Institutions as images of political authority and power hierarchies: understanding land tenure dynamics of state-making in Zimbabwe and Uganda

Abstract

The intricate link between political power and land rights is a historical axiom and Zimbabwe and Uganda present two conflicting yet analogous situations of what happens in agrarian societies, where socio-economic life is organised around access to and use of land. In such communities, institutions of land tenure are powerful mediums that shape political relations, electoral choices and the whole landscape of political interactions that happen in rural communities. This article seeks to examine how the post-colonial state in Zimbabwe and Uganda deliberately and systematically manipulated ‘insecure’ land tenure regimes by deploying institutions as instruments of political control and relevance. We argue that while the British coloniser framed the two counties differently, that is Zimbabwe as a settler colony and Uganda as a native colony, post-colonial land tenure regimes in the two countries were framed as institutional configurations purposefully designed and redesigned by national leaders as instruments of building state authority, organising the rural masses politically and shaping state-citizen allegiances. In this context, we argue that the land reforms in both countries perpetuated economic and regional disparities, inherited from colonial economic policies, and the ethnic and racial divisions, as foundations of state-making. In that regard, the connection between land and political authority may appear delinked and far-fetched, yet, as the Ugandan and Zimbabwean cases illustrate, there is compelling evidence to confirm this contention.