Introduction
Scholarly discourses on Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP) have largely been polarised. On one hand are scholars who have labelled the exercise a chaotic and violent dispossession of white-owned farms which led to a decline in agricultural productivity (Robertson 2011). Others have highlighted the impact of the land reform on farmworkers (Rutherford 2003). On the other hand are scholars who have characterised it as a broad-based revolution led by war veterans and peasants in acquiring commercial agricultural land and altering the relationship between the formerly landless people and the government (Moyo 2000; Moyo and Yeros 2005). This school further argues that smallholder farmers who benefited from the land reform were highly successful in improving agricultural productivity which resulted in their livelihoods changing for the better. Few studies have focused on land and boundary disputes among traditional authorities in the post-Fast Track Land Reform programme era (Mujere 2009; Mkodzongi 2016). Because claims for restitution of ancestral land (based on oral histories of pre-colonial territories, moral geography and boundaries) have been on the rise, there is a gap in the literature about how such claims configured rural politics, the relationship between chiefs and with both local and national governing authorities in the post-FTLRP period. We ask here what that changing relationship between traditional leaders and the government tells us about the government position on the issue of land claims and restitution of ancestral lands between 2000 and 2017. This allows us to contribute to debates on competing land claims by the chiefs and the case-by-case responses of government, and also to examine the extent to which such claims have both shaped government policy and been constrained by it.
This article argues that while the Zimbabwean government appeared to have been solidly against acceding to restitution claims by traditional leaders, in practice many land claims tended to be of lands lost during the colonial period. Moreover, these claims tended to be made by traditional leaders on behalf of their clans or chieftaincies. Such claims were usually met by counter-claims by other clans using different versions of histories of land ownership and land displacement during the colonial period. While all the restitution claims were based on histories of land alienation during the colonial period which were backed by ancestral graves and other sites, not all such claims were entertained by the government.
Pursuing outright land restitution presented some difficulties for the government because it was reasoned that the land restitution would be contentious to the extent of destabilising land reform by triggering fractious and conflicting land claims. Several scholars have shown that the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU–PF) government was unwilling to permit land restitution even for chiefdoms that were capable of proving their claims in the early FTLRP period (Mubvumba 2005, 18; Chakanyuka 2007, 88). Despite this early refusal by the government, traditional authorities consistently made use of the opportunity provided by the FTLRP to return to their ancestral lands, recast their authority and to also redraw boundaries of their territories (Chaumba, Scoones, and Wolmer 2003; Mujere 2009; Dande and Mujere 2015; Mkodzongi 2016). Such attempts resulted in some traditional leaders being resettled in the areas where their ancestors were evicted, from while other claims failed. Although it can be argued that this lack of policy consistency showed weaknesses in the government’s land reform policy, the flipside of it shows the inventiveness of those traditional leaders who succeeded in having their abolished chieftaincies restored and also part of their ancestral lands restituted.
Our focus in this article is to show how traditional authorities made their arguments for the redrawing of boundaries of their territories or return to their ancestral lands. We analyse how traditional leaders made their claims in the context of a land reform programme that did not have a clear land restitution policy. It draws on case studies from Masvingo, Midlands, Mashonaland and Manicaland Provinces in examining the conflicting land claims put forward by traditional authorities during and after the FTLRP. In doing so, the article analyses the challenges that these conflicting land claims posed for governing authorities in view of the fact that most of the areas claimed for restitution had several layers of histories associated with different ethnic groups. As will be shown below, land claims put forward by a traditional leader and his followers were often met by counter-claims from rival groups as contesting clans deployed their own versions of history to justify their land claims. This turned out to be not just contestations over land but also over versions of history, as rival oral traditions, oral histories and even archival files were used by traditional authorities to justify their land claims vis-à-vis those of their rivals. Interestingly, during this period a number of traditional authorities besieged the National Archives of Zimbabwe in search of what they considered to be the ‘authentic history’ of their displacement and therefore the ultimate arbiter in their attempts to justify their claims and to reclaim their ancestral lands, have their chieftaincies restored or to redraw the boundaries of their territories (see Bishi 2015). As will be demonstrated in the cases discussed in this article, several land claims and attempts to restore chieftaincies abolished in the colonial period often ended up being decided in the courts. The High Court of Zimbabwe became one of the platforms on which traditional authorities fought for the restoration of their ancestral lands and chiefdoms against the state and/or rival claimants.
