The Political Economy Of Livelihoods In Contemporary Zimbabwe

Since the introduction of the fast track land reform programme in 2000, Zimbabwe has undergone major economic and political shifts and these have had a profound impact on both urban and rural livelihoods. This book provides rich empirical studies that examine a range of multi-faceted and contested livelihoods within the context of systemic crises. Taking a broad political economy approach, the chapters advance a grounded and in-depth understanding of emerging and shifting livelihood processes, strategies and resilience that foregrounds agency at household level. Highlighting an emergent scholarship amongst young black scholars in Zimbabwe, and providing an understanding of how people and communities respond to socio-economic challenges, this book is an important read for scholars of African political economy, southern African studies and livelihoods.

The two articles are revised versions of papers presented at the end of May 2004 to a Zimbabwe Conference at the Nordic Africa Institute, which was co-organized by the project "Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa" (LiDeSA). They highlight current socio-economic aspects of Zimbabwean society. By doing so, they raise relevant issues, yet ones that have tended to be neglected given the almost exclusive concentration on political events. While this is understandable, the articles fill the gap in our knowledge and add insights into important sectors of society. These include information on the Zimbabwean economy and the present constraints of the decline, which together help us to understand the structural legacy that any future government will have to deal with. What is more, the elections in Zimbabwe in 2005 provide an ideal moment to discuss such matters. This Discussion Paper will thereby make a substantive contribution to the analysis of the overall picture in Zimbabwe.

This book is a collection of papers designed to analyze and present significant asspects of the political economy of contemporary Zimbabwe. The contributors, all of whom have either conducted field research in Zimbabwe, or are themselves Zimbabwean nationals, are thus uniquely qualified to illuminate present trends in a much publicized and important country.

For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified radical transformation with capturing state power. The collapse of these statist projects from the 1970s led to a global crisis of left and working-class politics. But crisis has also opened space for rediscovering alternative society-centered, anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, operating at a distance from the state. These have registered important successes in practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and Rojava in Syria. They have been a key influence on movements from Occupy in United States, to the landless in Latin America, to anti-austerity struggles in Europe and Asia, to urban movements in Africa. Their lineages include anarchism, syndicalism, autonomist Marxism, philosophers like Alain Badiou, and radical popular praxis. This path-breaking volume recovers this understanding of social transformation, long side-lined but now resurgent, like a seed in the soil that keeps breaking through and growing. It provides case studies with reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe, and includes a dossier of key texts from a century of anarchists, syndicalists, insurgent unionists and anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. Originating in an African summit of radical academics, struggle veterans and social movements, the book includes a preface from John Holloway.

This volume provides an accessible and up-to-date account of the difficulties that the Zimbabwean economy and its population experienced during the crisis which peaked in 2008. It details the suffering and chaos that befell the country with dramatic socio-economic consequences on growth, macroeconomic stability, service delivery, livelihoods, and development.

Revised, updated and still very relevant, this book focuses on the centrality of the land question, in the study of modern Zimbabwean history. It reviews previously published studies, and introduces new material. The study covers: the genesis of the land segregation legislation in Rhodesia, The Land Apportionment Act, and the economic effects of the Act; land and mass nationalism between 1945 and 1965, the dispossession of the people in Gazaland and the Tangwena people by white settlers; the Lancaster House negotiations, and land reform in the post-independence period. The book further discusses the many theories of racism and segregation propounded by the defenders of the regime, and the rationalisation for white rule and the economic exploitation of people and land.

Dashwood argues that it was the class interests of the ruling elite of Zimbabwethat explains the failure of the government to devise a coherent, socially sensitive development strategy in conjunction with market-based reforms.

Focuses on the relationship between the colonial legacy and the pattern of political and socio-economic development in the post- independence era. Analyses structural limitations on development.