Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods of the Tonga-Speaking People of North-Western Zimbabwe

Abstract

Using the concept of precarious livelihoods, this chapter examines the conflicts occurring between people and wild animals in the Tonga communities of north-western Zimbabwe. It focusses on the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of Tonga livelihoods due to the presence of, and attacks from, wild animals. On a day-to-day basis, the Tonga experience harm caused by animals to their lives, livelihoods and/or properties. The Tonga communities studied survive mainly on fishing in Lake Kariba or the tributaries of the Zambezi River as well as subsistence farming. Along Lake Kariba, they have conflicts with such animals as hippos and crocodiles, their fields are often trampled by elephants, buffaloes and duikers, and their livestock especially cattle and goats are attacked by lions, leopards and hyenas. These human–wildlife conflicts take place within a particular historical and spatial context, notably the forced displacement of the Tonga from the Zambezi River in the late 1950s and their post-displacement presence in an area of Zimbabwe marked by an arid ecosystem (in large part unsuitable for agriculture) alongside poverty and hunger. Thus, currently, they are placed between a rock and a hard place, between threatening wildlife and an arid environment. The chapter is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2020 among the Tonga communities of, in particular, the Mola, Musampakaruma and Sinakatenge chiefdoms.

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Springer Geography
KirkHelliker
PatienceChadambuka
JoshuaMatanzimaEditors
Livelihoods
ofEthnic
Minorities in
Rural Zimbabwe

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Kirk Helliker ·Patience Chadambuka ·
Joshua Matanzima
Editors
Livelihoods of Ethnic
Minorities in Rural
Zimbabwe

Editors
Kirk Helliker
Department of Sociology
Rhodes University
Makhanda, South Africa
Joshua Matanzima
Department of Social Inquiry
La Trobe University
Bundoora, VIC, Australia
Patience Chadambuka
Department of Community Studies
Midlands State University
Gweru, Zimbabwe
ISSN 2194-315X ISSN 2194-3168 (electronic)
Springer Geography
ISBN 978-3-030-94799-6 ISBN 978-3-030-94800-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800-9
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Acknowledgements
This book is the fifth in an ongoing series of books published under the auspices of the
Unit of Zimbabwean Studies, Department of Sociology at Rhodes University (South
Africa). The first book published is titled The Political Economy of Livelihoods in
Contemporary Zimbabwe (2018) and the following two appeared in 2021: Fast Track
Land Occupations in Zimbabwe—In the Context of the Zvimurenga, and Everyday
Crisis-Living in Contemporary Zimbabwe. The fourth book, which is forthcoming
(2022), is titled: Capital Penetration and the Peasantry in Southern and Eastern
Africa: Neoliberal Restructuring.
The Unit was formed in 2015 and seeks to contribute to the development of
emerging and mid-career Zimbabwean (and other) scholars, through its Master and
Ph.D. programme as well as publications.
Kirk Helliker
Research Professor, Head, Unit of
Zimbabwean Studies
v

Contents
1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods of Ethnic
Minorities in Zimbabwe ....................................... 1
Kirk Helliker, Joshua Matanzima, and Patience Chadambuka
Part I Land, Livelihoods and Ethnicity
2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods,
and Ethnicity ................................................. 31
Davy Ndlovu, Ben Begbie-Clench, Robert K. Hitchcock,
and Melinda C. Kelly
3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia,
1890–1950s ................................................... 51
Joseph Mujere
4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe
People of the South-East Lowveld of Zimbabwe, 1890–2014 ....... 67
Taderera Hebert Chisi
Part II Wildlife, Livelihoods and Ethnicity
5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities:
The Case of the Doma, Northern Zimbabwe ..................... 89
Vincent Jani
6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods
of the Tonga-Speaking People of North-Western Zimbabwe ....... 107
Joshua Matanzima and Ivan Marowa
7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe ....... 123
Emmanuel Ndhlovu
vii

viii Contents
8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies Among
the Nambya in North-Western Zimbabwe ....................... 141
Oppenheimer Chiweshe
Part III Crisis, Livelihoods and Ethnicity
9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis
and Marginalisation of the Tonga of Binga in Zimbabwe .......... 157
Codelia Govha Dhodho
10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest for Belonging—The
Case of (Chewa) Ex-Farm Workers in Shamva’s Communal
Areas ........................................................ 173
Patience Chadambuka
11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis—Malawian
Nyau/Gule Wamkulu Dances and Zimbabwe’s Economic
Meltdown .................................................... 193
Anusa Daimon
12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies Among Ethnic
Minorities and the Manyikas in the Honde Valley Borderlands
Since the 1970s ................................................ 211
Nicholas Nyachega and Vongai Olivia Sagonda

Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Kirk Helliker is a Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes
University in South Africa, where he also heads the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies,
which he founded in 2015. He publishes widely on Zimbabwean society and also
supervises a significant number of Ph.D. and M.A. students, mostly on Zimbabwean
topics. His most recent books focus on crisis-living in contemporary Zimbabwe and
the fast track land occupations in the context of zvimurenga.
Patience Chadambuka is a lecturer and Acting Chairperson in the Community
Studies Department (formerly Sociology Department), in the Faculty of Social
Sciences at the Midlands State University, Zimbabwe. She holds a Ph.D. in Soci-
ology from Rhodes University, South Africa and a M.Sc. in Sociology and Anthro-
pology as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education from the Midlands
State University. Her areas of interest include land and agrarian studies, migration,
ethnicity, livelihoods and gender studies.
Joshua Matanzima is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Inquiry
at La Trobe University, Australia. He is also a member of the Gwembe Tonga
Research Project. He has done extensive fieldwork in the Zambezi Valley among
the Tonga people. His research interests lie in the fields of human-wildlife inter-
actions, anthropology of landscape and resettlement as well as religion and social
change. His previous publications appear in such journals as International Journal
of Water Resources Development,African Identities, Water International and Oryx.
ix

x Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Ben Begbie-Clench Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, Windhoek,
Namibia
Patience Chadambuka Department of Community Studies, Midlands State
University, Gweru, Zimbabwe
Taderera Hebert Chisi History Department, Midlands State University, Gweru,
Zimbabwe
Oppenheimer Chiweshe ZADRT, Harare, Zimbabwe
Anusa Daimon International Studies Group, University of the Free State, Bloem-
fontein, South Africa
Codelia Govha Dhodho Department of History, Rhodes University, Graham-
stown, South Africa
Kirk Helliker Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South
Africa
Robert K. Hitchcock Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM, USA
Vincent Jani Geosciences, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South
Africa
Melinda C. Kelly Kalahari Peoples Fund, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Ivan Marowa Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems, Univer-
sity of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
Joshua Matanzima Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University, Bundoora,
VIC, Australia
Joseph Mujere National University of Lesotho, Roma, Lesotho;
Research Associate, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Emmanuel Ndhlovu Freelance Researcher, Pretoria, South Africa
Davy Ndlovu Tsoro-O-Tso Development Trust, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Nicholas Nyachega Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
MN, USA
Vongai Olivia Sagonda Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems,
University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

Chapter 1
Theorising and Historicising
the Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities
in Zimbabwe
Kirk Helliker , Joshua Matanzima , and Patience Chadambuka
Abstract This chapter introduces the ensuing chapters in this volume on the liveli-
hoods of ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe. It does so by offering theoretical comments
about ethnicity and livelihoods as well as providing historical details pertaining to the
development of ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe. As the chapter shows, the volume sits
at the intersection of two sets of scholarly literature, namely, literature on ethnicity
and literature on livelihoods. As a general trend, these two sets of literature do not
adequately engage with each other, and this volume seeks to contribute to addressing
this problem through a number of case studies of various ethnic minorities in both
past and present Zimbabwe. Much of the literature on ethnicity in Zimbabwe focuses
on the two main ethnic groupings (Shona and Ndebele), including the significance
of ethnic contestations between these two groupings in post-1980 Zimbabwe. This
has tended to crowd out studies about ethnic minorities in the country. This volume,
thus, brings to the fore the importance of studying ethnic minorities in offering a
more refined ethnic analysis of Zimbabwean history, politics and society.
Keywords Ethnic minorities ·Zimbabwe ·Livelihoods ·Ethnicity ·Belonging
The important characteristics of many of the new states that emerged at the end of colonialism
included ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. Because the colonial powers that created
these states were insensitive to the ethnic makeup of these states, what emergedin Africa were
states that consisted of not only a multiplicity of ethnic and linguistic groups but arbitrary
division of ethnic groups across national borders, thus making many indigenous peoples a
minority. (Umbanaso and Korieh 2010:5)
K. Helliker (B
)
Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa
e-mail: k.helliker@ru.ac.za
J. Matanzima
Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia
P. Chadambuka
Department of Community Studies, Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_1
1

