Felix Tombindo

Felix Tombindo

Department of African Studies and Anthropology
Doctoral researcher

Contact details

PhD title: Conservation, Landscape and Belonging on the Shores of Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe.
SupervisorDr Reginald Cline-Cole, Dr Jessica Johnson, and Dr Maxim Bolt
PhD African Studies and Anthropology

Qualifications

  • BSocSci in Social Anthropology (Great Zimbabwe University)
  • BSocSci, Hons in Sociology (Rhodes University)
  • MSocSci in Sociology (Rhodes University)
  • MA Social Research (University of Birmingham)

Research

My study seeks to understand everyday belonging and the material relations of fishing among the artisanal fishers on Lake Kariba’s shores, in Zimbabwe. I shed light on this by exploring livelihoods and access to resources, familiarity with the natural environment, and cultural norms pertaining to living on the lake’s shores. This will enable me to explore how the material relations of fishing in Zimbabwe’s unstable economy are central to the everyday life and understandings through which fishers belong in an economically and ecologically diverse place that Lake Kariba is. I define belonging in the broadest sense including people’s access to fishery resources, familiarity with the natural environment, cultural mores pertaining to living on the Lake’s shores, and formal and informal practices of natural resource entitlement. I also bring into my analysis the role of non-human elements – the physicality of the fishery and animals living in it – in shaping fishery (non)compliance in the face of Zimbabwe’s incessant economic and political crisis.

Publications

  • Gukurume, S. and Tombindo, F. 2021. Post-displacement livelihoods in mining communities: The politics of precarity and everyday uncertainty in Marange, Zimbabwe.The Extractive Industries and Society, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2021.100992
  • Tombindo, F. and Gukurume, S. Trust and the Zimbabwean diaspora: A Case Study of the West Midlands County, England in ‘Helliker, K., Bhatasara, S., and Chiweshe, M. K. (eds.). Everyday Crisis-Living in Contemporary Zimbabwe. Routledge: London.
  • Tombindo, F. 2018. Livelihoods vulnerability among riverbed farmers in Negande, NyamiNyami District in ‘Helliker, K, Chiweshe, M. K., and Bhatasara, S. (eds). 2018. The Political Economy of Livelihoods in Contemporary Zimbabwe. Routledge Studies on African Political Economy’. Routledge: London
  • Tombindo, F. and Gukurume, S. 2022. Resource Access, Livelihoods and Belonging amongst the Tonga in Mola, NyamiNyami District in Helliker, K. and Matanzima, J. (eds). Tonga Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe. Routledge: London and New York. DOI: 10.4324/9781003278580-7