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The Variable Geometry of Conflicts within a Marginalised Peasantry

Scalar Contributions to the Identity Construction of Territory in the Hwange District of Zimbabwe
La géométrie variable des conflits au sein d’une paysannerie marginalisée. Contributions scalaires à la fabrique identitaire du territoire dans le district de Hwange, au Zimbabwe
La geometría variable de los conflictos en el seno de un campesinado marginado. Contribuciones escalares a la construcción de la identidad del territorio en el distrito de Hwange, en Zimbabue
Zénaïde Dervieux
p. 259-284

Résumés

Cet article entend éclairer l’analyse des conflits au sein d’une paysannerie ayant traversé une histoire violente (domination coloniale, guerre de libération, massacres de Gukurahundi, accaparements fonciers). Il s’agit d’appréhender la paysannerie dans son hétérogénéité identitaire et l’ambivalence de ses rapports à l’État (résistances, quêtes de reconnaissance). L’examen révèle, à partir de matériaux doctoraux, combien la catégorie de « minorité marginalisée » embrasse des formes mouvantes et changeantes (re)définies suivant les échelles et les temporalités. Pour mieux appréhender les causes profondes qui amènent certains individus ou groupes d’acteurs à résister et à revendiquer des particularismes identitaires, il est défendu une lecture en termes de déni de reconnaissance et d’expérience de l’injustice.

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Introduction

1The issue of arable land ownership in Zimbabwe remains highly controversial. The “land reform” of the 2000s perpetuated major injustices in the distribution of land following a “policy of virtual exclusion of a large segment of the underprivileged rural population” (Andrew & Sadomba, 2006: 141). It has also plunged the country into an unprecedented economic crisis, leading to the mass impoverishment of its peasantry (Compagnon, 2008). These tensions are particularly acute in the Hwange district, on the country’s geographical, socio-political and cultural margin, where state and private land grabs have revolved around the exploitation of wildlife (Dervieux, 2019). This district, which covers an area of 31,555 km², is bordered to the north by the Zambezi River and to the east by the Gwayi River, forming a geographical enclave between Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia. The local population (estimated at around 65,000 inhabitants, mostly rural and forming part of a multicultural society) relies on extensive livestock farming, fruit gathering, and subsistence agriculture based on maize, millet, and sorghum. The Hwange district is as representative of the way in which violence is exercised on the fringes of protected areas in Zimbabwe as it is of the ways in which the State perpetuates a situated authoritarianism (Morelle & Planel, 2018) on its territorial margins.

  • 1 The term is understood by the everyday functioning of its public institutions, considering the acti (...)

2This paper seeks to shed light on the dynamics of conflict in a society that has experienced one of the most violent forms of colonisation (Palmer, 1977), a long liberation war (Bhebe & Ranger, 1996), the takeover of white farmers’ land by the state (Compagnon, 2011) and the Gukurahundi massacres (1982-1987). These massacres resulted from the violent military repression conducted by ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) against civilians and members of the Midlands and North and South Matabeleland provinces, who were accused at the time of supporting the opposition party, ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union). The district has also been particularly affected by conservation policies. Protected areas, in all categories (national parks, State-owned forests and safari areas), currently cover more than 70% of the district’s surface, from which the inhabitants were expelled during colonisation. Today, the local population remains relegated to the communal land, the least fertile land in the country. The authoritarian nature of the political climate in Hwange is reflected in the low degree of social visibility of conflicts. Despite this context, conflicts are not only formulated in terms of the relationship between “local society” and “external players” (“them”/“us”), but also fuel internal opposition. The mobilisation of the identity register requires us to examine the “peasantry” in terms of its heterogeneous identities (settlement history, number of languages spoken, social interactions) and the ambivalence of its relationship with the State1 (quests for justice, needs for recognition). It is also a central issue in a district marked by a centuries-old history of social mobility (Ncube, 2004): what significance does the category of “peasantry” hold in its political dimension?

  • 2 This research was supported by the 2020 Young Researcher Award from the Fondation des Treilles and (...)

3This case study is based on thesis data, collected during ethno-geographical fieldwork totalling eleven months between 2017 and 2019 in the Hwange district (Dervieux, 2023). The investigation combined field observations, qualitative surveys (life histories, family stories, lived spaces, narrated pathways, semi-structured interviews), directed reviews (kinship diagrams), and collective mapping. Data collection was carried out with 25 scientists, managers, and “experts” in natural resources and land tenure, as well as with 49 villagers, local officials, and customary authorities from the communal land. Complemented by a detailed analysis of the history of settlement, the research2 reveals the extent to which the category of “marginalised minority” embraces shifting and changing forms, (re)defined according to scale and time. Firstly, we look at the context of conflict in which violence takes on specific forms (dynamics, intensity). Next, the internal terms of local society are reconstructed according to scalar registers of legitimisation (macro-, meso- and microlocal scales). Finally, an analysis in terms of the denial of recognition (Honneth, 2018; Taylor, 2019) and the experience of injustice (Renault, 2017) supports the hypothesis that negative emotions are vectors of conflictual forms of action.

