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Title
Autochthons, strangers, modernising educationists, and progressive farmers: Basotho struggles for belonging in Zimbabwe 1930s-2008 |
Full text
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8237 |
Date
2012 |
Author(s)
Mujere, Joseph |
Contributor(s)
Locatelli, Francesca; Nugent, Paul; Fontein, Joost; Southern African Scholarship, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh; British Institute of Eastern Africa |
Abstract
This thesis uses belonging as an analytical tool to analyse the history of the Basotho community
in the Dewure Purchase Areas in Zimbabwe. The thesis analyses how Basotho's migration
history and their experiences with colonial displacements shaped and continue to shape their
construction of a sense of belonging. It also examines how Basotho's purchase of farms in the
Dewure Purchase Areas in the 1930s and their establishment of a communally owned farm have
played a key role in their struggles for belonging. It also explores the centrality of land, graves,
funerals, and religion in the belonging matrix. The study, however, avoids projecting the Basotho
community as a monolithic and cohesive unit by analysing the various internal schisms and
cleavages within the community and examining their impacts. Although, Basotho have
seemingly managed to integrate into the local community, a more critical analysis reveals that
they have also continued to maintain a level of particularism. The central dynamic in this thesis,
therefore, is how the Basotho, in their different struggles and strategies to belong, over the last
century, have fundamentally been caught between being seen and treated as the same as the other
people around them and being seen (and seeing themselves) as different.
It is arguably this
ambivalence or delicate balancing between integrating and remaining 'outsiders' that has shaped
Basotho's sense of belonging and determined the strategies they have deployed in different
historical contexts. The thesis concludes that, since it is relational and always in a state of
becoming, strategies deployed in constructing and articulating belonging constantly change to
suit particular historical contexts. |
Subject(s)
autochthons; migration; farmers; belonging; Zimbabwe; Basotho community |
Language
en |
Publisher
The University of Edinburgh |
Type of publication
Thesis or Dissertation; Doctoral; PhD Doctor of Philosophy |
Format
application/pdf |
Repository
Edinburgh - University of Edinburgh
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Added to C-A: 2023-05-15;08:46:52 |
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