Territoriality and the Politics of Space Among the Tokwe Mukosi Displaced Persons at Chingwizi, Zimbabwe

The displacement of the Tokwe Mukosi people from their ancestral land to pave way for the construction of the Tokwe Mukosi dam has received widespread attention both politically and in the academia. The temporariness and the limited space at the Chingwizi transit camp inevitably generates conflict over space and resources, given the opposing interests between the displacees and the host communities. Methodologically, this paper is drawn from a larger ethnographic study on the lived realities of the Tokwe Mukosi people at Chingwizi, in Mwenezi. In the broader study, participant observation, unstructured interviews and focus group discussions were the main data gathering methods. The findings in this study revealed protracted conflict over the space and limited resources at Chingwizi. Social, economic, political, and cultural diversity at Chingwizi is manifested in both intra conflict and intergroup conflict. Intergroup conflict is evident in the interaction between the Tokwe Mukosi people and the host communities. In conventional literature, the Tokwe Mukosi people have been portrayed as passive victims of their social conditions, but the findings in this study show how they use their marginalised social conditions to strategically position themselves in the quest for space at Chingwizi and other strategic spaces outside Chingwizi. Findings also show how some resourceful displacees deploy agency, essentialism, and the politics of belonging to lay claims to resources and spaces in their areas of origins and pre-displacement spaces. Theoretically the Structure-Agency theory and other complimentary concepts like strategic essentialism, social capital and conviviality are utilised to understand how the displacees deal with the constraining structures and negotiate spaces.