History and Role of Social Movements

7/30/2019 History and Role of Social Movements

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History and Role ofSocial Movements1Sam MOYO

Introduction: RuralMovements and LandReformThe paper attempts to answer a criticalquestion which faces policy makers:whether the emergence of organised socialmovements is a pre-condition for landredistribution. Indeed, as we argue below ina number of situations, governments havepursued land redistribution more vigorouslyunder the pressure of social movements insome cases, under the pressure ofinternational governments in others, and/or under pressure from both.

If pressure from social movements is acritical factor in land reform, then thepolitical and social rationale for landreforms assumes greater importance thanhas hitherto been acknowledged. Instead,an important body of the literature

emphasizes the economic rationale ofefficiency, inducing land reforms andrelated economic considerations arisingfrom equity. Economic reasons also tend tobe adduced to oppose land reform. Thissuggests that, since there is no need to waitfor pressures for land reform from socialmovements, technocratic government

1This paper has been prepared for theworkshop Land Redistribution in Africa:Towards a common vision. The findings,

interpretations, and conclusions expressedherein are those of the author(s) and do notnecessarily reflect the views of theInternational Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment/The World Bank and itsaffiliated organizations, or those of theExecutive Directors of The World Bank orthe governments they represent.

and/or markets will themselves pursue landredistribution given the economicrationality implied. Moreover, it can beexpected that in some situations, ruralmovements may even come to terms withgovernments to achieve a particular model

of land reform involving both state andsocial movement actors, in varying ways anddegrees.

Various cases are discussed to highlight thedifferent circumstances under which stateand social pressure interact, over landreform, in order to inform policy analysts ofthe options to consider in support of a moreinclusive and participatory approach landreform.

To answer this question we look at the

different and changing historical contextswithin which land reforms have occurred(section 2), and then we examine somespecific experiences that demonstrate thepressure of social movements (section 3).First, however we introduced the broadconcepts, and Section 4 summarises the keyinsights gained. But first we elaborate hereon some concepts and the context ofcontemporary land reforms.

1. ContemporaryContext and Basis ofRural MovementsEconomic liberalisation tended to removestate support for peasants in land reformand production, while market forces havetended to marginalise them, and transferproduction to agribusiness, in new exportdomains and marginalised food security.Liberalisation establishes private property

rights in land and accelerated landalienation in many countries. The creationand recreation of the peasantry occursalongside exclusion from land and, in theprocess of their social differentiation anddisplacement by merchant and elite classes(see Moyo and Yeros, 2005a). This processdoes not necessarily lead to theproletarianisation or the transformation of


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the peasant into capitalist class, resulting inthe so-called disintegration of the peasantry(Lenin, 1985; Kautsky, 1986). It leads to therecreation of the peasantry in differentforms, albeit in context of reduced incomes.Combined with experiences of declining real

incomes in off-farm employment, trends inde-industrialisation, and all-arounddeterioration of living standards, structuraladjustment has successfully deepeneddependence and underdevelopment.

Land struggles have been central to manyrecent efforts to regain access andautonomous control over land (Moyo andYeros, 2005a), and the emergence oforganised rural social movements has beena critical force in many of the new waves ofredistributive land reform in a number of

countries. The peasantry which has notentirely disappeared has tended to bejoined by semi-proletarianised people toswell movements, alongside the landlessand unemployed.

A diversity of rural movements exist,ranging from the more organised to themore spontaneous; using different modes ofmobilization; and exhibiting notabledivergences in ideology, strategy, andtactics. They are militant on land and

agrarian reform, quite often employing theland occupation tactic, and in the mostorganised of cases, they have become theleading forces of opposition to neoliberalismand the neo-colonial state, at the same timeas trade unionism has suffereddisorganisation and cooptation.

What does this say about rural movementsand land reform? The nineteenth-centuryclassical assessment of the peasantry asisolate, conservative, and reactionary, is nolonger accurate (Ibid). The countryside has

in the twentieth century been fullyintegrated not only into the capitalisteconomy but also in the humanist dialecticof consciousness, through the nationalistand socialist mobilizations, to the feministand environmentalist ones of the present.Contrary to localist approaches to ruralpolitics (Scott 1985), whether populist orrelativist, the above modern moral

languages are global in reach, they infuselocal notions of dignity and reason, andhave become a moral basis of social protest.

The rural poor engage in a variety ofpolitics, both simultaneously and over time.They vote in local and national elections,engage in covert and unorganized acts ofdefiance (trespassing, squatting, poaching,and stealing), participate in overt andorganised land occupations movements, andalso enter trade unionism. They fight inrebellions and revolutions, as well as non-emancipatory wars. Their politics may beprogressive or regressive; they may conformto the demands of civil society or they mayconfront them outright.

However, we must recognise the

ambiguities of peasant-workerconsciousness and the problems of politicalorganisation that pertain to them. Semi-proletarianisation yields a workforce inmotion, within the rural areas, across therural-urban divide, and beyondinternational boundaries. This workforce isalso poor and abundant, relativelyunhealthy and illiterate, and devoid ofbargaining power. Neither full peasants norsettled proletarians, semi-proletarians havegrievances that arise from both the family

farm (land shortage, insecurity of tenure)and the workplace (wages and conditions ofemployment). Their political languages areoften ethnic or national, and while thesemay contain democratic elements, and maybe powerful sources of mobilisation, theyare not in themselves adequate to the task ofarticulating wider class interests anddefending them on a sustained basis.

Meanwhile, a plethora of organisationsseeks to speak for the rural poor, enlistthem in their ranks, or otherwise secure

their support: from NGOs and churchorganisations, to political parties, tradeunions, farmers unions, and landlesspeoples movements. If the neoliberal theoryof civil society naturally gravitated to urbanareas in the early 1990s, in practicedevelopment agencies and NGOs had longpenetrated rural areas through the fundingof projects. This activity expanded under


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structural adjustment, as the socialresponsibilities of states were renouncedand global development agencies found newand willing partners in NGOs to take overfrom states. Political parties of the left havehad ambiguous relations with the

countryside, although by and large theyhave succumbed to the logic of capital,either to obtain state power or afterobtaining it.

Contemporary rural movements tend toinclude those that are organisedto variousdegrees, including those that are in theprocess of organising as well as the less

organised. Many have aprogressiveagrarian reform agenda, whose visibilityand proliferation over the last two decadeshas varied. Their strategy in the LatinAmerican context tends to be characterisedby autonomy from political parties and thestate, with limited pursuit of strategicalliances with trade unions, and other socialmovements. It is argued that since civilsociety organizations have not placedradical land and agrarian reform at thecentre of the development agenda , newmovements have been filling the neoliberalvacuum of the 1990s and that its strongholdhas been the countryside (see Petras 1997;Petras and Veltmeyer ; 2001). In the African

context, land and/or rural movement, whilelimited in scale and impact, have arisen inisolated spaces to fill this vacuum. Theirsocial base, entails a rural-urban mix ofsmall cultivators and proletarians, includingurban retrenched and unemployed(Ramdhane and Moyo, 2002). Howevertheir leadership remains dominated bymiddle class urban based elites, and directaction, such as land occupations, has beenovershadowed by indirect tactics such asresource poaching in private and public

lands, while being overwhelmed by thewelfarist projects of the NGO formation(Ibid).

