The People of the Zambezi Valley: Interactions between Migrants and Locals in and Around Lake Kariba

This chapter discusses the distribution of communities along Lake Kariba. It highlights the actors who interact with the Lake on a daily basis in different spaces for variegated reasons. These actors include the communities in the rural areas (which were displaced when the dam was constructed), fishermen (and their families) residing in the fishing camps, multicultural groups of people living in Kariba town, players in the tourism industry and tourists themselves who constantly visit the region. There is a myriad of reasons for such a widespread distribution of communities within the Zambezi Valley. The key reason, as I argue in this chapter, is what the waterscape and its environs offer to different categories of people. It is the socio-economic affordances of the Lake that decisively shape decisions to stay either permanently or temporally in a particular area. The chapter discusses the everyday socio-economic lives of the local communities and how they have been marginalised, within their territory, in terms of access to resources and opportunities. It also elucidates different forms of inequalities prevalent at Lake Kariba among different groups.