Deborah James, Gaining Ground? ‘Rights’ and ‘property’ in South African land reform. New York NY: Routledge-Cavendish (pb $57.95 – 978 0 415 42031 0). 2007, 304 pp.

Peter Geschiere, Perils of Belonging: autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago IL and London: University of Chicago Press (hb $60 – 978 0 226 28964 9; pb $22 – 978 0 226 28965 6). 2009, 304 pp.

Laura Mitchell, Belongings: property, family and identity in colonial South Africa (an exploration of frontiers, 1725 – c. 1830). New York NY: Columbia University Press (hb $60 – 978 0 231 14252 6). 2009, 252 pp.

There has been a recent upsurge in writings about migration, belonging, land and attachment in Africa. These authors have largely focused on autochthony and the insider-outsider nexus. They have also revealed the salience of land, graves, old homes and other landscape features in the construction and negotiation of belonging by communities. As scholars are beginning to realize the inadequacies of ethnic identity as a category of analysis, there has been a move towards the idea of belonging. Identity presumes that someone's ‘category’ is relatively fixed in spite of the possibilities of change. Belonging, however, is much more fluid and allows people to use all sorts of languages and practices to articulate their claims. These three books, using different but related approaches, explore the various ways in which different African communities have articulated their belonging through space and time; they also consider how belonging is contested and negotiated in different contexts. The major themes are migration, frontier politics, land restitution and belonging itself.

In Perils of Belonging, Peter Geschiere analyses the concept of autochthony and how its fluidity and complexity impact on the negotiation of belonging in Africa and Europe. Geschiere traces the historical origins of autochthony, or being ‘born from the soil’, and how it has been used in different contexts, especially by politicians in a bid to exclude those labelled outsiders or allogènes. As he argues, each time the question of belonging is raised, it leads to exclusion. Hence belonging in Africa often invokes exclusionary discourses which define who is an insider and who is an outsider. The study analyses the re-emerging concept of autochthony and its interface with belonging. Geschiere is more concerned with the centrality and fluidity of the concept of autochthony, whose interface with belonging has created complex but fertile grounds for inclusion and exclusion within a nation state: so-called autochthons versus allogènes, or first-comers versus late-comers. Such tensions are often a result of migration into towns and the resultant competition for resources and power between the autochthons and those labelled outsiders. These contestations of belonging, which often turn violent, are what Geschiere refers to as the ‘perils of belonging’.

In a very succinct way, Geschiere's study critiques the concept of globalization and its assumption that the world is increasingly becoming a global village. Citing cases from Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire as well as Europe, he exposes the globalization myth: whilst people are preaching globalization, the very same world is characterized by increasingly entrenched forms of communalism that are celebrating differences and exclusion. This has resulted in the creation of a world dominated by a ‘global conjecture of belonging’ in which religion and other variables are playing a crucial role as symbols. This, in essence, has led to the increased importance of autochthony and what Geschiere calls the ‘glocalization’ of the world. Though he acknowledges the existence of other forms of belonging, he is quick to point out that autochthony remains the most important form in Africa due to its links to land, graves and the idea of being a first-comer. Land has remained at the centre of contestations over autochthony as people fight over land rights and the privileges that come with being an original. The epilogue of the book is thus aptly titled, ‘Can the land lie?’ which refers to the appeal to the soil and to being its first-comer in contestations over belonging (Geschiere Reference Shipton2009: 12). The salience of autochthony in Geschiere's study needs to be further problematized, however, in the light of the existence of other forms of belonging. He acknowledges this need, and admits that religious belonging is becoming as important as autochthony (ibid.: 2). For example, Islam as a religion and a way of life engenders new notions of belonging for its converts. According to van Santen, ‘in the case of the Mafa in North Cameroon, as soon as converts have “started to pray” they change their name, dress in a different way, adopt another language, take on other praying habits, and practise other marriage rituals and bride price exchanges, follow other economic occupations and new inheritance systems’ (1998: 407).

