Browsing by Author "Mashingauta, Aisha Hatina"

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    Power and hunger : the state, farmers, and the Grain Marketing Board in Zimbabwe, c. 1980-2017
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Mashingauta, Aisha Hatina; Swart, Sandra Scott; Hove, Godfrey; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The thesis uses the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) as lens to explore the anthropogenic nature of hunger in Zimbabwe, from independence in 1980 until 2017, when Robert Mugabe’s regime ended. It explores how key political events and changing economic policies impacted on the GMB. It argues that the GMB, as a parastatal, was used by the government to achieve certain political, personal, and economic goals. Using archival data, newspapers, oral interviews, among other sources, this thesis examines the complex and shifting interface between the ZANU-PF ruling party, the GMB, and farmers and the manner in which these relations induced or worsened food security in the country. It also examines how the changing relationship between the GMB, and farmers impacted on food availability and affordability. In the main, the thesis contends that the GMB was captured by the ruling party and individual politicians for political expediency. It demonstrates that this capture severely altered the trajectory of the GMB and, ultimately, food security in the country. The thesis also examines how the politicization of food, especially grain has resulted in targeted and punitive famines. Given the important role millers play in the agricultural value chain, the thesis also examines how their relations with the GMB and the government also shaped food (in)security. Besides filling a historiographical gap in the existing studies of food and hunger in Zimbabwe, the thesis engages broader historiographical conversations about agricultural marketing boards and the role they play in the food security histories in southern Africa. Finally, it argues that the use of political power to capture the GMB by the state diverted the GMB from its original mandate, thereby inducing or worsening food shortages over time.