Forced displacement: critical lessons in the protracted aftermath of a flood disaster

Abstract

Forced displacement and resettlement is a pervasive challenge being contemplated across the social sciences. Scholarly literature, however, often fails to engage complexities of power in understanding socio-environmental interactions in resettlement processes. Addressing Zimbabwe’s Tokwe-Mukosi flood disaster resettlement, we explore hegemonic uses of state power during the pre- and post-flood induced resettlement processes. We examine how state power exercised through local government, financial, and security institutions impacts community vulnerabilities during forced resettlement processes, while furthering capitalist agendas, drawing insights from analysing narratives between 2010 and 2021. Concerns abound that multiple ministries, the police, and the army undermined displaced people’s resilience, including through inadequate compensation, with state institutions neglecting displaced communities during encampment by inadequately meeting physical security, health, educational, and livestock production needs. We explore how forcibly resettling encamped households to a disputed location is not only an ongoing perceived injustice regionally but also a continuing reference point in resettlement discussions countrywide, reflecting concerns that land use and economic reconfigurations in resettlement can undermine subsistence livelihoods while privileging certain values and interests over others. Policy lessons highlight the need for reviewing disaster management legislation, developing compensation guidelines and reviewing encampment practices. Analytically, lessons point to how state power may be studied in relation to perspectives on the destruction of flood survivors’ connections to place, people and livelihoods, underscoring the critical need for theorising the relationships between power dynamics and diverse experiences around displacement.

Flood hazard management in a multiple hazard context: a systematic review of flood hazard management during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa

“…Disaster damage is done by restricting settlements in flood-prone areas and investing in dikes in South Africa [ 35 ]. The government was said to compensate displaced people with land and cash payments in South Africa [ 24 ].…”

Death and the sociocultural dimensions of forced relocations: experiences from the Tugwi-Mukosi displacement in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe

“…The villagers were evacuated without support structures, food, shelter or other necessities, albeit under serious resistance from the villagers (UNDP 2015). More than 3 000 families were displaced by the rain-initiated floods, with a total of close to 50 000 villagers removed from their homes to make way for the dam (Mucherera and Spiegel 2021).…”

“…But the area that was marked for the resettlement did not have any social amenities. Actual construction of the dam began even before all affected people had been moved and the majority was yet to receive its financial compensation (Hove 2016;Mucherera and Spiegel 2021). Hence, when the dam flooded unexpectedly because of the high rains, people had to be moved forcibly to a transit camp in Chingwizi area, where they stayed until the government started a slow process of resettlement.…”

“…Even people considered not in immediate danger by the flooding were evacuated. To complicate matters, the displaced were instructed to build their own temporary shelters at their newly parcelled plots at the Chingwizi resettlement site, as the government anticipated they would have to move a second time because of contestations over the land at Chingwizi (Mucherera and Spiegel 2021). Considering this lack of a clear resettlement pattern, this article considers the Tugwi-Mukosi displacement as a classic case of forced displacement: in Phase One and Phase Two, the process resembled resettlement; but when disaster struck, the process became one of forced displacement as people were obliged to move to the transit camp.…”

“…The emergency that developed culminated in the state uprooting people from their areas of origin in a haphazard manner. Though a man-made crisis, the displacement has forever altered the course of the lives of the displaced (Mucherera and Spiegel 2021). It is against this backdrop that we write as people affected, directly and indirectly, probing some crucial issues on how the disruptive nature of displacement has had major implications on the social and cultural values of the displaced.…”