This doctoral research aims to understand what land as a resource means to farmers and how the idea of ownership of this asset changes over time. I explore land’s intangibility as an asset for farmers, arguing that, for them, it cannot be replaced with some materialistic value. I base this on the fact that the ‘right’ – the social relations in geographical space – which land as a resource carries is as important as its ‘physicality’.

The unique colonial experience of Zimbabwe continues to have a profound discursive impact upon questions of citizenship, nationhood and belonging: the residual impact of the Rhodesian settler state will remain significant for generations. Zimbabwe inherited institutions, particularly in the security sphere, wherein reform was very likely inevitable. How the reform occurred, though, was not. Questions abound as to just what constituted belonging, loyalty and service for Zimbabweans, and the specific valence of institutional legacies in determining these virtues.