Reconstructing history, grounding claims to space: history, memory, and displacement in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Abstract

The recent creation of Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP) and its integration into the larger Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) promise to effect profound political, social, and ecological changes. These range from removing sections of the international border fence and restocking wildlife in the LNP to the planned relocation of several thousand people living within the park. These transformations have inspired complex, conflicting excavations of the past. This paper investigates how history and memory are deployed as strategic political resources to justify competing claims to space, in this case the rural village of Massingir Velho slated for relocation and the larger GLTP/LNP. Official GLTP history strategically rationalizes the creation of a transnational park that is rich in wildlife and tourist opportunities and a vehicle for addressing multiple past violences. Residents of Massingir Velho who are critical of the planned relocation reconstruct a strikingly different history. They draw on intimate place-based and lived memories of two prior displacements to question the legitimacy of the current round of relocation. In short, historical excavations and reconstructions ground claims to space to both reinvent it, for example in the form of a transfrontier park, and to contest such spatial transformations. The mobilization of history, in short, actively shapes present and future spaces and possibilities.

Keywords:

• memory
• displacement
• conservation
• Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park
• Limpopo National Park

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the residents of Massingir Velho and others interviewed for this paper for their time and valuable contributions. I also gratefully acknowledge the funders of this research: the Fulbright Foundation, the University of Minnesota's Graduate School and Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC), and York University's Faculty of Arts. Finally, I kindly thank two anonymous reviewers along with Dagmar Soennecken and Soren Frederiksen for their constructive feedback. All errors and omissions remain my own.

Notes

^1. This paper draws on interviews conducted over 10 months in 2004–2005 with follow-up trips in 2008 and 2009 in Massingir Velho and several surrounding villages. To protect their anonymity, the names of individuals quoted in this paper are pseudonyms.

^2. For an important exception, see the work of Tolia-Kelly (2004).

^3. Analysis consisted of critical readings of the official websites of the GLTP, LNP, Kruger National Park, Peace Parks Foundation, and Boundless Southern Africa; speeches by government officials at GLTP public events; and GLTP and LNP planning documents. While this analysis does not claim to comprehensively cover all official discourse concerning the GLTP, it does focus on the most prominent and publicly available texts. It is these texts that most prominently shape popular understandings of the region's history precisely because they are so well advertized and easily accessible to such a large albeit privileged audience.

^4. For a broader discussion and critique of transfrontier initiatives like the GLTP in their capacity as ‘Peace Parks’ to promote peace and resolve or preempt conflict, see van Amerom and Büscher (2005).

^5. Despite the promises of community development found throughout the GLTP/transfrontier conservation policy-based and promotional literature, scholars have been highly skeptical that these projects effectively promote such development in practice (see, e.g. Wolmer 2003, van Amerom and Büscher 2005, Duffy 2006, Dressler and Büscher 2008).

^6. Relocation directly impacts an estimated 7000 people who are occupying what has been deemed prime wildlife habitat in the heart of the park. (Communities living near the Limpopo River along the eastern edge of the LNP are not slated for relocation.) While in theory, relocation is voluntary, residents of Massingir Velho have questioned this by pointing to increased threats posed by wildlife, which endanger their livelihoods and safety (Interviews 2004–2005, 2008, 2009; also see Spierenburg and Milgroom 2008).

^7. This is the case despite the importance of wildlife as a protein-rich food source especially in the past (Interviews 2004–2005).