Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the protest relations that characterized the interaction of the Tsonga people of southern Zimbabwe and the Rhodesian government during the colonial period following the declaration of the area as a game park in 1934

Paper long abstract:

In 1934, the Rhodesian government declared a vast forest area located on the south-eastern corner of the country as a national park, the Gonarezhou National Park. The place was, thereafter, reserved exclusively for nature as the indigenous Tsonga people who had lived in the area for over a century were forcibly removed and settled on marginal lands abutting the park. Subsequent to that, high protective fences were erected right round the game sanctuary in what was called fortress conservation. The fences were supported by a battery of protective laws directed at safeguarding the animal sanctuary, effectively barring the indigenous people from accessing its resources as they had done in the past. This paper examines the contest that characterised relations between the Tsonga people and the state over their eviction and their forced resettlement on lands they considered marginal. The paper essentially immerses itself in the contradictory discourse of fencing out communities in order to protect game. It illustrates how the different forms of the local people's protest that encompassed poaching put the entire game scheme into peril between 1934 and 1980. Fundamentally, the paper attempts to understand how the erection of the game sanctuary on a piece of land that the Tsonga considered to be their birth right created irreconcilable differences between the belligerents and how that in turn engendered a perpetual struggle between them during the above mentioned period.

Paper short abstract:

In Southwestern Angola during the 1960s, the agro-pastoralists way of life was menaced by the establishment of “modern” ranches. The paper discusses the role of barbed wire as a tool and symbol of developmentalist late colonial state, and agricultural experts and African communities’ responses.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the confrontation of two cattle raising systems in Southwestern Angola in the last years of Portuguese colonial rule: the "traditional" system practiced by African agro-pastoralists; and the "modern" large-scale concessions of European breeders. In the colonial war context of high anxiety for the colonial government and the military authorities, the African agro-pastoralist practices, in particular transhumance, were perceived negatively as a security and political threat to the state and an obstacle to economic development of the livestock industry. Subject of study by agricultural experts, the agro-pastoralists practices were instead valued as ecological response and adaptation to an adverse natural environment; a system that should be improved rather than substituted. In the Cunene and Benguela-Moçâmedes coastal regions barbed wire fences were a visible and material translation of settlers control over and access to land and natural resources (water and pastures), but also a symbol of the repressive nature of the late colonial state developmentalism. Driven from recent work on resilience of agro-pastoral communities, the paper discusses the responsive and adaptive capacities of southwestern Angola agro-pastoralists both to shifting physical environment, and to modernization projects and political acts, namely state violence. Finally it addresses the competing models of development, ambiguities and contradictions within the colonial administration, and the unexpected alliances between state technicians and the agro-pastoralists, enhanced by local African assistants of the Angola Agricultural Surveys Mission.

Paper short abstract:

The main focus of this paper is to describe the logics of power as it manifested in the technologies involved in animal governance and hunting predators in Southern Namibia, and how these reflected broader shifts in the attempts of the colony to establish a ‘modern’ agricultural economy.

Paper long abstract:

'To be cornered like a jackal' is a common phrase used by Nama-speaking farmers to hint to a history of territorial battles between small-stock farmers in southern Africa and the black-backed jackal - an animal renowned for its cleverness in predating on livestock. The main focus of this paper is to describe the logics of power as it manifested in the technologies involved in animal governance and hunting predators in Southern Namibia, and how these reflected broader shifts in the attempts of the colony to establish a 'modern' agricultural economy. Fencing in the colony transpired into a typology of fences ('standard', jackal-proof, electrified etc.) that opened up new forms of animal and human geographies in an area defined by extreme water and grazing scarcities. By focussing on jackal hunting, I suggest that hunting practices only became institutionalised when most of Namibia's agricultural lands were fenced under the colonial administration. In this context, fences not only influenced social history but also changed the nature of animal-human relations, especially with regards to predators and animal governance. Fencing was aimed at greater control over land, but it also allowed for negotiation and trespass: this was especially apparent in hunting practices, which became a game of territoriality in which the hunter and the jackal always try to outmaneuver each other.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the way battles for control, land access, and acknowledgement of power and personhood played out in the construction of a border fence. This case study probes the meaning inside, and beyond, the materiality of the fence.