2. Broad Role of RuralMovements in LandReformHistorically rural social movements played acrucial role in the struggles for nationalindependence and also against landexpropriations in Africa, Latin America andAsia. Given the social significance of land tothe lives of most of the rural and classes, itscontrol is an important source of politicalpower and a terrain for political contestbetween different social classes or groupingsof people: landlords, peasants, bureaucrats,men and women, ethnic groups, racialgroups and so many other social categories.The importance of land for the social

reproduction of mainly peasant households,through subsistence from land and naturalresources and related income generation,has both inter-generational and intra-generational implications.

The emergence in some countries of newsocial movements in the South (Brazil,Zimbabwe, India, China, Bolivia,Philippines etc) in relation to the evolutionof struggles for land reforms, suggests therenewed political and social significance ofpopular social pressures for land reform. Ina number of these countries peasants andlandless workers were the major actors instimulating the development of acomprehensivealbeit limitedagrarianreform programme even in cases of state-ledreform (Veltmeyer, 2005).

In the 1960s and 1970s, most nationalgovernments in Latin America used thepower of the state to alter the distribution ofland for different categories of producersand households, and to redefine the right to

land for those given access in the process.These reforms were state-led, regardless ofthe form of the state (authoritarian,military, liberal reformist, proto-revolutionary), but in all cases undertakenin response to mass peasant mobilisationsand a general threat of social revolution.The key countries in Latin America includedagrarian reforms in Bolivia in 1952; Cuba


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1959; in Peru from 1958 to 1974, Brazil from1962 to 1964, Chile from 1966 to 1973,Ecuador from 1964 to 1967, El Salvadorfrom 1980 to 1985, Guatemala between1952 and 1954; Honduras in 1873, andNicaragua from 1979 to 1986 (Ibid).

In Africa rural based armed struggles werekey to stimulating land redistribution inAlgeria, Kenya, Angola, Mozambique andothers. In Asia US policy on agrarian reform(Olson 1974), formed by the threat ofproliferating revolutionism in the region,led by Chinese communists, encouraged theabolition of feudal relations. Thus, in thefive years after the war, Japan, South Korea,and Taiwan underwent large-scale landredistributions, combined with armedsuppression of radical forces until the

reforms (some of which had already beenunderway in liberated zones) were undercontrol. In all cases, reform was institutedwithoutthe political marginalization of thelanded oligarchies; most of these werecompensated, induced towards industrialdevelopment, and transformed into apolitical class with allegiance to the UnitedStates. The Mexican Revolution of 1910played an equally important role earlier,within this political context.

The same type of agrarian reform activismwas not necessitated in the nearbyPhilippines, or in Guatemala soon after,where radical forces in each case weredefeated by military means, and existingland reforms, in progress, were reversed(Olson 1974). In Bolivia in this same apopular revolt brought a radical nationalistgovernment to power which set out on anextensive redistributive agenda. But, in thiscase, the political oligarchy was noteffectively displaced and the direction ofinternal change was successfullystreamlined in the medium term, not bymilitary means, but through instruments offoreign aid.

The reforms carried out by the nationalistgovernment in Egypt, ultimately led toreversals. In non-US spheres of influence,namely the colonial territories of Britainand France, reform experiences fit the

general pattern: in Kenya and Algeria,imperial armies were mobilised to crushrural-based anti-colonial revolts andeventually to negotiate neo-colonialtransitions.

The Cuban Revolution fuelled a new wave ofmilitancy in Latin America, and compelledthe US government to act against feudalremnants on this continent as well. Underthe banner of the Alliance for Progresslaunched in 1961, a series of redistributeland reforms were implemented, generallyagainst the wishes of local ruling classes.Once again, however, the object was acontrolled land reform strategy ofcooptation, entailing the creation of aconservative agrarian petty-bourgeoisie,and repression against the excluded (de

Janvry 1981, Petras and Veltmeyer 2000).By the mid-1960s, the new reformism wasstalling, against proliferating militancy inthe countryside and the closing of ranksbetween modernist and reactionarybourgeoisies. Under these circumstances,the US shifted agrarian policy away fromland redistribution and towards social andtechnological modernisation oflatifundios,combined with support for militarydictatorships, as necessary. A series ofcoupdetats, from Brazil in 1964 to Chile in 1973,

provided the political framework for thereorganisation of Latin Americanagricultures, to modernise them withlimited redistribution and mostly withoutdisplacement of national ruling classes, tointegrate them to varying degrees into theUS agro-industrial complex, and tomaintain extroverted accumulation.

In South Asia, the same passivereorganisation of agriculture was beinglaunched at the same time, by means of thegreen revolution, especially in North India.Meanwhile, further east, in Vietnam, the USwas escalating aggression against a potentnational liberation movement, while inAfrica a series of national liberationmovements were launching armed strugglesof their own against colonial rule and whitesupremacism in Guinea-Bissau, Angola,Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and


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South Africa (all except the latter beingrural-based).

The period before liberalisation was asmuch the period of redistribution as it wasof nation-building. While these were theprevailing developmental models, thedeterminant of change was class strugglewithin the centre-periphery structure underCold War conditions. Therefore, firstly,rural-based social struggles have compelledthe transition of agriculture to capitalismworldwide, characterised in the main by thetransformation of large landownership tocapitalist farming along with several othertendencies. Second, the whole experience ofpost-war reformism, rounded off in the1970s by integrated rural developmentprogrammes administered by global

agencies, served as a minimum subsidy tothe social reproduction of the ruralproletariat and semi-proletariat on a globalscale. Such policies put a break on morerapid proletarianisation, as well as moreradical alternatives (de Janvry 1981, Harriss1987). Thirdly, reformist measures thatsafeguarded the political and economicstatus of ruling classes and allowed them tosteer the direction of reform back toextroverted accumulation, have generallyfailed. As Atilio Boron has put it, history

teaches that, in Latin America, to makereforms you need revolutions (2003: 205,our translation), and this can certainly begeneralised. While revolutions may not beon the cards under the circumstances, thepoint to stress is that economic typeapproaches to agrarian reform (Bernstein2002) will continue to suffer unless thepolitical dimensions of reform are takenseriously.

The ensuing period of marked-baseddevelopment, roughly from the 1970s to thepresent, altered the model of agrarianreform away from redistribution. Thisperiod began with the coup detatin Chileand reached its symbolic height in LatinAmerica in 1992 with the amendment ofArticle 27 of the Mexican constitution whichhad been protecting communal/reformedland since 1917 (consequent upon the

Revolution of 191020). The growing

influence of the neo-classical economicdoctrine, called for both the restitution ofland in reformed sectors to previouslandowners and the establishment ofindividual title within the sectors that were

communal/indigenous, collectivized, orstate-owned. This policy framework spreadthroughout Latin America, Asia, and Africaunder structural adjustment, and then on toEastern Europe after the collapse of theSoviet bloc (Szelenyi 2001). Although actualimplementation has been uneven moresignificant in tenure systems in LatinAmerica and Eastern Europe than in Africa the impact has been momentous.