1. Geographical, Socio-Political, and Historical Milestones

4The following contextual elements aim to historicise the issue of colonial and postcolonial land dispossessions in the district, which is inseparable from conservation policies. Since independence, the practices of the authoritarian state have continued to exacerbate social tensions inherited from colonial racial segregation and have intensified the marginalisation of local minorities. The text finally emphasises the importance of employing the concept of peasantry in this context, not as a monolithic entity, but as a collective that takes positions based on its own intentions.

1.1. Contemporary Forms of Peasant Precarisation in an Authoritarian Context

5As in the other former colonies of the British Empire that experienced land dispossession by whites, the making of the national territory in Zimbabwe left a troubling “colonial legacy” (Bayart & Bertrand, 2006). Rhodesian domination was based on a system of apartheid, which generated notorious racial discrimination. From the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 onwards, “Africans” were ordered to move into “indigenous reserves” as part of the land-use planning policies established under Southern Rhodesia. In the Hwange district, these transformations were marked by nature conservation policies that led to exclusion and dispossession, both material and symbolic. The inhabitants of the communal areas were evicted from their land shortly after the start of colonisation for the purposes of mining (construction of a mine and a railway line), agricultural production (colonial farms) and nature conservation (establishment of protected areas, including the Hwange National Park, the largest in the country).

6Since independence in 1980, the ruling party has distinguished itself by its authoritarianism (use of torture, rigging of elections, lethal repression of public demonstrations, laws undermining freedoms). Among others, the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) of 2002 and the Criminal Law Code Amendment Bill of 2023 make it an offence to criticise the president and the government, while giving arbitrary powers to the police to curb opposition movements. In Matabeleland North province, which includes Hwange district, structural violence, understood as a form of oppression that hinders individuals’ ability to act (Galtung, 1969), is particularly tangible. This climate of fear restricts the expression of conflicts within the district’s society, which is threatened by the regime’s lethal violence aimed at suppressing opposition movements and militarising protected areas (Mushonga, 2025).

7Today, inhabitants living near protected areas face restrictive management practices that curtail their access and use. These protected statuses make most of these lands largely inaccessible to local society, with a few exceptions such as Sikumi Forest, where villagers are allowed to graze their cattle within the first three kilometres from the edge and collect dead wood once a week. Following a neoliberal trend, the nature conservation policies implemented in the area remain coercive (Peluso, 1993) and are taking on new forms (cross-border management, the influence of conservation NGOs, hunting tourism aimed at an elite). In a district where the loss of land by black rural populations has been massive and where its symbolic role is considerable, the concentration of land in the hands of the State and a political elite is fuelling contemporary conflicts in silent forms (Dervieux, 2024).

1.2. Identity Assignments and Local Particularities

8In Southern Rhodesia, racial segregation was accompanied by the fixation of identities through ethnic mapping (Worby, 1994) and the establishment of ethnicised administrative units (Muzondidya & Ndhlovu-Gatsheni, 2007). The hierarchisation of social groups by the colonial authorities facilitated the control and domination of black individuals and populations. Following these dynamics, colonial cultural imperialism spread through the attribution of identity characteristics to populations, the imposition of lifestyles (sedentarisation) or beliefs (evangelisation) and the assignment of land reserved for black African populations, now communal areas (land subdivision, imposition of a land tax).

  • 3 Published in the Ndebele language, it is received with popularity by a readership sharing a sense o (...)

9In post-independence society, national identity has become polarised around the relationship between Ndebele and Shona people (Muzondidya & Ndhlovu-Gatsheni, 2007). These categories, initially colonial exonyms, have been reappropriated and politicised by the ruling party, reinforcing its ideological project and consolidating his power. Into school curricula, cultural imperialism was expressed in the reconstruction of the country’s history around the promotion of a heroic Shona past, denying the anti-colonial resistance of the Matabeleland provinces (Alexander et al., 2000; Ranger, 2004). This instrumentalisation of colonial constructs to ideologise the nation reached its peak in the context of the violence perpetrated against the Ndebele. In the Zimbabwean press, the UMthunywa newspaper provides a critical perspective on the government’s socio-political and economic marginalisation of the region3 (Mabweazara & Strelitz, 2011). Although sixteen of the country’s “minority” languages were enshrined in the 2013 Constitution, many alternative identities remain ignored or even denigrated.

  • 4 In the literature, it is also spelled “Nambiya” (Nyathi, 2005), “Abenanzwa” (Hemans, 1913) or “Nyai (...)

10After 1980, the monopolisation of media debate around this binary dialogue resulted in the invisibilisation of other minorities in Zimbabwe, particularly in the Hwange district, populated by sociolinguistic groups of various origins. This region was long inhabited by San hunter-gatherers, who occupied the dry western regions of the country (Beach, 1980), including today’s Hwange Park, until the early 20th century (Davison, 1967). From the northern Zambezi in the 10th and 11th centuries, other Bantu-speaking groups, dominated by the Tonga, are thought to have moved into the region (McGregor, 2009). As a result of later migrations, the region also hosts speakers of Leya and Dombe, dialects related to Tonga. Rozvi, Shona-speaking speakers of Kalanga, now known as Nambya4, are thought to have arrived later, having migrated from the south of the plateau in the early 18th century (Hayes, 1977) and established the Hwange state from around 1730. In the second half of the 19th century, Ndebele invasions (led by Mzilikazi) spread to the west of the plateau and into the present district. Under colonial rule, their numbers increased due to forced relocation organised by the Rhodesian government in 1954 and 1955. These developments offer a clearer picture of the social identifications of certain groups in the district who feel unrecognised and assert their local distinctiveness.

