Achim Blume (1996): Land Tenure in Rural Zimbabwe

2.3 Experience with the Resettlement Program and the Government’s Response

2.3.1 Scale of Implementation

By October 1991 about 53,000 families had been resettled on about 3m ha. in 213 Resettlement Areas (RAs). This meant that barely a third of the programme’s resettlement target of 162,000 families on 10m ha. of land had been achieved. As already mentioned, the preferred form of resettlement among the settlers was clearly model A. Model B, favoured by the government, really only played a subsidiary role. This phenomenon can at least partly be attributed to the tradition among African farmers of working with a scattered settlement pattern where farming is carried out on an individual basis.

The distribution of the resettling families and their farms among the various regions is as follows. Whereas about 75% of the area resettled lies in the less favoured agro-ecological regions III, IV and V, only 60% of the settler families have been relocated to these regions. This differential in the distribution of settlers and land is principally attributable to the fact that the availability of pasture and the relative emphasis on livestock farming in the Resettlement Areas increase in line with the number of the region (i.e. they are at their greatest in region V). The type of farming practised naturally varies from region to region. Within regions I and II the majority of farming income is derived from arable farming. In regions III and IV arable and livestock farming are roughly equal in importance, while income in region V is derived predominantly from livestock farming.