**2. Twenty-first century land reform in Zimbabwe**

Documentation of the twenty-first century land reform, dubbed the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe, is quite visible, and there is a considerable corpus of studies on the land issue in the country. Some scholars have called land issues in the country, *Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business* [7]. However, most studies on FTLRP generally agree that the program was a result of the country's thirst to settle the land question in the country. Others have provided varying perspectives on the land issues with the likes of Vambe (ed.) [8] deciding to deal with political dynamics involved in the program, which subsequently affected economic and social lives of the Zimbabwean people, given the heavy political undertones characterizing it.

 In her report, Tibaijuka [9] reveals the many sidedness as well as many faces created by the land reform in the country. For instance, there are narratives detailing the dynamics of Operation *Murambatsvina* (Operation Restore Order), dubbed "Operation Tsunami" because of its speed and ferocity. Fontein [10] recounts realities during the operation when ordinary people in the cities destroyed their own residential structures considered "Illegal." Studying the aftermath of the FTLRP, Potts [11] observes the economic and humanitarian crisis and dislocations that followed the land reform program. More broadly, however, Sadomba [12] reflects the historical underpinnings of land reform from 1980 and the agitation as well as demand for land by war veterans. Moyo and Chambati [13] conclude that the FTLRP represents the only instance of "radical redistributive land reforms since the end of the Cold War," reversing,

*… the racially-skewed agrarian structure and discriminatory land tenures inherited from colonial rule, whereby over 6000 large-scale white farmers and a few foreign and nationally-owned agroindustrial estates controlled most of the prime land, water resources, and bio-reserves, while relegating the majority of the population to marginal lands and cheap-labor services. ([13], p. 1)* 

The twenty-first century land reform program in Zimbabwe also attracted the attention of the international community and imagination. For the locals, it rekindled memories of the past mostly tied to colonialism and its land policies. Mutondi [14] notes that for the Zimbabwean people, it was also about economic empowerment read as "the final embodiment of empowerment following Zimbabwe's independence in 1980" (p. 1). Political interpretations of the land reform program were two sided. Drivers of the program claimed the program was overdue. The then President, Robert Mugabe, declared in 2005 that

*without doubt, our heroes are happy that a crucial part of this new phase of our struggle has been completed. The land has been freed and today all our heroes lie on the soil that is declaration. Their spirits are unbound, free to roam the land they left shackled, thanks again to the Third Chimurenga. ([14], p. 2)* 

 Defenders, mostly beneficiaries of the land reform (mostly politicians), projected the program as successful. The defense was centered on the recentralized "decision-making relating to land matters, ostensibly because [the government] perceived itself as fighting against external forces bent on reversing the gains of the program" ([14], p. 4). Thus, political statements and action were pitched very high in order to hide certain local tendencies (some of the action relating to the land takeovers was permeated by violence), which made it difficult to discern what was happening on the ground ([14], p. 4).

Chief among the defenders of the program was the government, its institutions, agents, and officials. But those opposed to the government's model placed at the center "human rights violations" along racial, sometimes tribal lines. The white Zimbabweans were characterized as victims, and black supporters of this were also seen as victims too. The Mugabe government characterized black people who opposed its stance and model of the program as lacking totems, connections to the Zimbabwean culture and identity; stooges meant and being used to reverse the gains of the armed liberation struggle that brought independence in 1980.

 Perhaps, the politically charged periods of 2000–2008 rendered the program more political than economic or sociocultural. As such, studies done during the same period tended to take the same lines with conclusions being submitted as the program being unsustainable rather than a socially and economically sustainable developmental drive for the people of Zimbabwe. Almost two decades after the FTLRP, research and discourses now center on measuring the success of the land reform based on arguments around poverty reduction and economic efficiency with political considerations gradually wearing away.

Regardless of the cost in humanitarian sense, economic, political, and social complexities as well as dynamics, the program created economic opportunities for the locals around land ownership. Not only did the land reform address agrarian related land ownership and utilization, but residential as well as commercial land was also made available for expansion of existing settlements as well as for creation of new settlements and economies. It is this reading of the program, which opened up economic opportunities in terms of the availability of commercial land, which this chapter heavily sides with. The new spaces have allowed repackaging of "tradition," specifically repackaging of the traditional African village architecture and subsequent naming of the created spaces since most owners became locals.

### **3. Semiotics, architecture, and names**

 Buildings and their subsequent names are semiotic resources. Semiotics is used to view buildings as objects as well as respective place names as resources in the construction as well as naming patterns and systems of the landscape itself. Not only does this empower us to interpret meanings carried by lodges and restaurants, but also this alludes to the language of the landscape as it has come to communicate a variety of messages.

When linguistic sign systems are used either as names, strings of sentences, or lexical items, the sign systems create a signifying system. Ikegami ([15], p. 1) calls such a system a "meaning-generating" system "observable in the cultural spheres they are dealing with" ([15], p. 1). The science (sometimes approach) dealing with signs, their systems, and general function in meaning making as well as interpretation is known as *semiotics*.

 Broadly speaking, semiotics is a phenomenon in which something is used to stand in for something else. De Saussure [16] and Pierce [17] used "semiology" and "semiosis," respectively, which, in modern semiotics, are basically understood as semiotic processes. With reference to "semiosis," [15, 18] human beings operate and survive by evaluating as well as assigning significances and values to things, phenomena "around him *in relation to himself*"3 ([15], p. 2). This means, human existence is determined by use of sign systems where the world becomes a network of signs represented, or (mis)represented, as a network of sign systems.

<sup>3</sup> Emphasis original.

#### *Repackaging "Traditional" Architecture of the African Village in Zimbabwe DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81450*

Semiotic knowledge teaches us that anything can function as a sign since signs do not have predetermined properties. This also means that buildings and their names do not have predetermined properties as such function as semiotic signs. However, the observable properties of signs are in fact defined in terms of their relation to what they represent. Johansen and Larsen ([19], p. 26) say signs are an "inconspicuous part of our everyday existence" revealing a triadic relation among sign, object, and interpretant. *Icons*, *indexes,* and *symbols* are given as signs in a bid to explain the conditions of representation (or otherwise) and meanings generated when signs function [17]. More broadly, therefore, we can borrow Braga and Mundy [20] who, in attempting a position on whether semiotics is a science or a method, say:

*…semiotics can…be thought of as an applied science, in that it serves as an instrument for the study of empirical objects, or rather for the description and analysis of concrete products of language, whether they be a poem, a theorem, a piece of music, a utilitarian object, a rite, a political speech, a play, an art object, a movie, a TV program, etc. In short: each and every linguistic manifestation. (p. 115)* 

From the above, we note that aspects from which meaning making especially through language and its use is fertile ground on which semiotics can be and has been used. Riffaterre (in Champagne ([21], p. 229)) used semiotics to analyze French poetry for the simple reason that "poems are … assumed to be closed units of meaning …" Hale [22] speaks of Umberto Eco as having used semiotics in the writing of his novels notably *The Name of the Rose* [23], *The Island of the day before* [24], and *The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana* [25]. Cunningham [26] submitted the relevance of semiotics in educational psychology and, hence, speaks of educational semiotics [27]. Dunbar-Hall [28] used semiotics as an analytical method to study popular music. The list, therefore, is endless and cannot be exhausted here, hence, by extension, we can revoke semiotics in analyzing onomastic data.