1.3. Thinking the Registers of Action of Marginalised Peasantries

11The issues implicit in the use of the term “peasantry” in contemporary Zimbabwe need to be clarified through an epistemological detour. In the wake of the continent’s independence movements, scientific study of African rural societies was dominated by a modernist paradigm, embedded in the developmentalist theories of the 1960s-1970s. Advancing an evolutionist, Western-centric perspective, it conveyed the idea that so-called “underdeveloped” countries were “lagging behind” in terms of an ideal of progress (Rist, 1996). In the 1980s, a major reflexive shift took place in the face of the failures of state development projects, and the interest of rural sociology turned to the alternative role played by peasant collectives (Jacob & Lavigne Delleville, 1994). At the same time, the paradigm of domination drew on Marxist theories to explore, among other things, the “revolutionary” potential of the peasantry, the transformation of agrarian societies by the capitalist system and the class structures within them (McSween, 2015).

12Moral economy, nourished by this paradigm, emerges from the idea that the feelings involved in working-class and urban struggles derive from popular conceptions of economic inequalities, deemed immoral and unjust (Thompson, 1971). Extending these reflections to colonised or formerly colonised societies, Scott (1977) argues that feelings of anger, such as indignation or rage, lead Southeast Asian peasants to distinguish the “tolerable” from the “intolerable” and to become involved in risky struggles with uncertain outcomes that have their roots in capitalism, the commercialisation of agriculture and the introduction of the centralised state. Later, the anthropologist introduced the concept of invisible resistance, which refers to the discrete and often implicit forms of resistance and contestation by subordinate individuals or groups, including everyday behaviours, concealment strategies, or practices of resisting power structures without open confrontation. He demonstrated that struggles and revolts are not reducible to “exceptional moments of popular explosion” (Scott, 1990: 199), that they are also rooted in hidden, underground practices adapted to authoritarian and repressive contexts. The echo of this perspective has revolutionised the field of resistance studies (Moore, 1998), enabling a re-reading of the political dimensions of struggles by emphasising the hardly perceptible, even invisible, character of the weapons of the weak (Scott, 1985).

  • 5 This work revealed the extent to which villagers had found themselves caught between the Rhodesian (...)

13These reflections have had considerable resonance in Anglo-Saxon literature on the African world (Beinart & Bundy, 1987; Comaroff, 2013; Ranger, 1985). The movement has led to a revision of the historiography of resistance as it had hitherto been thought of both in Africa (Van Walraven & Abbink, 2003) and in present-day Zimbabwe. These contributions have allowed for a much more detailed documentation of processes such as rural adherence to Zimbabwean nationalism (Kriger, 1992), nuance of the place of spirit mediums in this mobilisation (Bhebe & Ranger, 1996), entanglement of peasant land struggles in the eastern highlands (Moore, 2005). Contrary to the idea that the liberation war (1972-1980) had attracted the support of the rural masses in the country, it has been shown that the use of coercion to mobilise peasants by ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army)5, the military wing of ZANU, took the form of negative political opinions towards the party (Kriger, 1992). More recently, national history has been supplemented by documentation of the post-independence violence that targeted Matabeleland after ZANU came to power, focusing on political supporters of the rival party and driven by a desire to eradicate any form of political counterweight (Alexander et al., 2000). Informed by these contributions, it is possible to clarify the use of the term “peasantry” in this argument. The term can be used in the sense defined by Shanin (1973: 64), as a social entity with four “facets”: “The family farm as the basic multi-functional unit of social organisation, land husbandry and usually animal rearing as the main means of livelihood, a specific traditional culture closely linked with the way of life of small rural communities and multidirectional subjection to powerful outsiders.” It is on the basis of this definition that the argument developed here seeks to interpret the conflicts affecting the Hwange district.

2. The Scale of Ethnicisation in Conflicts

14The rivalries and alliances forged over several centuries between Ndebele, Nambya, Tonga, (Toka-)Leya, Dombe and San revolve around interactions between clan chieftaincies and fuel complex games of identity formation. Despite rhodesian violence –such as the reconfiguration of chiefdoms and the redistribution of roles and responsabilities– territorial identitifications are not solely the product of the colonial assignments. This section aims to demonstrate how these identitications are also negotiated around precolonial settlement histories, the broad outlines of which shed light on the contemporary dynamics of domination.

2.1. Macro-Local Identifications: The Historical Roots of Nambya Claims and the Reactivation of the Identity Register

  • 6 Chilapala, or Chilu, was a hybrid language derived from African languages and dialects and used in (...)

