Abstract
This chapter provides a comprehensive examination of the livelihoods of the ‘Shangane’ nation (and specifically the Chisa of Gotosa) in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The Chisa people have a complex and convoluted history because of multiple forced displacements including from their ancestral lands which now form part of the Gonarezhou National Park. It traces the origins and livelihoods of the Chisa people from precolonial times, through the colonial period, and into the post-independence period including in the context of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). The history of the Chisa people is not only a story of incessant land displacements but it is also one of the resistances against top-down colonial projects. Though they may have benefited from the FTLRP through access to redistributed land, this falls far short of calls for restitution, that is, regaining access to their ancestral lands in Gonarezhou and the sense of identity and nationhood which would come with this. Hence, using the Chisa of Gotosa as a case study, the chapter demonstrates how Chisa livelihoods were distorted with each displacement (since the 1950s), with the FTLRP, in fact, actually pushing them further away from their ancestral lands.
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Ndhlovu, E. (2022). Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe. In: Helliker, K., Chadambuka, P., Matanzima, J. (eds) Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800-9_7
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