This land reform policy framework wasmodified in the 1990s when land reform wasbrought back to the agenda, along withpoverty, under the auspices of the WorldBank (Binswanger, Deininger and Feder1993), now combining neo-classicaleconomic doctrine with a renewed small-farm populism (Bernstein 2002). The newagenda has sought to redistribute land bymarket means or otherwise provide accessto land in some other form (e.g., rentalmarkets) (see Borass 2003). This latest turnof events has wrongly been dignified as thethird phase of land reform in Latin

America (de Janvry, Sadoulet, and Wolford2001), for it does not constitute a break withthe period that began with Pinochet.

Therefore, it has not only been the modelof agrarian reform that has driven thecourse of events, but class struggles in theclosing years of the Cold War and in itswake. Thus, at the same time as LatinAmerica was about to embark on structuraladjustment, the Nicaraguan Sandinistaslaunched the last Cold War revolution in

Latin America, with a radical agrarianagenda. This was fought bitterly by CIA-organised counter-revolutionary forces andultimately undermined. A decade later, afterthe end of the Cold War, the Zapatistaslaunched armed struggle in southernMexico to coincide with NAFTA, demandingland, indigenous autonomy, and nationaldemocracy. They received a combination of


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military repression and unfulfilled promisesby the Mexican state. Then, in Africa,Zimbabwe closed the century with a militantland occupation movement, led by veteransof the national liberation war, to bring abouta radical redistribution of land.

3. SelectedExperiences of LandMovements

The MST of Brazil

The Movement of Landless Rural Workersof Brazil (MST) is one of the most important

social movements in Latin America. It wasdeveloped under the influence ofprogressive sectors of different Christiancurrents the most outstanding being theCatholic Churchs Pastoral of the Land afew years after the Sandinista victory inNicaragua and its multiplying effects on thecontinents revolutionary movement. Afterlong years of military dictatorship, Brazilwas enjoying new democratic breezes.Manifestations of popular dissatisfactionwere on the upsurge, in particular

important trade-union struggles on theoutskirts of So Paulo. They were theoriginal starting point for the WorkersParty and later, the Single Workers TradeUnion.

This situation arose, among other reasonsfrom the incipient crisis in the economicmodel implemented by the military. As aresult of this crisis, the peasants - drivenfrom their lands by droughts and poverty inboth the North and West-Central regions, aswell as by capitalist modernization of the

countryside in the Central and Southernpart of the country - had increasingly fewerpossibilities of finding work in the cities. Onthe other hand and for different reasons,emigration to the regions of agriculturalcolonization had not worked out as asolution. It became more and more evidentthat the only way out for the landlesspeasants was to look for different actions

that would allow them to procure landwherever they lived especially taking intoaccount that there was more than enoughuncultivated land in all regions of thecountry.

The MST core membership comprises ofunemployed and semi-employed urbanpeoples from various regions, includingagricultural workers and landless peasants.These form the leaderships of local landoccupation committees, which arecombined at regional and national levels,through elected representatives.

The MST also has an elaborate secretariat ofemployees and volunteers, servicing a widerange of departments involved in land,production, social and international

relations. Various NGOs also providesupport to MST programmes, which includethe training of its cadets.

The MST has played a crucial role in theagrarian and land reform processes inBrazil. Firstly through pressure on landacquisition and secondly through itsengagement of the government in designingland and agrarian policies, of whichincluded developing support facilities forresettled farmers; credit facilities;mechanisation; and the protection of poor

farmers from exploitation by establishedlarge scale corporations, such as withuncompetitive lowly priced products. Thesuccesses of the MST have also led to thedevelopment of various smaller competingrural and urban land occupationmovements. However, the other movement,the CONTAG has pressurised for landreform, focussing on market based landreform principles, (see Meszaros; 2000).

Identification of vacant land, landoccupation and farm development - The

basis for the land occupation tactic used bythe MST in Brazil is the agrarian reformlegislation that was established for the landreform programmes of the 1960s which issimilar in form to the legislation establishedin the state-led land reform programmes ofthe 1970s. These allow for the expropriationof large landholdings which are deemed as


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unproductive and as having no social use.In Brazil this law provides a legal basis for aprogramme of state-led legal expropriationand land redistribution. However, as notedby Thiesenhusen (1995) among others, bythe 1990s, little land had actually been so

transferred, leading the reorganised peasantmovements to take action in diversepolitical and legal.

The MST in Brazil adopted the direct actiontactic of land occupations in the context of abroader class struggle (Stdile 2000). Inthis context, the MST mobilised itsmembership to take direct action in theform of large-scale land occupations thattypically mobilise from 1000 to 3000families. Upon occupation of the land, theleadership of the movement on behalf of the

encamped settlers immediately enters intonegotiations with the government for legaltitle to the land, under the governmentsown legal provisions for expropriation oflanded properties that do not have socialuse.

This strategy and the associated tactic ofland occupations has been so successful asto force the government to revive and stepup its own land reform programme,including the implementation of a World

Bank programme based on the marketmechanism. This begun in 1995 as a pilotproject calledSao Jose in the northeast ofthe country and extended nationwide underthe name Cdula da Terra. In 1999, theGovernment of Brazil introduced anotherprogram calledBanco da Terra, literallyLand Bank. Some argue that the aim ofthese market-supported land reformprograms was to redistribute land notnecessarily to the landless, but to the mostproductive user. At the same time, therehas been a lot of confusion between thesedifferent programs and is difficult togeneralize. However, the actual acreage ofland transferred via this mechanism underthese programs has been relatively modest.

Today, after fifteen years of struggle and arevamped state-led land reformprogramme, three percent of the population

still own two-thirds of the countrys arableland, much of which continues to lie idle.

The rhythm of MST occupations evolvedover fifteen years of struggle, averaging 345occupations a year and resulting in thesettlement of over half a million families(569,733) on about 50,000 hectares of land(Dataluta 2002). In just four months in1999, at the height of its conflict with theCardoso government and its alternativeofficial land reform programme, over 155large estates were occupied by 22,000families organised by the MST and theConfederao Nacional de Trabalhadoresna Agricultura (CONTAG). By mid-1999,there were over 72,000 families over

350,000 farm people encamped on land

awaiting a response on the part of thegovernment and action in the form oflegalising the de facto expropriation of theoccupied land.

However, some families continued to live inthe temporary settlements or camps for upto four years and more. It is suggested thatby withholding federal funds, and launchinga programme to offer loans to small farmersfor the purchase of land, the Cardoso regimehoped in vain to discourage the land

occupiers and to undermine public support

for the MST (MST 2000; Fernandes andMattei, in Moyo and Yeros, 2005a).

In the course of fifteen years of struggle, theMST has mobilised up to half a millionfamilies of rural and urban landless workersto occupy land, negotiate its legalexpropriation, and put it into production.During its thirty years of existence, INCRA,the institution established by thegovernment under the agrarian reform lawhas expropriated very few landholdings andsettled fewer than seven percent of the

landless rural families

some 330,000 outof four million. Thus, most land settlementswere initiated by social movementoccupations that were later legalised byINCRA (Ibid).

