The sociologist suspects that the ruling party is making an issue of the inequalities in land ownership in order to draw attention away from the economic crisis that the country has fallen into. The government has failed, by means of industrialisation, to bring a halt to the rising unemployment and decreasing economic growth.
Jens Andersson studied the people of the rural Buhera district. Although farming is the main economic activity, it appears that the Buhera people mainly depend upon family members who have gone to the capital city to work. Without the financial support of the salaried family members in the city, the farmers would, for example, be unable to buy seeds and fertiliser.
In turn the city-dwellers are strongly connected with their family in rural areas. Family contacts are indispensable for finding work and accommodation in the city. At Christmas almost everybody returns to the village where they were born, laden with goods purchased in the city. Men mainly marry women from the same district. Often city-dwellers choose to return to the countryside due to family ties and because their ancestors are buried there. Sometimes people exchange a well-paid job in the city for a poorly paid position in the village where they were born.
The unequal distribution of land between black and white Zimbabweans arouses a strong feeling of injustice, which also played a large role in the war of independence. According to Jens Andersson the unequal distribution of the most fertile land was also not the most important point of conflict then. The initiators of the war were not landless farmers but the educated whose carreer opportunities were frustrated by the apartheid regime.
The doctoral thesis was defended on 4 January 2002. Mr Andersson's supervisor was Prof. N.E. Long.
The research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).