One of the recurrent myths about Zimbabwe’s land reform is that investment has been insignificant in the new resettlements: the land lies idle, people are not committed to farming and infrastructure is destroyed, neglected or nonexistent. Perceptions of a lack of order and poor tenure security have further contributed to this view. Our studies in Masvingo province have shown this is far from the case. Certainly, unstable macroeconomic factors until 2009 undermined opportunities for capital investment, but impressive strides have been made in clearing the land, in purchasing livestock, equipment and transport and in building new settlements. In developing their farms, most new farmers have had to start from scratch. For the most part the Masvingo study sites were ranches: large expanses of bush grazing, with limited infrastructure. There were scattered homesteads, a few workers’ cottages, the odd dip tank, small dam and irrigation plot, but not much else. When groups of land invaders took the land they established ‘base camps’, under the leadership of war veteran commanders. Surveys of soil types and water sources were undertaken by the land invaders. The new settlers then pegged fields and marked out areas for settlement. Soon, once the official Fast Track Land Reform Programme was launched, officials from the government arrived and imposed an official plan, based on land use planning regulations, as well as much pressure to accommodate more people. Some had to move their shelters and clear fields anew. But within a remarkably short time, people began to invest in earnest. There was an urgency: fields had to be prepared for planting, structures had to be built for cattle to be kraaled in, granaries had to be erected for the harvests to be stored, and homes had to be put up for growing numbers of people to live in. A peopled landscape of houses, fields, paths and roads soon emerged. Human population densities increased significantly and livestock populations grew. Stocking densities on beef ranches were 9 recommended to be around one animal per ten hectares; now much larger livestock populations exist, combining cattle with goats, sheep, donkeys, pigs and poultry. Investment in stock has been significant, with cattle populations in particular growing rapidly, especially in the A1 sites.