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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Home and Away: The Divided Lives of Mozambican Refugees in South
| Panel |
34. Post-apartheid: ethnographies of the South African transition
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| Paper ID | 509 |
| Author(s) |
Golooba-Mutebi, Fred
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The paper looks at self-settled Mozambican refugees in South Africa’s
north-eastern lowveld region, focusing on their past and present lives
in Mozambique and South Africa respectively. Using testimonies collected
over an 18-month period, it examines their lived experiences at ‘home’
in Mozambique before and during the civil war, and how they remember
them. It looks at their experiences of flight from war, re-settlement
and their attempts at acceptance as locals since they arrived in South
Africa, bringing together the experiences of violence and of place. In
examining the experience of place, it focuses on the refugees’ views
about their pre-refugee existence and on their lives as refugees in
South Africa, including relations with the immediate host community and
other sections of wider South African society. It shows that, whilst
they are physically in South Africa and have generally had no contact
with Mozambique since they fled, they remain intimately connected to,
and engage, at least mentally, with their country of origin. It examines
how all these experiences have shaped their views about life in South
Africa and how it compares with that in Mozambique, and their ideas
about the desirability and practicality of returning to Mozambique. In
doing so, it interrogates the presumption of a universal desire among
displaced persons to return ‘home’ and contributes to the debate on
place, displacement, identity and (the need for) repatriation.
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