In studying class formation in rural Africa, many subtleties of this process are initially elusive, even when the process itself appears to be quite straightforward. The elusiveness of reality frequently results, at least in part, from the assumptions made by the researcher. So, for example, in studying one area of freehold tenure in Zimbabwe, in which ‘squatting’ is officially disapproved and where the land is legally inherited by a single heir, the informal allocation to others of rights to arable land for cultivation has obvious importance in the process of class formation. Less obvious, however (at least to me at the time), was the significance of grazing usufruct.