Land Reform, Economic Fragmentation, and the Dynamics of Peacebuilding in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) fundamentally reconfigured the country’s political economy, yet its implications for sustainable peace remain insufficiently theorised. This article interrogates how the economic fragmentation resulting from the FTLRP has shaped peacebuilding trajectories in Zimbabwe. The study draws on an integrative secondary data synthesis of existing datasets. Sources include Afrobarometer surveys, World Bank governance indicators, Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project conflict event data, as well as national economic and environmental statistics. The analysis adopts a critical peacebuilding framework grounded in Johan Galtung’s distinction between positive and negative peace and Mushtaq Khan’s political settlements theory. The evidence suggests that the post-FTLRP economy is organised into three interrelated spheres: a politically dependent agrarian sector, a politically contested extractive sector, and a dominant informal economy comprising over 76% of enterprises. This configuration is associated with a form of negative peace. It is characterised by the absence of overt conflict but appears to be maintained through a coercive stability arrangement that selectively distributes land and economic rents to politically aligned elites and segments of the rural middle class while marginalising broader populations. The study concludes that achieving positive and sustainable peace requires a renegotiated political settlement centred on land tenure security, economic formalisation, and restorative justice.