09:00 - 10:30
Room: Arts – Lecture Room 8
Stream: Land Policy Transformation, Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural and Peri-Urban Africa
Chair/s:
Howard Stein
The Agrarian Question and the new agrarian economy in Zimbabwe’s countryside
Toendepi Shonhe
University of Cape Town, Cape Town

The article argues that the Agrarian Question of capital remain unresolved in Southern Africa, notwithstanding the pre-dominance of globalisation and neo-liberalism in the agrarian sector. Access to rural agrarian capital accumulated from below is driving commodity production and social differentiation in the countryside, contrary to propositions by some scholars in the last two decades or so. Whereas the re-financialisation under neo-liberalism ensured increased incorporation of the rural agrarian economy into the global commodity circuits and capitalism through contract farming, it is the reinvestment of proceeds from agricultural commodity sales that drives social differentiation. The rising middle class in the new Quadi-PMMR agrarian structures shows tendencies towards increasing diversification and financial independence among the farming families. Using empirical data from Hwedza district in Zimbabwe, this study reveals how the incorporation of the peasantry into global commodity circuits, shifts production patterns towards domestic cash and export crops bolsters agrarian capital accumulation in rural Zimbabwe. The study reveals how re-investment of proceeds from agricultural commodity sales is driving economy-wide development, creating a new industrial capital base from the ashes of recent years of de-industrialisation in urban centres. The study reveals the pre-eminence of the Agrarian Question of capital in an ongoing agrarian transition in Zimbabwe.


Reference:
We-A26 Land Policy 1-P-002
Presenter/s:
Toendepi Shonhe
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Arts – Lecture Room 8
Chair/s:
Howard Stein
Date:
Wednesday, 12 September
Time:
09:15 - 09:30
Session times:
09:00 - 10:30