Speaker: Kirk Helliker
Date: Wednesday, 17th April 2019
Time: 4:15pm
Venue: Eden Grove Seminar Room 2
The series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) and the Departments of Sociology and Industrial Sociology, History, and Economics & Economic History.
THE BOOK: The land question remains central and contested in southern Africa. This book examines livelihoods in Zimbabwe since the “Fast Track Land Reform Programme” began in 2000, which led to major economic and political shifts, with a profound impact on both urban and rural areas. This book provides rich empirical studies that examine a range of multi-faceted and contested livelihoods within the context of systemic crises in the aftermath of land reforms. Taking a broad political economy approach, the chapters advance a grounded and in-depth understanding of emerging and shifting livelihood processes, strategies and resilience that foregrounds agency at household level.
Areas examined include urban livelihoods of the poor, sex work, the role of development NGOs, small-scale farming and livelihoods, land reform and women, the state health system, social capital and HIV-infected and AIDS-affected people, climate variability, insecure land tenure and natural resource use. Contributors besides the editors include Takunda Chabata, Loveness Chakona, Tafadzwa Chevo, Takunda Chirau, Rachel Gondo, Innocent Mahiya, Jonathan Mafukidze, Wadzanai Takawira, Felix Tombindo, and Kayla Knight Waghorn. Highlighting an understanding of how people and communities respond to socio-economic challenges, this book is a crucial resource.
THE EDITORS: Sandra Bhatasara is Senior Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. Her current research is on gender, climate justice, land occupations and women's land rights in Zimbabwe. Recent publications include "The Party-State in the Land Occupations of Zimbabwe: The Case of Shamva District" (“Journal of Asian and African Studies,” 2016) and "Beyond Gender: Interrogating Women’s Experiences in FTLRP in Zimbabwe" (“Africa Review,” 2017)
Manase Kudzai Chiweshe is Senior Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, and winner of the 2015 Gerti Hessling Award for best paper in African studies. Author of over 50 journal articles and book chapters, he is also author of “The People’s Game: Football Fandom in Zimbabwe” (2017, Langaa Press) and co-editor of “Perspectives in Sustainable Development in Zimbabwe” (2017, with Jacob Mapara). His research area is African agrarian studies: land, livelihoods, football, gender and youth studies. His work revolves around the sociology of everyday life in African spaces.
Kirk Helliker is research professor in Sociology at Rhodes University, and Director of the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies. His main research interests are civil society, land struggles and political transformation in Zimbabwe. He was expelled from South Africa in the 1980s by the apartheid regime. Edited books include "Land Struggles and Civil Society in Southern Africa" (with Tendai Murisa, 2011) and "The Promise of Land: Undoing a Century of Dispossession in South Africa" (with Fred Hendricks and Lungisile Ntsebeza, 2013).