Cadastral politics: The making of community-based resource management in Zimbabwe and Mozambique

Projects promoting community-based management of natural resources frequent ly encourage local smallholders to share flora, fauna, or land forms with s tate agencies and/or private companies. Ideals of common property and moral economy have inspired this agenda and helped spread it globally. In Southe rn Africa, however, the general model of shared landscapes has collided wit h a bitter history of white colonization and land grabbing. This article re counts the rise and fall of one CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Program me for Indigenous Resources) project in eastern Zimbabwe. There, cadastral politics - struggles over the bounding and control of land - overwhelmed ne gotiations for joint management and eco-tourism. Across the border, in Moza mbique, community-based resource management has engaged with cadastral poli tics in a more fruitful fashion. In the midst of latter-day Afrikaner colon ization, this project mapped smallholders' claims to land. Thus, the Zimbab wean project ignored territorial conflict and ultimately succumbed to it. T he Mozambican project jumped into the fray, with some success. On past or c urrent settler frontiers, community-based management may learn from this le sson: dispense with an ideology of sharing and join the rough-and-tumble of cadastral politics.