LAND REFORM, IDEOLOGY AND URBAN FOOD SECURITY: ZIMBABWE'S THIRD CHIMURENGA

ABSTRACT

This paper is used to comment on the political, legal and ideological struggles between the Zimbabwean State and an alliance comprised of the Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe (CFU) and the British Government over the country's land reform and the theoretical context in which these processes may be situated. A related and equally important objective of the study is to understand how ordinary Zimbabweans construe the impacts of the unfolding dynamics on their livelihoods. The study examines the mechanisms, which both the State and the alliance have used to manipulate land reform in pursuit of their various ideological and political objectives. Finally, it explores how these strategies are being interpreted by the urban poor in the local discourse of food insecurity. These issues are all contextualised in terms of what a former Zimbabwe cabinet minister describes as the Third Chimurenga, a reference to the country's first two agrarian/liberation struggles or chimurengas.