15In the course of colonial history, Nambya elites came to organise themselves to make features of their history and culture more visible. McGregor (2005) identified them as an educated group, distinct from traditional chiefs, with no interest in power, but for social recognition, notably legitimising their rights of access to gainful employment in the town of Hwange. If the Hwange district is today considered a “Nambya territory”, this is the result of a “modern cultural nationalist movement”, spearheaded by local intellectuals and embodied in the creation of the Nambya Cultural Association in 1963 (McGregor, 2005: 326). This mobilisation had its origins in the creation of the Wankie Colliery, a coal mine opened in 1903, and the economic development of the eponymous town. Following a classic imbalance of urban identities within “mining Africa” (Gervais-Lambony, 2013), the influx of a foreign workforce, inclined to put up with poor working conditions, coincided with the spread of exogenous languages, including Chilapalapa6 and Ndebele (interview with a member of the Nambya Cultural Association, June 2017). Local people, excluded from positions of power, found themselves sidelined from social life. In the corpus of historical data, many forms of domination of the Nambya people have been documented. When identity cards were issued by the colonial authorities, for example, a member of the Nambya Cultural Association explained that Nambya surnames were translated into the Ndebele language by clerks in charge of population censuses, the majority of whom spoke Ndebele:

[EXT1-H-050517] That was from the time the miners came, when the white people came. They came with their clerks. That’s when we started obtaining IDs. […] The first clerks to come here, the first people who came with the white people, they were used to Ndebele. They came somewhere from South Africa. So, they said: “What is your name? We’re using…” and they would misspell the name. That is, they were asking for your surname, you could say “I am Msaka”, but they would answer you “What does Msaka mean?”, you would say “Elephant”, and they would say “Elephant in Ndebele is Ndlovu. Your surname is Ndlovu.” Like myself, I’m Ndube, (instead of) Shoko, that’s where we’ve got these surnames. Because our grandfathers went there. They asked: “What is your totem? Baboon? All right. Baboon. Ndube. It’s Ndebele. They write Ndube, so you become Ndube. You are no longer Shoko.

16From the 1950s onwards, employment opportunities enabled “Nambyaland” (McGregor, 2005) to be promoted by an educated elite. These successes were reflected in the creation of the Nambya Community Museum, the writing down of local oral traditions referring to the Hwange state (grey literature, articles published in colonial journals), the conception of a Nambya dictionary, the attribution of the toponym “Hwange” (correction of the spelling “Wankie”) to the town in 1980, in memory of Sawanga, first chief of the dynasty, and the recognition in 2013 of the Nambya language as such, and not as a dialect of Shona. These socio-cultural dynamics attest to the social visibility (Voirol, 2005) to which the best-organised strategic groups in the district have access (cultural associations, museums, insertion in the capitalist economy, media bias) in order to negotiate a “right to exist” within society.

17Today, the reactivation of the identity register by the Nambya revolves around the feeling of marginalisation from administrative, wildlife management and teaching positions, said to be filled by Ndebele and Shona. In this sense, Nambya customary representatives claim to live under the yoke of Shona and Ndebele socio-cultural hegemony. Colonial exclusions from the territory are perpetuated by the non-consideration of dry-stone sites located within Hwange Park, including Bumbusi, in favour of wildlife enhancement benefiting a small segment of the population. Since 2020, the area around the archaeological site has attracted the attention of the mining sector, unbeknownst to the villagers adjacent to the park. On the scale of the Hwange district, these dynamics can be defined as operating at a “macro-local” level, which situates the Nambya people as an “oppressed minority” (Barbosa et al., 2020).

2.2. Meso-Local Identifications: Ceasing to Share the Leya Territory?

18When the Nambya, from the south of present-day Zimbabwe, arrived west of the Gwayi River in the Deka and Matetsi valleys in the early 18th century, they encountered small Bantu-speaking chiefdoms, including the Leya (Ncube, 2004). The Nambya chief, Dendelende Sawanga, is said to have asked the Leya chief, Mpofulume Khute, to sit on a lioness skin (shumba kaji) while he himself sat on a lion skin (shumba). This founding myth symbolises the peace sealed between the Leya and the newcomers. For the current Leya chief, the chiefdom name, attributed by the Nambya, comes from the word for “to give”, which refers to the land division that occured at that time. From his point of view, it also refers to the takeover of the territory by the better-armed Nambya chiefs, and the disadvantageous balance of power for the Leya:

[EXT2-M-250917] We are Tonga, Leya, from Zambia, from Angola, we came down this way. These Nambya people found us here. Yes. So, I’m called Chief #, I was named by them. […] Why? Because when [Sawanga] came here, I received him, I said “No, no, no, let’s not fight. You can take this way. We take this way.” So, they say: […] “You give us land.” […] The boundaries now here is what? He wrote. I will be that end you will be that end […]. Their army was too big. Humhum. My army was, we were very few here. So, we didn’t want to fight. So, they, themselves gave us a woman called Mancube. Yes. This lady, here, was given to my great-grandfather […]: “You have given us land? We give you a, a woman.” […] They married each other, that’s where we come from.

