Paper short abstract:

The papers engages with three key events and activities of the Kalanga communities along the Zimbabwe-Botswana border and seeks to demonstrate how these communities through these events have grappled with issues of autochthony, citizenship and belonging in postcolonial Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Paper long abstract:

In 1885, the British declared present day Botswana (Bechuanaland) a protectorate in an endeavor to curb the Germany eastward expansion. This was followed by the erection of the boundary fence that divided Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) and Botswana. This boundary fence cut across the Kalanga people who had a shared history, origin and identity, who constantly moved between the two territories unhindered prior to colonial rule. The paper seeks to demonstrate how in post-colonial Zimbabwe, communities living along the Zimbabwe-Botswana border have continued to undermine these colonial artificial boundaries in an endeavor to assert their identity and belonging in the post-colonial state. Through an analysis of three events and activities; the 2002 exhumation of chief Nswazwi’s remains, the 2006 repatriation of 600 members of the Nswazwi community; and everyday smuggling of people and goods along the border, the paper engages with the persistence of the precolonial porous boundaries. It further argues that through these events and activities Kalanga communities on both sides of the border have appealed to autochthony, history and origin in order to contest belonging, marginality and exclusion (political and economic) in postcolonial Zimbabwe and Botswana. Moreover, the paper probes the questions of citizenship and the limits of the power of the post-colonial states in dealing with communities on the margins of the states. It draws insights from interviews conducted with these communities, archival sources and secondary material in order to unpack the pertinent issues surrounding borders, migration and belonging in post-colonial Africa.