The fast-track land reform programme in Zimbabwe radically transformed the country’s agrarian structure from one dominated by white-owned, large-scale farms to one dominated by a large group of black family farmers. Since 2017, a set of explanations has emerged that attempts to explain processes of social differentiation in the countryside. These explanations are predominantly informed by a materialist approach and conceptualise this process as accumulation from below, whereby the resettled farmers become internally differentiated through their own agricultural production resulting in different ‘class formations’. This materialist approach focuses on relations of production on the farm but does not pay close attention to the role of wider state practices and political processes involved in shaping accumulation dynamics in highly politicised agrarian landscapes. This paper argues that processes of social differentiation in Zimbabwe cannot be adequately studied in isolation from the political developments of the post-2000 period, when the state increasingly became reconfigured as a site of violence and patronage legitimated by patriotic history narratives. Based on new evidence on the 2007–08 state-led farm mechanisation scheme that was intended to distribute farm equipment to resettled farmers, I argue that the processes of differentiation largely took the form of preferential access to farming equipment both at the national and local levels. I term this ‘accumulation from above’ by patronage clients of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF]). These clients include grassroots and senior party members or those linked to it, cabinet ministers, judges, members of the security sector, civil servants, national election administrators and traditional leaders who in turn sustain ZANU(PF)’s political hegemony in an unstable political agrarian landscape.

津巴布韦的快速土地改革计划从根本上改变了该国的农业结构，从以白人拥有的大型农场为主，转变为以一大群黑人家庭农民为主。2017年以来，出现了一系列试图解释农村社会分化过程的解释。这些解释主要基于唯物主义方法，并将这一过程概念化为自下而上的积累，据此，重新安置的农民通过自己的农业生产在内部分化，从而导致不同的“阶级形成”。这种唯物主义的方法侧重于农场的生产关系，但没有密切关注更广泛的国家实践和政治进程在塑造高度政治化的农业景观中积累动力方面的作用。本文认为，津巴布韦的社会分化过程不能脱离 2000 年后时期的政治发展而得到充分研究，当时国家越来越多地被重新配置为暴力和赞助场所，被爱国历史叙事合法化。基于 2007-08 年国家主导的旨在向重新安置的农民分配农业设备的农业机械化计划的新证据，我认为分化过程主要采取国家和地方层面优先获得农业设备的形式. 我将执政的津巴布韦非洲民族联盟（爱国阵线）(ZANU[PF]) 的赞助客户称之为“来自上层的积累”。这些客户包括基层和高级党员或与其有联系的人、内阁部长、法官、安全部门成员、公务员、全国选举管理人员和传统领导人，他们反过来在不稳定的政治环境中维持 ZANU (PF) 的政治霸权农业景观。