legal support to victims, and those working on voter registration and voter mobilization. These interventions of reform blockage and civic intimidation were combined with the ‘harvest of fear’ drawing on the memories of the brutalities of the 2008 election.36 Thus the long history of authoritarian nationalism and state brutality has continued to play a major, if differentiated, role in the country’s politics. However it is also clear that Mugabe and his party have retained a substantial social base in the country, as was evidenced even during the generally accepted first round of the Harmonised Elections in March 2008. Moreover the maintenance of this social base has not been based solely on violence and coercion but on a combination of the ideological legacies of the liberation struggle, the persistent memories of colonial dispossession, and the land reform process. As Fontein has written while the authoritarian turn in Zimbabwean politics has excluded such groups as the urban poor, farm workers, women and white commercial farmers, ‘it did simultaneously manage to appeal to some…localised aspirations which have been thwarted since 1980.’37 As Fontein also observes ‘the redistribution of land to the landless, however corrupt, politicised and indeed violent the process may have been, along with the increasing involvement of both war veterans and traditional leaders in local political structures…..were very astute political moves.’38 This social base has been renewed and expanded within the context of the radical changes in Zimbabwe’s political economy since 2000. The deconstruction of former white owned, large scale farms and their replacement by a preponderance of small farm holders has radically changed the social and political relations on the land. Following the land redistribution process, 70% of the land is now held by small farm producers, 13% by middle scale farmers, and 11% by large farms and estates. This ‘re‐peasantisation’ has resulted in changes in wealth distribution from a landed racial minority to ‘mostly landless and land‐poor’ classes.39 Moreover these changes on the land have created a new ‘entrepreneurial dynamism’ and ‘productive potential’ resulting in new areas of economic activity with novel marketing and value chains, even if it still unclear whether these restructured relations on the land will be dominated by patronage relations with the ZANU PF state or become the source of sustainable livelihoods.40                                                              36 P.Zamchiya, Pre‐Election Detectors: Zanu PF’s attempt to reclaim political hegemony. Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Harare, 2013, p.20. 37 J.Fontein, “ ‘We Want to Belong to Our Roots and We Want to be Modern People’: New Farmers, Old Claims Around Lake Mutirikwa, Southern Zimbabwe,” African Studies Quarterly, 10,4, 2009, p 15; and J.Fontein, ‘Shared Legacies of the War: Spirit Mediums and War Veterans in Southern Zimbabwe,’ Journal of Religion in Africa, 36,2, 2006, pp. 167‐199. 38 Fontein op cit p. 15‐16. 39 S. Moyo, ‘Three decades of agrarian reform in Zimbabwe,’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 38, 3, 2011 p.499. 40 I.Scoones, N.Marongwe, B.Mavedzenge, F.Murimbarimba, J. Mahenehene, and C.Sukume, ‘Zimbabwe’s land reform: Challenging the myths,’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 38,3, 2011, p986.   16