Paper short abstract:

Balancing domestic elite and foreign interests in land and natural resources vis-à-vis present and future peasant pastoral land based livelihoods are emerging as central issues for democracy and autonomous development in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Crises such as the COVID-19 global pandemic provides opportunities to reflect and re-think on many aspects including tenure and agrarian reforms. COVID-19 disruptions in global food supply chains, trade and border closures stresses the importance of comprehensive land policies in Africa for securing the welfare and future livelihoods of 60 percent of its population dependent on agriculture. The onset of pandemic came amidst unprecedented pressures by global capitalists to acquire control over and use of peasant lands through subversion of sovereign land policy making in most African countries. Within a Transformative Social Policy framework, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are presented as polar opposites in autonomous policy making, implementation and the future of land based livelihood outcomes under neoliberal capitalism. Using a combination of secondary and primary data, preliminary evidence suggests that the domineering influence of external actors working in cohorts with domestic allies led to the concessioning of peasant lands and large-scale disenfranchisement of peasant and pastoral communities in Tanzania. The effect on the present and future peasant livelihoods and welfare need no further emphasis. Exemplifying efforts towards autonomous development in the face of severed relationships with the international donor community and its governments, the peasant-dominated radical land redistribution programme in Zimbabwe and its welfare outcomes is presented as an oxymoron under the prevailing neoliberal ideological framework.

Key words: tenure reform, policy making, peasant livelihoods, transformative social policy, Zimbabwe, Tanzania