Land was allocated unevenly to men and women. In most cases it is men whose names appear on the ‘offer letters’, the permits issued to new settlers by the government. Yet women were important players in the land invasions, providing support to the base camps during the ‘jambanja’ period, and subsequently investing in the development of new homes and farms. invasions as an opportunity to make a new independent life and escape abusive relationships or accusations of witchcraft, for example. So who amongst these groups are ‘the cronies’? Some senior officials, often linked to the security services, were able to gain access to land, often by influencing allocations following the land invasions. We estimated that this group represented However, across our sample only around five per cent of those 12% of households had a woman with land in our areas. The land named as the land holder on the invasions involved diverse permit. The highest proportion of people with multiple affiliations. female-headed households was War veterans, often with an in the informal settlements, as ambivalent attitude to the party women often saw the land hierarchy but mostly not aligned 7 to the opposition, were influential in land allocation during and following the invasions, and managed often to secure better plots on the A1 self-contained schemes. The large group of civil servants, particularly on the A2 plots - and in our sample especially in the sugar estates - were often teachers, agricultural extension workers and local government officials. While not being poor and landless from the communal areas, most could not be regarded as elite. Indeed, in simple financial terms many were extremely poor, as government wages had effectively ceased during the economic crisis.