Similarly, though working on a different period, Laura Mitchell explores the politics of belonging in colonial South Africa: her focus is property, family and identity on the frontier. Her central example is how belonging was negotiated on the Cedarberg frontier in colonial South Africa, one of many such frontier communities. Central to this book is the idea of an African frontier as a category of analysis (see Kopytoff 1987). Like belonging, the frontier is a flexible category of analysis which allows negotiation and contestation. It is ‘both something fixed and porous, a region simultaneously claimed and fought over, a moment that is both fixable in time and yet open-ended’ (Mitchell 2009: 17). It is a region which offers opportunities to various groups of people, hence the need for communities to negotiate or to fight for space within it. Violent conflicts over land in Cedarberg often erupted as the frontiersmen, using the myth of an ‘empty’ interior, continued to encroach into areas ‘belonging’ to the autochthons. As a colonial frontier, the Cedarberg was the site of two major struggles, one for the control of land and another over the contours of identity (ibid.: 29).

Mitchell begins her study by examining the interactions of the San, Khoikhoi and white settler communities in the area around the Oliphants River, and the contestations over land and belonging that resulted. According to Mitchell, ‘beginning with the river also postpones the question of whose version of the frontier should take priority. Instead of indigenes, or second-comers, or those involuntarily transported, we focus on the primacy of location and resources’ (ibid.: 5). She illustrates the centrality of land in contestations over belonging on the frontier. As she argues, land was ‘crucial not only as a means of subsistence, but also as a component of identity for Khoisan and settler communities’ (ibid.: 29). The alienation of land by the settlers and the futile resistance by the autochthons thus reveals the complex nature of negotiation of belonging between the powerful late-comers and the less powerful autochthons. Mitchell concludes that ‘ultimately frontier conquest took shape in the nexus between belonging and belongings’ (ibid.: 74). Frontier conquest was thus about displacement, land alienation and renegotiation of belonging. However, probably quite inevitably, Mitchell ends up largely representing the conquests of the frontiersmen at the expense of the resistance of the autochthons who inhabited the ‘empty interior’.

Part 3 of Mitchell's book focuses on family histories and explores how kin-based networks helped in linking settler farms to one another and in the creation of a settler community on the Cedarberg frontier. One of her greatest strengths here is the use of a wide range of sources, with a different selection in each of the four chapters. As she argues, ‘each chapter is also a methodological essay that plumbs the possibilities of a particular documentary source’ (ibid.: 73) – including patrilineal genealogies, estate inventories, auction rosters and criminal records. She uses sources which link archaeology, archival sources and family histories. Such expertise makes her Cedarberg story a very valuable study of frontier dynamics and a demonstration of the possibility of recovering subaltern voices. The depth of reference afforded by online publishing makes the e-version even richer than the book is in print.

Deborah James's study analyses the complexities of land tenure, land redistribution and restitution in post-apartheid South Africa. The study is strengthened by the fact that, unlike the Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe, South Africa has a clear restitution policy enshrined in its constitution. James applauds restitution as a good policy but sees the challenge as coming from implementation. The study juxtaposes the ‘market-driven’ policy of land reform and the ‘rights-based’ emphasis on restitution. Her main focus is on community struggles over return to ancestral lands alienated during the colonial period. Such historical claims are emboldened by the South African land restitution policy. This study helps scholars to analyse other land reform programmes, like Zimbabwe's, where land reform has focused solely on land redistribution without any recourse to restitution. Whilst James seemingly celebrates the triumph of the policy of land restitution in the case of the Mpumalanga area, she warns us against repeating the mistakes made in Zimbabwe's land reform. The Zimbabwean case is depicted simply as a classic case of ‘how not to do land reform’. The South African exercise, in contrast, was undertaken on behalf of its claimants as well as in consultation with them (James 2007: 9).

