Displacement and placemaking amid conflict in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado: an ethnohistory study of the affinities between ethnicity and belonging among the Makonde and Makhuwa families

Abstract

Since 2017, conflict has erupted in Mozambique, spreading terror, violence and displacing millions of people from areas largely inhabited by two ethnic groups: Makonde and Makhuwa. For centuries, these groups have been distorted as ‘traditional enemies’, posing as key conflicting element of the current war. What prompted my questioning was the observation that thy are now entangled in a sort of ‘appeasement’ and ‘rapprochement’ within and around displacement and resettlement camps. This dissertation deploys Franz Boas’s historical particularism and employs an ethnographical approach to examine the experiences and narratives of displacement, and the role of ethnicity and ethnic boundaries in processes of re-encountering of place to dwell and belong, amid conflict. Altogether, ethnicity, social boundaries and home are a void in Mozambican’s contemporary conflict studies. This study changes the current state of art. It centres home [in conflict settings] as an often-contested profound concept and repository of identity, security and social memory. Home becomes an element that either fosters social cohesion or fuel of conflict, by establishing social boundaries, exclusionary and antagonistic identities. By this, the essay builds footprint of factors serving as powerful identity from where conflicts may arise or be intensified. The essay argues that, to survive displacement, lower-class Makonde and Amakhuwa peoples have produced two [ethnos] social phenomena. The first is a parallel process of dilation and stretching of ethnic boundaries. This phenomenon encompassed [re]creation and expansion of social networks through appropriation of space and new neighbouring practices, characterised by a sort of appeasement and rapprochement, in [what I call] ethno-mingled communities. This did not entail changes in concept and practice of home, as it continued to be a multilayered material concept. However, it entailed changes for its spatial manifestation (in place) and some elements of home. The second phenomenon is the emergence of [what I call] the ‘revolving door’ status of Others – encompassing displacement experience amounted leading to de facto ‘refoulement’.