This reform thus fell short of human rights standards such as the right to a fair and impartial hearing by an independent tribunal and the right to appeal (Gubbay, 1997). It did, however, provide the government with much flexibility to acquire land for resettlement purposes. A different approach was suggested by the Commission of Enquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure Systems (referred to as the Rukuni Commission, 1994), appointed by the President in 1993. The recommendations made in this document were very much in the spirit of Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights emphasizing the obligations to take steps to ensure the realization of the right to livelihood by ‘‘reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources.’’ The Commission observed that, as of 1994 (Rukuni Commission, Vol. II, 1994, p. 223): The resettlement programme is severely underfunded and beset with planning and administrative difficulties. Government funding for the resettlement programme, for example, is only equivalent to 2.4% of the defense budget for 1994–95. This has resulted in a very poor rate of resettlement since 1990, and any hope that the program will relieve communal land pressure has been lost.

The Commission made a series of recommendations. 16 It recommended that resettlement be made a permanent program. To increase the efficiency of the agricultural sector, the main recommendation was increased investment in water in communal and resettlement areas (Derman & Gonese, 2003). Other recommendations as to how agricultural production could be increased in communal and resettlement areas included legally secure tenure, improved credit and financial services, and comprehensive agricultural support institutions. While the Commission made a number of recommendations about securing tenure in communal and resettlement areas, it did not adequately address womenÕs tenurial concerns nor directly respond to presentations made to it by womenÕs groups. The Commission rein-

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

forced the public/private dichotomy underlying ZimbabweÕs land regime by leaving out transfer of land within the family in the event of marriage, divorce and death. The husbandÕs matrimonial power, which is at the root of the unequal distribution of land between married men and women, was not questioned. The law that applies to registered and unregistered customary marriages gives a man status as head of household and, as such, the right to hold property on behalf of his family. In communal areas, where land use rights usually are conferred on the husband as the head of the family, womenÕs access to institutional loans were severely hampered (Ncube, 1987; ZWRCN, 1998). Furthermore, crops are usually marketed through the husbandÕs name and payments received in his name. The lack of title deeds and control over income by women has given rise to an increasing number of ‘‘harvest suicides.’’ 17 In a parallel fashion, the Commission did not address issues concerning tenure for women in resettlement areas. After the Edinburgh Commonwealth Summit at which President Mugabe felt snubbed by the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, he announced that the Government would be acquiring 50% of the large-scale commercial farming areas for three different types of resettlement (Chan, 2002, p. 111). During this time of increased attention to land disparities came the food riots and strikes of 1998 and the general economic decline in the national economy. The international donor community including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department for International Development (DFID), the Danish Agency for International Development (DANIDA), and the Norwegian Agency for International Development (NORAD), the World Bank, et al. attempted to more seriously confront the land question. At the International Donor Conference on Land Reform and Resettlement in Zimbabwe in 1998, the Donors indicated their concerns for the need for rule of law, transparency, and gender equality in the next phase of land reform. At this conference the donors agreed to fund an extensive land-reform program encompassing one million hectares but wanted greater proof that land reform would benefit the poor in a transparent manner. 18 Therefore they insisted that compensation should be paid for land to the landowners and a technical unit organized outside government should administer the resettlement process. The agreement rapidly fell apart

1791

for reasons that remain unknown. It is our hypothesis that the party wanted to reserve the land issue for political purposes and was unwilling to have land reform be administered by technical personnel supported by Donors. Simultaneously internal opposition to the party-dominated state was greatly increasing. The critique culminated in the formation of the broad based National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) an alliance of about 100 civil society organizations; trade unions, human rights organizations, church organizations, womenÕs organizations and students calling for a more democratic constitution. In an attempt to address this critique, the GOZ appointed a Constitutional Commission in April 2000. The mandate of the Commission was to review the present Constitution and on the background of extensive popular consultation make general and specific recommendations. The Constitutional Commissioners attempted to take the charge of listening to the people seriously. Many members crisscrossed the different provinces of the country to consult with the people. According to many of the commissioners who participated in the consultation process, there was no outcry for more land among the peasants in the communal lands. Rather smallscale farmers expressed a strong need for greater gender justice in the event of divorce or death and better roads, access to markets, affordable and accessible credit systems—in short, inputs that could help them farm the land they had much more effectively (Government of Zimbabwe, 1999a, 1999b). In the consolidated draft constitution the protection of private property clause was suggested upheld in the event of land reform requiring compulsory acquisition of land. In its listing of factors that may be taken into account in the assessment of compensation for the compulsory acquisition of agricultural land Section 57 weakened the ownerÕs right to compensation by adding that compensation would be affected by ‘‘(e) the resources available to the acquiring authority in implementing the program of land reform.’’ President Mugabe asserted that he would not accept the international legal requirement to pay the white commercial farmers compensation for land initially acquired through occupation and conquest. He unilaterally changed the final draft of the Constitutional Commission in February 2000 to make the British Government responsible for the compensation for the land of white commercial farmers. 19 Thus, the draft constitution that the Zimbabwean

1792

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

Government presented to the people during the referendum in February 2000 provided no right to compensation for land in the event of expropriation. The draft constitution, however, was rejected by voters. 20 Unbowed, the President proposed the same wording as a constitutional amendment in April 2000 allowing for expropriation of land without compensation. This wording was adopted by Parliament. Politically, it had the effect of making it appear as though the fundamental conflict was between the old colonial power, Great Britain, and its former colony, Southern Rhodesia. In labeling this a colonial conflict, the Zimbabwe government generated much sympathy from other African states who found it easier to ignore the patterns of internal violence documented by Heather Holtzclaw in this issue when viewed as an unresolved colonial issue. A dramatic course of events followed the defeat of the draft constitution in February 2000. There were a series of farm occupations, organized and sustained by the National War Veterans Association and at different times the ruling party, provincial governors, and various ministries and elements of the military. (The effect of these invasions on human rights is treated in Section 5.) At first, the occupations were relatively peaceful even if clearly illegal. In March 2000, however, they rapidly turned violent, and the violence continues, manifested in different ways, in different places. At best, the invasions were merely a threat. At worst, they led to murders, beatings, rapes, farm closures, expulsion of workers, loss of employment and agricultural production, cessation of foreign investment, and the stagnation of tourism, to name only some of the consequences. We believe that the evidence demonstrating government support, if not direct implementation, of the land invasions is incontrovertible. Amendment 16A of the Constitution, of July 2000, gives legal legitimacy to the PresidentÕs decision to take the land without compensating the owners. Britain is made economically responsible for paying for land the government compulsorily acquires for resettlement. It reads: In regard to the compulsory acquisition of agricultural land for the resettlement of people in accordance with a program of land reform, the following factors shall be regarded as of ultimate importance: (a) under colonial domination the people of Zimbabwe were unjustifiably dispossessed of their land and other resources without compensation;

