Please let us know if there are any broken links or outdated content on this page
Click here to reportPlease let us know if there are any broken links or outdated content on this page
This paper comprises a critical description of how different categories of people with ties to Mapungubwe express their attachments to place through affective and other experiences, as well as an analysis of the politics of belonging that often arises in the context of post-apartheid land claims. Belonging has been discussed in contexts such as migration, nationalism, and affective attachment to places that we call home. Belonging in place emanates from an embodied experience of and an attachment to place. In the context of post-apartheid land claims, discussions around belonging are taken a step further to include a discussion around autochthony, that is, who the original owners of Mapungubwe are, with the descendant groups explicitly asserting their ownership of Mapungubwe. These expressions of territorial belonging are therefore used to claim rights to resources, as is the case at national and global levels. In this chapter, I demonstrate that the various social groups that currently interact with and have ties to Mapungubwe do so because they are attached to Mapungubwe in various ways.