Rural Planning Missing link in fast-track Resettlement plots in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The Fast-Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe was undertaken to address the land question that the liberation struggle war had hitherto sought to use as a way of trying to correct the racial inequalities of resource distribution embedded in settler colonialism in Rhodesia. The land reform was undertaken mainly to address the poverty that was being faced by poor Zimbabweans in the erstwhile reserves who had limited access to productive agricultural land. Agriculture emerged as the key to poverty alleviation in Zimbabwe to lift most of the poor Zimbabweans and those who had returned from the war landless. The study critically explores how rural planning was not implemented in the resettlement process in Zimbabwe. The article examines the missing link in the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe as the government tried to resolve the inherent poverty in black African rural communities. The study used a qualitative methodology with a bias towards the case study design. The study concludes that the land reform has not realised its potential so far. This might be because it has a missing link that is it lacked rural planning. The study recommends the decentralisation of the resettlement process from the central government to the rural councils.