Johannes Bhanye, CASAS’ member, has published an article with Abraham R. Matamanda, Jennilee Kohima & Elmond Bandauko in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume.
The article addresses how Zimbabwe implemented the Fast-Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in the year 2000. This program has had far-reaching implications on urban development, especially on urban land markets in cities and towns. The paper highlights the implications of the land reform program on urban land markets, using Harare as a case study. Their analysis demonstrates that the land reform process in peri-urban spaces was complex and largely driven by political interests. The land reform process distorted the urban planning processes, leading to disparities in the land markets. Such disparities include informal and uncontrolled processes of accessing land and, ultimately, rapid development of informal settlements in the city. Political elites and land barons took advantage of the land reform program extorting money from desperate home-seekers. We conclude that the distortion of urban land markets by politically driven land reform processes negatively affects sustainable urban development. Overall, the paper makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on land reforms and peri-urban development in Africa, demonstrating the complex and multidimensional implications of land reform programs on peri-urban land markets.
To read the full article, go to: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03500-9
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CASAS
The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.