Paper short abstract:

Migrants deploy the past to claim a place in the world through a male centric narrative of the nation that critiques the racialised global structural inequality and yet still precludes shifts in gendered power dynamics and creates rigid boundaries between ethnic groups.

Paper long abstract:

The past is an always available resource for navigating the present and envisioning the future but its meaning is reframed by those who hold more power. While national narratives may employ the past to locate migrant bodies as the sites for the contestation delineating who belongs and who is other within the nation. How do migrants in turn respond to these political contestations and with what gains or losses? Through an intersectional analysis of Zimbabwean migrant narratives about belonging and home in Johannesburg. The paper presents music by migrant victims of Gukurahundi in Johannesburg which simultaneously narrates Gukurahundi atrocities perpetrated against the migrants in Zimbabwe, experiences of xenophobia in South Africa and the history of slavery and colonialism. The music harkens to imagined pre-colonial origins to substantiate ethnic differences amongst Zimbabweans, while simultaneously claiming affinity to the Zulu in South Africa and thus space in Johannesburg; At the same time it narrates racial differences to center their victimhood to slavery and colonialism to racially locate themselves within the imagined human global community. The past is used to claim space in Johannesburg and justify the imaginings of a future home ‘Mthwakazi’ which does not yet exist. Concomitantly this hampers shifts in ethnic tensions or gender power dynamics. In this way the past is deployed to claim space for the migrants through a male centric narrative of the nation that critiques the racialised global structural inequality and yet still precludes shifts in gendered power dynamics and creates rigid boundaries between ethnic groups.