(b) the people consequently took up arms in order to regain their land and political sovereignty, and this ultimately resulted in the Independence of Zimbabwe in 1980; (c) the people of Zimbabwe must be enabled to assert their rights and regain ownership of their land; and accordingly, (i) the former colonial power has an obligation to pay compensation for agricultural land compulsory acquired for resettlement, through an adequate fund established for the purpose; and (ii) if the former colonial power fails to pay compensation through such a fund, the Government of Zimbabwe has no obligation to pay compensation for agricultural land compulsory acquired for resettlement. Despite the new constitutional amendment, the government could not act without enabling legislation. The actual procedures for land acquisition were still in the 1992 Land Acquisition Act. The President dealt with this by employing section 2 of the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act, which enables the President to enact temporary legislation when Parliament is not in session. Accordingly, President Mugabe changed the Land Acquisition Act in July 2000 to limit compensation for improvements to the land when land is acquired for resettlement purposes. Further, the right to appeal assessment awarded by the Compensation Committee was, in Section 29d of the new act, limited to incidents where the court is satisfied that the Compensation Committee did not observe the principles prescribed by the Act. There were many legal challenges at different stages in this process. In response to the occupations and then the fast track program, white farmers attempted to use both negotiation and the courts to protect their interests. The Commercial FarmersÕ Union (CFU) filed in July 2000 an urgent appeal to the courts to have the Commissioner of Police, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, and its leader, Dr. Chenjerai Hunzvi, and the President stop the land occupations. 21 The CFU then challenged the PresidentÕs use of the Temporary Powers Act to implement land reform. The Union sought to have all attempts to acquire land after May 23, 2000 (the date of the PresidentÕs use of temporary powers) declared invalid since there was no reasonable resettlement plan after that date and all land acquired afterward was subject to threats of

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

violence, duress and illegal farm invasions. While consent orders declaring Fast Track unconstitutional or the occupations illegal were issued by the courts, they were routinely ignored by the police and Attorney GeneralÕs office. GOZÕs answer to these legal challenges was swift in coming. The number of farms to be acquired by Government as of this date was 841. On August 1, the number swelled to 3,041—an additional 2,237 farms had been hastily added. It was this designation of over 3,000 farms and the insistence that all would be resettled by the rains of November–December that led to the appellation fast track resettlement, further described in Section 4. The use of violence and force on the farms increased while the government sought to protect the occupiers from eviction. Parliament passed the Rural Land Occupiers Bill (June 2001), which precluded the possibility of legal proceedings by the farm owners or others to evict illegal occupiers of their land. The bill retroactively protects trespassers without providing any remedies to affected owners. The penalties for landowners evicting occupiers are quite severe. This step removed one strategy of farmers, who, together with their workers, attempted to evict occupiers. In this manner farmers were denied the right to defend not only their property but also their homes and themselves. There are now hundreds of stories of physical aggression, violence and abductions that go unpunished as the police have orders not to intervene in matters involving ‘‘war veterans,’’ ZANU-PF supporters and certain others. In one incident, a farmer who was almost beaten to death in 2000 was held captive and threatened again in his own home in August 2001. In neither instance have perpetrators been arrested. In response to the increasing violence the major lawsuit brought by the CFU against government was withdrawn in the expectation that it would permit a compromise. The CFU became convinced that there would be no end to the invasions if the lawsuit remained active. They misunderstood the new situation which meant that they could no longer rely on past strategies to resist land reform. The CFU did partially break with its past history by offering GOZ one million hectares and pledged to raise another 200,000 hectares from large corporations. The one million was seen as only the first tranche to be offered. There were other components in the proposal, including technical assistance, credit, and willingness to seek additional

1793

funding for land reform from donors. The CFU seemed to accept the long-standing five million hectare goal but not the current designation of virtually all farms. In addition, many individual farmers have offered to share part of their farms with local settlers and/or district administrations. These offers have been rejected, and in many instances the police and rural district councils have moved would-be settlers onto these farms to ensure that farmers cannot live up to their agreements. At a Commonwealth meeting in Abuja, Nigeria on September 7, 2001, at which the Commonwealth sought a compromise on the land reform process, the GOZ agreed to halt the occupation of large-scale commercial farms, to speed up the process for the delisting of designated farms, to remove occupiers from unlisted farms, to restore the rule of law and rapidly to reach agreements on the land reform process and its funding. The government never attempted to implement The Abuja Agreement which made it seem to be a public relations stance by the government to lessen criticism and make it appear that Mugabe was willing to compromise. Without any let up the farm invasions, the displacement of farm workers, and the violence on farms all continued. 22 The President and his Minister of Agriculture were intent on ending white-farm ownership in Zimbabwe and the removal of virtually all farm workers. To further facilitate the process the Land Acquisition Act was altered again in May of 2002. This amendment specified that once an intention to acquire is served to the land owner, the title of the land vests in the acquiring authority, the state. The farmer then had 90 days to leave the farm. In this way, 5,831 farms were acquired by December 2002. Once designated, the farmer cannot sell, improve or alter the farm nor sell or remove any permanent improvements. Banks have stopped lending to designated farms. As a result, a number of commercial farmers have seen their farms bankrupted and their belongings auctioned while others sold or removed their equipment. By July 31, 2003 the large-scale commercial area had been diminished by 9.2 million hectares. The percentage of ZimbabweÕs land in large scale commercial agriculture was cut from 30% to 6% and of that land, almost one-half is now owned by black Zimbabwean farmers glossed by the government as indigenous (Government of Zimbabwe, 2003a, 2003b, pp. 41–43) (Hereafter referred to as the Utete Report). 23

1794

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

We now turn to what is known about the details of the ‘‘fast track’’ resettlement program and the legal battles concerning its constitutionality. 4. FAST TRACK RESETTLEMENT, THE CONSTITUTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS In a draft document released by the government in early 2000, the fast track program is said to build on earlier plans, including the donorsÕ framework of 1998, section 16 of the Constitution (the new land amendment) and the older guidelines for resettlement. 24 The document refers to only 841 farms to be resettled as fast as possible on one million hectares with 30,000 benefiting families. The criteria for designation are (a) farms under multiple ownership; (b) farms contiguous to communal areas; (c) derelict farms, farms not being used; and (d) underutilized farms. There is no discussion as to how to determine what constitutes an underutilized farm. The settlers are to be selected from the ‘‘landless persons in the congested communal areas.’’ 25 The priority list is as follows: successful candidates selected from the Rural District Council waiting lists (including women) in the area where the scheme is found, successful candidates selected from other districts in the Province, ex-combatants and former detainees selected by the local chapter of the War VeteransÕ Association, and other landless Zimbabweans from elsewhere in the country. There are no guidelines for what constitutes ‘‘landlessness.’’ Overall the document is thin, devoid of details and in any event was ignored since war veterans from anywhere in the country are being given highest priority, with no questions asked as to land ownership, wealth, etc. Whole farms have been allocated to a range of highly placed government, military and party officials. It is indeed difficult to take this document seriously, since it was never implemented. Initially, the process on the ground looked more like taking what one can without regard to anyone else. This was emphasized by The Minister of Local Government, Public Works, and National Housing, Ignatius Chombo, who was also head of the GovernmentÕs Land Committee, told people to go and resettle whatever commercial farm land they wanted. The government team would follow them later. The constitutionality of fast track was challenged by the Commercial Farmers Union

