ABSTRACT
In Mashonaland West, the colonial state established a continuous line of large-scale farms along the tarred road heading northwest from Kadoma, via Patchway and Golden Valley mines, as far as the Sanyati communal lands. After 1980, the Government mostly opened these lands for resettlement, such as at Muzvezvem, located about 60 kilometres either way between Kadoma and Sanyati, which is where the Shiri family resides. Nevertheless, within the state-regulated economy of the 1980s, Muzvezve residents managed to lift themselves out of destitution. Although to a lesser extent than in land depleted communal areas, the fall in living standards among Muzvezve residents came at the worrying cost of accelerated environmental exploitation of the commons. The Government's resettlement program of the early 1980s, according to Mr Mhishi, a former deputy director of the Department of Rural Development [DERUDE], was 'both by design and default first and foremost a political and social program'.
