| | A basic problem that southern African countries face is how far their 'labour reserve' economies can be transformed to eliminate labour migration. Zimbabwe's official policy aims to end 'divided families' by pushing some into being unambiguously working class families with no land and others into a settled, non-migratory peasantry. Thus former white-owned land is only distributed to those without jobs. But this could turn out to be only a more radical variant of the attempts in the 1950s (through the Native Land Husbandry Act and later Tribal Trust Land Act, for example) to reform agriculture so as to promote a measure of proletarianisation and a stable rural petty bourgeoisie. The authors argue that a common thread running through various proposals focuses on what is to be done with the land rather than asking questions about who benefits from any proposal or what people need. Thus present plans for separating out worker-peasants into separate classes are no more realistic than previous proposals. There is a danger of creating a landless unemployed stratum and of ignoring the needs of women heads of households. Mozambique and Nicaragua seem to have recognised that combining paid work with farming may have to continue for some time and suggest that Zimbabwe may have to recognise a similar need. |
