Abstract
A violent eviction in a remote northwestern corner of Zimbabwe in late 1997 provides a prism through which to explore the changing dynamics of competition over space, power and production in Zimbabwe's agrarian margins, where con?ict over wildlife and agriculture has intensi?ed and the state has become a key player. The article argues that in its quest to (re)gain control over one such location, the state has had to construct it as space of violence in order to de‐civilize it and reinvent it as a wilderness zone. The ‘day of burning’ is taken not only as a signi?er of the violent potential of such competition, but also as a metaphor for the state's increasing loss of legitimacy in the margins: that is, the ‘burning away’ of any residue of illusion about the state as either the democratic embodiment of the people's will or compassionate provider of services and security.
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