Eric Kushinga Makombe
| Eric Kushinga Makombe is a doctoral student at the University of the Witwatersrand (RSA). His research focuses on the social history of rural-urban interaction in Colonial Zimbabwe and seeks to explore human experiences and agency attendant in the system. Eric received his bachelors’ and masters’ degrees from the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) before becoming a Lecturer in the Economic History Department (UZ). Email: ericmakombe@gmail.com |
Research on Land-grabbing:
Subaltern voices and corporate/state land grab in the Save Valley, Zimbabwe
The history of the Save Valley in south-eastern Manicaland provides an intriguing account of peasant encounters with state apparatus dating back to the 1920s. However, the process currently underway, where an obscure 20year-deal between the quasi-state parastatal ARDA and Rating Investment (Ltd) for 40,000 hectares of land; represents what is perhaps the highest level of the state’s coercive apparatus at work as close to 250,000 communal farmers stand to lose or have already lost their lands and livelihoods. A context of disassembled private property rights and absent political and legal tenure rights has rendered the inhabitants of Save Valley vulnerable to another wave of elite land-grabs. This paper seeks to capture and historicise the subjective subaltern voices in the light of the current corporate and state-centric land-grab being experienced in south-eastern Manicaland. The study will attain this objective by drawing upon oral interviews, life histories, participatory rural appraisal methods and newspaper reports.