19This Chief claims that until recently, the Nambya were welcomed onto his land by his grandfather in the early 20th century, when they were relocated from protected areas and commercial farms during colonisation. Today, he says, there are too many of them on his land:

[EXT3-M-250917] When [the Nambya] came in, they were asked [by the colonial administration] to stay in Inyantue. There, it’s mountainous, there is no place to plough. So, they asked to come and plough this land. Then they were allowed by my grandfather to come in and to plough. Until they stayed for long and there are too many people from [the other chief]’s place in my area. Even here there are too many Nambya people.

20Against a backdrop of discourse on the cohabitation of Leya and Nambya, it is the demographic pressure within his chiefdom, as a customary territorial subdivision, that is the subject of discussion. The administrative boundaries it shares with the neighbouring chiefdom are the subject of an unresolved conflict between the fathers of the current chiefs, dating back to the colonial period. With no compromise reached, the Land Office map outlines “disputed boundaries”. In 2017, the conflict was reactivated, with Leya chief accusing his neighbour of seeking to expand his administrative territory:

[EXT4-M-250917] He wanted to own, to take the whole ward. I said “but how can you take ward# where there is the grave of my great grandfather? The school Dingani is me”. You see? He himself is at Dinde, here. It’s where he was installed. As a Chief. All their graves are somewhere here. Inyantue. Yes, he cannot take over the ward because the ward is where my ancestors are buried.

  • 7 Among the Leya, it is customary to bury one’s ancestors where one’s livestock lived, the “kraal hea (...)

21At the meso-local level, burials are used to assert the chief’s legitimacy over the territory, using arguments based on how long the land has been settled (Bayart & Geschiere, 2001). The village of Dingani is located at the junction of the chiefdoms and is under the jurisdiction of the Leya chief. The chief does not refer to the ancestor of his lineage segment, his grandfather Nhlekisa, who is buried in his own garden, in N’Dajila, but mobilises a kinship link with another of his ancestors and Leya warrior, Dingani, who is buried in the eponymous village7, a few kilometres away. These subtle games played by the chief with his kinship relations reflect the mobilisation of the identity register or, more precisely, the ethnicisation of an interpersonal conflict. Contrary to the idea that the Leya have been incorporated into the Hwange state, they have gained separate political representation as a distinct group even though some of their identity traits, such as their language, are not recognised. These processes are ancient and, at the time of the Hwange state, society already maintained internal hierarchies between Nambya and Leya or Dombe, and the descendants of these peoples were distinguished as “inferior” citizens (lowly commoners) (McGregor, 2005).

22In the Hwange district, socio-cultural minorities continue to play a key role in the claims and conflicts over resources and territory. The formulation of these identity claims raises questions about the relationship of individuals and groups to the State, the State’s political treatment of cultural diversity (Taylor, 2019) and the way in which its language is used and reappropriated by minority groups to make themselves visible or even “legible” (Scott, 1999: 293) within society and thus gain access to what is denied to them.

2.3. Micro-Local Identifications: Access to Dombe Customary Power in Dispute

23A rival to the Nambya Cultural Association, the Dombe Cultural Association was created in 1990 to “promote Dombe identity and Tongan language and culture”. Famous hunters, the Dombe are known to cross the Zambezi River in the course of their hunting practices and are thought to have arrived in the region before the Nambya (Elliot, 1965). Some oral accounts claim that it was the Dombe who helped the Nambya escape from the Ndebele by taking them across the Zambezi in boats (ibid.). To this day, most people who identify themselves as Dombe live in the Simangani and Msuna regions near the Zambezi River, under the leadership of one of the Nambya chiefs. In the 1990s, the quarrels between Nambya and Dombe were counter-productive, and schools continued to teach Ndebele in the face of these disagreements (ibid.). At the “micro-local” scale, the Nambya, Tonga and Toka-Leya enjoy privileges that the Dombe feel they lack, fuelling Dombe claims to land, customary power (demand for Dombe representation on the political scene) and recognition of their dialects (which are not recognised in the new Constitution promulgated on May 23, 2013).

  • 8 Anthropologist Gary Haynes (2014), in his book Hwange National Park: The Forest with a Desert Heart(...)

24Emphasis is also placed here on the San sociolinguistic group, whose current population in Zimbabwe, associated with the Tshwa group (Tyua8 and Cuaa), is estimated at 2,500, and inhabits mainly the districts of Tsholotsho (Matabeleland North province) and Bulilima-Mangwe (Matabeleland South province). The singularities of the San people (nomadism, language) seem to have got the better of them. On the one hand, their social marginalisation by the State, which is attempting to sedentarise them where they are still mobile (Hitchcock et al., 2016), indicates an ultimate degree of non-recognition by society. On the other hand, the San struggle to use the categories imposed on them to emancipate themselves from the denial of attention and contempt to which they are subjected, and to develop a socio-political language intelligible to the prevailing normative framework. In Matabeleland North, and more specifically in the Hwange district, the invisibility of this population today translates into a form of “silent ethnocide” (Barbosa et al., 2020: 261). This situation illustrates how certain groups, such as the San, find themselves confined to the condition of a marginalised peasantry: their cultural singularities and social exclusion, coupled with their inability to engage with the dominant terms of political and social dialogue, result in their near-erasure from the public sphere.