(CFU). The Supreme Court ruled in mid-2001 that, because compensation was payable by the ‘‘acquiring authority’’ (government), there is a requirement for a program of land reform in order to determine compensation for improvements to the land. Stating that GOZ not had produced a plan the Supreme Court reserved its final judgment giving the Government six months to do so. 26 GOZÕs application for a six-month extension to complete the plan was not granted by the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, in its decision, the court did not order a stop to the resettlement exercise. Rather than putting a proper program for land reform in place, the government changed the composition of the Supreme Court by appointing a government-sympathetic Chief Justice and adding three new Supreme Court Judges. In a ruling in December 2001, the Supreme Court by the new Chief Justice Chidyausiku and two of the three new court appointees ruled that fast track complies with the Constitution. 27 The new Chief Justice excluded those judges who had formerly ruled against the government on this issue. The President has, as we have seen, been changing policies rapidly without having the appropriate legislative frameworks in place. Thus, even though laws are being written and cited, they serve more to permit the President to act rather than as a systematic effort to change policy through the careful writing of new laws. Perhaps the best example is the failure of government to draft a new land reform policy to conform with the request by ZimbabweÕs Supreme Court that all actions regarding fast track resettlement would be deemed illegal in the absence of a land reform program. Thus, the outcome is the governmentÕs position that the law, much less all the human rights obligations, does not apply to the government since land is a political—not a legal—issue. The very basis of considering land purely a political issue centers on labeling all whites as not being genuinely Zimbabwean because they are said to be supportive of the ending of ZANU-PFÕs long rule. It has been claimed by high officials that ‘‘whites’’ are enemies of the state, that ‘‘Rhodesians’’ are attempting to overthrow the government, and that there is a conspiracy against the Zimbabwean revolution led by South African racists, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the British and the Americans. In the governmentÕs view, courts are not to be trusted and should be bypassed; they enforce ‘‘white manÕs law’’ and are blocking land re-

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

form. The government does not seem to comprehend that the proposed draft constitution would also have made all its actions illegal and unconstitutional as well. According to Jonathan Moyo, spokesperson of the Constitutional Commission and now Minister of Information, Post and Telecommunication, the draft constitution was a black manÕs constitution and homegrown. 5. THE HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS FOR ZIMBABWES POOR OF USING LAND INVASIONS TO IMPLEMENT FAST TRACK RESETTLEMENT The governmentÕs argument for fast track resettlement and land occupations rests on the idea that ‘‘the law’’ is a barrier to social and economic justice. In order to provide land for the poor and landless, the government has proceeded to designate and resettle while ignoring court orders that were meant to block them from doing so. Here, we examine the situations of farm workers and women to ascertain whether land reform is benefiting two major categories of the poor. In doing so we rely on a human rights framework seeing civil and political and social and economic human rights as an integrated and indivisible whole. (a) Farm workers It is difficult to establish the numbers of farm workers rendered homeless or jobless because of resettlement. According to the Utete Report and the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (Magaramombe, 2003), approximately 1% of resettled people were farm workers. 28 From the inception of the land occupations, the government demonstrated at best, complete indifference to what was happening to farm workers. Sachikonye carried out one of the few field-based surveys of farm workers in early 2003 (Sachikonye, 2003). He estimated that the number of farm workers varied between 300,000 and 350,000 or between 20% and 24% of the national workforce up until fast track. This farm workforce supported a population of approximately two million. At best, a third of the original work force was still employed but farm occupations and appropriations are continuing. He found for those who lost work a situation of everincreasing poverty and often displacement. The fast track program largely ignores farm workersÕ rights to livelihood in terms of ‘‘ade-

1795

quate food, clothing and housing’’ embedded in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Economic Rights. No consideration has been given to the governmentÕs obligation to ‘‘take appropriate steps to safeguard the right to work’’ of the farm workers who lose their jobs (in terms of Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Economic Rights). Most of farm workersÕ civil and political liberties have been lost. Because they are assumed to be nonZimbabwean, migrant laborers, who were not fully supportive of ZANU-PF in both the referendum and Parliamentary election, they have been targeted for political violence. A great number have been forced from their employment and homes without any provision made to assist them or to find them places in resettlement schemes. The leading role played by war veterans increases the continuing threat of violence toward these same workers, especially if they disobey orders to leave the farms. Why and how farm workersÕ dispossession can be so unimportant will be discussed in Section 6. Farm workersÕ vulnerability to malnutrition, illness, and insecurity is dramatically intensified. As full-time farm workers lose their jobs due to fast track resettlement, no provision has been made for their children to continue schooling, to receive medical care, or food while their parents search for new lodging. This neglect is in clear violation of Article 27.3 of the Child Rights Convention obliging states to take appropriate measures to assist parents in ensuring the well-being of their children and in ‘‘the case of need provide material assistance and support programs, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing.’’ Farm workersÕ children are not the only ones, however, to be harmed. Children of parents receiving land under the fast track schemes will lack schools, clinics, clean water, reasonable shelter or supplemental food for some period of time a gross violation of Article 28 of the Child Rights Convention obliging states to ‘‘make primary education compulsory and free’’ and Article 24Õs obligation to ‘‘ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with the emphasis on primary health care.’’ No effort has been made to ensure that children will be cared for in this time of transition. Since the economy is declining, donors are withdrawing and the government has scant resources, diverting efforts to the new resettlement areas means a loss of services in other communal and resettlement areas.