2 K. Helliker et al.
1.1 Introduction
This book is about the lives and livelihoods of ethnic minorities in past and present
Zimbabwe, and, more specifically, ethnic minorities within the rural African popu-
lation. We speak of ‘ethnic minorities’ not in terms of their limited demographic
presence, but in relation to their overall subordinate status in Zimbabwean history,
politics and society, existing on the margins of state and economic power.
Ethnicity is central to the economic, social, political and cultural history of
Zimbabwe, and there is now a significant body of Zimbabwean scholarly literature on
ethnicity, including stretching back to pre-colonial times. In this literature, however,
there is a pronounced focus on the colonial construction (and re-construction) of
what are considered to be the two most important African ethnicities—Shona and
Ndebele—and how colonial state ethnic practices conditioned the character of anti-
colonial struggles and became embedded in various ways in the (ethnic) practices
of the post-colonial state in Zimbabwe, with reference to nation-building, socio-
economic development, democratic processes and social cohesion. Other African
ethnicities also exist in Zimbabwe (‘ethnic minorities’) and, in recent years, numerous
scholars have sought to recover their histories and to identify the significance of their
lives for wider Zimbabwean politics and society.
Studying ethnicity is never an easy task, as it entails complex analytical and
conceptual issues because of the multiple but uneven entanglements between
ethnicity, language, memory, history, culture, religion, nationhood and citizenship,
as the Zimbabwean literature clearly demonstrates. Even the very existence of partic-
ular African (and other) ethnicities in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere, is open to consid-
erable controversy, in part because of the fluid, porous and situational character of
ethnic boundaries. The literature on ethnicity, in fixated often on the intense rival-
ries between Shona and Ndebele as part of broader narratives about Zimbabwean
history and politics, has tended unintentionally to crowd out and inhibit the possi-
bility of writing about ethnic minorities. In this respect, this book contributes to high-
lighting the growing pertinence of literature on African ethnic minorities, including
for facilitating a more complete understanding of Zimbabwean history and society.
The African ethnic minorities covered in this book include those identified as
wholly indigenous to what is now Zimbabwe’s territory, and those often defined
as ‘foreigners’ or ‘aliens’ (i.e. entering the territory from outside, mainly from
the early days of Rhodesian colonialism). This incorporates ethnicities which at
times have been subsumed discursively and materially under other ethnicities and
those with a transnational presence in southern Africa. The ethnic minorities liter-
ature, emerging alongside current cultural-political efforts at linguistic and ethnic
revitalisation among minorities in Zimbabwe, quite appropriately centres on ethnic
recognition, identity and belonging as crucial in telling the stories of these minorities.
This book offers a fresh angle into ethnicity and ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe
by ‘hanging’ the study on ‘livelihoods’. Though the existing literature on ethnic

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 3
minorities in Zimbabwe discusses ways of making a living (i.e. livelihoods), it tends
to do so indirectly, that is, in the context of a more explicit focus on questions around
culture, identity, belonging and citizenship. At the same time, an almost separate
body of literature exists on livelihoods in Zimbabwe (though not always drawing
explicitly upon a livelihoods analytical framework), and this livelihoods literature
pays insufficient attention to ethnicity. Due to the dual focus of this book (on ethnicity
and livelihoods), it is of great relevance to Zimbabwean scholars of both ethnicity
and livelihoods.
By way of the various chapters, this volume seeks to demonstrate and analyse
the complex relationships existing between (minority) ethnicities and livelihoods,
including the ways in which projects of ethnic belonging (and identity-formation)
become entangled in the diverse and shifting livelihood projects of ethnic minori-
ties, and vice versa. The key themes in this regard focus on: land, livelihoods and
ethnicity; wildlife, livelihoods and ethnicity; and crisis, livelihoods and ethnicity.
The ethnicities covered in the book include Chewa, Tonga, Tshwa San, Shangane,
Basotho, Ndau, and Hlengwe. The chapters highlight an emergent scholarship among
young black scholars in Zimbabwe who are (or are becoming) acknowledged experts
on particular ethnic minorities. Together, they provide a rich empirical basis for
understanding the livelihoods of ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe. All chapters are
rooted firmly in original fieldwork or archival research and, individually and collec-
tively, they weave together a rich tapestry of stories that unpack and analyse ‘ethnic
minority’ livelihoods in Zimbabwe.
1.2 Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities
The very notion of ethnicity, as presented conceptually, is subject to significant
and unresolved contestations across disciplines within the scholarly literature (Bilge
et al. 2021) and we make no attempt to offer a clear and concise definition, in part
because it is subject to different articulations (at least implicitly) in the following
chapters. Certainly, at an abstract level, ethnicity encompasses a range of possible
characteristics such as: common descent, history or national origin; familial ties
or kinship relationships; similar cultural and/or spiritual arrangements; and shared
linguistic attributes. When some of these characteristics overlap or reinforce each
other, their loose combination leads to the existence of reasonably distinct—ethnic—
categories or groupings. These categories might appear as bounded ethnic groups
self-declaring their ethnicity or deliberately enacting their ethnicity in clear and
identifiable ways. The situational intersectionality of gender, class, race and ethnicity,
though not central to this volume, also adds considerable complexity to the real world
presence of ethnicities and ethnic groups.

