Islands and autochthons

Abstract

This article, the first in a two-part series, examines the ramifications of the complex relationships between race and space for definitions of the nation and national identity in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. Most generally, the workings of race and space helped polarize Rhodesia and Zimbabwe between what was set up as ‘white’ and ‘black’, and limit the struggle for power and claims on belonging to those two poles. Racial identity was inscribed into spatial sensibilities and organization so that white space (the city) functioned as a series of islands and black space (the countryside) activated organic assertions of autochthony. More specifically, race and space informed the creation of an intermediate racial category, ‘Coloured’, with no substantive claim to a ‘real’ or ‘full’ identity and with no authoritative claim to the physical soil of the country.