Natural Resource-Based Conflicts in Rural Zimbabwe

Chapter 1: Natural Resource-Based Conflicts in Zimbabwe

Joshua Matanzima, Patience Chadambuka and Kirk Helliker

PART I: Land, Natural Resources and Conflict

Chapter 2: Domestic Communal Land Grabbing and Dwindling Peri-Urban Spaces: The Case of Midlands Province's Mataga Communal Areas

Patience Chadambuka, Talent Moyo, Faith Zengeni and Praise Percy Tinashe Gandah

Chapter 3: Natural Resource Conflicts in Western Zimbabwe

Robert K. Hitchcock, Melinda C. Kelly and Maria Sapignoli

Chapter 4: Othering Doma Foragers: Contestations Over Natural Resources in the Mid-Zambezi Valley

Vincent Jani, Nigel L. Webb and Anton H. de Wit

Chapter 5: Women’s Land Access and Gendered Land Conflicts in Hwedza and Makoni Districts

Ngonidzashe Chidavaenzi and Chengetai E. Hamadziripi

Chapter 6: Resource Conflicts in the Chiredzi District: The Case of the Minority Hlengwe Against Settlers and the State, 1950s-2022

Taderera Hebert Chisi

Part II: Water and Conflict

Chapter 7: Water as a Site of Contestation at Lake Kariba

Joshua Matanzima

Chapter 8: Conflicts over River Sand Use and Management in Binga District

Christopher Mweembe

Chapter 9: Conflict over Land and Water Resources in Zimunya, Manicaland Province

Aldrin T. Magaya and Mathew Ruguwa

Chapter 10: Whose Water is it? Underground Water and Social Conflicts in Fuleche, Hurungwe District, c. 1958–2020

Ivan Marowa

Chapter 11: Governance, Power Dynamics, and Conflicts in Norton’s Small-Scale Fisheries

Tawanda Jimu, Martin Magidi and Simbarashe Gukurume

Chapter 12: Conflicts Over Natural Resources at Mutirikwi Dam in the Masvingo Province

Shumirai Nyota and Jeriphanos Makaye

PART III: Minerals and Conflict

Chapter 13: Farmer-Miner Conflicts in Mberengwa North, 2000–2020

Praise Percy Tinashe Gandah

Chapter 14: Mining-Induced Displacement and Resource Conflicts in Chiadzwa

Simbarashe Gukurume, Felix Tombindo and Tawanda Jimu

Chapter 15: Farming-Mining Conflicts Surrounding Land Use on A1 Farms in Shurugwi District

Tendai Nciizah

Chapter 16: Conflicts over Harnessing of Diamond Resources in Marange Communal Area, Eastern Zimbabwe, 2006–2015

Mathew Ruguwa

Biography

Joshua Matanzima is a researcher at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (Sustainable Minerals Institute), University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He holds a PhD in anthropology from La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include natural resources conflicts between indigenous people, governments, and extractive companies; social aspects of mining and energy transitions; and social, environmental, and governance risks and impacts of large-scale infrastructure development and conservation projects. He has carried out extensive fieldwork on these topics in the Middle-Zambezi Valley.

Patience Chadambuka is a researcher, lecturer and acting chairperson at the Department of Community Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe. She holds a PhD in sociology from Rhodes University, South Africa. She researches and writes on land, livelihoods, ethnicity and gender. She has also been awarded international research grants on climate change and disability studies.

Kirk Helliker is Emeritus Research Professor at the Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, South Africa, where he heads the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies, which he founded. The Unit was formed in 2015 and seeks to contribute to the development of emerging, early-career, and mid-career Zimbabwean (and other) scholars. He publishes widely on Zimbabwean history, politics, and society and has supervised a significant number of PhD and MA students.

This collection marks a new plateau in the study of rural Zimbabwe. A full generation after rapid, violent rapid land reform, the distinction between private and common lands has broken down. Mining and its resource curse have filled the economic void left by the collapse of tourism. This cohort of emergent, insightful authors traces startling - sometimes heart-rending - dynamics of conflict: between smallholders and a Chinese mining corporation, between foragers and the state, between large and small ethnicities, and between women and men. As always, Zimbabweans fight for their rights, however defined and contested.

David Hughes, Rutgers University, USA. Author of the book Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging.

 

Natural resource conflicts are on the rise, made more intense by the effects of climate change. This is definitely the case in Zimbabwe. This important book looks at how conflicts play out around land, water, minerals and their intersections. Based on original research from every corner of the country, the case studies reveal how struggles over resources give rise to contestations around authority, with major implications for politics and governance. This must-read book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers and field practitioners and anyone interested in the politics of environmental change in Zimbabwe and beyond.

Ian Scoones, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom

 

This innovative interdisciplinary text focuses on natural resource-based conflicts in rural Zimbabwe where individuals face everyday challenges in obtaining land and water rights as well as access to fisheries and forests. Rural dwellers live in precarious situations due to a combination of unequal power dynamics and unjust laws that compromise their land tenure rights. They are prone to displacement without compensation due to mineral discoveries, dam constructions, and urban expansion. The book is essential reading for historians, sociologists, anthropologists, environmentalists, urban planners and rural development specialists.

Terence M Mashingaidze, Department of History, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe

There is need to rethink natural resource governance in the light of everyday conflicts that are multi- layered, within rural Zimbabwe. The structural forms of conflicts at micro, meso and macro levels, affect inclusive processes and equitable resource development. This comes at a time when different policy vectors are being proposed nationally to enhance the natural resource governance pillars in rural and urban Zimbabwe to enhance processes of resource efficiency.

Professor Patience Mutopo, Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife, Zimbabwe