MODERNITY AND ETHNICITY IN A FRONTIER SOCIETY - UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCE IN NORTHWESTERN ZIMBABWE

This article builds on Terence Ranger's pioneering work on Ndebele ide ntity through an exploration of the everyday politics of naming as it occurred in the context of forced evictions into the remote Shangani R eserve after World War Two. We argue that day to day interactions were critical in shaping the content of Ndebele identity. Evictees, whose communities and structures of leadership were systematically broken up by an administration intent on suppressing political activism, were n onetheless the principle agents in this process. They defined themselv es as modern and Ndebele, and sought to establish their superiority ov er communities they encountered in the Shangani by asserting the moral weight of a civilising mission, and drawing on notions of hierarchy d rawn from the nineteenth century Ndebele state. The colonial transform ation of pre-colonial identities took the form of reinscribing old nam es with new significance. These names, though often dating from the ni neteenth century and often 'tribal' in origin, conveyed ideas about st atus associated with twentieth century notions of modernity and primit iveness.