Forced Resettlement, Ethnicity, and the (Un)Making of the Ndebele Identity in Buhera District, Zimbabwe

Abstract:This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitants of Buhera district in south-central Zimbabwe and Ndebele speakers who settled in the area after being forcibly removed from various parts of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between the 1920s and 1950s. It shows how competition for productive farmlands, which became visible beginning in the 1940s, produced and sustained the Ndebele-Shona hostility in Buhera. While other scholars view this hostility primarily from an ethnic perspective, this article argues that ethnicity was just one of many factors that shaped relations between these people.Resume: Cette etude examine le developpement historique de l'hostilite entre les habitants de langue shona du district de Buhera au centre-sud du Zimbabwe et les habitants de langue ndebele qui se sont installes dans la region apres avoir ete expulses de force de diverses parties du Matabeleland et des provinces des Midlands entre les annees 1920 et 1950. Il montre comment la concurrence pour l'exploitation des terres agricoles fertiles, devenue visible depuis les annees 1940, a cree et maintenu l'hostilite qui perdure aujourd'hui entre les Ndebele et les Shona dans le district de Buhera. Alors que d'autres chercheurs considerent principalement cette hostilite du point de vue ethnique, cet article soutient que l'ethnicite n'est qu'un des nombreux facteurs ayant faconne les relations entre ces deux groupes.Key Words: Forced resettlement; ethnicity; identity formation; boundary disputes; Ndebele-Shona relations; ZimbabweIntroductionFrom the mid-1920s to the early 1950s, Buhera district in south-central Zimbabwe received about one hundred families of Ndebele speakers forcibly removed from Matabeleland and Midlands provinces (see map). Most of them settled in scattered enclaves in the northern and eastern parts of this predominantly Shona-speaking area. Over the years, intermarriage and other forms of interaction between the Ndebele and their hosts produced somewhat hybrid communities in Buhera. The majority of evictees and their descendants adopted several aspects of their hosts' ways of life, and both groups became competent in the other's language. However, despite coexisting in this district for several decades, there is an unmistakable tension and promotion of negative stereotypes between the Ndebele and Shona speakers in Buhera.This article examines why and how the Ndebele-Shona relations in Buhera came to be what they are today. It does so by exploring the politics of community building and identity (re)construction among the Ndebele in Buhera district. In so doing, the study builds on a growing body of scholarship examining the intersection of forced resettlement and identity formation in Zimbabwe. Examples of such literature include Worby's (1994) and Nyambara's (2002) studies of developments that took place in Gokwe district after the resettlement of evictees from Rhodesdale Ranching Estates near the town of Kwekwe. With slight differences of emphasis, both scholars concluded that ethnic labeling and counterlabeling became a daily occurrence in that area. While the earlier inhabitants of Gokwe called the evictees madheruka, "an onomatopoetic word intended to evoke the sound of the lorry engines that brought them," the evictees in turn referred to their hosts as shangwe, which had connotations of backwardness (Worby 1994:389). In their analysis of the interaction between Ndebele evictees and their hosts in the Shangani area, Alexander et al. (2000) came to a similar conclusion. They argue that naming played a big role in power politics between the "progressive" evictees (labeled amaFilabusi, amabhunu, or amadeluka) and the earlier inhabitants of Shangani, who were thought to be primitive.What is common in works on identity formation in post-resettlement situations in Zimbabwe is an emphasis on the role that ethnicity has played in shaping interactions between the evictees and earlier inhabitants. …