| dc.description.abstract | Extensive global and African scholarship exists on how decentralisation has been
implemented to achieve rural growth. Pre-eminent scholars like Liihring, Mutizwa-
Mangiza, Fortmann and Hankla contend that decentralisation is good for governance
and that its merits for development are indisputable. This article interrogates the
dynamics o f development within the decentralisation policy context in colonial
Zimbabwe between 1956 and 1980, using TILCOR-Sanyati as a case study. It is
motivated by the challenges of promoting irrigation development in a decentralisation
context. Although the observed upsides o f decentralisation are well-founded, the
article challenges the 'advantaging' notion o f the policy in Gowe-Sanyati irrigation.
Data gathering combined documentary, case study and archival research. The
study's major findings firstly are that TILCOR, operating on the 'modernising’
pedestal provided by the colonial government, did not employ the decentralisation
strategy to achieve economic growth for rural Africans. TILCOR failed to achieve
decentralised development because it was pro-white and anti-African as illustrated
by its support for the former and not the latter. Devolution o f power to irrigation
plot-holders remained a pipedream, as instructions were issued from above. The
limits of decentralisation led to peasant disillusionment with the policy as there was
a gap between people's expectations and what the state was willing to offer. Secondly,
the politically-driven growth dynamics o f Gowe-Sanyati during the decentralisation
debate (1956-1980) were responsible for bringing 'modernisation' without real
development, as colonial-type decentralisation had a 'big centralisation focus'.
Thirdly, leveraging community-development planning on the assumption that
remarkable agricultural results were to be based on the training o f a 'unicjue'
individual to transplant new techniques onto the whole society was difficult.
128
M. Nyandoro 129
Development had to be society (people), not individually-driven. Fourthly, while in
the period up to 1975 decentralisation was the favoured policy-priority among
Rhodesian policy-makers, the state frequently determined the extent and level of
application o f the strategy. As part o f the colonial government's import substitution
programme, African agricultural production (for instance, wheat) was merely 'to
fill the gap' but not to surpass European production. Hence, the years after 1975
marked a quiescent phase in the decentralisation debate in Sanyati. The article
concludes that whilst the post-1980s experienced huge improvement in agricultural
production, some o f the colonial practices and frameworks like the lease agreement
o f 1967 remained in force, providing a major source o f social resistance. While
initiatives were taken to expand the size o f land under T1LCOR, this did not
directly benefit individual irrigation farmers whose holdings remained the same in
size, a problem its successor (ARDA) had to grapple with. | en_ZW |