This article is largely based on an analysis of documents generated by district and provincial administrators who handled cases to do with the installation of chiefs, and with land claims and boundary disputes. It also makes use of parliamentary debates relating to the restoration of formerly abolished chieftaincies, land claims and boundary disputes. In addition, it makes use of court records, newspaper articles and the chiefs and headmen files kept at the offices of the district administrators.
Historical background
The nascent Rhodesian colonial state, between 1890 and the early 1900s, abolished chieftaincies that resisted its authority and created new traditional authorities which it saw as useful agents. Colonial rule also distorted institutions of traditional authority by manipulating tradition and history in the appointment, demotion and promotion of traditional leaders (National Archives of Zimbabwe n.d.a 1). In numerous instances, traditional authorities that did not pay taxes or refused to listen to Native Commissioners (NCs) were demoted or deposed. Territories controlled by traditional authorities were further alienated after the enactment of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 that designated vast tracks of land controlled by chiefs as belonging to the whites. Massive white migration into the country after World War Two resulted in many chiefs residing in areas designated as European land being relocated to lands set aside for African racial groups and their traditional authorities (see Nyambara 2005).
Traditional authorities, depending on their situation, either fought or negotiated with colonial administrators in defence of their ancestral lands because they claimed that important ceremonies and rituals were held there. In some instances, the affected people were either moved to new areas together with their traditional authorities or were placed under other traditional authorities. The delineation exercise carried out by the colonial administration in the Tribal Trust Lands in the 1960s showed that demotion, elevation and relocation of chiefs had exacerbated boundary conflicts. For example, in the 1970s the colonial administration abolished the Chendambuya chieftainship in Manicaland Province and attempted to replace it with either the Mwendazviya or Mukowamombe headmen whom they intended to elevate into being chiefs in the Weya and Tanda communal areas. These appointments and demotions created competing versions of history (Ranger 1982; The Herald 2012, July 23). According to Ranger (1982, 21), in the 1960s and 1970s ‘administrators appealed back to the precolonial past, or at least to the precolonial past as they imagined it.’ The legacy of this invention of tradition had a great impact on post-colonial land claims by different traditional authorities.
Notwithstanding the fact that the return of lost lands was one of the most important reasons why the liberation struggle was waged, the ZANU–PF government refused to entertain applications for the restoration of demoted traditional authorities, abolished chieftaincies and any form of restitutive land reform between 1980 and 1997. Government did not accede to the demands of traditional authorities on this issue because it believed that they had not sufficiently supported the quest for liberation as some chiefs had been used by the Rhodesian Front regime to further colonial agendas (Parliament of Zimbabwe 1984). In addition, the government viewed traditional institutions as anachronistic as it preferred a pro-big-agricultural-business strategy aimed at maintaining high output in the farms and in managing resettlement areas (Mubvumba 2005, 18–19). Its Marxist-Leninist developmental agenda at a national level militated against allying with traditional authorities. Predictably, the government enacted the Communal Areas Act and the Chiefs and Headmen Act of 1982 that denied traditional authorities the power to preside over resettlement areas and to allocate land even in communal areas. Moreover, the ruling ZANU–PF party with its Marxist-socialist philosophy preferred co-operative agricultural approaches over traditional land usage strategies. In both communal and resettlement areas government established quasi-democratic local government structures such as the Village Development Committees (VIDCOs) and Ward Development Committees (WADCOs) which were staffed by its local activists. The government saw co-operatives and technocratic resettlement schemes as the best agricultural development strategy compared with granting traditional land restitution claims.