James also explores the land/property and citizenship link, because land was central in denying the entitlements of a citizen in apartheid South Africa. As she puts it, ‘if land was seen as crucial in restoring citizenship, this was because it has earlier been central in denying the entitlements of the citizen’ (ibid.: 11). Similarly, Lentz has argued recently that ‘land and land rights play an important role in the politics of belonging in Africa due to the fact that rights to land are intimately tied to membership in specific communities’ (Lentz Reference Lentz, Chabal, Engel and de Haan2007: 37). James's research thus illustrates the salience of graves and former homes in claims to land and the negotiation of belonging in Africa. Attachment to such sites allows the Doornkop community to articulate their belonging and to reclaim their ancestral lands. The author still believes that no practical restitution can take place based on ‘indigenous rights’, because in South Africa they are based on ‘short occupancy’, ‘recent burials’ as well as ‘unlimited and infinite claims’ (James 2007: 16). As she puts it, ‘where stories of lives lived on the soil have been told or features of the landscape invoked to endorse claims to particular farms or clusters of territory, these tend to highlight moments in the experience of the claimants’ or tellers’ own childhoods or to emphasize the burial sites of their parents rather than stressing long-term occupancy of the land’ (ibid.: 16). It is quite evident that James's study seeks to show that restitution is easier for those people with titled land. ‘The most obvious beneficiaries of land reform’, she argues, ‘were to be former title-holding landowners who had been relocated to the homelands during apartheid's “Black Spots” removals. Their property rights have been clearer cut and rather easier to assert and retrieve through restitution than those of other claimants’ (ibid.: 8). Her case study seems to suggest that it is only people with traceable claims to ancestral lands who can easily be restituted. This provides challenges to the majority of communities across the continent who make historical claims to land which are not backed by any legal documents such as title deeds. However, Mazarire's study (2008) of Chishanga in Zimbabwe shows the possibility of land restitution based on historical claims.

The same theme is also pursued by Geschiere, who argues that graves are an important element in Africans’ construction of belonging. According to Geschiere and Nyamnjoh, many Cameroonians consider burial locations as a very important criterion for establishing belonging (Geschiere and Nyamnjoh 2000: 435). In the end, the funeral becomes the final test. As Geschiere puts it, ‘in the new political order, proving one's autochthony has come to have supreme importance, and there is no better way to do this than through elaborate funeral rituals “back home”. The consequence is a rather macabre traffic of bodies: people digging up their father's body and burying it in a different site in order to fortify their claims to belong there’ (ibid.: 56). In a recent publication, Chabal asserts that burials reinforce a collective sense of belonging and strengthen an individual's attachment to the community. As he argues, ‘the link to the ancestors, wherever they are buried, is an integral part of the meaning of origin, and of the texture of identity, which cannot be disregarded’ (Chabal Reference Chabal2009: 29). Autochthony can thus be linked to attachment to a physical place which draws its meaning from the presence of ancestral graves. This resonates with Shipton's arguments about land and ideologies of attachment among the Luo in Kenya. For Shipton, ‘graves are the symbolic focal points of human attachments to place: the living and dead, the social and the material, all connect here’ (2009: 20).

The three books reviewed here speak to each other in many ways and address broadly similar themes. They provide various trajectories in the politics of belonging in Africa. Particularly, they provide valuable insights into how ideologies of attachment and belonging intersect with such issues as migration, land tenure, restitution and frontier dynamics. Increasingly, contestations over land and belonging have become key factors in Africa and the world at large, as demonstrated by Geschiere's Perils of Belonging. Though dealing with different historical periods and different cases, this set of books is critical in understanding conflicts over land and other forms of resources in Africa, as well as the centrality of autochthony in a seemingly globalizing world. It becomes evident that belonging transcends social construction to include people's physical relationship with the landscape and with materials. Hence, though belonging is a social construct, the materiality of objects and landscape also matters. However, all these metaphors of belonging are subject to contestations. The three books go a long way in charting new paths in the study of migrations, autochthony and the politics of belonging in Africa. Together with other works, such as Shipton's Mortgaging the Ancestors, they represent a growing corpus that explores this field. Any scholar of African studies interested in the imbrications of land and belonging will wish to engage with them.