1796

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

(b) Implications for women In this section, we pay special attention to women because the empirical evidence has demonstrated that they do much of the work in communal areas and they have not been able to gain land rights on an equal basis with men. Maintaining that women always have had access to land without necessarily owning, controlling or benefiting from it, organizations such as the Women and Land Lobby Group have called for incorporation of the CEDAW in laws and policies concerning land reform. As a means of putting womenÕs rights under CEDAW into practice, the Zimbabwean government is obliged to ensure womenÕs right to participate in the structures set up to allocate and manage land. Article 14 places an obligation on states ‘‘to take measures ensuring that women . . . participate in the elaboration and implementation of development planning at all levels.’’ In fast track, as in land allocation in general, there are no clear government policies with respect to having women represent themselves in decisions regarding land. It is clear from empirical work to date that whether land is allocated through customary or state structures, womenÕs organizations and representation are not formalized, nor are there any institutions to represent them. In practice, who undertakes the selection and resolves disputes concerning land is key whether the land is in resettlement areas or in communal lands. 29 In fluid and violent land grabbing situations, as under fast track, women are particularly vulnerable. Research has shown that resettlement officers in the 1980s and 1990s often allowed women to stay on the land in the event of death of a husband and divorce (Jacobs, 2000; Kinsey, personal communication; WLSA, 1997). In communal areas, where traditional authorities have greater influence on land allocation, registration practices have been based on patriarchal customary practices (ZWRCN, 1998). Upon death and divorce, women in communal areas have more frequently been denied access to land with reference to customary law than have women in resettlement areas. There is reason to believe that the removal of the resettlement officers and the strengthening of customary authorities in adjudication of family disputes and land allocation that has taken place through fast track mean a setback for women. Chiefs regard themselves, despite some variation, as guardians of customary values and

patriarchal law. Now with fast track, yet another force is influential in the allocation of land the war veterans. They will most likely continue in control politically and socially in the new areas. The war veterans have a record of violence and sexual abuse against white women, farm worker women and women belonging to the political opposition. Talking to local people we have been informed about numerous instances where land has been given to female land invaders, women extension staff and police officers by the war veterans in exchange for their cooperation. It is under these circumstances important to keep in mind that women also are discriminated against on the basis of race, ethnicity and political orientation. To ensure equality between men and women, The Women and Land Lobby Group entered into dialogue with the government about the fast track program, claiming that 30% of the land to be distributed should be allocated to women and be registered in their own names, regardless of marital status. The only available figures for how many women actually received resettlement land is in the Utete Report (p. 40). The information collected by the Presidential Land Review Committee suggest that the number of women allocated land under fast track was very low country wide. Womenheaded households who benefited under Model A constituted approximately only 18% while women beneficiaries under Model A2 constituted only 12%. To obtain secure tenure for women there has been a long-standing call for joint registration of title and joint permits in resettlement schemes by organizations like the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Trust (WLSA), the WomenÕs Action Group (WAG) and now the Women and Land Lobby Group. 30 The Women and Land Lobby Group has also lobbied for joint registration in resettlement areas. They have called for repeal of Section 23 of the Constitution that places customary law before principles of gender equality in family and inheritance matters. This section has been used to prevent legal change enabling women to obtain equal property rights with their husbands during marriage and in the event of divorce and death. One barrier rests in that property is held jointly but the husband, by virtue of his matrimonial power, is the one who disposes of assets, including, most importantly, land, on behalf of the family. This practice has been interpreted by different institutions in a way to deny married women access

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

to credit and to lead to highly unequal divisions of landed property in the event of divorce or the husbandÕs death. Abolishment of Section 23 in the Constitution and joint registration of marital property was the claim Vice President Msika faced when meeting women stakeholders present at the WomenÕs Lobby Group meeting in Harare in August 2000. In response, he argued that ZANU-PF was pro-woman, but that it always had to take black Zimbabwean culture into account in its land policies. Although the Deeds Registry Act allows joint registration of property, Vice President Msika stated that such a practice would not be pursued by the fast track program because it undermined customary values. The government through its fast track program thus sides with those men who assert that Shona customs and customary law are deeply patriarchal. This static notion is a departure from the way in which many people, through their customs and practices, adjust to changing social, economic and legal conditions and move toward greater equality between men and women. Empirical research referred to above has, for example, shown that widowed and divorced women in the 1980s and 1990s often were allowed to stay on the land in the event of death and divorce by resettlement officers. The fast track program is also a departure from the governmentÕs own draft constitution from 1999 that suggested that Article 23 of the Lancaster House Constitution, which gives customary law privilege when it comes to the equality principle, be abolished. The findings from the Utete Commission that has examined the implementation of fast track make clear that its policy toward women, who play a key role in agriculture as farmers, leave a lot to be desired. The Commission concludes that land leases should be registered in the names of the husband and wife. It also suggests that a quota of at least 40% of the land allocations should be made to women and that a quota of 40% funding reserved for women for credit and other purposes should be made available. In cases of widowhood the commission suggests that widows should have first option to take over the lease provided they can work the land (p.163). These recommendations are in consonance with both the CEDAW and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and PeopleÕs Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

1797

Making the point that womenÕs human rights stretch beyond equal access to land under the fast track program, the WomenÕs Lobby Group for Land also argued that adequate health services, schools, water sources, credit schemes and agricultural extension services must be put in place by the government to ensure womenÕs, childrenÕs and familiesÕ right to livelihoods. The view that the fast track program falls short of the minimum standards provided by the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights is clearly formulated in a communique´ on the implications of the fast track resettlement program. 31 This communique´ states Civil Society was also concerned that the current approach to land reform would threaten food security at household and national level as well as the countyÕs international obligations which will have an adverse effect on the countryÕs gross domestic product and the inflow of the much needed foreign currency.

and Government should make provision of input supply, farmers training and basic infrastructure should be a priority as the program might lose one of its objectives which is poverty alleviation.

In its examination of the implementation of fast track, The Utete Report emphasizes women farmersÕ need for greater opportunities in terms of access to inputs and labor-saving technologies, land ownership, information and extension services and education (p. 146). This recommendation resonates with the Protocol to the African Charter that in Article 19(c) on the Right to Sustainable Development requires States Parties to ‘‘promote womenÕs access to credit, training, skills development and extension services at rural and urban levels in order to provide women with a higher quality of life and reduce the level of poverty among women.’’ In the Utete Report, women appear as a homogeneous group while within fast track, but it is important to have in mind that women are not just discriminated against ‘‘as women.’’ Women, like men, are not a homogeneous category; they belong to different classes, ethnic groups, races, political parties, and professions. The fast track program, as pointed out in the section above, has ended employment for large numbers of women farm workers, both full time and seasonal. The program proceeded