Paper long abstract:

Fencing can be an intimate process, when the fence building involves the labour of the two parties being separated hands. The push and pull between the fence being constructed or not can also be a tension between different assertions of livelihood. Fences are multiply representative: ownership, danger, belonging. This paper draws on Isobel Hofymeyr's work examining the intimacy of fencing, with a case-study from Hammanskraal, South Africa. The tensions I navigate are those which occurred between white farmers and what was then called a "tribal authority", the AmaNdebele a Moletlane. The white farmers officially owned their farms, while the land belonging to the AmaNdebele a Moletlane was held "in trust" by the Department of Bantu Affairs. Using a series of letters written between these three parties, this paper examines the intimate process around constructing this fence, which was to become a physical, racial, and national border. This border construction was minute and minutely contested, from the strands of wire used and the time fencing was to happen, to the contestations of language in the negotiations. The language used to address the different groups is also indicative of attitudes and the construction of groups and identities. This paper examines the way this fence was constructed and permeated over time, and what this meant about desires, anxieties, livelihoods, existences, and the power involved in communication and transaction.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on how wild almond trees planted as part of Van Riebeeck's Hedge were associated with material, symbolic and political meanings, how these impacted on the lives of the trees, and how the trees themselves can be understood as historical actors and witnesses of fencing histories.

Paper long abstract:

Histories of fencing are predominantly told as histories of humans who built or were segregated by them. They sometimes include animals but largely ignored plants. Against this trend this paper focuses on vegetal histories of fencing. It argues for reconsidering Van Riebeeck's Hedge, often called southern Africa's oldest colonial fence, as a site of multispecies makings and in particular plant histories of fencing. In 1660, Jan van Riebeeck ordered the fencing of the land occupied by the VOC at the Cape. This fence included a hedge of wild almond trees with characteristically large intertwined branches. The planted trees likely didn't grow fast enough but their symbolic impact outgrew their material impact. When the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden was established in 1913, remnants of the hedge within the garden became subjected to "monumental gardening". The trees were pruned and cleared of encroaching "exotic" plants. In 1936, the hedge became a national monument and during apartheid era the state deployed it for political spectacles. To celebrate its tercentenary, Kirstenbosch distributed young trees for replanting along the original fence's line. Trees of the original hedge as well as such planted in 1960 have continued to grow to this day. They have numerous functions, ranging from loved or despised monument to popular jungle gym. Some trees also grew without human interference. The paper discusses how the changing material, symbolic and political meanings impacted on trees' lives and how the trees themselves can be understood as actors and witnesses of fencing histories.

Paper short abstract:

When researchers and farmers in South Africa stand next to a fence and talk about the differences on each side, what sorts of topics are discussed? How might this situation offer evidence about theorizing the way in which the 'moral order' is constituted?

Paper long abstract:

Among the many things that fences do - or at least facilitate - one characteristic feature is that they constitute a moral order, creating an in and an out. These power relations are both visual and material (Miescher), which I take as a starting point to suggest a reading of the 'fence line archive' as a performance of the moral order. What I mean by this is a collection and circulation of photographs among a network of ecologists in South Africa used to make claims over space. These images of 'fences-line contrasts' "constitute arguments in their own right" (Hongslo, 2015 p.339). On one side of the fence there is grass. On the other side there is none. Therefore, simply pointing and saying "there is a difference in the fence" can index good land management or poor land management. My contribution to this discussion is to re-engineer a translation process by tracing the images of fences that appear in journals and reports down to a situation in which they are enacted. This situation takes place within a Nature Reserve in South Africa where researchers and farmers stand next to a fence and talk about nature conservation and what farmer ought to do. This talk offers an occasion to analyze the 'fence' as a conduit of the moral order (Jayyusi, 1984) particularly in regard to what exist inside of nature, and that which is said to exist outside of it.

Paper short abstract:

In Musina, South Africa's northernmost town bordering Zimbabwe, the partial transformation from mining to border economy has contributed to further social differentiation amongst black residents of which new rising private fences are a manifestation.

