Online Reporter
FOR decades, the narrative surrounding Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme has been dominated by a single, grim story: collapse, isolation, and famine. In Western media and policy circles, it is often presented as the definitive case study in agricultural failure. But history, like land, is not a monolith. It has many plots, and some of them are now bearing fruit in unexpected places.
The story of Ms Matilda Manhambo, a retired civil servant and successful farmer from Gweru, is one such plot, and it demands that we rewrite the simplistic script we’ve been handed. Ms Manhambo, a beneficiary of the very land reform that was meant to spell doom, has not only thrived in Zimbabwe but has now expanded her agricultural enterprise to Botswana.
Trading as “Kupfuma Ishungu Farm,” her company, Manhambo Investments, has been granted land by the Botswana government and is already supplying the local market with a bounty of horticultural produce.
This is more than just a business success story; it is a profound moment for African agency and a quiet vindication of a contested decolonial project.
Decolonisation was never simply about replacing a white flag with a black one. It is, at its core, about the reclamation of sovereignty — not just political, but economic, cultural, and psychological. The redistribution of land in Zimbabwe was a bold and sometimes messy process, but its fundamental objective was decolonial: to correct a historic injustice where a minority controlled the most vital economic asset. For years, critics argued that this came at the cost of agricultural competence.
Ms Manhambo’s story challenges that assumption head-on. Botswana is not a naïve actor. It is one of Africa’s most stable and prudently managed economies. For its government to grant 30, and potentially 100, hectares of land to a Zimbabwean farmer is a powerful vote of confidence. It signifies that the skills, expertise, and business acumen cultivated by beneficiaries of Zimbabwe’s reform are not only valid but are a sought-after commodity. This is not aid; it is investment. It is a partnership.
This expansion represents a new form of South-South co-operation, born from shared African experience. It is the positive outcome of “cordial bilateral relations” and the economic diplomacy championed by President Mnangagwa. When former Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi engaged with Ms Manhambo at an expo, it wasn’t charity; it was a recognition of value. The fact that 30 percent of her produce is already being procured by the Botswana government demonstrates that this is a strategic, commercially sound venture.
The implications are significant. Firstly, it reframes the Land Reform narrative from one of isolation to one of regional integration. The skills acquired in Zimbabwe are now creating jobs, supplying food, and transferring knowledge in Botswana, with plans for a farming training school. The value generated by reclaimed land is now circulating within the region, strengthening collective food security and economic resilience.
Secondly, it embodies a practical decoloniality. The flow of expertise is no longer unidirectional, from the Global North to the “needy” Global South. Here, an African nation is the source of valuable agricultural knowledge, exporting not just crops, but a model of empowerment. Ms Manhambo, who rose from a clerk to a senior executive and now a transnational entrepreneur, exemplifies this shift. She is a product of a system that, for all its faults, sought to create a new class of black agrarian capitalists.
The journey from Gweru to Gaborone is a short distance on a map, but it is a giant leap in Africa’s economic imagination. It proves that the reclamation of land, when coupled with determination and smart policy, can be the foundation for reclaiming our economic destiny. Ms Matilda Manhambo is not just exporting cabbages and tomatoes; she is exporting a powerful idea: that Africa’s path to prosperity will be paved by its own people, on its own terms, for the benefit of its own future.
