Rural Citizenship in Action: Community and Social Services Development from below in Zimbabwe’s Resettlements

While focus by scholars and practitioners on Zimbabwe’s land reform, particularly the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) has gained traction in agrarian studies, the emergence, mobilisation, and role of grassroots rural citizenship for improving farm community development and social services are under-explored. In this context, using Zimbabwe as the evaluative case study, applying bottom-up grassroots mobilisation lenses, and data generated through the ‘Social Policy Dimensions of Land and Agrarian Reform in International Perspective’ research project, the paper interrogates rural citizenship in action by prioritising how rural citizens, particularly in the resettlements, are mobilising for ecological and social change in and for their communities. This is in a context where Zimbabwe’s latest land reform – the Fast Track – was not accompanied by government-led pre-settlement investment, and post settlement community development by various stakeholders outside the farms is paltry and vacuous in some parts of the country. Furthermore, these lacunae are associated with flagging macroeconomic performance, rising population and inflating demand for social services in the farm communities. The paper centres five questions: a) What is the context of farm community development challenges and the rise of bottom-up citizen initiatives? b) How are the rural initiatives – farm- and ward-level institutions including associations, cooperatives, village development committees (VIDCOs) and ward development committees (WADCOs) – constituted? c) What is the broad range of ecological and social issues are the grassroots initiatives addressing? d) How are the grassroots initiatives agentive, resilient and working autonomously, and engaging with political and broader civil society organisations to explore and influence their sociopolitical landscape to improve social justice in relation to community development? e) How are improved community development and agriculture linked? Overall, the paper contributes to scholarship and policy on active rural citizenship and rural development.