ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, the Zambian economy embarked on a liberalisation programme that culminated in the privatisation of Zambia’s copper mines and other state assets. The programme had the effect of unsettling pre-existing social relations, in the process of creating new winners and losers. This article uses the Luana Farmers’ Cooperative as a case study to demonstrate how resistance to capitalist restructuring can generate new forms of social and economic practices, discourses and identities in post-independence Southern African states such as Zambia. This article explains that the rationalisation of Zambia’s copper production activities displaced thousands of workers who were forced to eke out a living through subsistence agricultural activities. For a time, the government permitted workers to access state lands for that purpose. However, the ambitions of the Zambian elite, who embraced globalisation and sought ways to engage in export-oriented agriculture for the global market, required large tracts of land. This land was amassed in part through the privatisation of the lands the ex-miner subsistence farmers had been cultivating. This put the two into conflict, drawing in the state, which initially sided with the elites and sought to appropriate the squatter farms. The Luana farmers were forced to take defensive action by mobilising to confront both the state and the elites – ultimately they were able to secure their right to subsistence through farming, at least partially and
for the short term. The question remains whether they will be able to parlay that success into longer term and more systemic transformation of the Zambian economy.
