Sam Moyo

Sam Moyo (1954–2015) was a Zimbabwean scholar and land reform activist, the co-founder and executive director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS) (renamed the Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies following his death in 2015 ), and President of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESIRA). He was a research professor at the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies, and taught at the University of Zimbabwe. He published extensively on agrarian, rural and environmental issues, and founded the journal Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. His work, while interdisciplinary, is characterised by a strong critique of imperialism and neoliberalism, and he is well-regarded for his work in building knowledge networks among indigenous scholars in the Global South. Based on a detailed set of case studies, the book is described as "comprehensive",

In 2000, Moyo was made head of the Land Reform Technical Advisory Team to the Government of Zimbabwe, which observed the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). and that the reforms undermined the class structure of settler-colonial relations

Moyo also founded the South-South research network Agrarian South, which includes the AIAS, Third World Forum, CODESRIA, CLASCO and IDEAS, and publisher of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy.

Moyo was also outspoken on the centrality of issues of race and gender when it came to questions of land and labour, arguing that "white-settler capitalism organised the labour process such that white capital exercised both 'direct' and 'indirect' power over the indigenous black population", and that "unwaged female labour, would subsidise the social reproduction of male labour-power on mines and farms".

Moyo's work was described by the former director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Mahmood Mamdani, as "indispensable" in understanding the history of land reform in Zimbabwe.

Death

On 20 November 2015, Moyo, along with two other academics, was involved in a car accident in Delhi, while attending a conference on "Labour Questions in the Global South". He died in hospital two days later as a result of his injuries. Moyo's family declined to have him memorialised as a national hero by the ZANU-PF party.