Guns and Guerrilla Girls: women in the Zimbabwean liberation struggle (review)

Abstract

controls. This narrative emphasizes land reforms based on redistributing land held by whites, as opposed to the internal reforms. This resistance, however, only managed to delay the implementation of the internal reforms, which failed to avert landlessness, tenure insecurity, low productivity and land degradation as promised. In the end, the shift of government policy towards a fast-track land redistribution programme in 2000 diverted the attention of the land-hungry towards invading former white-owned lands, just as project officials were redeployed to the new land redistribution programme. The broader effects of the counter-narrative, however, partly fuelled demands for land redistribution. In essence therefore, the book implicitly argues for a deeper understanding of Zimbabwe’s land question, and of the Fast Track Land Reform. It identifies a variety of social forces in rural areas that articulated demands for land redistribution, including the local chiefs, spirit mediums, autochthons in overcrowded communal areas and landless migrants (strangers). In reality these forces buttressed the search by urban elites and other politically organized interests for a radical official land redistribution programme at that conjuncture. The study is thus a critical reminder of the complex processes which have led to the stalling and revival of redistributive land reforms in Zimbabwe since 1980. It highlights the failure of palliative policies, such as internal land reforms and rural development, to accommodate local priorities and repress popular demands for land redistribution. The evidence pinpoints the critical role played by non-state actors, including the traditional leaders and spirit mediums mobilized by locals, in rejecting internal land reforms and orchestrating land redistribution. The book also makes an important contribution to the study of spirit mediums in rural Zimbabwe by rejecting over-simplified renditions of their grand and self-contained influence on local communities and officialdom. It replaces this perspective with a nuanced treatment of their changing interactions with socially differentiated rural communities, which in turn influence the spirit mediums’ narratives. Moreover, the spirit mediums were found to be willing to mediate the interests of ‘strangers’. The evidence shows how spirit mediums and chiefs frequently pursued the demands of their adherents, and how the Mhondoro cult had become an important platform for debates on development and various social and political issues, as opposed to operating autonomously. Thus, spirit mediums cannot be situated narrowly within the traditions of autochthons, nor only within a vision of the past, given that they mediate the interests of various residents, do not reject ‘modern development’, and look towards the future. The author provides critical insights into why local communities resist development projects, including internal land reforms, and in so doing provides important clues to understanding demands for redistributive land reforms in Zimbabwe.