State-making and community-based natural resource management: Cases of Vhimba CAMPFIRE Project (Zimbabwe) and the Chimanimani Transfrontier Conservation Area (Mozambique)

This research emphasizes community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as a basis for exploring the relationship between state-making and expert knowledge in southern Africa. It explores how construction and application of expert knowledge affects state-making, especially when the expert knowledge emphasizes public participation.; This study takes place in the southern African context comparing experiences in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. I focus first on two current CBNRM projects in Zimbabwe and Mozambique in an area along their border—Chimanimani—to examine whether these programs and the debates surrounding them are contributing to or inhibiting state-making processes. Second, this research examines and compares local level response to the projects and the debates surrounding the projects in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. In addition, this research examines practices similar to state-making at the local level by traditional leaders such as chiefs and headmen. Third, I examine the alignments that emerge from the implementation of these projects and the influence of these alignments on state-making in Chimanimani. Finally, I explore the implications of this analysis for CBNRM in Zimbabwe and Mozambique and more broadly in southern Africa. Essentially I argue against conventional wisdom of relying on pre-colonial forms of authority as a basis for CBNRM and stress critical re-evaluation of pre-colonial or indigenous systems of authority in communal areas as a basis for CBNRM, especially in states where these systems of authority have been under severe external pressures.