Gender, politics and land use in Zimbabwe 1980-2012
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This comparative study on Zimbabwe’s agrarian reforms may provide countries such as South Africa and Namibia with valuable lessons, as they attempt their own land reforms. Conflicts between colonialists and the indigenous people in the then Rhodesia centred mainly on the land question. This inequitable distribution of land resulted in Africans waging liberation struggles in order to reclaim their land from the colonialists. In most post-colonial countries, calls have been made for land redistribution as a way of redressing colonial injustices in land tenure systems. The process of reclamation of land and redistributing it to the indigenous people is fraught with problems and has resulted in the present-day land crisis in many parts of Africa and other continents. These are some of the issues this book examines, attempts to understand and explain from a gender perspective. Gender relations are viewed in terms of land use and ownership in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. These socially constructed roles have been found to be unequal in terms of power and decision making. It is argued that lessening of social inequalities between men and women reduces poverty, raises farm efficiency and improves natural resource management. The book emphasizes that once women are empowered, the quality of life of their households improves.