Paper long abstract:

While historical analyses of the role of fences in ordering Southern African societies revolve around barbed-wire confinement during colonial warfare and forceful enclosure ushering in the epochal dispossession of rural resources, little scholarly attention is given to the meaning of fences in contemporary urban contexts. In South Africa, the ubiquity of fences and their forthright aesthetics can be attributed to the interrelations between a generalized fear of crime-induced loss and influential sectors of the economy putting high premiums on insuring and securing under-fenced private property. More specifically, the high standards of investment in professional fencing and its complementary services ("armed response") can be interpreted as an expression of a persistent perception of "swart gevaar" in view of the still gaping inequalities along racialized fault lines and its twin-phenomenon of an economic redistribution occurring as frequent burglary. Within black Musina, bordering Zimbabwe, fences tell yet another story: The switch from a high-voltage electrified frontline to a friendly interstate boundary coincides with a shift from copper to diamond mining and has created a border economy with salaried and informal opportunities leading to further social differentiation amongst black inhabitants of the area. Thus, ironically, the negotiated porosity of the new border regime has contributed to the rise of fancy fences around some households of former mineworkers, often merely erected as markers of wealth and social distinction. This paper, based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, contributes to the uprooting of the flawed narrative of unity and solidarity in the "kasie" (Dickinson 2015).

Paper short abstract:

The paper aims at synthesising the history of fencing in Southern Africa. It argues that the various technologies and practices of fencing since the late 19th century contributed to the making of a specific imperial space marked by large-scale fencing, the logics of military, police and settler besiegement.

Paper long abstract:

Fences played a particular and important role in South African and Namibian history. The advent of industrially produced wire enabled large scale fencing and stood at the beginning of a distinctive transformation of the South Africa landscape since the late 19th century. Starting in the Eastern Cape comprehensive fencing, i.e. the systematic fencing of farm boundaries, gradually spread to the West and North until South Africa's 'white' farming area became a uninterrupted grid of fenced-in settler farms stretching from the Cape up to central Namibia. The technology of fencing was not limited to the agricultural sector alone in South Africa. Fencing also has a long tradition of explicit military and police control with, for instance, large scale fencing of borders, fencing along railway lines and fencing in urban areas. South Africa, one might argue, has a specific history and tradition of fencing resulting in a particular spatial practice and experience that characterises its imperial space. So far this history has mainly been discussed in a series of different case studies each of which focused on particular applications and practices of fencing. By drawing from these cases studies the paper aims towards synthesising the dynamics of fencing from the late 19th century to the collapse of apartheid rule.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers jackal-proof fencing in Namibia as a site of confluence between efforts to solve environmental questions regarding the ecological feasibility sheep of farming in arid districts and efforts to address labour uncertainty caused by genocide and “self-peasantisation.”

Paper long abstract:

The Afrikaans word for vermin is ongedierte: translating to "non-animal", or a de-animalised creature. In Southern Namibia, killing jackals (the main type of vermin in the region) was thought of not through imperial game hunting language and practice. In fact, archival references to vermin destruction rarely uses Afrikaans phrases such as jag (hunt), but rather uitroei (exterminate) or bestryding (combat). Unlike in game hunting, jackal eradication privileges ends over means. In Namibia, methods deemed illegal in Game Laws, such as traps, poisons, pitfalls, coursing with hounds, were common methods used to control vermin.

This paper explores the history of jackal eradication in Southern Namibia, noting how the colonial and apartheid states sought to include vermin control as part of an array of subsidies intended to uplift and stabilise the white sheep farming community. Vermin demographics were finally brought under control with increased subsidies towards the creation of jackal-proof fencing in the early 1950s. Jackal-proofing farms not only protected small-stock against predation, but also addressed labour demand by reducing the need for shepherds. I show that jackal-proof fencing is therefore a site of confluence between efforts to solve environmental questions regarding the ecological feasibility of sheep farming in arid districts and efforts to address labour uncertainty caused by genocide and "self-peasantisation." Jackal-proofing, however, revealed that efforts to control complex ecologies for the sake of Ovine Capitalism were ill-founded. Other "vermin" such as hares and rock hyrax, ordinarily the prey of jackals, descended upon jackal-proofed districts and reduced veld conditions to deplorable states.