Forced resettlement, ethnicity, and the (un)making of the ndebele identity in Buhera District, Zimbabwe

This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitants of Buhera district in south-central Zimbabwe and Ndebele speakers who settled in the area after being forcibly removed from various parts of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between the 1920s and 1950s. It shows how competition for productive farmlands, which became visible beginning in the 1940s, produced and sustained the Ndebele-Shona hostility in Buhera. While other scholars view this hostility primarily from an ethnic perspective, this article argues that ethnicity was just one of many factors that shaped relations between these people.