Because of the government’s bias against land restitution, traditional authorities walked a tightrope between 1980 and 1997 as VIDCO and WADCO office bearers wielded more power. During this period, the government consistently turned down the restitution claims of well-documented traditional authorities such as that of Chief Jahana who was forcibly relocated from Insiza District to Gokwe District during the colonial era, an episode we return to below (Kufakurinani and Bamu 2015). In the Guruve District, the post-colonial government declined to reinstate the Chimbwerere chieftainship which had lost its ancestral lands to European commercial agriculture, forced its people to switch allegiance to Chief Chipuriro and was finally abolished by the colonial government (Mubvumba 2005, 45). Although the government had earmarked as a resettlement area Horse Shoe Block Farm among others in Guruve District, which were located in its ancestral lands, it flatly turned down their application for the return of lost lands. As a last resort, the Chibwerere people tried unsuccessfully to use courts to reclaim their ancestral lands. Unfortunately, there was no legal framework for the restoration of land alienated during the colonial era. This was captured in the Ministry of Local Government and Urban Development’s 1989 contention that, ‘to our knowledge, chiefs only exercise jurisdiction in communal areas in conformity with the provisions of the Chiefs and Headmen Act of 1982’ (quoted in Mubvumba 2005, 46). All the other chiefs who tried to use the same route between 1980 and 1997 met with failure (Mujere 2011, 1130).
Traditional leaders such as Chief Enoch Zenda Svosve of the Mashonaland East Province and his people came to assert their land restitution claims with a degree of militancy by the late 1990s. Chief Svosve and his followers occupied Duskop and Chipesa Farms in 1997, justifying their actions on the basis that these were their ancestral lands from which where they had been displaced during the colonial period. It took the intervention of the then Vice President, Simon Muzenda, and Minister of Lands, Kumbirai Kangai, to convince them to return to their communal lands. Land restitution claims from different chiefdoms or ethnicities throughout the country thrust the issue of restitutive land reform into public discourse (Marongwe 2003, 186).
In 1998 the government began toying with the idea of a redistributive land reform programme as it began uncoupling from its neoliberal land reform policy. It promulgated the Traditional Leaders Act (1998, Chapter 20:17). Section 5 of the Act bestowed on chiefs the responsibility to appoint headmen and village heads in communal and resettlement areas. These leaders were to preside over traditional and administrative matters in resettlement areas. Although there was no explicit reference to land restitution, it became clear that the government was gradually dropping laws and policies that had previously made land claims based on restitution difficult. Undoubtedly, the thawing of government policies towards restitution came about because of a decade-long push by traditional leaders that reached a crescendo between 1997 and 2000. The government also began to argue that traditional leaders were the custodians of the people’s culture and traditions. The political context that resulted in the founding of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party in 1999, and that gained supporters in the ruling ZANU–PF party’s traditional support bases, forced it to expedite its land redistribution programme. Consequently, returning lost lands brought a political pact involving war veterans, traditional leaders and the ZANU–PF government converging over the correction of colonial land injustices.
Land reform, traditional leaders and the land restitution debate
This section uses the land restitution conflicts in Makoni District from 1999 to 2008, involving Chiefs Makoni, Tandi, Chiduku, Chipunza and Chikore over the control of resettlement areas, to examine the salience of land restitution discourses during this period. Although the government did not favour a comprehensive land restitution policy, it appeared to have encouraged or colluded with chiefs during the FTLRP as it looked for new support bases. On their part, traditional leaders made group or clan-based claims to particular areas on the basis that they were their ancestral lands which they lost during the colonial period. In March 1999, Chief Mbaimbai Chiduku claimed that the ‘whole area which lies to the west of the railway line in Makoni District’ was his ancestral lands and he began appointing his headmen and village heads there. He based his actions on the Traditional Leaders Act (1998) that had been passed the previous year (CHK 1999, letter to J. Nkomo from District Administrator’s Office Makoni2). He supported his claims by use of oral traditions that talked about ancestral ruins, homes and battlefields located at Tsanzaguru, Tikwiri and Mtanda Mountains. He alleged that his people’s connection with these areas went as far into the past as the 1680s (The Manica Post 2006, November 24–30).
