ABSTRACT
To understand the current state of crisis in Zimbabwe it is important to fi rst examine the historical processes whereby the ideas of land and nation have become intertwined, to the point where they are now seemingly inseparable. From the migrations and tribal confl icts that led to the pre-colonial states and their chiefdoms (Vambe 1972, Beach 1986), to the vicissitudes of a post-colonial state under pressure to reform an economy burdened by the protection of residual colonial political and economic interests (Astrow 1983, Moore 2003), the history of land ownership and the struggle over it have been vital to the political project of both anti-and post-colonial African nationalism. For the needs of this project, once so full of hope and idealism but now corrupt and seemingly in a perpetual state of crisis, ‘the land’ inevitably becomes a synecdoche for the liberated post-colonial nation.