4 K. Helliker et al.
Ethnicities are neither ascribed nor fixed as static states of being, as they require
understanding within and through the prisms of fluidities, contingencies and circum-
stances. Insofar as it is possible to speak about the presence of specific ethnic iden-
tities and particular quests for ethnic belonging, these are processual (or processes
of becoming) and involve reconfigurations over time. As well, at a fundamental
level, ethnicity is relational and is typically conditioned by social-power differ-
entials. Although ethnic identities are sometimes imposed from above, or at least
restructured from above, ethnicity cannot be reduced to instrumentalist machina-
tions through access to (and manipulation of) political power. The human agency
of ordinary people is crucial to thinking about ethnicity, including ‘desires to fit in
(such as via belonging or compliance) and strategies to opt out (via distinction, resis-
tance, or defiance)’ (Forsyth and Michaud 2011: 9). In the case of Africa, ethnicity
is one of the most enduring forms of identity and it has withstood the supposedly
homogenising effects of the modern nation-state (Batibo 2006). In fact, ethnicities in
Africa are very pronounced despite the modern state (both colonial and post-colonial)
and most likely because of it as well.
At first site, the phrase ‘ethnic minority’ seems ambiguous. As Ndhlovu (2007:
131) argues, this is a ‘highly contested subject that cannot be fully explained in terms
of demographic facts alone as it is indexically linked to struggles over socio-political
power, cultural domination and control’. In other words, and for our purposes, an
ethnic minority is not a category of people (an ethnicity or ethnic group) demo-
graphically small in size, though this is often the case with ethnic minorities. Rather,
the key question entails the relationship between ethnicity and power in a particular
nation-state or even within a sub-region of a nation-state. Because of the relational
character of ethnicities, an ethnic minority at national level may be an ethnic majority
at sub-national level. As a general trend, then, ethnicities excluded from power or
incorporated into power in a subordinate manner are minority ethnicities. Further,
ethnic minorities should be conceptualised as ‘fluid and transitory phenomena medi-
ated and reconstituted by various forms of discursive practices’ (Ndhlovu 2007: 131).
In this way, the presence and character of particular ethnicities as minority ethnicities
is contingent upon the outcomes of ongoing power contestations.
In their important study of ethnic minorities in Africa, Umbanaso and Korieh
(2010) argue that, prior to European colonisation, African societies were not demar-
cated, at least spatially, by ethnic boundaries to any significant degree. States, king-
doms and chiefdoms all flourished, but their spatial, social and political boundaries
were fluid as a result of wars, conquest and migration. The colonial period, as indi-
cated in the epigraph (at the beginning of this chapter), led to state-systems that
constructed fixed ethnicities and coercively included or excluded specific ethnic
groups as indigenous colonial subjects within particular territorial boundaries: these
groups became enclosed within fixed spatial (national) boundaries in a manner insen-
sitive to pre-colonial ethnic (and religious and linguistic) socio-spatial arrangements.
This resulted in fundamentally reconfigured ethnicities among the indigenous popu-
lations within African colonies. It was also not unusual for groups sharing a common
ethnicity (as well as culture and language) to be located across two or more colonial
nation-states.

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 5
The socio-spatial fixing of indigenous populations in terms of ethnicity continued
under post-colonial conditions because of the maintenance of colonial boundaries.
Additionally, the shift from colonial to post-colonial society in Africa led to the
emergence of ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities within the modern nation-state,
depending on the outcome of the post-colonial political settlement. As a colonial
legacy, ethnic minorities are often spatially located along territorial borders (i.e. in
the borderlands as marginalised borderland communities). Borderlands have become
hotspots for armed conflicts and insurgencies. In the end, contemporary African
states rarely uphold and protect the rights of ethnic minorities occupying figuratively
the margins of state power, irrespective of their spatial location. Ethnic minorities
inhabit the margins of the state and, as a consequence, of the nation as well. Those
in post-colonial Africa experience discrimination, political violence, and serious
violations of human rights, mainly by dominant ethnic group(s) (Umbanaso and
Korieh 2010). Ethnic minorities typically are not incorporated in any meaningful way
into the development programmes of African states. As a result, their sub-regions
have, for instance, inadequate health and education facilities, very poor transport and
communication networks, and soils with low-agricultural potential.
Through colonial land appropriation and dispossession, particularly pronounced
in white settler societies, indigenous Africans lost access to their ancestral lands,
disturbing not only indigenous people’s access to resources (and thus their liveli-
hoods), but their assertions of ethnic belonging and autochthony to particular land-
scapes as well. In post-colonial Africa, and perhaps more so than is the case for ethnic
majorities, ethnic minorities lay claim to particular landscapes and landscape features
such as trees, rocks, caves, fountains, rivers and mountains (Merino and Tileaga 2011;
Carruthers 2003). Simultaneously, these are claims to past, present or future liveli-
hoods. Such assertions or claims may involve the evoking of ethnicity situationally.
Plus, assertions of autochthony regarding particular landscapes may be reinforced
during times of conflict, whether conflict over land and resources or broader political
conflicts. Conflicts around resource access entail each group seeking to exclude ‘the
other’ from accessing local resources (Carruthers 2003). These politics of identity are
bolstered by the need to demystify the ‘stereotypes’ and ‘derogatory’ labels regularly
placed upon them by majority ethnic groups, portraying them as uncivilised if not
animalistic (Merino and Tileaga 2011). In Zimbabwe, for instance, the physiology
of the Tonga and the Doma people has been misrepresented, with suggestions that
they have ‘tails’ (McGregor 2009).
There is significant global literature on ethnicity, including ethnicity in Africa, and
it focuses mainly on ethnic-based contestations, processes of othering and the politics
of belonging (Yuval-Davies 2010; Antonsich 2010; Youkhana 2015; Anthias 2013;
Yuval-Davies et al. 2018). There are also many studies concentrating on the reali-
ties of ethnic contestations among Europeans, ‘foreigners’ and migrants in Europe
(Zenker 2011). There is less of a focus on livelihoods in the ethnicity literature, just
as the livelihoods literature tends to downplay the importance of ethnicity.