The MSTs autonomy has undergonechanges overtime. In the re-democratisation period, the MST had close


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links with the Workers Party (PT), butremained independent from it, and alsohad a strategic alliance with the trade unioncentre (CUT) (Ibid). However, throughoutthe 1990s, alliances with the CUT and PTweakened.

Since the electoral victory of PT, the MSThas been working close with statestructures, although the Lula governmenthas not formulated an agrarian reformagenda that is significantly more substantialthan before. The relationship facedcontradictions as the MST intensified itsland occupation campaign during the Lulaera, leading to a new period of ruralconfrontation; including over control of thepolice and of the hired militias of thelandowners which are both fundamentally

state functions.

The Brazilian state has repressed the socialmovements on numerous occasions, indifferent historical contexts, to maintain theexisting regime of property and the meansof production. The judiciary played aconstricting role in this regard, for example,in the trial and imprisonment of MSTactivists, while the violence of landowners,involving murder or massacre, has been metwith legal impunity. The powerful links

between the large proprietors and thejudiciary is demonstrated by the fact thatbetween 1985 and 1999 of the 1,158 ruralactivists assassinated in land disputes, only56 gunmen were brought to trial and only 10were convicted (MST, 2002). In 2003,repression of the MST when it refuses to toethe government line (to have patience andsupport the governments land reformprogramme) has continued under the PT(Partido dos Trabalhadores) government.What is more, the government has even sentin the military police to surround the MSTheadquarters and intimidate the leadership.

However, the MST has secured significantsupport and alliance (ideologically andmaterially) from numerous left orientedNGOs of a middle class leadership.Moreover, it has secured the support ofinternational farmers movements and theadmiration of land movements in southern

Africa (South Africa and Zimbabwe). Thishas buttressed its strength and legitimacyglobally.

The War Veterans, Land

Occupations and the StateAccess to adequate land and naturalresources contained therein whilecomplemented by migration andremittances and off- farm activity andincomes is increasingly dominated byexchange incomes derived from agriculturalproduction activities among most peasanthouseholds in Zimbabwe. Diminishingaccess to land in terms of land alienation,demographic pressures and failure of thetechnological base to improve productivity

of the land and natural resources elicitpeasant strategies to expand their access tonew land and natural resources incompetition with coterminous peasantcommunities, emerging agrarian capitalistsand migrants. Women are the leastresourced in these struggles.

Increasingly, contemporary structures ofpolitical and economic power relations inZimbabwe significantly influenced bystruggles over land concentration and

popular efforts to restore or gain land rights.The increasedthe demand for land and itsnatural resources, is also a consequence ofthe generalized decline in sources of income(farm, off-farm, and non-farm). The contextis characterized by the enforced extensionof peasant survival strategies underpressure of impoverishment (Raikes 2000:68) to such activities as petty-trading,

craft-making, and gold-panning alongside

intensified struggle to access land illegally(squatting) in both rural and urban areas,as well as an intensified political struggle toreclaim land. The most important case of re-peasantisation in Africa under neoliberalismhas been that of Zimbabwe at themillennium (see Moyo and Yeros 2005b).

The politics over land reform in countriessuch as Kenya, Namibia and South Africasuggest the resurgence of liberation stylepolitics, based on anti-colonial, anti-


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imperialist and anti-minority dominanceideologies, in societies polarised on racial,ethno-regional and ideological lines.Emerging popular but sporadic andscattered land occupations for instanceconjure the idea of seizing local power and

local autonomy, although notions of landseizures or grabs have however, replacedthe immediate post-colonial discourses ofland nationalisation. Land occupationshave not been as widely pursued in most ofthese countries, although sporadicoccupations have been witnessed.

The land occupation movements ofZimbabwe, in rural and urban areas, beforeand after the countrys independence, hasrepresent an unofficial or undergroundsocial pressure used to force land

redistribution onto the policy agenda (Moyo2001). The 2000-2001 occupations inZimbabwe, mark the climax of a longer, lesspublic, and dispersed struggle over land inthat country, which intensified underadverse economic conditions that wereexacerbated by the onset of liberal economicand political reform (Ibid). The dynamics ofland reform in this and other contexts arecomplex and variegated, and can best beunderstood in political termsthat is, interms of a protracted struggle of peasant,

poor urban workers and other rural groupsfor access to land, and in terms of thereaction of the dominant landholding classto this struggle, as well as the responses ofthe state. Indeed one reaction of the statehas been to occasionally coopt theoccupation movements, and by 2000 tosystematically support and control themovement.

The war veterans of the liberation strugglein the 1960 and 1970s, originate from itspeasant base guerrilla bases and linkages inrural Zimbabwe, and as the integral militarywing of Zanu PF and Zapu. After beingdemobilised during the 1980s, the warveterans re-organised themselves under anassociation with NGO registration(Zimbabwe Liberation War VeteransAssociation) in the mid-1980s, andconsolidated themselves independently by

1991. During 1995 and 1997, the warveterans staged a direct confrontation withZanu PF over disability and pensionallowances, demanding immediatepayments, as well as demanding theirpromised 20% land quota and provoking

this to be delivered through landexpropriations. Noticing the failure of the1997 efforts to expropriate 1,471 farms, theymobilised 30 land occupations throughoutZimbabwe in 1998, in alliance withtraditional leaders and, weak and scatteredlocal land occupation movements which hadevolved since 1980. They also lobbied forthe constitutional expropriation of landwithout compensation.

The rejection of the draft constitution thatthe government of Zimbabwe embarked

upon in 2000 triggered renewed landoccupations in Zimbabwe led by warveterans, and later supported by thegovernment. Before the draft constitutionwas put to a referendum, the governmentintroduced a number of changes to it,including clauses that reinforced the right tocompulsory acquisition, and qualified theexisting market criteria for compensation ofthe land, permitting it to pay only for anyimprovements to it. The NationalConstitutional Assembly formed to push for

constitutional reform, the MDC, and theCommercial Farmers Union (CFU),campaigned heavily against the draftconstitution, contributing to its defeat in thereferendum.

The Zimbabwe National Liberation WarVeterans Association (ZNLWA) thenmobilised various peasant groups,traditional leaders, spirit mediums, formerwar collaborators and other middle classnationalists to join them in a widercampaign of land occupations, first as a wayof demonstrating the need for land, andthen as actual land seizures, and called forgovernment to appropriate such land. Whenleaders of the war veterans association andthe ruling party realised by the end ofMarch 2000 that white farmers wereactively campaigning for the MDC, andencouraging farm workers to do the same,


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the farm occupations became moreextensive and often violent, and wereintertwined with the political campaign forthe June 2000 parliamentary elections.

The Characteristics: Social Base andOrganization -A perceived uncivilcharacter of the war veterans, whoseinfluence derives from their military orguerrilla formation tends to overshadowtheir civil associational basis oforganisational cohesion. Formed in April1989 as a registered welfare organisation (asan NGO), the ZNLWVA aimed to improvethe lives of 55,000 war veterans,economically and socially. ZNLWVAhowever directly represents a widerpopulation of about 300,000 people, whoinclude war collaborators and their families.

