Paper short abstract:

Zimbabwean land reform created a new relationship between citizens and the state via the redistribution of land. Land beneficiaries had to perform a particular mode of citizenship, that created a particular image of the state in order to maintain and secure their claims over their land allocations.

Paper long abstract:

Hernando de Soto Polar argues that property rights are the foundation of citizenship, democracy and development. Drawing on Hann (1998) Li (2014) and Kelly (2005), I argue that the inverse is true: particular kinds of social relations produce land as a particular kind of property. 'Property' is not simply made through technocratic processes such as legal title. In the late 1990s war veterans in Zimbabwe spear-headed what would become known as the 'Fast-Track Land Resettlement Program'- a movement which saw the massive redistribution of mostly white-owned commercial farm land to black Zimbabweans. Land distribution was portrayed as the symbolic and material restoration of the sovereignty of the country from the hands of white settlers by ZANU PF and President Mugabe. However land was redistributed in terms of an exclusive form of citizenship based on ZANU PF loyalty. Land reform thus created a new relationship between citizens and the state via the redistribution of land. In this paper I examine these citizen-state relations in the context of a new resettlement area, formerly a white owned commercial farm. Examining a land dispute between two beneficiaries, I show how land was embedded in ZANU PF patronage networks. Land beneficiaries had to perform a particular mode of citizenship, that created a particular image of the state, in order to maintain and secure their claims over the land they were allocated. Their sense of security over the plots they were allocated, depended on their relationship to the state rather than formal legal title.