1 Chapter Four Lacuna in Rural Agency: The Case of Zimbabwe’s Agrarian Reforms Tendai Murisa Land occupations of varying intensities have shaped the pace and pattern of land reform since independence in 1980. In the late 1990s the occupations were more aggressive; targeting white owned farms and received wider coverage in the media suggesting the return of land reform to the policy agenda. In a high profile case, the Svosve people of Marondera occupied four farms in June 1998 and in the same year 36 war veterans occupied ARDA Mkwasine in Chiredzi district. Knight (1998:13) aptly captures this moment: “land invasion followed land invasion becoming almost a national movement”. These occupations were however momentarily quelled by the promise that a new constitution will be able to resolve the hurdles surrounding legal transfer of land. However when the draft constitution was rejected in 2000 the land occupations were revived, starting in February 2000, exactly a day after the „NO‟ vote in the referendum Zimbabwe went through nationwide land occupations which culminated in the biggest property transfer ever to be seen since colonialism. The motivation and significance of the land occupations remains a subject of academic and political debate. On the one hand, the occupations are described by certain commentators as a „retreat from the development project‟ or signifying „the “end of modernity”‟ (Fontein 2009, 3); on the other hand, certain scholars consider them as „the most important challenge to the neo-colonial state in Africa under neo-liberalism‟ (Moyo and Yeros 2005, 165). The land redistributions that followed the occupations did not only change the physical structure of the agrarian landscape but the social relations that underpin rural production. Approximately eleven million hectares of formerly white-owned large-scale commercial farmland was redistributed to nearly 150 000 resettled households. However, processes of agrarian reform, especially the allocation of productive resources and the dismantling of structural barriers to enable increased smallholder production, remain outstanding. State-led agrarian reforms introduced since 2001 are biased towards the elite of the commercial „A2‟ resettled beneficiaries and the majority small -scale „A1‟ beneficiaries remain marginalised. In this regard, the discussion in this chapter explores how a grassroots-driven but state supported process of land acquisition has not consequently led to an inclusive pro-poor agrarian reform programme. An analysis of the agency behind reform, through a focus on the role and position of actors involved in lobbying for land and agrarian reform, potentially contributes insights into why livelihoods of smallholders have not been prioritised. Since independence the smallholder farmers‟ union, the National Farmers‟ Association of Zimbabwe (NFAZ) – which later merged with the Zimbabwe National Farmers‟ Union (ZNFU) to form the Zimbabwe Farmers‟ Union (ZFU) – and war veterans of the second Chimurenga (or guerilla war during the 1970s) have led the struggle for land and agrarian reforms in Zimbabwe, albeit using different tactics. The smallholder union has always operated within the realm of the civil-formalised lobbying of the state for improved agricultural commodity pricing, as well as