3. Denial of Recognition, Experience of Injustice and Conflict

25How can we understand the pervasiveness of the rhetoric of identity in the expression of contemporary controversies in Hwange? The aim here is to explain the rhetoric surrounding the marginalisation and denial of recognition of certain groups of actors and, more fundamentally, the profound meaning that individuals and groups give to these conflicts (quest for justice, need for recognition).

3.1. Social Conflicts as Quests for Recognition

  • 9 The 100 km walk from Hwange town to Victoria Falls to raise funds for the museum was held over two (...)

26Debates over the title of the Hwange town museum, the Nambya Community Museum, are yet another indicator of the reactivation of the identity register in local conflicts. In June 2017, renewed interest in the project to restore the town’s community museum9 took the form of disputes over the history of the district, with the Leya and Dombe questioning the non-inclusive nature of the museum. These social oppositions led the donor, Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke (MS – Zimbabwe), a Danish non-governmental organisation wishing to sponsor the development of the project, to withdraw (Sagiya & Shenjere-Nyabezi, 2023). To ease tensions, the museum’s management committee stated that the museography would not focus solely on the Nambya. Recent research on community management in the district also shows that people identifying themselves as Nambya and Tonga dominate local institutions, on the grounds that the Ndebele and Shona are not originally from the area, are wealthier and hold positions of power.

27Since the 1990s, a current of political philosophy has proposed viewing social conflicts as struggles for recognition (Honneth, 2018), with the need for recognition seen as “one of the forces at work behind nationalist political movements” and a requirement “in the current politics of minority or subaltern groups” (Taylor, 2019: 55-56). Recognition is defined here as inseparable from the construction of identity, which, on the one hand, emanates from an inner dialogue with oneself and, on the other, is negotiated through recourse to “others” (or “meaning-givers”). The latter allow us to build oneself in a quest for authenticity (by finding oneself and one’s own originality) and difference, but with dignity and respect. In the interview below, the representative of the Nambya Cultural Association explains that the evangelisation of the Nambya in the 1960s betrays this dialogue: it’s as much about seeing oneself as independent of the perception of others as it is about being understood and respected by them.

[EXT5-H-050517] Almost 80% of the Nambya are catholics because you go where you are understood, where you are respected. People they are more attracted to the church. If it’s in another language, sometimes you’re feeling inadequate. With your own language you feel closer to your creator and that’s when you try to liberate yourself better. You see yourself as an individual not someone’s perceptions. These are the same priests who wrote our first literature.

  • 10 One example relating to identity constructions in the Hwange district refers to the meanings of the (...)

28Recognition theorists see the lack of recognition as a form of oppression and injustice, in that “non-recognition or inadequate recognition can cause harm” (Taylor, 2019: 55-57). The German philosopher and sociologist Axel Honneth (2018) defends a similar conception of recognition, based on a typology that operates in terms of the analysis of practices within a given society. According to this typology, contempt can take the form of abuse and violence (violation of a person’s physical integrity), deprivation of rights and exclusion (violation of a person’s social integrity) or humiliation and offence (violation of a person’s honour and dignity, including denigration and negative judgement10). In the Hwange district, contemporary social recompositions seem to be rooted in the shared experience of marginalisation by groups who each feel, to varying degrees, that their identity is under threat, from cultural imperialism (depreciation of their way of life) and non-recognition of their language (deprivation of rights).

3.2. Negotiating a Place in the “Power Matrix”

29These specific cases tend to characterise a heterogeneous multicultural society. What, then, is the basis for the uniqueness of the category of “peasantry” in the Hwange district? Building on Shanin’s (1973) conceptualisation, this article proposes that adopting such a framework allows us to go beyond an interpretation of social demands through the ethnic prism as the common denominator organising collectives. The society in the communal areas of the Hwange district seems to meet the four characteristics he identifies, in terms of the way the social organisation functions, subsistence practices (agro-pastoral activities, fruit gathering and wood cutting) and the sharing of a “rural culture”. Since the country gained independence, people living in rural areas have had to contend with a major economic crisis, ongoing political unrest and increasing human density.

  • 11 These land statuses emerged following the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), a land redistri (...)

30The province of Matabeleland North is now one of the poorest in the country, with the highest concentration of food-insecure people (GoZ, 2014). In the Hwange district, these issues are emerging in a context of increasing aridification (more droughts, delayed start to the rainy season, greater inter-annual fluctuations in rainfall). While the government claims to be keeping its promises to the country’s peasantry, the elites remain the main beneficiaries of land redistribution (Goebel, 2005). Under the guise of a policy of “indigenisation”, which is part of the demands for post-apartheid reparations, the government is pursuing a class project which enables those close to the party and a state bourgeoisie (urbanites, politicians, and businessmen) to accumulate agricultural land (Raftopoulos & Compagnon, 2003), Zimbabwe’s main economic asset (Raftopoulos, 2001). The 2005 report by The Zimbabwe Independent on the acquisition of A2 farms11 in the Hwange district, and more specifically in the Gwayi Valley Conservation Area, confirms that land redistribution followed the same logic as elsewhere in the country, with most of the beneficiaries concerned “having links with ZANU-PF” the ruling party.