The other four chiefs – Makoni, Chipunza, Tandi and Chikore – interpreted this as an encroachment into their ancestral areas. These claims and counter-claims show that the reclaimed areas in the District have various layers of histories connected to different chiefdoms. Chief Makoni indicated that Chief Chiduku was making unwarranted claims because his headmen Rukweza, Mupambawatyi, Bvekerwa, Dzvairo, Nyan’ombe and Madzikumedze resided in the areas that Chief Chiduku claimed. In a pre-emptive move, Chief Makoni assigned headmen in the Mtanda 1, 2 and 3 and in Big Tree Farms in the same area. This forced Chief Chiduku to write to government officials that Chief Makoni was encroaching into his area of jurisdiction (CHK6 Makoni Chiefs, n.d.). On 4 February 2000, Chief Tandi and his followers chased Mr Mawoko, the District Administrator, from his office up until he sought refuge at Rusape Police Station allegedly for allocating their ancestral lands to ‘strangers’ (The Manica Post 2000, February 4). Chief Chipunza and his people who had attempted unsuccessfully to buy their ancestral lands in the 1940s also responded by applying for the return of their lost lands as a group (National Archives of Zimbabwe n.d.b). Chief Chipunza and his headmen applied for their return to Ruwanda, Yorkshire, Harrington and Harleigh Farms from where they had been evicted in the late 1940s (CHK 2000, minutes of meeting). The Chipunza application mentioned that these areas formed the clan’s cultural identity and the District Land Reform committee felt that their application was similar to the one made by Chief Tandi and his followers. In addition to bickering amongst themselves all these chiefs bitterly complained that some of their traditional territories were given to outsiders who did not understand the traditional practices demanded by the land and the ancestors (Interview with Chief N. Makoni, 13 January 2005).
Thus, traditional leaders in Makoni District had taken the matter of land restitution into their own hands by either resettling their followers in what they considered to be their ancestral lands, writing their petitions to the government and asserting their claims by occupying their ancestral lands. As this case study shows boundary disputes in which traditional leaders came with elaborate oral historiographies to back up their restitution claims ensued. Traditional authorities deployed different versions of history to assert their claims.
Between 1999 and 2002, the government used the Makoni District Administrator, the Ministry of Local Government and National Housing and the Resident Minister of Manicaland (Kenneth Manyonda) to resolve the Makoni–Chiduku boundary dispute. During the duration of this dispute, Chief Makoni had become a parliamentarian appointed on the provincial chiefly ticket that was available to 10 chiefs only in the country. Due to his close relationship with national politicians such as Didymus Mutasa, who was the member of parliament for Makoni East Constituency and the Secretary for Administration in the ruling ZANU–PF party, Chief Makoni was able to persuade government officials to warn Chief Chiduku against making land claims. The warning ironically used a 1960s document that had been used by the colonial regime to threaten the abolition of the Chiduku chiefdom if it kept making things difficult in the district (PER/Chiduku 2002). These national politicians stressed at a meeting held in the district in the presence of all the chiefs that the railway was not the boundary and that chiefs needed to adhere to the boundaries that had always existed. Members of the Chiduku chiefdom, however, booed the Manicaland Resident Minister, Kenneth Manyonda, as he was delivering this directive and promised to make Chief Makoni and his followers ‘unwelcome’ in the Chiduku area (CHK6 Makoni Chiefs, n.d.).
The matter had not been solved by April 2003 despite the heavy-handed approach of the national government officials (The Manica Post 2003, May 4–10). In the same month, the District Land Reform Committee allocated the Tikwiri Farm to Chief Chiduku. Tikwiri Farm is located at a place where Changamire Dombo of the Rozvi state is said to have defeated the Portuguese army and was thus invested with a lot of cultural significance. However, Chief Makoni was given a farm in Makoni East that he rejected because he preferred Zimati Farm that was close to Tikwiri Farm.
