Widows, Widowhood and Sustainable Land Use in the Post Land Reform Era in In Zimbabwe: Case for the Mushandike Smallholder Irrigation Scheme Exceptionalism

Abstract

There is overwhelming evidence of the poverty-widow nexus in agrarian settings, with widows wearing, as it were, the ‘face of poverty’. This study critically examines the sustainable land use through a gaze at widows’ lived experiences and realities within the context of land reform in an irrigation scheme whose ‘exceptional circumstances’ remains a notable socio-economic outcome of the Zimbabwean land reform. Deploying the narrative inquiry as the anchor of data generation within the broad qualitative research design, guided by the eco-feminist lens, the study brings to the fore the cultural, political and economic circumstances in which women navigated their spaces and eventually broke out of the ‘vicious circle of poverty’. The exceptional circumstances of widow farmers represent the treacherous but sustainable journey by those in the margins as they pursue sustainable food security and change. The study argues that sustainable transformation linked to women’s experience of working on small piece of land was through support from adult ‘children’ through remittances, support from feminist civic organisation and the enabling political environment. As an outcome, widows in Mushandike Resettlement Scheme, become key agricultural producers who sustainably supply both local and urban markets with their products and build modern houses with electricity, water and sewage reticulation systems.