Crafting Identities in Peripheral and Transnational Spaces of Southeast Africa

"Crafting Identities in Peripheral and Transnational Spaces of Southeast Africa"

The setting for this paper is the rural and urban space of central Mozambique and eastern Zimbabwe inhabited by the Ndau who speak a dialect of Shona. In this corner of southeast Africa, the Ndau have crafted a cultural identity over time on the margins. Living in an outlying region far from the national capitals of Harare, Zimbabwe and Maputo, Mozambique, they claim that the government of each country overlooks their needs and concerns. Their rural spaces are, however, linked to secondary cities and towns in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.  Despite the solidification of rural-urban connections in the twentieth century, the Ndau continue to draw on a discourse of hardship and perseverance as a peripheral group far from centers. In this paper I will examine the stories told by the Ndau that reflect their precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial experiences living between borders in a space that separates nations and, at times, people.  These narratives were collected during fieldwork in Zimbabwe and Mozambique that included oral interviews and archival research, and I also draw on recent newspapers articles that address the political and cultural aspects of “being” Ndau to enhance my analysis. Geography places the Ndau at the periphery, but their growing urban presence in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and even South Africa (through migration over time) threatens to dismantle this construct. My focus is on questions of what it means to be Ndau in relation to ideas about the center, the periphery, and the nation over time.