Chiefs Chiduku, Chipunza, Tandi and Chikore maintained that the Makoni chiefdom had benefited from colonialism to the extent that the district was named after them and that this was the reason why Chief Makoni acted as though he controlled the whole district. They, however, used the Makoni Rural District Council (MRDC), the local elective governing authority in the district, to set up a committee (that they called a commission of inquiry) to look into the boundary disputes before May 2004. However, there was no provision in the law for the MRDC to carry out this exercise. The ‘committee’ supported the restitution claims of these chiefs because they controlled the MRDC and used it to fight the influence of Chief Makoni, who relied on national government authorities. On 31 May 2004, Chief Makoni wrote to the MRDC insisting that their investigation was shallow, illegal and baseless because the government had directed that his chiefdom was responsible for all resettlement areas in dispute (CHK Makoni Chiefs 2004, response to MRDC exercise on boundaries). Evidently, chiefs were using both local and national institutions to push for their land restitution claims. These attempts either succeeded or failed based on the political capital that they invested in their local and national patronage links. Chiefs on both sides of the boundary disputes deployed competing versions of oral narratives about the pre-colonial and colonial past to bolster their claims (Dande and Mujere 2015). Case studies from Makoni District showed that although there was no official restitution policy the government pursued a de facto land restitution policy that was contingent upon the claimants having powerful patronage links or on their capacity to put up a fight against official FTLRP policies that prejudiced their restitution claims. However, that ad hoc restitution strategy could not douse pressure from traditional leaders because it did not go as far as they would have wanted.
Restitution and boundary disputes in Masvingo and Midlands Provinces, 2005–2015
As the cases discussed in the preceding section demonstrate, in spite of the government’s reluctance to craft a clear restitution policy, some groups were able to make use of a combination of oral narratives and archival sources to reclaim successfully their ancestral lands. One such case is that mentioned earlier of Chief Solomon Jahana and his people who were forcibly relocated from Insiza District to Gokwe District by the colonial regime to make way for white commercial agriculture. Chief Jahana and his people started negotiating with the government authorities from the 1980s to be allowed to return to their ancestral lands in Mpalawani, Mpopoti, Lambamayi and Gwamanyanga located in the Debshan Ranches in Insiza North. The government permitted Chief Solomon Jahana and his people to return to their ancestral lands in Insiza North in 2005. However, when they moved there in 2006 they found the area already occupied by both official and unofficial settlements: mainly by Karanga people from Midlands Province and Ndebele people from Insiza South under Chief Maduna, who based their claims on having displaced white farmers during the FTLRP. The Jahana case is unique because it was the only case in which restitution claims of a chieftainship residing in one province were upheld in another province by the government. However, the restitution of the Jahana ancestral lands was not based on a well thought out government policy, as authorities based their decisions on the support that Chief Jahana got from the Chiefs’ Council, the representative body for all traditional chiefs in the country (Kufakurinani and Bamu 2015, 278). The ZANU–PF government acceded to this land restitution claim possibly to strengthen its support base in Insiza North and to also weaken that of the opposition MDC party in the area.
The case of land disputes between Chief Chikwanda and Chief Makore in Masvingo Province are well documented. Their boundary disputes had begun as early as 1982 and worsened during the FTLRP. Both chiefs installed village heads and headmen in disputed areas during the FTLRP which led to violent conflicts between followers of the two chiefs. Chief Makore explained that mountains such as Musanawengwe, Nyoni and Zishumbe Mountains, where he claims his founding ancestor Risipambi lies buried, and which were being claimed by Chief Chikwanda, were places where their ancestral mapa (royal burial sites) and sacred sites were located (Mujere 2011). The situation worsened in 2008 after Chief Chikwanda’s followers allegedly assaulted Chief Makore thereby forcing him to seek police protection (The Herald 2008, July 9). The history of this conflict goes back to 1913 when Chief Chikwanda’s ancestral lands began to be alienated in 1913 by the colonial administration which established Chikwanda Reserve in Gutu District. However, the colonial administration noticed that despite previously dominating the area, Chief Chikwanda and his people began to be outnumbered by Chief Makore and his people and based on that observation contemplated changing the name of the reserve to Makore (Mtetwa 1976, 313). Thus, colonial land alienation had practically left the Chikwanda people landless.