31The Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) programme, introduced in the late 1990s in the country’s communal areas, constitutes an economic compensation scheme for damage caused by wildlife. It may be regarded as an opportunity seized by the government to circumvent the problem of human pressure in communal areas without redistributing land to the most vulnerable (Murombedzi, 1999). The failure of CAMPFIRE, whose economic spin-offs are perceived as non-existent by the district’s villagers, reiterates the programme’s incapacity to halt the impoverishment of the inhabitants of communal areas. In addition to its inability to meet the socio-economic needs of the least well-off sections of society, the participatory policy is beginning to introduce a new level of injustice: participation has been transformed into an injunction from the State to rural dwellers to assume the posture of “environmental subjects” (Agrawal, 2005), by calling on them to take responsibility for the stewardship of natural resources and for denouncing practices deemed criminal.

32The quest for recognition, or the negotiation of a place within the “power matrix”, appears to be one of the strategies that individuals and social groups employ to ensure their subsistence. In most of the cases documented in this research, the problem of land (un)availability emerges from the conflicts. The decisions and risks taken by the farmers are in response to the need to access land to build their homes, cultivate a plot, collect wood, raise their livestock, but also to access water and herbaceous and woody resources. The head of the District Land Office himself wrote, in a 2016 letter to a headman of the communal areas, that the chiefdom is “congested given growing populations that rely on subsistence agriculture in the absence of active industrial performance that tend to employ young people [sic]”. The empirical material reveals that the conflicts centre on resources whose function is more or less central to subsistence or which have a strong social and symbolic function, i.e. access to places (the sacred sites of Bumbusi, Tshongwena and Matoa) or to spaces despoiled by the State and which ensure the maintenance of cultural conventions, such as rain-calling rituals.

3.3. The Experience of Injustice at the Root of a “Practical Dynamic”

33The fourth facet of the definition used above, that of a “multidirectional subjection to powerful outsiders” (Shanin, 1973: 64), raises questions about how the local society express antagonism towards external actors. Although the groups in the district do not directly invoke the term “peasant” in the discourses collected in this research, one case of conflict revealed the extent to which villagers could resort to state categories, including that of “inhabitant of communal areas”, to negotiate rights. In the case of the occupation of a parcel of private land by around sixty families, one villager explained how, as an inhabitant of communal land, she was seeking to secure access to the land for her two sons (Dervieux, 2019). The “hat” put forward in this context, namely that of “mother of two sons, inhabitant of communal land” and not “woman”, “widow” or “elderly person” (which would be ineffective), is directly correlated with the discourse of the village headman (“we wanted a piece of land for our children and grand-children”), which itself conforms to the language of legitimisation of the ruling party, which has designated “communal land dwellers” as the Zimbabweans who should be the priority beneficiaries of land reform programmes in the post-colonial state. In this way, she mobilises a legal identity other than that of “woman” to renegotiate the conditions of her dependence on the land and circumvent patrilineal customary conventions.

34Under these conditions, the concept of the peasantry takes on a political meaning, demonstrating that “collectives” are built and evolve according to a collective consciousness. The cases mentioned illustrate some of the “weapons of the weak” used by the peasants in their daily lives, and reveal varying levels of conflict and resistance, most of which are oppositional: arising from a lack of arable land and insufficient recognition by the legal framework. Often, conflicts do not take the form of direct confrontation with the authorities, embodied in Hwange by both the police and the national parks, as armed guardians of State land and wildlife (Duffy, 2000). For example, illegal interactions with the park are limited to poaching, and territorial claims (requests for grazing areas) are made with little hope of being realised and take latent forms (non-cooperation, insubordination). These practices are governed by a self-help approach that underpins individual identification (access to arable land as a “woman” or “inhabitant of communal areas”) and collective identification (mobilisation of group membership to assert legitimacy).

35Unfulfilled expectations can “give rise to a feeling of injustice”, which can be the source of a normative dynamic (reflexive movement) or a practical dynamic (taking action) (Renault, 2017: 171). In this sense, the villagers experience of injustice acts as a catalyst for questioning and reacting against the inaccessible lands, which contain resources vital for their subsistence. We argue, therefore, that the denial of recognition fuels conflicts that have as their object experienced spaces invested with emotions, understood as potentially collective positive or negative affective states. The life stories of the people involved in the occupation of the contested plot show that experiences of injustice (insufficient and uncertain access to arable land) are “productive” in the sense that they are at the origin of certain forms of conflictual action (returning to land formerly inhabited and grazed by cattle, moving closer to the graves of close relatives). In this respect, nostalgia for place is a vector for action, a “practical dynamic” formulated in response to the experience of a situation of forced displacement experienced as unjust, following a “normative dynamic” (Renault, 2017). Regardless of the distance from the places and spaces that evoke them, this research reveals the extent to which the emotions associated with geographical experiences are drivers of conflicts that are often silent or at least discreet.

