Food Imports, Hunger and State Making in Zimbabwe, 2000–2009

Abstract

This article uses hunger as a lens to explore how the process of state making in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2009 negatively affected the country’s food security. Using Eriksen’s concept of state making, the study demonstrates how the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) ruling regime concentrated more on accumulation and power retention at a time when government was expected to address the serious food shortages that the country was facing. The development of a different kind of state that had repressive and accumulation tendencies was signified in 2000 by the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) which was intended to appease the regime’s various constituencies. Taken together with other populist measures, particularly price freezes, the policies destroyed the country’s capacity to produce and manufacture food and pushed citizens to rely almost entirely on food imports (mainly from South Africa). The paper thus contributes to the literature on the Zimbabwean crisis by offering a different dimension, not only on the process of state making and how it caused hunger, but also on the specifics of how ordinary citizens were literally starving except those who could afford to buy imported food (particularly maize meal) from South Africa.