CLEAR WATERS AND MUDDIED HISTORIES - ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY AND THE POLITICS OF COMMUNITY IN ZIMBABWE EASTERN HIGHLANDS

This article examines competing struggles over the demarcation, implem entation and multiple meanings of the proposed Kaerezi River Protected Area in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands. It focuses on the micro-politic s,within a state-administered resettlement scheme bordering Nyanga Nat ional Park, whose 1987 extension precipitated the conflicts. Counterin g a tendency within environmental history to assume a monolithic 'stat e' in opposition to art undifferentiated 'community', the analysis emp hasises shifting political alliances within, among and between state r epresentatives and rural actors. Competing agendas among various minis tries within the Zimbabwean government have encountered the salient di fferences of gender, generation, class, education and 'traditional' au thority in Kaerezi, The analysis attends to grounded livelihood practi ces as well as the cultural idioms and historical resonances that affi x particular meanings to the landscape and environmental resources. In particular, resettlement farmers deployed social memories of colonial evictions from the same property, articulated through the idiom of 's uffering for territory', to claim land rights in the 1990s. Competing cultural constructions of the landscape itself-a rainmaking territory, a chieftainship, a former colonial ranch and a resettlement scheme-ha ve figured prominently in post-colonial conservation politics. Cultura l politics-debates over the meaning and practice of 'custom' and 'trad ition' as well as legitimate authority-are foregrounded to demonstrate the simultaneity of symbolic and material struggles over resources. I n turn, these cultural contestations have animated the contours of env ironmental conflicts as well as the processes shaping the political bo undaries of 'community' membership and resource rights.