The case of the Chikwanda-Makore boundary dispute is important in that it was an example of many similar conflicts. Minister Chombo in July 2011 alluded to the fact that government was inundated by such conflicts and that it was making use of provincial and district authorities in line with the provisions of the Provincial Councils and Administration Act (Chapter 29:11) and the Rural District Council Act (Chapter 29:13) to deal with boundary disputes between provinces and districts. Thus provincial administrators, district administrators, and provincial planning officers nationwide were given the responsibility to mediate and resolve traditional boundaries disputes ignited by the FTLRP (Parliament of Zimbabwe 2011, 56–59). This attempt proved that there were bureaucratic considerations for including restitution in the land resettlement policies of the government. Mentioning these laws and the provincial and district officials that dealt with these issues underlined the importance of considering why such authorities rarely supported restitution claims that overlapped into other provinces or districts. It became apparent to the government in July 2012 that boundary disputes arising out of competing chiefly restitution claims were too intractable to be holistically dealt with such that it preferred a case-by-case response. Government stated that:
As things stand no chief or district administrator or any other Government official should arbitrate in boundary disputes or demarcate new boundaries until we gazette the actual boundaries. We have a team that is busy on the ground working to determine the actual boundaries of all chiefdoms countrywide including in contested areas. The findings of the committee are expected to be out by mid next year and we will then gazette the actual boundaries so until such a time, no one is allowed to handle the issues of boundary disputes. (The Herald 2012, July 23)
The restitution claims of Chief Chikwanda and his followers became complicated after the government made one unprecedented policy divergence when it decided to restore the Musara Chieftaincy in 2014. This restoration marked a new phase in government’s restoration of chiefdoms and the restitution of their ancestral lands. The colonial government in the 1940s abolished the Musara chiefdom (The Financial Gazette 2014, August 7). However, after years of lobbying and taking advantage of the FTLRP the government acceded to the Musara people’s request to have their chiefdom restored. This also came with restitution of part of their ancestral lands which had hitherto been under Chief Chikwanda. This resulted in land conflicts between Chief Chikwanda and Chief Musara over the Hwendedzo Resettlement Area (Masvingo Mirror 2014, December 6). Ironically, it was Chief Chikwanda who initially supported the appointment of Musara as a headman, possibly to bolster his land restitution struggles with Chief Makore. However, the relationship between Chief Chikwanda and Chief Musara quickly soured after the installation of Chief Musara in early 2014. These conflicts were triggered by the new chief’s land claims. The Chikwanda chieftainship approached the High Court and the Supreme Court arguing that the restoration of the Musara chieftainship had been a nullity because it violated Section 3 (1) of the Traditional Leaders Act in that it had been done without consulting the National Council of Chiefs and the community (Newsday 2014, August 1). Both chiefs appointed their trusted clients as village heads and headmen in the area. Consequently, Chief Chikwanda complained that:
We are tired of this man. You have illegally and through a Ministerial directive made him chief in the land that is historically known to belong to the Vaduma people and now he is causing a lot of confusion. He has set a new chisi [traditional rest day] and is already taking people to court for defying his chisi and making them pay hefty fines. This is abominable, as you cannot have a foreigner setting a chisi in the land of other people. He knows and everyone in Government knows very well that the land is a Vaduma land. Please remove him for the sake of peace and harmony in the area. (Masvingo Mirror 2014, December 6)
Because Chikwanda also enforced his chisi on a different day, FTLRP farmers in Hwendedzo Resettlement Area had to observe two such days in a week to avoid the punishment of either chief. Reference to the ministerial directive meant that he had allied with both local and national leaders to achieve his land restitution demands. He directed those people who did not understand the boundary demarcations to seek the assistance of local government through District Administrator James Mazvidza. This dispute was also taken to the High Court, which ruled in favour of Chief Musara (Chronicle 2015, January 10). That the High Court ruled in favour of Chief Musara meant, in principle, that the restitution of ancestral lands was beginning to gain traction.