6 K. Helliker et al.
1.3 Livelihoods and Ethnicity
The (Sustainable) Livelihoods Framework, as an actor-orientated framework (Long
2000), is an important perspective within development studies, particularly when
analysing the lives and livelihoods of marginalised groups and households (Chambers
and Conway 1992; Carney 2002; Ellis 1998; Scoones 1998; Solesbury 2003; Morse
and McNamara 2013). As set out by Helliker et al. (2018: 3), the framework makes
the following overall argument:
A livelihood is said to be sustainable when it can cope with (and recover from) stresses and
shocks, and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets while not undermining the natural
resource base. Overall, the LF encompasses analysis of the context in which people live (i.e.
their socio-economic, technological, demographic, agro-ecological and political context);
their access to natural, human, social, physical and financial capitals or assets (and their
ability to put these capitals to productive use); the institutions, policies and organisations
which determine people’s access to these assets and the returns they can achieve on assets;
and the priorities that people identify in confronting the problems, including stresses and
shocks, which they face as well as the different strategies (even of only a coping character)
they adopt in pursuit of these priorities …. The framework therefore links inputs (‘capitals’
or ‘assets’) and outputs (livelihood strategies), which are connected in turn to livelihood
outcomes … Households and individuals living under conditions of poverty – in both rural
and urban settings – juggle ‘capital assets’ in actively seeking (hopefully) positive livelihood
outcomes, and this juggling is mediated through different structures and processes which
may either constrain or enable livelihood activities.
Significant criticisms have been levelled against the framework, but in large part to
strengthen it (Scoones 2009; Speranza et al. 2014; Banks 2015; Thieme 2008;Prowse
2010; Sakdapolrak 2014; van Dijk 2011;Levine2014; White and Ellison 2006;
Wilshusen 2012; de Haan and Zoomers 2003; Zoomers and Westen 2011; Harriss
1997). We briefly mention some key criticisms. First of all, ‘structure’ (including
relations of power and inequality) is not given proper weight as a constraining factor
in the micro-study of local livelihoods, as if households exist outside structures.
Secondly, the framework’s notion of ‘agency’ implicitly draws upon methodolog-
ical individualism, with households treated as distinct rational subjects pursuing
livelihood goals, rather than considering the historically conditioned dispositions
of households moving along established pathways. Thirdly, ‘capitals’ (as a concept
central to the framework) are conceptualised as things (or possessions), when in fact
they embody and are nestled within power-infused social relations. Finally, there
is a failure to fully comprehend the spatial and temporal dynamics of livelihoods,
including their cross-national and multi-local spatial settings, and their fluctuating
rather than stable character over the long term (see Helliker et al. 2018).
Surprisingly, the absence of a sustained focus on ethnicity is not normally raised
as a key criticism of the Livelihoods Framework, though questions of structure,
power and inequality speak to ethnicity, as they do to gender, race and class. Overall,
‘current approaches to the analysis of livelihoods do not take … ethnicity sufficiently
into account’ (Forsyth and Michaud 2011: 15). More fully, ethnicity is:

