Although it is increasingly recognised that Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), initiated in 2000, was redistributive (Moyo et al 2009; Scoones et al 2010), few studies have examined the qualitative character of this outcome and its prospects for progressive social and political transformation in a largely agrarian society. Most critics of the FTLRP (e.g., Cliffe et al 2011) continue to underplay the significance of the settler-colonial roots of Zimbabwe’s land question and its exacerbation under neoliberal rule after independence, in fomenting the social and political crisis which provoked the popular reclamation of land (see Moyo and Yeros 2005, 2007a) and in shaping the transformational character of the FTLRP (Moyo 2011a, 2011c). Focusing on the narrowly defined ‘human rights transgressions’ that accompanied the FTLRP, using abstracted neoliberal good governance norms, the critics miss the important rolethat broad-based social mobilisation played in shaping state action towards accommodating a wide array of land demands.

This chapter explores the social and structural distributional outcomes of the FTLRP based on extensive empirical research (see Chapter 1 on the sources used). It first summarises the evolution of land reform policy before and after the FTLRP, touching briefly on the social forces which mobilised for the radical reform (as elaborated upon by Sadomba and Masuko, Chapters 3 and 4). It then examines the extent to which the programme was redistributive and elaborates on the social transformations it evoked in terms of race, gender and other forms of identity and the recognition this purveys. The chapter finally assesses the class formation processes emerging from the new land ownership structure, briefly noting the changing agrarian land-labour relations (for details on labour relations see Chambati, Chapter 5). This chapter is also intended to set the stage for later assessments of the wider agrarian changes that have ensued.