The Variable Geometry of Conflicts within a Marginalised Peasantry

This article analyses conflicts within a peasantry that has lived through a violent history (colonial domination, liberation war, Gukurahundi massacres, land grabbing). The aim is to understand this peasantry in terms of its heterogeneous identities and ambivalent relationship with the State (resistances, quests for recognition). Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, the study shows how the category of “marginalised minority” embraces shifting and changing forms that are (re)defined according to scale and time. We argue that, to better understand why certain individuals/groups within this peasant community assert or resist particular identities, attention must be paid to the denial of recognition and the experience of injustice.