A very technical, very difficult book to read, especially since there seems to lack any consistency in what is being argued in the book.

In “Land Reform and Redistribution in Zimbabwe Since 1980”, Sam Moyo, also the editor of the book, seems to argue that the Fast Track Land Reform Program was revolutionary, and comparable to major land reforms in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, etc.

"Of the 15 million hectares of land which in 1980 was controlled by about 6,000 white farmers, over 13 million had be 2009 been formally transferred to over 240,000 families of largely rural origin,” writes Moyo. He continues: “The FTLRP's redistribution process has led to a 'net transfer of wealth and power' from a racial minority of landed persons to various classes of black people, including mostly the previously landless and land-poor classes and a substantial number of low-income wage-earning and unemployed workers…” Summarizing his views on the FTLRP, Moyo writes:

"The FTLRP redistribution also restructured a wide range of social relations of agrarian production and social reproduction, which had been constructed over 120 years of colonial and post-independence rule. Restructuring was accomplished by broadening social access to land and socializing the land tenure system, through expanding the public property regime, while retaining customary land tenures. Redistribution reversed racial patterns of land ownership, broadened the ethno-regional distribution of land and marginally altered gender relations of access to land...Redistribution also unravelled the unequal political and racial power relations and the related labour agrarian relations associated with inequitable control over the labour of landless people, while reversing the territorial segregation which had resulted from monopolistic control over large tracts of land and natural resources by a few landowners. This process has broadened access to various natural resources connected to land control, such as water, indigenous forests and wildlife, which, for many people, has reinforced their spiritual connection to nature and their history..."

In “A Decade of Zimbabwe’s Land Revolution”, Zvakanyorwa Sadomba seems to argue the exact opposite of Moyo, that the FTLRP was simply a way for the neo-colonial, petty-bourgeois class, led by Robert Mugabe, to seize control of the country’s wealth from the white, mostly British, settlers.

“The post-independence era,” writes Sadomba, “has largely exhibited the inherent contradictions of the state/society relations found in a neocolonial and settler dominated capitalist settings…The Zimbabwean state, being essentially a bourgeois neocolonial establishment, promoted interests and values that were opposed to those of the peasants, rural and urban workers and marginalized war veterans who comprised the land movement.”

“Two decades of President Mugabe’s leadership had therefore reversed the ideological gains of the liberation war and effectively protected the interests of white capital. Simultaneously, it suppressed all voices of dissent with appeasement of the peasants through a cosmetic resettlement programme. Power became more concentrated and centralized, crushing PF-ZAPU, which was a potential alternative to the leadership of the liberation movement. With this, a de facto one-party state under President Robert Mugabe reigned and the Lancaster House alliance consolidated.”

The alliance “of the nationalist elites” — i.e., Mugabe — “with the revolutionaries was just a marriage of convenience,” argues Sadomba, “since the two had antagonistic class interests.” The “[e]lite nationalists were content with removing settler, colonial and racial rule, but not capitalist relations, whereas the guerrilla veterans were mobilizing peasants and workers for a complete removal of colonialism and capitalism.”

I feel more confused about Zimbabwe’s FTLRP after reading this book than I did before… ( )