Decades after independence and the end of apartheid, why have forest communities in Zimbabwe and South Africa not been able to recover the land and resource rights they lost under colonialism?  This lecture, based on my recent book, examines the politics of conservation in southern Africa through the lens of chronic liminality, a ‘state of in-betweenness’ or ‘waiting’, to explain the status quo in local people–state forest relationships and why progress has been so slow. Using the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve, the Gwayi Forest and Mafungabusi Forest as cases studies, it examines the consequences on people living in and around protected areas of neoliberal approaches to conservation and of the legacy of colonial property relations. The book asks why local communities have not engaged in collective or rebellious action against the government and how they have instead found themselves in a liminal position, caught between waiting for conditions to change and advancing their rights through violent action. It also asks why states have likewise pursued a politics of liminality and continue to prevaricate about whether to restore local rights or maintain the status quo around forest preserves. Overall, the book advances scholarship around conservation in Africa and other postcolonial regions by providing a different perspective on the continued marginalisation of local people and arguing for a need to rethink forest ownership, management and state relations.

Frank Matose is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Co-Director of the Environmental Humanities South Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His research interests are in environmental sociology with a particular focus on Southern Africa, placing emphasis on the intersection of local people, the state, capital, forest and resource conservation, and the political economy of protected areas. Interests in these areas are informed by intellectual projects around environmental governance, social justice, and commons in Africa. He is an active team member of the "Living Landcapes" Project.Matose is the author of the monograph titled Politics of Chronic Liminality: Forests and the power of the marginalised in Southern Africa (University of Arizone Press, forthcoming) and the edited volume titled The violence of conservation in Africa: State, militarisation and alternatives (with Maano Ramutsindela and Tafadzwa Mushonga, Edward Elgar Publishing).