1798

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

with virtually no attention paid to who is already working on a given farm: the number of women, the number of children, where they will be moved to or how alternative employment will be found for them. Internal displacement has, according to the Norwegian Refugee CouncilÕs report of July 2003, negatively affected female-headed households that do not have resources to get resettled or be attractive as labor for the new commercial farmers. This calls for special attention to regularize this group of womenÕs access to land in consonance with the right to livelihood. It also draws attention to procedures that will insure that working conditions on the ‘‘new’’ commercial farms are in consonance with ILO standards and the Protocol to the African Charter. 6. LAND, GENDER, CITIZENSHIP AND THE STATE IN FAST TRACK Fast track provides a window into the deeper understanding of the changing Zimbabwean state and citizenship. A gender perspective on the process of designation and redistribution of land illustrates the exclusion of a wide range of Zimbabweans to the full rights (formal and informal) of citizenship. We suggest that there are links between how the state regards women, whites, farm workers, and black members of the ‘‘opposition.’’ We begin by examining the strong continuities between past gender policies and the present ones in fast track. Fast track leaves in place the old division whereby married women, unlike those widowed and divorced, are not full citizens. Government has no plans to issue land or resettlement permits to husband and wife jointly. 32 While widows, divorced and single mothers can be given resettlement land in their own right, married women cannot. Moreover, even when married women are given land, it will become subject to the husbandÕs control due to the customary notion of matrimonial power protected by Section 23 in the Constitution. Widows and divorced women eligible for fast track lack resources to build new lives as comfortable as those they were forced to leave. It is our view that women should have equal rights to the land they worked and not be sent off to new resettlement land because of lack of property rights. The fast track program is not only upholding the division between married and unmarried women but also that between farm-worker women and ‘‘Zimbabwean’’ women. Farm-

worker women are not included in the groups of women who are to receive land. Farm workers, whether male or female, have been driven off the farms with no consideration of their citizenship. They are apparently viewed as nonindigenous no matter what their own citizenship (Rutherford, 2001a, 2001b). They are not seen to be among those whose property rights or land are to be restored because their identity as farm workers displaces all others. By virtue of marriage to a male farm worker whose family does not originate in Zimbabwe, a Zimbabwean woman may in practice lose her citizenship. Without examining in any detail the history of the land question, we want to draw attention to colonial continuities in fast track resettlement through the state domination of the process. Drinkwater, among many others, has pointed to the strong linkages between the resettlement process as implemented by the Zimbabwean state and the Native Land Husbandry Act so forcibly opposed by the majority of black Zimbabweans in the 1950s. 33 The fast track approach continues to rely heavily upon resettlement Model A as described in earlier chapters. Under fast track resettlement, A1 villagized areas are larger than before. Land continues to be divided among arable, residential and grazing locations. Agriculture and Extension staff map and determine where the best lands are for all of the different land uses without consultation or engagement with would-be settlers or residents. In short, there remains one basic model for all of Zimbabwe that remains substantively unchanged from the 1950s. We have been surprised at the lack of concern for the farm workers. In discussing farm workersÕ issues with many Zimbabweans, we find that the consideration of farm workers is dismissed for several reasons: (a) The issue is only now being raised by farm owners to prevent land resettlement. (b) It is argued that farm workers can join the queue for resettlement just like everyone else. (c) They are not real Zimbabweans. In the words of former Minister Zvogbo at a 2001 conference in Copenhagen, they have ‘‘a farm worker culture’’ and thus they are not indigenous. 34 The farm workers, according to Zvogbo, are not really integrating into genuine Zimbabwean culture. Former Minister Zvogbo, like many others, wants to freeze the farm workers in time and place without considering generation, education and gender. While the Declaration of Rights in the Constitution gives every person the right to protec-

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

tion against discrimination on the grounds of race, Amendment 16 to the Constitution (Land) states that it is ‘‘the people of Zimbabwe that must be enabled to reassert their rights and regain ownership of their land.’’ Who is ‘‘the people’’ remains unspecified, but they appear to exclude commercial farm owners and farm workers. What is happening in the domain of citizenship and land illustrates the narrowing of boundaries and eligibility, with the state making the final determination as to who may be a citizen and who may own land. Constitutional Amendment No. 14 was a turning point in blocking both male and female spouses of Zimbabwean citizens of obtaining citizenship through marriage. It mandates that the Immigration Department shall determine whether any individual spouse can or cannot become a citizen. It replaced the right of Zimbabwean men to pass on citizenship to their foreign wives with a gender-neutral provision whereby neither men nor women can pass on citizenship. Under the present constitution, both male and female alien spouses can obtain citizenship only through the discretion of the Immigration Department. The new citizenship law further undermines who is and who is not a citizen of Zimbabwe. The law requires that those with dual nationality renounce their other citizenship according to the laws, not of Zimbabwe, but of the other country. The law makes no distinction between those who sought dual citizenship or actively maintained it and those who merely possess it by entitlement from another country. Citizenship had to be renounced by January 2002 or else would be lost automatically. Once lost, restoration of citizenship demands Z$25,000 and a wait of some one-and-a-half years. Without citizenship, hundreds of thousands of people can be forced out of the country, denied land and denied voting rights. The law is also a further attack against farm workers, although it was initially understood as forcing white Zimbabweans to choose between Britain and Zimbabwe. The law can be read as an effort to reduce the potential number of voters against the President and to reduce the number of claimants for redistributed land. It also continues the long-term trend of enhancing executive power. Further boundaries between those who are considered ‘‘people’’ and ‘‘nonpeople’’ seem to be drawn in fast track. We suggest that what these processes imply is the emergence of a new form of patrimonialism. There is a narrowing

1799

of political power in the hands of a small number of men, who are deciding; who has the right to protection by the stateÕs legal machinery and who does not; who has a right to benefit from land reform land and who does not; who has the right to self-defense when property, life or freedom of expression is threatened and abused and who does not, and indeed, who has the right to life and who does not. Fast track is indeed a political process but not in the way the government argues. The program is about the recentralization of power and resources. Almost all land now rests in the hands of the state, which chooses to redistribute it to those it feels will be loyal supporters. The essentialized notion that the President and his party can decide who is and who is not entitled to land and who is and who is not a ‘‘real Zimbabwean’’ has in many instances been contested by local villagers making claims to the land government has given to its followers with reference to ancestral links. Fast track, while cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric, masks patrimonial practice where belonging is defined by patrilineal blood ties and allegiance to the ruler. This last point becomes central in understanding why and how members of the MDC are excluded from receiving land under fast track, how any commercial farms they may own will be expropriated, and how they are being denied food aid. Members of MDC are no longer part of ‘‘the people’’ by virtue of their opposition to the ruler and their liaison with ‘‘whites.’’ Mugabe and ZANU PF claim to speak for ‘‘the people’’ or more appropriately ‘‘his people,’’ and those not following his voice are viewed as ‘‘alien.’’ Mugabe rewards his followers with land and punishes those who do not follow by taking their land—black and white alike—and by denying them food. The restoration of land becomes a ‘‘male’’ issue, since it is only men who can be genuinely landless and only men who own land and pass it on to their heirs. It becomes a mobilizing device overwhelmingly for male citizens. 7. CONCLUSION: HUMAN RIGHTS, LAND AND CITIZENSHIP President Mugabe has claimed that this last push of the fast track program will solve the land question once and for all. We have demonstrated that there is a series of human rights

