Displacement, Elimination and Replacement of Indigenous People: Putting into Perspective Land Ownership and Ancestry in Decolonising Contemporary Zimbabwe

Colonial scholars have taken immense pleasure in portraying Africans as possessed by spirits but as lacking possession and ownership of their resources, including land. Erroneously deemed to be thoroughly spiritually possessed but lacking senses of material possession and ownership of resources, Africans have been consistently dispossessed and displaced from the era of enslavement, through colonialism, to the neocolonial era. Delving into the historiography of dispossession and displacement on the continent of Africa, and in particular in Zimbabwe, this book also tackles contemporary forms of dispossession and displacement manifesting in the ongoing transnational corporations land grabs in Africa, wherein African peasants continue to be dispossessed and displaced.

Focusing on the topical issues around dispossession and repossession of land, and the attendant displacements in contemporary Zimbabwe, the book theorises displacements from a decolonial Pan-Africanist perspective and it also unpacks various forms of displacements - corporeal, noncorporeal, cognitive, spiritual, genealogical and linguistic displacements, among others. The book is an excellent read for scholars from a variety of disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, Social Anthropology, History, Linguistics, Development Studies, Science and technology Studies, Jurisprudence and Social Theory, Law and Philosophy. The book also offers intellectual grit for policy makers and implementers, civil society organisations including activists as well as thinkers interested in decolonisation and transformation.

Jairos Kangira is a professor and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Namibia. He holds a PhD in Rhetoric Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and has published extensively in the field of rhetoric and language.

Artwell Nhemachena holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town, and lectures at the University of Namibia.

Nelson Mlambo holds a PhD from the University of Namibia, and lectures in the Department of Language and Literature Studies at that university.