Chisumbanje energy driven agricultural investment and transforming kinship relations in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The Chisumbanje Ethanol Project is a national project of great strategic importance where ethanol is produced from sugar cane. The establishment of the project has brought about both social advantages and challenges to the community. This article seeks to strike a balance between the returns and challenges that the plant has brought to the community. It explores the transforming kinship and/or social relations in a social community of largely Ndau speaking people. While the plant has instigated business boom, there is very little examination of how it has or not transformed social relations. As communities experience and see development through lens of “buildings, roads, new companies, products and ways of life”, how reach these are to the Ndau people are matters that require in-depth study. While social giving in the form of schools and clinics, water and other provisions, is good for business relations, this does not provide or reveal the community dynamics necessary for pro-people economic foundations. There is no doubt that a development such as the Chisumbanje plant, will have a range of services benefits, with employment and other economic derivations from the value chain being key. This article, further explores the kinship dynamics and how they play out in dialogue and negotiations over land compensation, relocations, “forced or negotiated” downsizing of land, and the incorporation into shop floor types of jobs, with perhaps weak contracts. The idea, in this paper is to hear from the ordinary people their stories in terms of relations with the company, and new players within the space they culturally called their own. Such stories, more importantly will tell us their own relations, and how they have negotiated with the company and where they stand as a community and as families. But perhaps, the economic investment is bringing back home the Ndau diasporas to live with their own. Yet, questions remain whether such patterns exist, how this changes family relations, and whether such retreat back to the roots is leading to cohesive kinship and a better vision for the Ndau people of Chipinge. Yet, the Ndau will never be alone in that space they call home, as new people come in and other still go out. So what does this mean for livelihoods of the ordinary Ndau?