Social Impact Analysis through Landscape Perception in a History of Apartheid era Forced Resettlement between the Letaba and Levubu Rivers

The main objective of my research is to produce an understanding of the social impact of forced resettlement during apartheid in rural South Africa by focusing on local people`s relation to the natural environment in the aftermath of resettlement. The curr ent research in segregationist development and agricultural capitalism shows that forced resettlement during apartheid was key to the modernisation of rural regions so they could be incorporated into the flow of global capital . This process was a consolida tion of the contestation over natural resources since the 19th Century. While the research thus shows a congruence between social and environmental processes, researchers do, however, tend to sideline the natural environment and local people`s relation to the natural environment. At the same time, recent research in nature conservation does focus on indigenous nature perception and contemporary indigenous structures of authority in relation to conservation policy but does not incorporate an adequate socioh istorical analysis of resettlement. My project addresses this lacuna, and additionally compliments the ongoing research, through the
phenomenon of forcibly resettled people`s Landscape Perception. The area of concern is the former Tsonga Homeland Gazankulu created during apartheid in the context of 19 th century Swiss missionary history in the region. My work therefore additionally compliments the ongoing revision of Switzerland’s colonial history (Lengwiler, Penn, Harries, 2019) 2019).
I will use oral history located at Basler Afrika Bibliographien collected by Patrick Harries and the History Research Group between 1979 1987 in Gazankulu. As a Tsonga speaking researcher with training in orality (the philosophy and politics of verbal com munication), I am well suited to conduct this research. My work is the first extensive research project using the archive deposited in 2015 when Harries retired from the University of Basel after holding the first Professorship in African History in Switze rland (Arlt et al., 2016). The archive remained closed in the aftermath of
Harries` untimely passing in 2016 only recently becoming publicly accessible. 108 tape recorded interviews averaging 40 minute length were conducted in the region with students of H istory at the University of Cape Town, amidst apartheid censorship over movement and flow of information across the country. The recording of oral histories to write counter social histories was part of a larger movement in South African historiography. This has led to contemporary research that considers mediality, mediation, translation, narration and communication in the use and repurposing of sound archives and oral histories (Hoffmann, 2023; Lavery et al., 2023). These insights will inform how I find meaning in the content and ways in which people relay information in the testimonies and songs, where recorded extralinguistic particularities in speech and song also operate as additional information that can be analysed. By addressing local people`s relation to the natural environment in the aftermath of resettlement, these results will illustrate the underlying logics of apartheid and how they fit into the broader struggle over natural resources in South African history. This expands the project`s general relevance beyond the bilateral framework across Switzerland and South and places the voices of the marginalised within a global framework amidst the ongoing developments in environmental research that focuses on conservat ion, climate, and colonisation as well as rurality, development, and globalisation (Gupta et al., 2023).

Keywords: Landscape Perception, Indigenous Natural Histories, South Africa, Apartheid, Forced Resettlement, Oral History