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 7
[A]t times overlooked or reduced to background elements in livelihood studies … [but] but
can play pivotal roles in howindividuals and households determine what constitutes an appro-
priate livelihood strategy, taking into consideration culturally embedded understandings of
right and wrong, success and failure, and benefit and loss. (Turner 2012b: 406–407)
Studies exploring the linkages between ethnicities (notably ethnic minorities) and
livelihoods have emerged. Below we discuss some relevant literature. Some of this
examines ethnicity explicitly in the context of the livelihoods framework, but other
literature considers more broadly the relationship between ethnicity, livelihoods and
belonging.
Notable literature focuses on the Southeast Asia’s Massif high borderlands region
that covers parts of India, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (Trincsi
et al. 2014; Forsyth and Michaud 2011; Mao et al. 2020). These studies reveal the
vulnerability and marginality of ethnic minorities in that region, showing as well
how ethnic communities depend mainly on natural resources for their survival.
For instance, Turner (2012a,b) examines ethnic minority livelihoods in upland
Northern Vietnam, specifically Hmong farmers in the context of state-sponsored
agrarian change, highlighting how they have ‘constructed, negotiated and experi-
enced’ (Turner 2012a: 544) livelihoods as part of everyday life. Turner (2012b) speaks
of ‘the Hmong way’ of making a living (an ethnic-informed livelihood pathway)
but nevertheless argues that these farmers culturally appropriate rural livelihoods in
highly pragmatic ways.
Forsyth and Michaud (2011) analyse the relationship between livelihoods and
ethnicity in Highland China, Vietnam and Laos, also highlighting that ‘the role of
cultural and ethnic networks’ is ‘an under-acknowledged influence in …. livelihood
strategies’ (Forsyth and Michaud 2011: 1). Like Turner, they speak about how ethnic
minorities ‘fashion livelihoods’; and they seek ‘to question how ethnicity affects,
and is influenced by, economic and political changes in relation to these livelihoods’.
In criticising both an essentialist and instrumentalist conception of ethnicity, and
stressing its relational quality, they refer to ethnicity as a possible ‘agent of access,
or indeed as an asset itself’ in seeking ‘to better understand ethnic minority liveli-
hoods’ (Forsyth and Michaud 2011: 14). Just as ethnicity may condition livelihood
strategies, changes in livelihood options likely affect ethnic identity. In a similar
study of two ethnic minorities in the forests of Bangladesh, Islam and Sato (2013:
431) demonstrate that ‘the livelihood of ethnic minorities is not stable’.
Studies elsewhere, including in the Americas, also bring to the fore the absence
of a meaningful focus on ethnicity and livelihoods, such as Torres et al. (2018:
23) with reference to migrant settlers and indigenous populations in the Ecuadorian
Amazon—in particular, they consider ‘the effect of ethnicity on the households’
adoption of [specific] LS [livelihood strategies]’. In their work on urban foragers
in Seattle (Washington State, USA), Poe et al. (2014: 908) make an intriguing
argument about ‘relational ecologies of belonging’, specifically ‘the connections
between foraging [as a livelihood] and cultural belonging … made by foragers who
self-identified as newcomers or immigrants’. Additionally, linkages are established
between the rhythms of (livelihood) work and the construction (and loss) of belonging

8 K. Helliker et al.
in the favelas of Rio de Janiero (Brazil), including with regard to evictions from the
favelas and displacement of people to apartment blocks (Arrigoitia 2017).
Closer to home, namely the African continent, the importance of studies of
ethnicity and livelihoods for Zimbabwe become clearer. Chome (2020: 318) for
instance studies the linkages between land, livelihoods and ethnic belonging in
Kenya’s Lamu county and, in a manner which makes the reader think of Zimbabwe,
states:
In a country [Kenya] where identity and land are inexorably linked, … claims to ‘belong’ as
autochthonous ‘sons of the soil’ were more often than not, synonymous with narratives of
ethnic territorial exclusion. In Lamu, as elsewhere in Kenya, such narratives were providing
the dominant language for debating belonging and citizenship. ….. [D]ebates were also
becoming more public and bitter, as people sought to secure land (and other land-based
resources).
Other studies of Kenya indicate similar trends. For Quandt (2019: 3), in a study of
Isiolo County, ethnicity in Kenya ‘not only influences the normal range of livelihood
activities for an individual (pastoralist, agriculturalist, etc.) but is politically and
socially salient’. The complexity of the relationship between ethnic identity and
livelihoods appears in the following quotation from Kratli and Swift (2014: 3) in the
study by Rodgers (2020: 241–242):
The term ‘pastoralist’ can be used to indicate a cultural identity and a production/livelihood
system, but while the latter implies the former, the former does not always imply the latter
…. People can identify with a ‘pastoral’ background without necessarily being involved in
pastoral production. Conversely, people can be involved in pastoral production … without
necessarily sharing a pastoral cultural identity.
In this light, the relationship between ethnicity and livelihoods is not straightfor-
ward or without ambiguity (as there is no one-to-one connection) as ‘people shift
fluidly and opportunistically between an array of livelihood options’ (Rodgers 2020:
242), or they may be compelled to do so. As Vawda (2017: 41) demonstrates in
relation to Senegalese Muslims in Durban (South Africa), ethnicity is evoked and
performed at times for “mobilising and accessing resources” in pursuing livelihoods.
1.4 Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities in Zimbabwe
Past and present Zimbabwe is marked by a diverse array of African ethnicities.
Whether or not, and in what sense, ethnicities existed in the pre-colonial territory
of Zimbabwe is open to considerable debate (MacGonagle 2007; Msindo 2012).
In terms of African ethnic identities, two groupings came to dominant colonial
Zimbabwe (at least with regard to demography), namely, Ndebele and Shona (with
the Shona comprising most of the country’s total population). The colonial govern-
ment recognised, if only begrudgingly, the Ndebele and Shona as autochthonous
to the territorial boundaries of the colony and it initially labelled separate regions
of the country accordingly, that is, as Matabeleland and Mashonaland. The Shona

