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How do people survive in Zimbabwe’s gold-mining districts, where violence, death, and cynicism are rampant? Join us for the first of the 2024 seminar series hosted by The Africa Institute, where Dr. Melusi Nkomo, a scholar from Princeton University, will share his findings from an ongoing ethnography of the precarious and violent lives of people in these areas. The seminar, titled “State Cynicism, Violence, Deaths and the (Im)possibility of Politics in a Zimbabwean mining town”, will take place on Tuesday, 23 January 2024 (12:00 noon to 02:00 pm), at The Africa Institute Auditorium (Location Map).
In the mines around the impoverished townships of Zimbabwe’s gold-mining city and district of Kwekwe in the country’s centre, the general population, and the youth in particular, face regular untimely deaths or near-death experiences. Several factors, including orchestrated or opportunistic violence/thuggery, decrepit and damaged infrastructure, mudslides, explosions, mining shaft collapses, pandemics of alcohol and drugs, poisoning, and the general fragility of life owing to illnesses, can be blamed for this. The origins, symptoms, and repercussions of precarious existence in these townships are always terrible, yet no longer surprising. This seminar examines the relationship between the state and society in areas characterized by regular loss of life and immense social suffering. It contends that these experiences create an environment that fosters a particularly cynical approach to politics by the state, as well as the occasional opportunistic exercise of state sovereignty. Equally, these experiences mediate the impossibility of a collective politics that can change the situation for the better for the largely impoverished and politically dejected poor communities. The seminar is based on a working paper on an ongoing ethnography of politics in Zimbabwe’s artisanal and small-scale mining regions.
Melusi Nkomo is an Associate Research Scholar at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University in the USA. He is an anthropologist with research interests in African politics, the African state, labour/work, and their intersection with cultural and social activities, particularly in extractive (mine) environments. From 2019 to 2023, he was on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Zürich (Political Geography). He was previously a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)-supported Visiting Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for African Studies. He earned a PhD in Anthropology and Sociology from The Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2018, an MA in Political Science from the University of Osnabrück in Germany in 2012, and a BSc in Social Work from the University of Zimbabwe in 2008. Nkomo’s most recent research is part of a larger SNSF-funded project called, Frontier Settlements: Territories of Artisan Mining Labor in Africa, which investigates the political, social, and network connections that allow extractive labour to become embedded in the local context, revealing the conditions under which extractive frontiers materialize in contexts where the extraction and commodification of natural resources are often highly contested. His most recent article examined how artisan and small-scale mining, as a pervasive socioeconomic and general way of life in Zimbabwe, is involved in political mobilization, strategies, and participation and is an essential force in party-state expansion and power consolidation. Part of his argument is that informal (sometimes unregulated) mining activities provide fertile ground for forming political identities and subjectivities that cannot be described simply in terms of class or liberal politics.
The seminar will be moderated by Grieve Chelwa, an Associate Professor of Political Economy at The Africa Institute.
Through these lectures and workshops, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.
The seminar will be in English.
The session is free and open to the public. Registration is mandatory, Click here to book your place.
How do people survive in Zimbabwe’s gold-mining districts, where violence, death, and cynicism are rampant? Join us for the first of the 2024 seminar series hosted by The Africa Institute, where Dr. Melusi Nkomo, a scholar from Princeton University, will share his findings from an ongoing ethnography of the precarious and violent lives of people in these areas. The seminar, titled “State Cynicism, Violence, Deaths and the (Im)possibility of Politics in a Zimbabwean mining town”, will take place on Tuesday, 23 January 2024 (12:00 noon to 02:00 pm), at The Africa Institute Auditorium (Location Map).
How do people survive in Zimbabwe’s gold-mining districts, where violence, death, and cynicism are rampant? Join us for the first of the 2024 seminar series hosted by The Africa Institute, where Dr. Melusi Nkomo, a scholar from Princeton University, will share his findings from an ongoing ethnography of the precarious and violent lives of people in these areas. The seminar, titled “State Cynicism, Violence, Deaths and the (Im)possibility of Politics in a Zimbabwean mining town”, will take place on Tuesday, 23 January 2024 (12:00 noon to 02:00 pm), at The Africa Institute Auditorium (Location Map).
In the mines around the impoverished townships of Zimbabwe’s gold-mining city and district of Kwekwe in the country’s centre, the general population, and the youth in particular, face regular untimely deaths or near-death experiences. Several factors, including orchestrated or opportunistic violence/thuggery, decrepit and damaged infrastructure, mudslides, explosions, mining shaft collapses, pandemics of alcohol and drugs, poisoning, and the general fragility of life owing to illnesses, can be blamed for this. The origins, symptoms, and repercussions of precarious existence in these townships are always terrible, yet no longer surprising. This seminar examines the relationship between the state and society in areas characterized by regular loss of life and immense social suffering. It contends that these experiences create an environment that fosters a particularly cynical approach to politics by the state, as well as the occasional opportunistic exercise of state sovereignty. Equally, these experiences mediate the impossibility of a collective politics that can change the situation for the better for the largely impoverished and politically dejected poor communities. The seminar is based on a working paper on an ongoing ethnography of politics in Zimbabwe’s artisanal and small-scale mining regions.
Melusi Nkomo is an Associate Research Scholar at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University in the USA. He is an anthropologist with research interests in African politics, the African state, labour/work, and their intersection with cultural and social activities, particularly in extractive (mine) environments. From 2019 to 2023, he was on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Zürich (Political Geography). He was previously a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)-supported Visiting Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for African Studies. He earned a PhD in Anthropology and Sociology from The Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2018, an MA in Political Science from the University of Osnabrück in Germany in 2012, and a BSc in Social Work from the University of Zimbabwe in 2008. Nkomo’s most recent research is part of a larger SNSF-funded project called, Frontier Settlements: Territories of Artisan Mining Labor in Africa, which investigates the political, social, and network connections that allow extractive labour to become embedded in the local context, revealing the conditions under which extractive frontiers materialize in contexts where the extraction and commodification of natural resources are often highly contested. His most recent article examined how artisan and small-scale mining, as a pervasive socioeconomic and general way of life in Zimbabwe, is involved in political mobilization, strategies, and participation and is an essential force in party-state expansion and power consolidation. Part of his argument is that informal (sometimes unregulated) mining activities provide fertile ground for forming political identities and subjectivities that cannot be described simply in terms of class or liberal politics.
The seminar will be moderated by Grieve Chelwa, an Associate Professor of Political Economy at The Africa Institute.
Through these lectures and workshops, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.
The seminar will be in English.
The session is free and open to the public. Registration is mandatory, Click here to book your place.
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