Creation of the Limpopo National Park and Population Resettlement, Participatory Processes? A Subsidy for Understanding Compulsory Migrations

Abstract

The present work is a case study, which analyses the participation of communities in the creation of Limpopo National Park (LNP) in 2001 and the consequent population resettlement. The research was carried out in a qualitative approach using a descriptive analysis of the data collected between 2011 and 2015 in the communities covered by the resettlement, and managers of the resettlement program. The study reveals that in the creation of the LNP, the character of participation was summarized in the information to communities residing in the park by the Mozambican government and its partners. Resettlement in the LNP is a process of forced deterritorialization-reterritorialization were the government and its partners overtaking the communities; using tactics such as animal restocking of the park, consultations that serve to legitimize the process as having been participatory, being in fact a pseudo-participation. The communities of Nanguene, Makavene and Massingir-Velho, already resettled are in a complex and difficult process of reterritorialization, as there was no effective compensation of the total cost for property losses, because the conditions in the resettled area are not equivalent and nor advantageous in relation to the old places. Continuing this scenario, a continuous process of forced resettlement for the communities still in the park is envisioned.