Financialised Agrarian Primitive Accumulation in Zimbabwe

The literature on land reform in Zimbabwe has blind spots in relation to how the peasant majorities continue to loss land and natural resources to monopoly finance capital. Despite monopoly finance capital having been ousted by Robert Mugabe under the 2000s radicalised land reform, under the new regime presided over by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the land reform literature is silent on how it has regrouped to reverse Mugabe‘s pan-Africanist legacy of promoting broad-based land access and utilisation by Africans. This exploratory article (i) examined the implications of the 'Zimbabwe is Open for Business‘economic development path for the agricultural sector; (ii) revealed the link between politics, policy and economic development in Zimbabwe; and (iii) flagged the diagnostic potential of social policies to counteract the unfolding financialised primitive accumulation. Predicated on critical discourse analysis and underpinned by the transformative social policy framework, a detailed literature review on land reform and social policy was conducted, including an analysis of viewpoints, policy, and strategy documents. The search for germane documents were conducted in academic and grey literature databases using land reform, monopoly finance, peasants, new dispensation, and primitive accumulation as key terms. It concluded that finance capital has engendered forcible production models for peasants, increased livelihoods and tenure insecurity, and fermented displacements.