Accumulation, extractivism and dispossession in contemporary Zimbabwe

SCIS invites you to a seminar titled Accumulation, extractivism and dispossession in contemporary Zimbabwe by Dr Mbuso Moyo on 29 May '25, 2:30 - 14:00 (SAST)

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a hybrid seminar by Dr Mbuso Moyo titled Accumulation, extractivism and dispossession in contemporary Zimbabwe. The session will take place on 29 May 2025, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST). 

Abstract:
Extractivism is often a violent process. Majority of the times it is marked by unfair labour practices, environmental degradation due to crude open cast mining methods, desecration of graves, and a general disinterest towards social justice and corporate social investment. The present intervention focuses on
extractivism in contemporary Zimbabwe. The article focuses on the questions: How, and why, does Chinese extractivism in Zimbabwe embody the continuation of, ‘accumulation by dispossession’ and ‘extractivist imperialism’? How does extractivism configure rural livelihoods and with what implications for broad based resource ownership? Evidence from rural Zimbabwe reveals that, in collusion with Zimbabwe’s ruling elite, Chinese mining capital is currently the preeminent land dispossessor in Dinde, a coal mining host community in Hwange district, Matabeleland North province of Zimbabwe. Land-dependent modes of production by the local Tonga and Nambya people are sharply curtailed. In addition, this accentuates the burgeoning of the reserve army and the immiseration of the labour class. By and large, such processes demonstrate how capital has regained its foothold in contemporary Zimbabwe four decades after independence.

About the speaker:
Dr Mbuso Moyo is a post-doctoral fellow in the Climate and Inequality programme at SCIS. He holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Johannesburg, on youth unemployment, aspirations, and development in the Royal Bafokeng Nation, a ‘traditional community’ that has carved for itself
a lofty position as a ‘successful’ platinum mining community in South Africa’s North West province. His work interrogates the political economy of mining, extractivist accumulation and the various modes of popular resistance it has engendered in coal, copper, platinum, and lithium mining host communities
in the global South in general and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Moyo’s work amplifies the point that mining operations undermine rural communities’ access to, and rights over, land resulting in land enclosures

Register here

Add event to calendar