Conclusion

36This article highlights qualitative materials concerning the identity dynamics of a marginalised peasantry, which has been little documented by academic researchers. Until now, research in the district has primarily focused on the claims of the Nambya population (McGregor, 2005; Barbosa et al., 2020). This study illustrates how non-Nambya groups also organise themselves around a shared identity to seek greater recognition and express their grievances about being denied certain rights. By way of example, Dombe or (Toka-)Leya respondents mention their inability to learn and practice their language at school or access skilled employment. This nuance of the minority status of Nambya’s people underscores the critical importance of field documentation at the microlocal level. Another significant observation is that social groups who establish “boundaries” (Barth, 1998) between themselves, nonetheless share an intertwined history. For instance, the socio-political recompositions surrounding the archaeological remains are constantly redefined, revealing changing modes of appropriation based on groups of actors, whether defined by sociolinguistic affiliation (Leya, Nambya, Dombe, and San) or clan (Nambya Hwange, Nekatambe and Chilanga clans).

37To better understand the underlying causes driving individuals or groups to resist and assert particular identities, we pay attention to the experience of injustice (Renault, 2017), recognition (Honneth, 2018; Taylor, 2019) and peasant resistance (Scott, 1985). Conflicts over customary boundaries, common in contemporary Zimbabwe (Mombeshora & Le Bel, 2009), must be understood within the context of current challenges faced by peasants in accessing land and means of subsistence. The intra-societal rivalries outlined in the second section of this article also reveal quests for recognition directed towards external actors (the State, its representatives, private organisations). In this sense, the peasant community constructs its common identity by identifying an external “other” and organising itself in opposition. One of the key findings of this work concerns the ambivalence of the relationship between individuals or social groups and the State, which may either be rejected or appropriated as a means of negotiating access to land and food.

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Notes

1 The term is understood by the everyday functioning of its public institutions, considering the actions of the individuals who constitute it and how marginalized minorities perceive and interact with it (fear of its sanctions, expectation of its support).

2 This research was supported by the 2020 Young Researcher Award from the Fondation des Treilles and the Atlas Programme of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement. I would also like to thank the historian Maurice Hutton for his copy editing of the text, as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided comments. Many thanks to the individuals who contributed to this research and agreed to be interviewed in the field.

3 Published in the Ndebele language, it is received with popularity by a readership sharing a sense of exclusion from political life (Mabweazara & Strelitz, 2011).

4 In the literature, it is also spelled “Nambiya” (Nyathi, 2005), “Abenanzwa” (Hemans, 1913) or “Nyai” (Hayes, 1977: 386).

5 This work revealed the extent to which villagers had found themselves caught between the Rhodesian state and the combatants. The independence movement was associated with significant material concessions, mainly by the adults, preoccupied with the subsistence of their families, despite their sympathy for the struggle (Kriger, 1992).

6 Chilapala, or Chilu, was a hybrid language derived from African languages and dialects and used in the mines of Zimbabwe and South Africa.

7 Among the Leya, it is customary to bury one’s ancestors where one’s livestock lived, the “kraal head”, before establishing one’s home elsewhere.

8 Anthropologist Gary Haynes (2014), in his book Hwange National Park: The Forest with a Desert Heart, reports investigating Penny Nkomo, in the 1990s, and refers to her as the “last” of the Tyua.

9 The 100 km walk from Hwange town to Victoria Falls to raise funds for the museum was held over two days in June 2017. At the start, the 15 participants present (compared with 60 registered) carried a banner reading “Let us restore our heritage”. According to the organisers, dozens of participants joined the walk after their day’s work and Chief Hwange honoured the movement with his presence at the finish. Over the weekend, the event was broadcast several times on the television news, as well as on the national broadcasting channel, ZBC News (Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation).

10 One example relating to identity constructions in the Hwange district refers to the meanings of the word “Dombe” and the demeaning image of one of its translations. In the most widely circulated oral accounts, the word is said to mean “dirty”, in reference to the fact that when the Dombe moved south of the Zambezi, many of them had no access to water for washing (Elliott, 1965).

11 These land statuses emerged following the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), a land redistribution programme initiated in February 2000, which led to the largest land transfer in the history of post-independence Zimbabwe. The large commercial farms, predominantly owned by Whites at the time, were reallocated to Black beneficiaries.

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Auteur

Zénaïde Dervieux

Zénaïde Dervieux is a senior lecturer in human geography at Sorbonne Paris Nord University (Pléiade research centre). Since her doctoral research on injustices related to nature conservation in Zimbabwe, her work has focused on environmental policies in southern and central Africa, at the intersection of the geography of emotions and the anthropology of conservation.
Recent publications
Dervieux, Z. (2024). Conservation coercitive et (in)visibilité des conflits dans le district de Hwange, au Zimbabwe. Vertigo, 24-1. https://doi.org/10.4000/13b4x
Dervieux, Z. (2023). Territorialités, reconnaissances et résistances silencieuses : dans l’ombre du parc national zimbabwéen de Hwange. Carnets de géographes, 17. https://doi.org/10.4000/cdg.9163
Dervieux, Z., & Noûs, C. (2022). La « communauté » produite pour gérer les ressources naturelles : lecture croisée des programmes CAMPFIRE (Zimbabwe) et ACAP (Népal). Justice spatiale – Spatial Justice.
Dervieux, Z. (2019). Pratiques spatiales au nord-ouest du Zimbabwe : revendications, occupations et résistances. L’Espace politique, 37. https://doi.org/10.4000/espacepolitique.6202

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