These are dispersed geographically acrossthe country and conduct their affairsthrough national, provincial and districtlevel structures. But during the landoccupations they led and representedthousands of landless peoples and otherswho joined their campaign.

Significantly the organisation representswar veterans of varied objective class originsand status (peasant based, working andmiddle classes, and elites) some employed

and others not. Close to 20% of the corewar veterans are employed in key positionsin the state, and private sectors and securityapparatus. Many of them are based in ruralareas and others in urban areas. Some aresenior veterans who have longer warveteran service than others, and so forth.Their social and class basis is varied, whiletheir socio-economic structures andcommunities are also diverse. Theirmajority are however part of the rural andurban poor, as opposed to their more visibleelite, who hold leadership positions ingovernment and the military.

The latter tend to be identified mainly withthe state (government and security) asfunctionaries and political leaders, althoughsome are private employers and businesspeople. Since independence, theirdemobilisation and absorption intosocietal economic and political structures

has been highly differentiated, yielding acomplex hierarchy and power base. Theirrural base, developed during the guerrillawar era and from their mainly rural originsand current residence, provided them withextensive links to the peasantry and other

rural structures, during the landoccupations. For this reason that warveterans operated from within and outsidethe state- some scholars (Hammer andRaftopolos 2003; Cousin, 200 _) havetended to emphasize the importance of thestate and the political survival of Zanu PF asshaping the land occupations of 2000.

However since independence, the warveterans have consistently led argumentsthat redistribution of land which was thecore aim of the liberation war was overdue

(Sadomba, 2005). From 1997, theZNLWVAs focused on land redistributionthrough the occupation of commercial farmsin 1998 and then in 2000, the governmentsfast-track approach to land reform. Thereform was essentially led by war veterans,in a cause which Zanu PF and the state co-opted and gave direction, long after theelections of 2000 and 2002 had transpired.Therefore this is one important case, wherea loosely organised rural movementobtained extensive redistributive land

reform, albeit with some inequalities,directly through the ruling party and thestate. This appeared to be the only viablealternative to the closures of a civil societywhich was disengaged from land reform.

During the 1998 land occupations, whichwere recorded in 30 sites, Zimbabwe for thefirst time since independence experiencedthe emergence of a national land movement.Peasants on their own had only managedscattered, sporadic and local landoccupations (Moyo, 2001; Alexander, 2006;Sadomba, 2005). Technically, as an NGO,ZNLWVA was the first CSO to truly buildpeasant capacity to demand land, whilemost NGOs had focused on micro-levelwelfarist and environmentalist land useinterventions since 1980. Initially in 1998war veterans joined the peasant occupationmovements led by spirit mediums and


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traditional leaders, with the support of theirurban based offspring, notably in Svosveand Hwedza (Sadomba, 2005). Warveterans independently of Zanu PF thenmobilised similar peasant dominated landoccupations across the country. This was

followed in 2000, by the occupation of1,000 properties in 2000, and then furtherZanu PF constitutional reform, which nowincluded a clause to expropriate withpayment only for improvements. Thenationwide occupations were led by warveterans initially and then copied by otheractors, and then these supported by ZanuPF and the state. This process was laterjoined from 2001 by urban working classand elite occupiers, building a cross-classland movement (Moyo, 2001).

This development pitted the MDC-ZCTU-NGO alliance against the Zanu PFwarveteransnationalists alliance, in arealignment which significantly reshapedZimbabwes political and economicenvironment, especially by forcing changewithin government and Zanu PF and byradicalising its leadership towards a landexpropriation programme. These at timesviolent occupations of commercial farmsaccount for the recent attention directedtowards war veterans, although the tactic of

land occupation has been part of theirarsenal, albeit in sporadic and isolatedincidences, since the 1980s (Moyo, 2001;Sadomba, 2005; Tshuma, 1997).

Before these high profile occupationshowever, the war veterans were fastbecoming an influential political actor.Their formal organisation and powerincreased when they took a less entryisttactic and autonomous protest strategyduring 1992-1999, such that in 1997 theirhigh profile protest actions (streetdemonstrations, lock up of Zanu PF leaders,courtroom disruption, march on the StateHouse, etc) resulted in unbudgetedmonetary compensations for their service inthe liberation war being paid to them, andtheir demand for land being met by thelisting in 1997 of 1,471 farms forexpropriation.

Their relations with social actors - Debatestend to conflate the ZNLWVA membership,which is organically born from Zanu PFmembership, with Zanu PF organs andstrategies as a party (see Moore, 2005 andKriger, 2003), neglecting the evidence of the

changing social and political relations of thetwo organisations, and the nuanced shifts inthe alliance. A complex evolution ofautonomy (full and/or partial) andcooptation or control of the ZNLWVA byZanu PF and the state at its apex levels(national and provincial branches) isevident. This has entailed a multiplicity oflocally independent actions, mostly by themiddle class and poor war veterans,challenging the local and central state andZanu PF structures. This pressure later

initiated the key processes such as landexpropriation in response to theoccupations, while the former continued toexpose land and agrarian corruption and todemand policies to enable their farming(e.g. agrarian equipment procurement andsubsidies).

This organisational characteristic iscombined with general loyalty towards ZanuPF, and their tendency to be subordinatedby Zanu PF and the state shortly afterrebelling (Moyo, 2001; Sadomba, 2005).

Opportunistic corrupt and pugilisticelements also exist amongst them, as inmost segments of society, given theirmilitary experience. Some of these warveterans have undermined the fairness andconsistency of the land reform. Moreover,their complex social linkages especially inrural structures of the peasants and urbanworking class and elite sections, suggeststhat their formation, combines a variedorganisational and strategic framework ofadvocacy and alliance building.

The militant movement that broke with civilsociety, acted directly through the state,achieved radical land reform, but failed tosustain itself and defend its interestssystematically (Moyo and Yeros, 2005b).The post-colonial period of Zimbabwe hasbeen characterised by closure to ruraldemands both at the level of the state and


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oppositional politics. It has also beencharacterised by unstructured and low-profile land occupations, which haveexpanded under structural adjustment. Thetrade union movement (ZCTU) was themain source of hope for a short period in the

late 1980s and early 1990s, as it took amilitant stance against neoliberalism andproclaimed the unification of peasant-workers as an organizational task.

However, by mid-decade the ZCTU hadbeen co-opted into the civil domain by acombination of neoliberal economiccompromise, state repression, and thepatronage of international trade unionism.By decades end, trade unions wereoperating within the internationallyrespectable framework of good governance,

which in turn was impervious to theincreasingly militant rural demands. It wasat this time that the National LiberationWar Veterans Association began to agitatewithin the framework of the ruling party toeffect a re-radicalisation of nationalism andland reform. However, the movement hassignificantly been streamlined by the rulingparty, as the indigenous bourgeoisie hasbeen allowed to gain a sizeable foothold onthe land, and the rural poor are now facing anew challenge without a tangible

organisational structure of their own.

Yet the war veterans also attempted fromlate 2000 to organise urban landoccupations, which the ruling party did notformally condone, but cajoled into a formalcooperative housing project. But by 2005,the state destroyed these urban structures,including those based on land occupationsby war veterans, as part of the ruling partysgoal to weakening the leadership of the warveterans, and co-opt its causes.

