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The Mutirikwi river was dammed in the early 1960s to make Zimbabwe's second largest lake. This was a key moment in the Europeanisation of Mutirikwi's landscapes, which had begun with colonial land appropriations in the 1890s. But African landscapes were not obliterated by the dam. They remained active and affective. At independence in 1980, local clans reasserted ancestral land claims in a wave ofsquatting around Lake Mutirikwi. They were soon evicted as the new government asserted control over the remaking of Mutirikwi's landscapes. Amid fast-track land reform in the 2000s, the same people returned again to reclaim the land. Many returned to the graves and ruins of past lives forged in the very substance of the soil, and even incoming war veterans and new farmers appealed to autochthonous knowledge to make safe their resettlements.
This book explores those reoccupations and the complex contests over landscape, water and belonging they provoked. The 2000s may have heralded a long-delayed re-Africanisation of Lake Mutirikwi, but just as African presence had survived the dam, so white presence remains active and affective through Rhodesian-era discourses, place-names and the materialities of ruined farms, contour ridging and old irrigation schemes.
Through lenses focused on the political materialities of water and land, this book reveals how the remaking of Mutirikwi's landscapes has always been deeply entangled with changing strategies of colonial and postcolonial statecraft. It highlights how the traces of different pasts intertwine in contemporary politics through the active, enduring yet emergent, forms and substances of landscape.

Joost Fontein is Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.

Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Economic development --- Natural resources --- Land use --- Land reform --- Land tenure --- #SBIB:39A4 --- #SBIB:39A73 --- Agrarian tenure --- Feudal tenure --- Freehold --- Land ownership --- Land question --- Landownership --- Tenure of land --- Land use, Rural --- Real property --- Land, Nationalization of --- Landowners --- Serfdom --- Agrarian reform --- Economic policy --- Social policy --- Agriculture and state --- Land --- Land utilization --- Use of land --- Utilization of land --- Economics --- Land cover --- Landscape assessment --- NIMBY syndrome --- National resources --- Resources, Natural --- Resource-based communities --- Resource curse --- Development, Economic --- Economic growth --- Growth, Economic --- Statics and dynamics (Social sciences) --- Development economics --- Social aspects --- Management --- History --- Toegepaste antropologie --- Etnografie: Afrika --- Economic aspects --- History. --- Management. --- Zimbabwe. --- Zimbabwe --- An tSiombáib --- Cimbabue --- Dēmokratia tēs Zimpampoue --- Government of Zimbabwe --- Jinbabue --- Poblachd Shiombabue --- Repubblica dello Zimbabwe --- Republic of Zimbabwe --- República de Zimbabue --- Republika Zimbabve --- Simbabve --- Simbabwe --- Siombabue --- Southern Rhodesia --- Yn Çhimbabwe --- Zimbabhue --- Zimbabua --- Zimbabue --- Zimbabvah --- Zimbabve --- Zimbabṿeh --- Zimbabves Republika --- Zīmbābvih --- Zimbabvo --- Zimbabweh --- Zimpampoue

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National wealth --- Economic geography --- Zimbabwe