The University
of KwaZulu-Natal offers profound condolences to
the family, loved ones and colleagues of Sam Moyo,
a UKZN Centre for Civil Society (CCS) Honorary Professor
who died in New Delhi, India early on Sunday. Moyo,
61, was at the peak of his career, having recently
presided over the Council for the Development of
Social Science Research in Africa (2008-11). He
had built up the Harare-based African Institute
for Agrarian Studies as a leading site for research
and teaching.
Moyo was co-supervisor of two UKZN doctoral students
studying Zimbabwe's land reform, and was a regular
participant in intellectual events in Durban. With
CCS co-hosting, he was awarded for his contributions
at the World Association for Political Economy in
June, and was named a vice-chairperson of that association.
Amongst his major innovations was deploying the
most sophisticated Marxist analysis to what he termed
rural Africa's 'trimodal' agrarian structure.
Moyo passed away following a car accident on 20
November, when he was driven back to his hotel after
a conference at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He
was in his element at that conference, entitled
Labour in the South, with his closest collaborators
nearby, and had just delivered papers on "Labour
Questions in the African Periphery" and "Capitalism
and Labour Reserves."
Moyo earned his PhD in Rural Development and Environmental
Management from the University of Northumbria, having
received earlier degrees in geography from the Universities
of Western Ontario and Sierra Leone. During the
early 1980s he taught in Nigeria at the Universities
of Port Harcourt and Calabar. He returned to Zimbabwe
in 1983 and established a career focus on land and
natural resources management, civil society organisations,
capacity building and institutional development.
His publications included 10 authored or co-authored
books, 11 co-edited books and nearly 100 other chapters
or academic articles, and he founded the academic
journal Agrarian South. His most recent book, co-edited
with Walter Chambati, was Land and Agrarian Reform
in Zimbabwe (Codesria, 2013), and with Paris Yeros
he co-authored a book chapter about African geopolitics
for a collection co-edited by CCS Director Patrick
Bond, BRICS (Jacana Press 2015), entitled 'Scramble,
resistance and a new non-alignment strategy.'
During the 1980s-90s he held leadership positions
at the Southern Africa Regional Institute for Policy
Studies and the University of Zimbabwe's Institute
of Development Studies and Department of Agriculture
and Rural Development. He was also a land consultant
to the Government of Zimbabwe, and celebrated the
post-2000 land reform while offering mixed reviews
of implementation given its circumstances. He also
consulted to the governments of Sierra Leone and
South Africa. And he founded the Harare NGO ZERO:
A Regional Environment Organisation, which he also
chaired.
As University of Dar es Salaam Professor Emeritus
IssaShivjiput
it, "We have lost one of our great comrades:
utterly committed, a most unassuming scholar and
an absolutely decent human being." Indeed Moyo
captured the spirit of his times in Zimbabwe and
ours in Durban: intellectual hunger, an insistence
on theorising not just describing social relations,
progressive aspirations for transformed power relations
in a profoundly unequal rural landscape, a critical
spirit that meant he was often on the wrong side
of political elites, and an infinite generosity.
His professional networks were also the sites for
conviviality and nurturing of the next generation
of progressive scholars. He worked with civil society
and helped build social organisation wherever he
could.
Admired by rural scholars across the world, Moyo
was academically inspirational, as Zimbabwe's most
cited organic-turned-professional intellectual,
and as a genuine Pan-African scholar. His memory
will demand from his admirers a renewed commitment
to combining intellectual rigour and the passion
for social justice that he personified, all with
the sense of humour and love of life that kept him
surviving and thriving in Zimbabwe's stressed conditions.
November 23, 2015.
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