Land resistance in Zambia: a case study of the Luana Farmers' Cooperative

Abstract

This article focuses on local struggles and new social practices in Zambia, a country rarely discussed when investigating sites of resistance in the region. It reviews the economic history of Zambia, highlighting the centrality of mining to the country’s political economy and the effects of the privatisation of Zambia’s copper mines, one central part of the broader liberalisation programme undertaken in the 1990s, on former miners and mining communities. Spontaneous opposition to resettlement of local communities, as required by new private mine and landowners, led resistance to take on a more organised form, notably in the formation of the Luana Farmers’ Cooperative. The cooperative met with some success under very challenging economic and political conditions, which may fall far short of a fundamental repudiation of neoliberal restructuring, but nonetheless strengthened the survival capacities and political clout of some of those most harshly affected by it.