Forced Removal and Social Memories in North-western Zimbabwe,c1900-2000

This is a study in regional history focusing on a case of forced removal that happened in the late 1950s in North-western Zimbabwe and partially on another of voluntary migration in the 1980s. Forced removal and voluntary migration, both as a process and as an event, are used here as prime entry points for a better understanding of rural settlement history in colonial and postcolonial Africa and of the contestations regarding ethnic identity and social belonging that came along with it. Through forced removal, Rengwe, the Zimbabwean area of study, emerged as a combined or merged chiefdom of groups with collective experiences and similar identity but with different historical backgrounds. Later, they were joined by immigrants of other ethnic identities. These broader processes of movement, ethnic identity and social belonging are the main interest of this study. This study argues that stories and memories of forced removal tell us not only about relocation itself, but also about events before and after it. The study pursues two agendas, namely; it gathers memories of relocation and of the environment, and analyzes how they were entangled with each other in a historical perspective. It then examines the impact of these memories on constructions and contestations of social belonging and identity in Rengwe after resettlement. It argues that forced removal and migration as collective experience play a significant role in the formation and negotiation of identity and in building social relations. The study also distinguishes two kinds of memory applied in such cases, “displaced” and “nostalgic.” Displaced memories are used as a source of information about the past before forced removal, and they were relied upon to conceptualize human-environment relations in the past. Such memories were used by both forced and voluntary resettlers to make sense of history and inscribe meaning into and belonging to the landscape, both old and new. Nostalgic memories, in contrast, are defined as carrying views about the past which are used to reinterpret, explain and criticize present circumstances in the context of today’s socio-economic and political challenges. Lastly, this study observes that memories of forced removal and environment were and are used to describe and to explain the changing power relations between different sections of Rengwe’s forced resettlers.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Bayreuth

Year

2014

Author dc:creator

• Marowa, Ivan

Contributors dc:contributor

• von Oppen, Achim

Repository record source_url

https://epub.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/2090/

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:epub.uni-bayreuth.de:2090