Reconstructing history, grounding claims to space: history, memory, and displacement in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Abstract

The recent creation of Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP) and its integration into the larger Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) promise to effect profound political, social, and ecological changes. These range from removing sections of the international border fence and restocking wildlife in the LNP to the planned relocation of several thousand people living within the park. These transformations have inspired complex, conflicting excavations of the past. This paper investigates how history and memory are deployed as strategic political resources to justify competing claims to space, in this case the rural village of Massingir Velho slated for relocation and the larger GLTP/LNP. Official GLTP history strategically rationalizes the creation of a transnational park that is rich in wildlife and tourist opportunities and a vehicle for addressing multiple past violences. Residents of Massingir Velho who are critical of the planned relocation reconstruct a strikingly different history. They draw on intimate place-based and lived memories of two prior displacements to question the legitimacy of the current round of relocation. In short, historical excavations and reconstructions ground claims to space to both reinvent it, for example in the form of a transfrontier park, and to contest such spatial transformations. The mobilization of history, in short, actively shapes present and future spaces and possibilities.