1800

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

abuses involved in this program. These abuses involve farm workers, communal-area residents, those who were dispossessed of land, members of opposition political groups, white farmers and women in virtually all groups, in short, many of the stakeholders who should have had highest priority to participate in a land reform program. This program is probably unique in that it deprives people who have been working on the farms for years the right to stay there and to have rights in a reform program. Estimates are that the program has displaced more people than it has resettled. The assumption that ‘‘the land is the economy and the economy is land’’ has not been true for many years in the sense that ZimbabweÕs rural people depend upon varied livelihood strategies which entail not just agriculture but also urban jobs, commerce, use of natural resources, and so on. In this article we have not presented a comprehensive review of the large and often excellent literature on the land question in Zimbabwe. 35 This literature emphasizes the historical construction of the contemporary division between communal and commercial land. It attempts to explain why the Zimbabwean state did or did not succeed in at least beginning if not sustaining a resettlement program and strategies for greater equity. In our view, there are two serious weaknesses in the past literature. The first is that both the will and the capacity of the Zimbabwean state to carry out fair land reform are greatly overestimated. This has led to the idea that the ZANU PF government has been seriously interested in land reform and resettlement in the 1990s which we doubt is true. In this regard, the optimism expressed by Sam Moyo, one of ZimbabweÕs most outstanding researcherÕs on land, seems misplaced. Second, until the recent work of Moyo, Rutherford and Amanor-Wilks virtually no attention had been given to the resettlement of farm workers. But, despite the more recent attention to farm workers, they continue to be driven off the farms while the working conditions on the ‘‘new commercial farms’’ are more appalling than in the past. Third, the importance of a legal framework ensuring rule of law has, with the exception of Shivji, Gunby, Moyo, & Ncube (1998) been overlooked and at best underestimated in the literature on land reform. The abrupt and profound disruption of the existing agricultural system caused by fast track has had a series of affects for livelihood strate-

gies. People in communal lands rely not just on agriculture but also on wage employment (full or part-time on the commercial farms); these reliant people exist in all categories of land (communal, resettlement and commercial). From both a human rights perspective and an economic one, land reform should not cause massive disruption and loss in other parts of the economy. Furthermore, it remains the basic obligation of the state to protect property and to insure that all groups have secure tenure in their property. The current Zimbabwean government has dramatically increased tenure insecurity. If all legal guarantees to property are suspended for one group, the same can therefore be done to any. Land is today being given away and sold without reference to chiefs, local district councils, to local zoning laws, and so on. Women, already prejudiced in terms of property rights, find their situations worsened. Earlier reforms put in place to enhance womenÕs tenurial rights are not followed. The possibilities for single, widowed and divorced women to be able to use resettlement land productively are, as pointed out by the Utete Report, extremely limited when they possess only meager resources. These are the groups most dependent upon a well-supported land reform program with technical backup. As though exclusion from supporting resources were not enough, initially there are hardly any schools for their children, clean water, clinics, or adequate transportation. They are far from familial support systems that could create pressures leading to greater use of child labor and fewer educational opportunities. The rights of children are closely tied to those of women, and both have lost out in this resettlement process. The human rights argument has, as we have shown, not had any effect on the content or implementation of the fast track program. The fast track program, as we have shown, never intended to respond to womenÕs need for secure tenure, access to support services or right to dispose of the fruits of their work. It was designed and implemented solely as an instrument to serve President MugabeÕs desire to stay in power. Ironically, it is through the lens of human rights standards that underlie basic principles of state-citizen relationship such as protection of private property, protection against discrimination on the basis of sex, ethnicity, race and political opinion, due process and the rule of law that we can analyze the profound changes that have characterized

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

the past few years in Zimbabwe. It is one in which the ZANU-PF government has attempted to fundamentally alter and redefine the state–citizenship relationship into one mediated through patrilineal kinship and allegiance to the ruler in terms of ZANU PF and President Mugabe. As the way forward we have attempted to show that using the whole array of international and regional African human rights instruments would not privilege individual property rights over social justice. It recognizes the need for a broad and far-reaching land reform. Such an approach calls for a concerted strategy to protect peoplesÕ livelihoods through a wide variety of property rights ranging from land to work Eide (2001). Property rights are far broader than exclusive private ownership; they include a bundle of rights to use a resource. As stated by Krause, ‘‘A perception of human rights as an interdependent and indivisible whole calls for a wider interpretation of the right to property, which does not hamper the effective enjoyment of other rights, including

1801

social rights’’ (2001). With respect to finding appropriate balances between social, economic and individual rights along the different axes of already existing inequalities of gender, class, race and ethnicity we suggest participatory frameworks involving all appropriate actors, international, regional, national, and local, are given particular attention. We are of the view that the concerns formulated by civil society organizations, and embedded in international and regional African human rights instruments, are contributing to a just and balanced way of thinking about land reform, something that so far has been profoundly absent. We welcome future land reform policies and programs informed by approaches envisioning civil, political, social and economic rights as an integrated whole invoking the international and regional African conventions and agreements already signed by the Government of Zimbabwe. Such an approach leaves open many options for tenure and reform but would have prohibited the current one.

NOTES 1. A rough figure of 350,000 is used for the number of farm workers at the beginning of the farm invasions. According to the Utete Commission few farm workers were given land on the former commercial farms. The figure is challenged in an appendix to the Report where it is argues that generalizing from one site (Chikomba) to the country as a whole, more farm workers have received land (Vol. 2, p. 145).

6. For a comprehensive overview of social, economic and cultural rights, see Eide, Krause, & Rosas (2001).

2. The human rights treaties and covenants are listed in Section 2.

8. This was a preparatory committee for the Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, 1966.

3. Some of these new laws are discussed in Sections 3 and 4.

9. For an overview of the practice of the African Commission on Human and PeoplesÕ Rights, see Ankumah (1996).

4. For an overview of the different court cases lodged by the commercial farmers see the Affidavit by David Hasluck to contest the constitutionality of the ‘‘fast track’’ resettlement program. Available from the Commercial FarmerÕs Union Web Site (http://www.samara. cfu.org). 5. For an exhaustive overview of international instruments signed by the Government of Zimbabwe since independence see Zimbabwe Treaties List, Government of Zimbabwe.

7. From a livelihood perspective land and water reform is closely connected. For analysis of the implication of human rights on water reform in general and Zimbabwe in particular, see Ferguson & Derman (1999), Gleick (1999), Hellum (2001) and Hellum & Derman (2004).

10. South African Constitution Article 25.3. 11. Amendment 16 to the Zimbabwean Constitution is further discussed in Section 4 of this article. 12. For the implications of article 14 of the CEDAW with regard to land and water reform in countries such as Tanzania, South Africa and Zimbabwe see Hellum (2001), Hvidtsteen (2000), Ikdahl (2001) and Lindstrøm (2000).