After the High Court had ruled on the case between Chief Chikwanda and Chief Musara, the government threatened Chief Chikwanda with possible arrest if he continued to defy the High Court ruling on the issue of ancestral lands and boundaries in Hwendedzo Resettlement Area (The Herald 2015, February 11). About 200 villagers demonstrated at Masvingo Central Police Station on 9 January 2015 complaining that the dispute between the two chiefs was affecting their farming operations (Chronicle 2015, January 10). Interestingly, the protestors accused the police of forcing them to support Chief Musara against their wishes. On his part, Chief Musara used punitive punishments such as demanding cattle for violators of traditional boundaries and his chisi rest days. Like the case of Johana, where politics were the major reasons for supporting their restitution claims, the same was true for the reasons behind the restoration of the Musara Chieftainship. Evidence showed that Chief Musara had the support of the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development Dr Ignatious Chombo who kept warning Chief Chikwanda to stop interfering in Chief Musara’s area of jurisdiction (Masvingo Mirror 2014, December 6). Despite the violence, court challenges and demonstrations that happened between these two competing restitutions claimants, the government solidly supported the newly restored Musara chieftainship (The Financial Gazette 2014, August 7). Minister Chombo insisted that ‘Chief Musara is a chief just like Chief Chikwanda and the latter should accept that the two are now at par. They are now both chiefs who should respect each other’s boundaries.’ The minister further stated that Chief Chikwanda had no locus standi to impose his authority in another chief’s area of jurisdiction (The Herald 2015, February 11). Chief Chikwanda also had his supporters such as the Member of Parliament for the area, who complained about the activities of Chief Musara (Chronicle 2014, November 1). Evidence shows that Chief Musara and Chief Chikwanda were being backed by rival factions within the ruling ZANU–PF party (Masvingo Monitor 2014, December 6). Therefore both chiefdoms made use of their patrons in government in forwarding their land restitution arguments with different results such that some commentators observed that readers ‘forget about the court battle … that is not the real issue … the real war is about factionalism’ (The Financial Gazette 2014, August 7). Thus, various clans’ land restitution claims and restoration of chieftaincies abolished during the colonial period were closely entangled with factional politics within the ruling party.
In October 2014, Francis Zimuto, a war veteran leader who spearheaded the FTLRP in Masvingo, petitioned Minister Chombo in connection with boundary disputes involving 12 chiefs namely Marozva, Chiwara, Makore, Chikwanda, Musara, Mugabe, Charumbira, Serima, Zimuto, Ndanga, Bere and Nerupiri over land. He averred that,
this area has been declared a battlefield and the supremacy of authority on this land has no-one in full control. Each of the 12 chiefs is claiming the authority of this land that stretches approximately 100 km and 60 km in width. (Southern Eye 2014, October 31)
The Masvingo province is important in analysing land disputes and restitution claims because of their high number. According to Fortune Chimbishi, the chief provincial lands officer in Masvingo, only five out of forty-five chiefs in the Masvingo Province were given land between 2000 and 2014. He also pointed out that Masvingo Province topped the list of the most overcrowded communal areas in Zimbabwe and that it was in Natural Regions 3, 4 and 5 that are characterised by poor soils and low rainfall. He averred that three-quarters of the chiefs in the province were yet to benefit (Chronicle 2014, November 1). Chief Nhema from Zaka District complained of selective treatment in the allocation of farms to traditional leaders (Southern Eye 2014, October 31).
Based on the different outcomes of all the restitution claims referred to above, it is clear that the restoration of the Musara Chiefdom in 2014 was a departure from the government’s reluctance to restore abolished chieftaincies and restitute their land. The government also supported the restoration and restitution claims of the Bere chiefdom in Masvingo Province and thus opened another controversial chiefly boundary dispute involving the newly restored chiefdom as Chief Charumbira and Chief Zimuto in Masvingo complained that the new chiefdom’s proposed boundaries encroached into their traditional areas of jurisdiction (The Herald 2017, September 18). Government argued that the Bere chieftainship of the Shumba Murambwi totem had been abolished by the colonial regime in 1924 and that before its abolition its traditional area covered parts of Chivi and Masvingo Districts. As in the case of Chief Chikwanda, the two chiefs applied to the High Court contesting the new proposed boundaries of the Bere chiefdom and the restoration procedures that the authorities had followed. They also made use of the Masvingo Provincial Chief’s Assembly (Ibid.). In the same month, Chief Charumbira who was also the President of the Zimbabwe Council of Chiefs told Abednigo Ncube, the Minister of Rural Development, Protection and Preservation of National Culture and Heritage, to ‘stay away from boundary disputes in Masvingo’ (Daily News 2017, September 19). He did this after the ministry had held meetings in Masvingo to install Headman Nemamwa as a new chief. This evidence showed that the government was in the process of restoring new chieftainships and allocating them land in the province. It is clear that the chieftainship restoration and land restitution claims that were supported by powerful political figures succeeded and that they ignited new rounds of chiefly boundary disputes.
