Land Use of Angolan Immigrants in Western Zambia: Rethinking the Autonomy and Coexistence of Self-settled Refugee Communities in Host Countries

Abstract

When studying self-settled refugees in Africa, driven by war from rural villages into a host country and losing property in the process, there has been an assumption that after achieving self-sufficiency, the livelihood of these groups is stable. Though there are attempts to refer their livelihoods to identify solutions of refugee problems, this assumption has not been examined comprehensively in the light of political change at the macro level. The present study examines actual land use and livelihoods among self-settled refugee Angolan immigrants in Western Zambia in order to comprehensively clarify the dynamics involved in their reestablishment of an autonomous livelihood. The economy of this group depends on shifting cultivation in the woodlands of the Kalahari uplands and subsequent sale of crops. Because land use is limited by the traditional political system of Lozi people, who is the host in Western Zambia, integrated into the Zambian government’s land act, these immigrants have opened shifting cultivation fields from the western edge of the woodlands to the east. Land transactions have therefore followed prior occupation, with a tacit understanding that primary forests has been a source of intra-group competition. The autonomous land use of these self-settled refugees shows new methods of land acquisition which reinforce practical units of common social organization, has demonstrated the dynamics of reestablished livelihood in a flexible and practical manner, allowing them to coexist in a politically marginalized situation in the host country.