1802

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

13. The Protocol was adopted by the second ordinary session of the Assembly of the African Union in Maputo July 11, 2003 and signed by 51 heads of state, also President Robert Mugabe. 14. A Protocol has status as an international human rights convention. 15. See, for example, Politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe 2000–01: A report by the Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO Forum, August 2001. Harare (found on the web site: wwq.hrforumzim.com). The most comprehensive account of current human rights violations up to this time is ‘‘The Rule of Law and Organized Violence and Torture in Zimbabwe,’’ paper distributed at the Crisis in Zimbabwe Conference, Harare August 2001 by the Coalition of NGOÕs called Crisis in Zimbabwe. We attended that meeting. Amnesty International, The International Crisis Group, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and many news accounts in the Daily News and The Zimbabwe Independent have all documented the patterns of violence that have become a part of Zimbabwe since March 2000 until today, June 9, 2004. The Daily News though was forced to close in the spring 2004. 16. Recommendation 8.8.1; 8.8.3; 8.8.4; and 8.8.5 Rukuni Commission (1994). 17. In 1997, according to Kgogo Mudenge (Sunday Mail, March 2000) 153 women committed suicide in Gokwe because their husbands had squandered all the money earned from the cotton crop. 18. Communique´ issued at the end of the International DonorÕs Conference on Land Reform and Resettlement in Zimbabwe, September 9–11, 1998, Harare, Zimbabwe.

22. Apparently the governmentÕs own reversal caught ZANU-PFÕs official newspaper, the Herald, by surprise. In its edition of July 30, the headline ran ‘‘End lawlessness on occupied farms: Culprits must be brought to book and resettlement to be done in an orderly manner.’’ At a time when the ‘‘fast track’’ program included only 1,000 farms, the paper reported: ‘‘The National Land Acquisition Committee agreed during its recent meeting in Harare that the current lawlessness on occupied farms and the haphazard allocation of land should be stopped immediately.’’ 23. There continue to be profound disagreements between government and CFU. The Utete Report states that there are 1,323 farmers still on their properties while the CFU claims that from their membership there are now less than 700 remaining on their farms. The Utete Report was written in August 2003 and compulsory acquisition has continued since then including some military personnel returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo. 24. Government of Zimbabwe, Ministry of Agriculture, Lands & Resettlement, 2000, accelerated Land Reform and Resettlement Implementation Plan: Fast Track, MLARR, Harare. 25. The Utete Report notes that many A1 (numbers are not indicated) come from households which have one leg in the communal areas and one leg in the new resettlement villages. This makes sense for communal area farmers but means that many were neither landless nor land poor. 26. Supreme Court Case No. SC 55/2001. 27. Supreme Court Case No. SC 204/2001.

19. Final Consolidated Draft, November 29, 1999. 20. For an analysis of the social, economic and political crisis that followed the constitutional referendum held in February 2000, see Hammar & Raftopoulos (2003). 21. High Court of April 10 and 13, 2000 (HC 3985/ 2000) ordered police to remove invaders from the farms. A series of newspaper clippings and ministerial statements prove that the police did not remove the invaders in spite the court order. In July 2000 we had a long conversation with a senior police officer in Mvurwi who told us that they (the police) had been instructed not to intervene on the farms. In the event of extreme violence, however, they were to establish a presence.

28. Chambati and Moyo estimated that percentage to be higher based upon extrapolating their results from Chikomba District. Without doubt there is significant local variation in the numbers of farm workers included in the resettlement schemes (Utete Report, Vol. II, p. 145). 29. The recommendations made by Shivji et al. in their National Policy Framework Paper suggest that 40% of the membership of an elected village council be women. In their model of villages they would be more selfgoverning under Village Assemblies. These Assemblies would be made up of all adults in a village. They would vote for a Village Council. These Recommendations have not been accepted by Government.

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS 30. The first statements were in response to the failure by the Commission of Inquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure of 1994 to address WomenÕs Rights. 31. This document was written by the WomenÕs Land Lobby Group for Land an other unnamed organizations grouping themselves as ‘‘Civil Society.’’ 32. The Deeds Registry Act, permits both spouses to have their properties jointly registered. 33. One such case, the Mid-Zambezi Valley Development Project, required the resettlement of over 2000 long-term resident households in the area between Mushumbi pools and Muzarabani in the eastern Zam-

1803

bezi Valley. Done under the so-called accelerated model A resettlement, the resettled households received no compensation for loss of land or housing nor any assistance in moving (Derman, 1997a, 1997b). 34. ‘‘Rethinking Land, State and Citizenship through the Zimbabwe Crisis,’’ Research Conference and Seminar in Copenhagen in September 2001 hosted by the Centre for Development Research, CDR. 35. Bratton (1994), Bruce (1990), Kinsey (1998, 1999), Maposa (1995) Moyo (1995, 2000), Moyo, Rutherford, & Amanor-Wilks (2000), Palmer (1977, 1990), Potts (2000), Roth & Gonese (2003), Rukuni & Eicher (1994), Tshuma (1997), WLSA (1997).

REFERENCES Ankumah, E. (1996). The African commission on human and peoplesÕ rights. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Bowyer-Bower, T. A. S., & Stoneman, C. (2000). Land reform in Zimbabwe: Constraints and prospects. Ashgate: Aldershot. Bratton, M. (1994). Land redistribution 1980–1990. In M. Rukuni & C. Eicher (Eds.), ZimbabweÕs agricultural revolution (pp. 70–86). Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Bruce, J. (1990). Legal issues in land use and resettlement. Report for the World Bank at the request of the Government of Zimbabwe. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Chan, S. (2002). Robert Mugabe. A life of power and violence. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. Craven, M. (1995). The international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. A perspective in its development. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Derman, B. (1997a). Nature, development and culture in the Zambezi Valley. In B. R. Johnston (Ed.), Life and death matters (pp. 63–80). Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Derman, B. (1997b). How green was my valley! Land use and economic development in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. In B. Isaac (Ed.). Research in economic anthropology (Vol. 18, pp. 331–380). Greenwich, CT: Greenwood. Derman, B., & Gonese, F. (2003). Water reform in Zimbabwe: Its multiple interfaces with the land reform and resettlement. In M. Roth, & F. Gonese (Eds.). Delivering land and securing rural livelihoods: Post-independence land reform and resettlement in Zimbabwe. Harare: Centre for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe/Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin—Madison. Dumbutshena, E. (1990). The rule of law in a constitutional democracy with particular reference to the Zimbabwean experience. South African Journal on Human Rights, 5(3), 311–321.

