Social class differential in the impact of repression and Guerrilla war on rural population and development in Zimbabwe

The hypothesis of differential impacts of government repression & guerrilla war according to one's status & role in the war, related to social class (SC), is investigated for the case of Zimbabwe's guerrilla struggle for independence, based on oral history accounts (N not given) & data from a 1984 labor survey among 266 farming households, stratified according to land tenure sector, in Mt. Darwin District. Two types of impacts are examined: loss of property & family members, & displacement (fled to safety, became a refugee, or forced into a goverment-controlled "protected village"). Land tenure, education, & occupation are examined as dimensions of SC. Contingency table analysis, supplemented with chi-square & Gamma statistics, indicate significant nonlinear relationships between all dimensions of SC, losses of property & family members, & population displacement. Households whose members were better educated, from either the least or best developed land tenure sectors, or from the lowest occupational stratum experienced the greatest loss & displacement; in contrast, employees on commercial farms & those engaged in nonagricultural economic activities were least affected. Consideration of the implications for postwar rural development reveals that households that suffered the greatest losses demonstrated greater cooperativeness, assistance, & maintenance of social ties after resettlement. 5 Tables. Modified AA