Landless People Movement ofSouth Africa

The Landless Peoples Movement (LPM)was formed in 2001 within a context ofnegative effects of fiscal policies on the poorand marginalisation of the majorityfollowing the adoption of the neo-liberal

Growth, Employment and Redistribution(GEAR) macroeconomic strategy in 1996(Eveleth and Mngxitama, 2003; Greenberg,2004). In 1994 the ANC had promised todistribute 30% of agricultural land to themajority poor within 5 years of democracy.

However, ten years later the governmentonly managed to redistribute about 3 percent of the white lands. The whites whoconstituted 5% of the population continuedto hold about 85% of land while about 12million Africans inhabited the remainder17.1 million hectares of land and no morethan 15 per cent of this land was potentiallyarable (Moyo 2005; Wildschut and Hulbert,1998). Thus whites own six times more landin terms of the quantity of land availableand its quality (Wildschut and Hulbert,

1998). The majority of the black populationremained poor and tenure insecure.

Four factors can thus be isolated regardingthe emergence of the LPM, with the failureof the post-apartheid land reformprogramme being the most obvious. Theother are (Mngxitama, 2002 cited byEveleth and Mngxitama, 2003): the ANC ledgovernments abandonment of its socialdemocratic project in favour of neo-liberalpolicies, marked notably by the 1996adoption of the growth, Employment and

Redistribution (GEAR) strategy; theZimbabwe factor also played an importantrole , giving both example and confidence toland hungry South Africans, primarily byproving that it is possible for property to bealienated from the settler colonialists; therise of the anti-globalisation movement andthe resulting links made, particularly withBrazil Landless Rural Workers Movement(MST), have inspired South African landless people and NGO activist working withthem. Not only has it become possible to

envisage a movement for land reform basedon landless peoples participation in andownership of their struggle, but the politicsof anti-globalisation demands the activeinvolvement of the landless, and not just theNGOs and other activists claiming on theirbehalf (Mngxitama, 2002 cited Eveleth andMngxitama, 2003; Greenberg, 2004)


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However it is critical to note that the LPMwas nurtured by elements within thenetwork of land NGOs called the NationalLand Committee (NLC), whose historydates back to the 1980s, as well as leftintellectuals associated with this and othercivil society organisations.

Since the LPM was connected to the NLCthe membership and organisation base ofthe NLC are critical to understanding thesocial base and organisation of LPM. TheNLC however provides an example of thecontradictions inherent in civil societyinstitutions, given the neo-liberal terrainthat has governed civil society. On the onehand, the NGO network was instrumental in

the formation of the LPM (Eveleth andMngxitama, 2003; Greenberg, 2004). Butonce the LPM began to transcend the NLCand begun to move outside its control topose a potentially greater challenge to thestate (even if this was merely nascent) theNLC reasserted it control over themovement, and defended the integrity of thestate (Ibid). This reassertion of control overthe movement of the landless by the NLC issaid to revelled the strength of post-apartheid hegemony on the terrain of civil

society (Ibid).Some LPM members question theleadership role played by a few left leaningNGO groups, which supported theformation of the Landless PeoplesMovement (LPM), although thecontradictions of white middle classintellectual leadership of the black peopleslandless structure, given also the trans-classand nationalist nature of the interests inland which have become evident in the slowmaturation of a nation-wide radical land

reform advocacy agenda (Moyo, 2005;Mngxitama, 2004).

The LPM demand quick and wide scaleredistribution of land to the landless, andsecure tenure for all. It sees a failure ingovernments willing seller, willing buyermodel of land reform, and calls its reviewand its replacement with a new and more

pro-active process, on the market. The LPMalso calls for an end to evictions on farms(labour tenants and farm dwellers), ininformal and other settlements, whilethreatening land occupations as a tactic ofredistributing land through the self activity

of the landless.

The LPM used various tactics andcampaigns to highlight its demands for aradical redistribution of land and securetenure. Most notable of these is themovements support for Zimbabwes landexpropriation programme and its own landoccupations campaign. Prior to the WorldSummit on Sustainable Development(WSSD) in 2002, the LPM requestedMugabe to come and speak to its member inSouth Africa. Perhaps the LPM support to

ZANU PFs land expropriation programmehad tactical value, since the Zimbabweanland expropriation programme had anelement of dissidence to neo-liberalism andits market driven economic reforms, and animplicit recognition of the propaganda roleafforded by aligning with this, added weightto its own threats to occupy land, if SouthAfrican government did not carry out landredistribution (Greenberg, 2004; Evelethand Mngxitama, 2003).

The LPM also targeted un- or underusedland and abandoned farms, indicating itswillingness, initially to accommodatelandowners and commercial agriculture.But it has also directly called forexpropriation or occupation of farms ownedby abusive farmers, questioning the role ofsuper-exploited farm labour, inconstructing commercial agriculture and,making demands for reparations, whichtranscend the official land reform andhuman rights agendas (Greenberg, 2004).

Specifically, the success of the LPM was itsmobilisation of landless, during the UnitedNations World Conference Against Racism(WCAR) in 2001, which placed movementinto public light, leading to its recognitionas a national stakeholder in the land debate,which could not be ignored by government(Greenberg, 2004). The LPM posed littlenumeric threat to the state in its


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mobilisations, especially around theelections of April 2004 as it mobilised only1500 protesters in a march to the UnionBuildings in Pretoria in November 2003.Moreover only a few small and unsuccessfulattempts to occupy land or government

offices in the Eastern Cape and Gautengwere attempted.

The LPM focused on their ability to mobilizemany people in the streets to force thegovernment to address the variousproblems faced by labour tenants, farmdwellers, informal settlers etc. For example,in 2002 during the UNs World Summit onSustainable Development (WSSD), thevarious NGOs mobilized resources again, tobring the constituent parts of the LPMtogether for the second Landless Peoples

Assembly (Ibid). These representativesdiscussed issues and organized a march of25,000 people, under the banner of theSocial Movements Indaba (SMI) against theneo-liberalism of sustainable development(Ibid).

This mobilization of radical expression ofland reform brought to a head simmeringtensions between different politicaltrajectories in the NGOs and in the LPM,especially the attitude of the movement

towards government (Ibid). Some NGOsand a portion of the movement sought acontinuation of a relationship of criticalengagement. This has meant the pursuit ofclaims for land restitution andredistribution within the governmentsofficial land reform framework, rather thanthe use of direct action (e.g. landoccupations; demonstrations etc). Criticalengagement meant demanding the removalof perceived obstacles by government forthe implementation of the land reformprogramme, because many believed that aconstitutional basis for extensiveredistribution existed and since governmenthad the capacity to carry out the substantialtransfer of land to the landless but hadchosen not to, given its political andeconomic path (Ibid). Pressure from belowwas seen as critical to shift the governmentfrom its political and economic trajectory.

Their relations with social actors - TheLPM, by receiving significant funds fromdonors in the UK and Belgium, that weremanaged by the NLC on behalf of themovement, was tied into complex local andinternational NGO alliances. Funds were

also provided for a number of campaigns,including the Take Back the Land Campaignand the No Land, No Vote Campaign.