Eide, A. (2001). Economic, social and cultural rights as human rights. In A. Eide, C. Krause, & A. Rosas (Eds.), Economic social and cultural rights: A textbook (2nd revised ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer International. Eide, A., Krause, C., & Rosas, A. (Eds.). (2001). Economic social and cultural rights: A textbook. Dordrecht: Kluwer International. Ferguson, A., & Derman, B. (1999). Water rights vs. right to water: Reflections on ZimbabweÕs water reforms from a human rights perspective. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, IL, November. Gleick, P. (1999). The human right to water. Water Policy, 1(5), 487–503. Government of Zimbabwe (1999a). Constitutional Commission of Zimbabwe. (November, 1999), What the People Said. A report of the National Commission of Inquiry into the establishment of a new democratic constitution. Vols. I–III. Harare: Constitutional Commission of Zimbabwe. A New Constitution. A. New Era. Government of Zimbabwe (1999b). Constitutional Commission of Zimbabwe. What the People Said. Harare, Masvingo, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Midlands, Matabeleland South, Bulawayo and Manicaland Provincial Report on finding from the Outreach. Harare: Constitutional Commission of Zimbabwe. A New Constitution. A New Era, October. Government of Zimbabwe (2000). Accelerated Land Reform and Resettlement Implementation Plan: Fast Track. Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Resettlement 2000, Harare. Government of Zimbabwe (2003a). Report of Presidential Land Review Committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Charles M.B. Utete. Vol. I: Main Report. Harare: Government Press. Government of Zimbabwe (2003b). Report of Presidential Land Review Committee under the Chairmanship

1804

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

of Dr. Charles M.B. Utete. Vol. II Special Studies: Main Report. Harare: Government Press. Gubbay, A. (1997). The protection and enforcement of fundamental human rights: The Zimbabwean experience. Human Rights Quarterly, 19, 227–254. Hammar, A., & Raftopoulos, B. (2003). ZimbabweÕs unfinished business: Rethinking land, state and nation. In A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos, & S. Jensen (Eds.), ZimbabweÕs unfinished business. Rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis. Harare: Weaver Press. Hellum, A. (2001). Towards a human rights based development approach. The case of women in the water reform process in Zimbabwe. Law, Social Justice and Global Development, 1, Available from http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/global/issue/2001-1/hellum. html. Hellum, A., & Derman, B. (2004). Re-negotiating water and land rights in Zimbabwe: Some reflections on legal pluralism, identity and power. In J. Murison, A. Griffiths, & K. King (Eds.), Remaking law in Africa. Edinburgh: Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Hvidtsteen, G. (2000). Menneskerettigheter og kvinners landrettigheter i Sør Afrika (Human rights and womenÕs land rights in South Africa). Kvinnerettslige studier no. 42 (Studies in WomenÕs Law No. 42). Oslo: University of Oslo. Ikdahl, I. (2001). Det menneskerettsigetsverne for kvinners bruk av jord (The human rights protection of womenÕs land use). Kvinnerettslige studier nr. 45 (Studies in WomenÕs Law no. 45). Institutt for offentlig retts skriftserie (Department of Public and International Law Publication Series) Oslo: University of Oslo. Jacobs, S. (2000). The effects of land reform on gender relations in Zimbabwe. In T. A. S. Bowyer-Bower & C. Stoneman (Eds.), Land reform in Zimbabwe: Constraints and prospects (pp. 175–186). Ashgate: Aldershot. Kinsey, B. (1998). Determinants of rural household incomes and their impact on poverty and food security. Resource paper for discussion at the Workshop on Rural Household Dynamics, Bonte Hotel, Harare. Kinsey, B. H. (1999). Land reform, growth and equity: Emerging evidence from ZimbabweÕs resettlement programme. Journal of Southern African Studies, 25(2), 173–196. Krause, C. (2001). The right to property. In A. Eide, C. Krause, & A. Rosas (Eds.), Economic social and cultural rights (2nd revised ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer International. Lindstrøm, E. (2000). Human rights and rural womenÕs land rights. An analysis of the land tenure system and the land reform in Tanzania. Unpublished dissertation in WomenÕs Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Oslo. Magaramombe, G. (2003). Farmworkers: The missing class in ZimbabweÕs fast track resettlement. In M. Roth, F. Gonese (Eds.), Delivering land and securing rural livelihoods: Post-independence land reform and

resettlement in Zimbabwe (pp. 277–282). Harare: Centre for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe/Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin—Madison. Maposa, I. (1995). Land reform in Zimbabwe: An inquiry into the Land Acquisition Act (1992) combined with a case study analysis of the resettlement programme. Harare: Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe. Moyo, S. (1995). The land question in Zimbabwe. Harare: SAPES Books. Moyo, S. (2000). The political economy of land acquisition and redistribution in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 26(1), 5–28. Moyo, S., Rutherford, B., & Amanor-Wilks, D. (2000). Land reform and changing social relations for farm workers in Zimbabwe. Review of African Political Economy, 84, 181–202. Ncube, W. (1987). Underprivilege and inequality: The matrimonial property rights of women in Zimbabwe. In A. Armstrong & W. Ncube (Eds.), Women and law in southern Africa. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Palmer, R. (1977). Land and racial discrimination in Rhodesia. London: Heinemann. Palmer, R. (1990). Land reform in Zimbabwe, 1980– 1990. African Affairs, 84(355), 163–181. Potts, D. (2000). Environmental myths and narratives: Case studies from Zimbabwe. In P. Stott & S. Sullivan (Eds.), Political ecology: Science, myth and power (pp. 45–65). London: Arnold. Roth, M., & Gonese, F. (2003). Delivering land and securing rural livelihoods: Post-independence land reform and resettlement in Zimbabwe. Harare: Centre for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe/ Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin—Madison. Rukuni, M. (1994). Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure Systems [The Rukuni Commission]. Vol. 1: Main Report & Vol. 2: Technical Reports. Harare: Government Printers. Rukuni, M., & Eicher, C. (Eds.) (1994). ZimbabweÕs agricultural revolution. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Rutherford, B. (2001a). (Not) belonging to the farm(er): Farm workers, farmers and the shifting politics of citizenship. Paper prepared for the research seminar on Rethinking Land, State and Citizenship through the Zimbabwe Crisis, Copenhagen. Rutherford, B. (2001b). Working on the margins: Black workers, white farmers in postcolonial Zimbabwe. Harare: Weaver Press. Sachikonye, L. M. (2003). The situation of commercial farm workers after land reform in Zimbabwe. A report prepared for the farm community trust of Zimbabwe. Harare: Farm Community Trust. Shivji, I., Gunby, D., Moyo, S., & Ncube, W. (1998). National land policy framework paper. Harare: Government of Zimbabwe, Ministry of Lands and Agriculture.

LAND REFORM AND HUMAN RIGHTS Tshuma, L. (1997). A matter of (in)justice: Law, state and the agrarian question in Zimbabwe. Harare: SAPES Books. Women and Law in Southern Africa, WLSA (n.d.). Women and land rights in resettlement areas in Zimbabwe. Harare [approximately 1994].

1805

WLSA Zimbabwe (1997). Inheritance in Zimbabwe. Harare: WLSA Trust. Zimbabwe WomenÕs Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) (1998). Beyond inequalities: Women in Zimbabwe. Harare: ZWRCN/SARDC.