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 9
and Ndebele are descendants of migrant groups originating from the north, with the
Shona settling in the colonial territory of Rhodesia in the 1500s and the Ndebele
arriving later from South Africa in the 1800s (Beach 1980). Though the Shona and
Ndebele were considered by the colonists as the indigenous ‘tribes’, the San and
Khoisan were likely the original occupiers of the whole southern African region,
including Zimbabwe.
In relation to post-colonial Zimbabwe, Shona is the main ethnic majority (in terms
of power relations) in that Shona-speakers provide the support base for the ruling
Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), leading to what
Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2012: 533) refers to as an ‘ethnocracy’ whereby the ‘distinction
between nation and ethnicity is eliminated. In an ethnocracy, nationality is defined
in terms of majority ethnicity’. While the Ndebele are an ethnic minority vis-à-vis
the Shona, as reflected in the overall marginalisation and victimisation of Zimbabwe
African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the region of Matabeleland since 1980, they are
numerically an ethnic majority when compared to the various ethnicities discussed in
this volume. As well, within Matabeleland, they might at times dominate over these
other ethnicities, including the Kalanga and Tonga—in this context, they become an
ethnic majority in the main sense used in this volume.
Though both the Ndebele and Shona are treated often as homogeneous ethnic
groups, they incorporate sub-ethnic clusters. For example, it is common to speak
of distinct ethnic sub-categories within the Shona, notably, the Manyika, Zezuru,
Ndau, Karanga and Korekore. The original identification and naming of Shona sub-
ethnic clusters was undertaken by the colonial regime and entailed reference to
the topographical regions in which they were found. For instance, Korekore means
‘Northerner’ with respect to the northern plateau in which they were located. Other
clusters derived their names from powerful local chiefs, such as the Manyika (after
chief Manyika). As well, Shona sub-ethnicities consist of, linguistically, various sub-
dialects (Doke 1931), with the Zezuru for instance incorporating the Gova, Nohwe,
Hera and Harawa.
1.4.1 Ethnicities in Colonial Zimbabwe
The white settler state in colonial Zimbabwe constructed and fuelled, in large
part intentionally, ethnic and sub-ethnic divisions among the indigenous African
population, as a divide-and-rule strategy. This involved the emergence of political
programmes, administrative structures and territorial spaces focusing on ethnicity.
Hence, colonially constructed ethnic identities were mapped onto fixed territories
(initially called the Reserves) and this took place alongside the reinventing of
tribal or ethnic polities regulated by way of the dictates of British-inspired indi-
rect rule, overseen by salaried and appointed chiefs (Moore 2005). In alliance
with the colonial state, Christian missionaries performed a significant role in the
construction of—in particular—Shona as a separate and all-embracing ethnicity.
Early missionary efforts in translating the Bible into the Shona language clearly