The LPM, alongside other land NGOswhose work it gave radical expression,influenced the thinking on land reform inSouth Africa. The state responded with amixture of reform and repression, such thatelements of the hegemonic bloc haveengaged in more vocal debates on landredistribution (Greenberg, 2004).Grassroots constituencies and the national

articulation of demand for land by the LPM,and other land networks placed landredistribution on the national agenda.

For instance, business leaders, media andpolitical parties have called for speedierland reform programme, while the largestnational farmers union (Agri-SA) worksclosely with government to design a plan forcommercial agriculture that incorporatesland reform as a component (NDA 2001). Asurvey (Markinor in 2004) found that 75%

of white farmers canvassed felt land reformwas inevitable, while 54% were willing tosell their land to advance the process (Ibid).These ideological movements suggest aconfrontation linkage to the growingpressures for land reform, particularly forthe landless, as influenced by the LPM.

The states coercive tactics with the LPMsuggested that the latter has a perceivedpower base, as the LPMs No Land, No Votecampaign in 2004 national electionsrevealed (Ibid). Mobilising the

constituencies historically marginalisedwithin nationalist discourse, as threatenedby the LPM could challenges the ANCselectoral base and its construct of thenation, thus opening up new areas forpolitical contestation (Ibid). However, theLPMs various contradictory alliances anddependences, as well as the countervailinginfluences of the state, led to its collapse.


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The land movement in South Africa is nowrelatively weak, in the face of an obviouslyslow and ineffective land redistributionprocess.

Philippines Case: the bibingkastrategy2

Peasant based revolutions in the Philippineswere common because of widespread ruralpoverty and unequal landownership. Butradical peasant mobilizations and collectiveaction in some regions of the countryemerged in the 1980s, with the support ofthe entire National Democratic (ND)movement, leading to a revival of the landquestion in Philippine politics (Ibid). By thetime the Aquino government came to power,

land reform had become one of the morepressing issues that demanded immediatestate action. The Aquino administration wascompelled to pursue land reformimmediately, to restore and maintainpolitical stability in the countryside, afterthe EDSA uprising. With the nationaldemocratic movement gaining ground bothin the cities and in the countryside, landreform was perceived not only as aninstrument that could unleash theproductive capacities of the countryside

(Hayami et al. 1990), but also as a socio-political measure that could strengthen theAquino administrations legitimacy amongthe landless rural poor. Apart from the factthat land reform constituted an importantaspect of Aquinos presidential campaign in1986, it was also perceived as an extremelyimportant reform measure for anygovernment in quelling the ruralinsurgency.

In the Philippines, direct action on land wascombined with co-opting reformist elementswithin the state

the dual bibingka

strategy to propel a substantial landredistribution 1990s (Borras 1998, Feranil,2005). Thus the objective of state power in

2This section is mostly summarized from Feranil,

2005 in Moyo and Yeros, 2005). Binkingka Strategy

is a term coined by Borass (2001; Development and

Change)

the ruling political party was pursued inalliance with grassroots organizationalpower, around the land question.

The KMP pressed for agrarian reformworking largely outside the system, some ofthem seized opportunities for land reform inCARP official programme, and engaged thestate in its implementation. Here, thereform initiatives of government, non-government organizations (NGOs), andpeoples organizations (POs) were mobilisedto converge toward a common direction.This convergence initiatives among differentreform-oriented groups was facilitated bythe Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR),under the administration of ErnestoGarilao, to harness the wider participationof civil society organizations in CARP

implementation (Ibid). These initiativeslater translated into a policy wherebyTripartite Partnership for Agrarian Reformand Rural Development (TriPARRD)projects were implemented in selected partsof the country. The impact created byTriPARRD, especially in movingcontentious private landholdings and inpropelling autonomous mobilizations frombelow, raised doubts among civil societyorganizations, although the strategy servedthe purpose of harnessing civil society

participation in the states reformprogrammes and in enlarging the politicalspace available for subaltern groups in thePhilippine countryside.

From the early 1990s, autonomous peasantorganizations, previously associated withthe CPP-led Left, used a variety of tactics tokeep the pressure on CARP implementation,including mass demonstrations, pickets,and land occupations (Ibid). These actionssucceeded because the new political contextcharacterised by the existence of reform-oriented individuals strategically locatedwithin the state bureaucracy exertedpressure on the state. This created parallelpressures from state reformists and bypeasants from below, within a correlation offorces (later termed the bibingka strategy)whereby the interaction of initiatives frombelow and from above tilted the balance of


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forces in favour of agrarian reform (Borras1998).

Reform initiatives from above were a crucialfactor in the CARP implementation process,since these perceived reform openings in theDAR changed the strategic complexion ofNGOs and Pos, and opened the way forengagement with the state on land reform.In the process, formal and informalalliances between civil society organizationsand reformists at the DAR created anational momentum which, in turn, putpressure on local-level DAR officials torespond more favourably toward landreform, against the local-level obstacles(Ibid)

Despite reformist pressure from above,

however, local autonomous peasantorganizations continued to face resistancefrom landowners during CARPimplementation. Thus local autonomousorganizations went beyond the localconfines of their mobilizations and buildnational level federations and organizationsthat constructed broad alliances among pro-reform actors across state and civil society.ThePambansang Ugnayan ng mgaNagsasariling Organisasyon saKanayunan (UNORKA or the National

Coordination of Autonomous RuralOrganizations), was one among otherinitiatives of the landless to build nationalorganizations.

Land occupations have been seen assymptomatic of the Philippine crisis (Putzeland Cunnington 1989), since genuine andredistributive agrarian reform, wouldrequire land occupations. The Aquinogovernment continued to be dominated bythe landowning class (Borras 1998), whoseinterests prevailed in state-legislated land

reform program. Thus political transition in1987 did not address the land question norrestructure Philippine society, as Acquinoremained captive to these interests. Landoccupations became necessary politicaltactics, expressing the demands of landlesspeasants for land reform with or without thestates intervention (Ibid).

Simultaneous with campaigns for a genuineagrarian reform, popular initiatives andmassive land takeovers on the ground werelaunched by local KMP chapters (sometimesbacked by the NPA) in different parts of thecountry (Kerkvliet 1993). KMP members

occupied idle public lands and took overthose that were either abandoned byMarcos cronies or foreclosed by banks invarious parts of the country. In NegrosOccidental, in the Western part of the islandof Visayas, the efforts of KMP to intensifyland occupations reached approximately75,000 hectares of agricultural lands andbenefited some 50,000 landless households.The breath and scale of these occupationsfar surpassed previous occupations by theNational Federation of Sugar Workers, who

had attempted to take over lands left idleand abandoned by the sugar planters at theheight of the crisis in the sugar industry inthe mid-1980s.

Land occupations were however stalled bythe Aquino government, through its TotalWar policy against the CPP-NPA and itscontinuing armed struggle. The resurgenceof authoritarian tendencies in the Aquinogovernment led landowners to regain idleand abandoned lands occupied by landlesspeasants of KMP. Borras (1998) points out

that while land takeovers in the second halfof the 1980s contributed in keeping landreform on the national agenda, it failed asan alternative land reform programmeimplemented outside the state.

