Discursive hauntings: limits to reinvention for Zimbabwean farm workers after fast-track land reform
Abstract
Scholars of Zimbabwe’s agrarian milieu since the “fast-track land-reform” in 2000 are increasingly suggesting that the label “farm worker” is no longer a relevant or accurate term for referring to former workers now living in resettlement areas. While many former workers still live in their old farm compound accommodation, they survive through a range of livelihood strategies rather than formal employment in commercial agriculture. Yet the term “farm worker” has proved difficult to shake off. Its enduring power and popular understandings of what it means to be a Zimbabwean farm worker, coupled with individual histories and identities as farm workers, have ensured that unbecoming a farm worker has not been as simple as ceasing to be employed as an agricultural labourer. In this paper, I explore the various dynamics of unbecoming a farm worker in this context, showing that such unbecoming is a complex, fraught, contradictory and dynamic process, influenced by many social, political, economic and personal factors.
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The discursive shadows cast by being a former farmworker are long, making it difficult to shed such identities completely.
“The discursive shadows cast by being a former farmworker are long, making it difficult to shed such identifies completely (Hartnack, 2017).”
From Labour after Land Reform: The Precarious Livelihoods of Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe (2019) · cites this paper as Hartnack, 2017
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2 of the 30 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
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Labour after Land Reform: The Precarious Livelihoods of Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe
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“The two have embraced their new identity as employers and left behind their old farm worker identity (Hartnack 2017), regardless of the prestige associated with being a foreman for a white farmer.”
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“Churches, political leaders, and even war veterans and other farm occupiers, also came to ‘assist’ the displaced farm workers, if only to develop new forms of patronage over them (Hartnack, 2017; Rutherford, 2001).”
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“Studies also explore impacts for differentiated social groups, including farmworkers (Hartnack, 2017; Scoones et al., 2019b), youth (Nyamupingidza, 2018; Scoones et al., 2019a), white farmers (Nel, 2020) and actors entering contract arrangements over land utilisation and commodity production (Mazwi…”
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- Authors
- Hartnack, A.
- Affiliations
- Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation (ZA)
- Corresponding author
- Hartnack, Andrew
- ORCID
- Hartnack, Andrew
- Venue
- Anthropology Southern Africa
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2017-10-02
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 276-289
- ISSN
- 2332-3264 (ISSN-L)
- 2332-3256
- OpenAlex
- W2771096047
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 2.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Anthropology Southern Africa (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Rhodes University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › African studies and sociopolitical issues
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Land Rights and Reforms
- Keywords
- fast track land reform, farm workers, unbecoming, identity, resettlement, agricultural labor, livelihood strategies, Zimbabwe, land redistribution
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