Although the FTLRP generated a number of land claims as well as the restoration of some chieftaincies abolished during the colonial period, some traditional authorities also complained that the land reform had led to the erosion of their powers. They complained that newly resettled farmers had no respect for the traditional authorities and were doing as they pleased. For instance, in August 2014 Chief Chiduku complained about the conduct of newly resettled farmers in his area. He stated:
The government says we are the custodians of land and heritage when in actual fact our mandate is limited to communal areas. What does that mean? People who were allocated land under the land reform programme have become more powerful than us. If you try to fine them for environment-related offences they will take you to the magistrates who will tell us [chiefs] that the newly resettled areas are not within your jurisdiction. (The Zimbabwean 2014, August 13)
Chief Chiduku conceded that ‘we will not fight you but we will fold our hands lest we shall appear on front page of newspapers for wrong reasons’ (Ibid.). However, this did not mean that the majority of the chiefs whose restitution claims had been refused folded their hands. During the fact-finding meetings of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Lands and Irrigation Development, it was observed that traditional leaders were corruptly allocating land to people on undesignated plots (Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe 2016). Farmers who settled in agricultural lands in Masvingo North, such as Simon Mahosi, called on the Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement to introduce a Land Commission Bill that would clearly state that allocating land was the duty of the ministry and not traditional leaders (Ibid.). This would obviously put the government and traditional authorities onto a collision course.
Conclusion
The land restitution claims, disputes over the restoration of formerly abolished chieftaincies as well as boundary disputes between different traditional authorities post-FTLRP in Zimbabwe provide an important perspective in examining outcomes of the programme. A previously neglected aspect is how the FTLRP either aided or hindered traditional leaders in their quests to reclaim ancestral lands as well as the restoration of chieftaincies abolished during the colonial period. In seeking to contribute to this debate from this perspective, we have taken a national outlook in order to examine the changing government policies over the issue of land restitution. Despite showing a superficial aversion to the subject of land restitution between 1980 and 2017, the evidence presented above shows that the government position has always been affected by political expediency. Although the government continued to skirt the emotive subject of restoration of previously abolished chieftainships and more importantly land restitution, traditional authorities often took it upon themselves to ensure that they recast the boundaries of their territories to the ones that existed prior to colonial land alienation or that they returned to their ancestral lands. In doing this, they appealed to history which consequently led to conflicts which sometimes went all the way to the High Court. In seeking to reclaim their ancestral lands, traditional authorities and their subjects availed themselves of versions of tradition which supported their claims including ancestral graves (mapa), old homes (matongo), sacred pools, rivers and mountains. Archives and competing oral traditions were availed of by the different groups to buttress their claims. Hence, traditional authorities had their own objectives in the land reform which sometimes even ran parallel to the government’s conceptualisation of what the land reform was supposed to achieve.
This article showed that there were three different phases in the government’s approach to land claims based on restitution as well as the restoration of abolished chieftaincies. The first one was the period between 1980 and 1997 in which the government solidly opposed land restitution. In the second phase between 1997 and 2008, the government supported a few restitution claims. We used the case study of the Masvingo Province to highlight both the violence and bickering that happened between the traditional authorities over land restitution and the restoration of abolished chieftaincies. Between 2014 and 2017 three different chieftainships were restored to their former statuses and given their ancestral lands. Although there have been instances where the government and courts have allowed land restitution or the restoration of chieftaincies abolished during the colonial period, the government has largely been reluctant to craft a land restitution policy.