The radical rural movements of the 1980s,which had close links to the CommunistParty and its armed wing, were defeated anddispersed by the total war campaign of theAquino government. The succeeding periodof the 1990s saw the reconfiguration of ruralmovements, the renunciation of armedstruggle, and the pursuit of alliance-buildingwithin the constitutional framework,although on its edges. The difference herehas been the qualified success of thebibingka strategy, a dual approach ofimplanting reformist elements within thestate while persisting with land occupationsand campaigns. The bibingka strategy


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obtained substantial land reform in the1990s. When the correlation of forces laterchanged, reformers were displaced, and thebibingka strategy became obsolete. In turn,rural movements have been searching for anew strategy, while this is increasingly

inclining to the use of human rightslanguage, rather than that of socialtransformation (Ibid).

Key Issues on RuralLand Movements andReformA few elements and issues define ruralmovements which have impacted on land

reform in the above and other cases, as hasbeen articulated elsewhere (see also Moyoand Yeros, 2005a). Current policyapproaches seeking inclusive orparticipatory land reforms, and the natureof stakeholders analyses that this is basedupon, need to take note the key issues.

The social base of the rural movements isrelatively similar throughout the peripheryand comprises of semi-proletarians andunemployed rural and urban proletarians,both men and women, straddling the rural-urban divide. Contemporary ruralmovements worldwide are becoming anorganising centre for the marginalisedmasses of rural poor.

The lack of recognition of the semi-proletarianised specificity of peripheralcapitalism, has tended either to urbanisesocial protest in the familiar way and effacethe agrarian question (Bond 2002c), or toruralise protest, by lumping semi-proletarians into a farmer category that

applies universally, to France and the USA,to Zimbabwe, the Philippines, and Brazil.Economic and political realities suggeststhat organizational priority is being given bythe movements to the unification ofpeasant-workers across the rural-urbandivide, in order to demand agrarianreforms, which not only seek to redistribute

land, but which also seek but articulateddevelopment.

The leadership of rural movements tends tobe grounded within the organisations,mainly from among the movementsmembers, which have proclaimed autonomyfrom political parties and their associatedintellectuals. The rural movements havecultivated durable local and wider nationalstructures on their own, setting in motionan independent process of conscientisation.

By contrast, in Zimbabwe, wheremobilisation occurred largely within theruling party, leadership has been providedby the National Liberation War VeteransAssociation, its local branches, and itscadres within the state; while many war vets

themselves have been among the rural poor.The failure to generalize this process beyondland access, to create durable, democraticstructures, with systematic politicaleducation, has been a weakness in this case.

However, even among politicallyautonomous movements, middle classintellectuals can also occupy the toppositions, as the case of the MSTdemonstrate. Moreover, these features arelikely to be unstable and generally underthreat, as movements evolve, interact with

states and international actors and producea hierarchy of intellectuals. Maintaining acommitment to the spirit of independentleadership is an ongoing challenge.

The tactics of many rural land movementsare increasingly imbued various forms ofdirect action on the land, with landoccupations being one significantdevelopment. It is partly associated with therift of alliances with the state and politicalparties. But as the case of Zimbabwe againshows, both of the unstructured, low-

profile, may be sporadically organized intacit and/or direct consent with the state orsome ruling party officials. The organisedrural movements are discussed haveconsciously placed land occupation at thecentre of their arsenal of political tactics,and more specifically, through occupationsthey have confronted market-based land


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reforms head on, either compelling them towork more effectively or displacing thementirely. The organised use of landoccupations in Brazil, the Philippines,Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Zimbabwe,among other countries has had a significant

effect on land reforms in general.

There are also some important exceptions tothe narrow use of land occupations, amongthe rural movements that opted for armedstruggle, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico(Bartra and Otero, 2005) and the FARC inColombia (Ampuero and Brittain, 2005).

The strategy of rural movements tomaintain independence from politicalparties and the state, or the issue ofautonomy in its more holistic sense, has

not been conceptualised adequately, nor isthe record clear. For breaking with the statehas meant that rural movements have hadto enter the realm of NGOs, trade unions,and churches where no less intense andsystematic forces of cooptation operate.

By contrast, the movement that haseschewed civil society and pursued directaction through the ruling party and the stateis that of Zimbabwe. Even there, divergentviews obtain over whether the state led theoccupation for its electoral survival or

whether it co-opted the movement forsimilar reasons. Meanwhile the war-veterans-led movement in Zimbabwe hadbroken with civil society and operatedwithin the vacillating bourgeois/petty-bourgeois parameters of Zimbabwesnationalist movement. Althoughnationalism has always containedmobilisational and emancipatory potentialand nurtured the possibility of a nationaldemocratic revolution, it has not, in itself,sufficed for the longer-term interests of the

working class.The literature also reveals other positivesigns on the ideological basis and objectivesof rural movements (see Moyo and Yeros,2005a), although our cases here did notdelve into these. In Latin America are thenew ecological sensitivity and recognition ofpatriarchy as a fundamental problem

(Petras 1997, Deere and Len 2001). Gendersensitivity is perhaps most evident in Brazil(Deere 2003) and Mexico (Stephen 1996),where rural movements in the late 1990shave adopted a conscious politics of genderequity. This has had wider effects in terms

of mobilisation and internaldemocratisation, as well as in terms oflobbying effectively against the state for theinclusion of gender-specific legislation inthe agrarian reform process. In Zimbabwe,by contrast, the land occupation movementhas fallen far short of a gender sensitivepolitics, despite the fact that women haveparticipated in the occupations in largenumbers. In this case, the strong patriarchalcurrents of the nationalist movement inalliance with traditional leaders remain

dominant.

ConclusionsThe fundamental issue of concern for policymakers in this forum therefore is: whetherthe strategies of emerging African socialmovements which demand land reformhave the potential to substantially influenceredistributive land reform or not? Thisraises the further question of whether land

reform policies and strategies, to beeffective, should not seek to balance thepolitical, social and economic rationale andobjectives of land reforms, in relation to thenature of organised demands withinsouthern Africa. Furthermore, the classicalbasis of land as an element of the agrarianquestion, still relevant or should our focusremain narrowly placed on particularnotions of poverty eradication.

A more structural, political-economicframework of analysis, rather than an

eclectic analysis, of the evolution of socialmovements around the land question insouthern Africa, is required to inform policyhow to manage state-society interactions onland reform. A clear understanding of thesocial and class origins, strategies andimpacts of scattered rural movements inAfrica (Rahmato, 1991; Veltmeyer, 1997;Moyo, 2005) is essential to the shaping of


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policy and its implementation in aparticipatory way. Various studies onwhether African struggles for land reflect asystematic mobilisation of incipient socialmovements (see Moyo and Yeros, 2005a),or whether they merely exhibit defensive

and reactive tactics of the politics ofeveryday life (see Scott, 1985) arefortunately emerging in the literature. Newperspectives on beneficiary led land reformprocesses in relation to state responses needto be developed from the wider empiricalexperience.


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History and Role of Social Movements

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