10 K. Helliker et al.
illustrate this. Catholic missionaries based in Chiwasha, for example, translated the
Bible using the Zezuru language. Meanwhile, the Dutch Reformed Church at Mogen-
ster College in Masvingo developed Karanga, and the Methodists in Manicaland used
Manyika. Standardising one official Shona language was subject to contestation and
erased a diverse range of dialects, with the Zezuru dialect eventually becoming the
official Shona prototype. Ultimately, ethnic-based administrative structures arose,
such as Mashonaland for the Zezuru and the Fort Victoriaarea for the Karanga. On this
basis, ‘[m]any groups, especially those speaking minority languages, were lumped
into these ethnicised administrative units and their alternative identities ignored’
(Muzondidya and Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 278), and this continues today.
The embedding of particular ethnic and sub-ethnic groupings in specific socio-
spatial sites had real material effects, as ethnic categorisations increasingly became
an integral part of self-identity for indigenous Africans. As one example, Ranger
(1984) argues that, in relation to colonial urbanisation and the development of capi-
talist waged-employment and labour migrancy in towns and cities (including in South
Africa), Manyika migrants tended to amplify sub-ethnic categorisations, as they clas-
sified themselves based on their rural ethnicised origins. More broadly, Africans
contributed to the consolidation of distinct ethnicities over time by performing
ethnicity in their lives and, at times, this resulted in inter-ethnic conflicts—as in
the case of the Bulawayo ‘faction fights’ of 1929 (Msindo 2006). The formation of
ethnically based mutual aid societies, alongside ethnic responses to the repressive
urban work environment, was also clearly evident (Yoshikuni 1989).
Building nationalism from the 1940s and into the 1960s entailed grappling with
seemingly competing political and ethnic identity claims, beyond emerging class
differentiations and the growing divide between urban and rural sites (Mlambo 2009).
In this sense, early attempts at forging a national anti-colonial identity and ‘nation-
alising the struggles’ were undercut by the pervasiveness of regional-ethnic politics,
including among the (typically, male) African elite (Raftopoulos and Mlambo 2009).
However, ethnic identities were not always and inherently antagonistic to nationalism
as there is evidence of ethnicity providing local expressions of anti-colonial discon-
tent (Msindo 2007). Indeed, ethnic groups provided leaders who would become
prominent nationalist figures, with the latter articulating the pre-colonial history,
personalities and sacred monuments that sparked the nationalist imagination. The
nationalist movement became closely aligned to the revival of ethnic-cultural nation-
alisms, and propagators of nationalism drew upon pre-colonial languages and cultures
and reinterpreted pre-colonial histories even as they mobilised across ethnic lines
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2009). This highlights the fluidity of identities and
the possibility of multiple forms of belonging existing simultaneously. As Bhebhe and
Ngoepe (2021: 3) argue, African ethnicities in Zimbabwe are ‘situational, contested
and fluid’.
Beyond African ethnic identities said to be indigenous to Rhodesia’s colonial
territory, the colonial creation of territorial boundaries cut through the fluid territo-
ries of pre-colonial ‘ethnicities’. This was, for instance, the case with the Ndau along
the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border (MacGonagle 2007), who became lumped under

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 11
‘Shona’ in then-Rhodesia. Schmidt (2013), in focusing on the borderland communi-
ties in the Honde Valley along the Mozambique border, notes this in relation to the
colonial border also running through the pre-colonial territory of Manyika-speaking
people. Other studies of the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border highlight this, such as
Duri (2010) and Kachena and Spiegel (2019), as well as the examination by Francis
Dube (F. Dube 2020) of public health along and across the Zimbabwean and Mozam-
bican border up until 1940. A similar issue arose with the Tonga people along the
Zimbabwe-Zambia border (McGregor 2009). In the case of the Tonga, in Zambia,
they became a majority group (if only demographically) whereas, in Zimbabwe, they
remain as an ethnic minority in both senses of the word. The ways of life of these
and other pre-colonial entities were disrupted in multiple ways by colonial border
construction, though many cross-border movements and networks remained in place.
As Hughes (1999: 536) highlights with reference to Vhimba along the Mozambique
border, a ‘flexible citizenship’ exists in post-1980 Zimbabwe because of the ongoing
population flows in and out of Zimbabwe.
Labour migration into Rhodesia from neighbouring colonies gave birth to ethnic
minorities as well. These include migrant workers who came as either covenanted
or autonomous labour into the colony, mainly from Zambia, Mozambique and
Malawi, with less significant numbers coming from Botswana, Tanzania and Namibia
(Johnson 2000). Once in the country, they were openly denied (the limited) rights
accorded to indigenous colonial subjects (i.e. autochthonous African ethnic groups).
Though Zimbabwe is now typically understood as a migrant-sending country, there
have been both permanent and temporary flows of refugees into the country post-
1980, including from Mozambique in the context of that country’s civil war, with
these refugees initially ‘self-settled in rural villages, farming and mining areas’
(Chikanda and Crush 2016: 3) along the border. Groves (2020) and Daimon
(2018) offer comprehensive historical and contemporary accounts of migration of
Malawians into Zimbabwe and their lives once there.
Furthermore, ongoing forced displacements by the state internal to colonial
Zimbabwe contributed to complicating the ethnic landscape, leading to ethnic appro-
priations, assimilations and conflicts. Together, these processes led in some instances
to the creation of multi-ethnic chiefdom-governed areas, as propagated and recog-
nised by the colonial state. The ongoing (forced and sometimes voluntary) move-
ments of indigenous and ‘foreign’ Africans into and out of kraals, villages, wards
and districts brought about significant confusion over land entitlements, adding to
the multiplicity of ethnic-based land and boundary conflicts, which were overlain
at times by a modernity-tradition ‘divide’ related to class and religious sensibil-
ities. Certainly, the 1960s saw an upsurge in land disputes, some brought before
local chiefs for mediation and others not. In Gokwe, for example, ethnic clashes
arose between the Shangwe and ‘Madheruka’ over differences in farming and reli-
gious practices, with the former following traditional religion and the latter adopting
Christianity (Nyambara 2001; Alexander and McGregor 1997; Maravanyika 2012).
Nyambara (2002) speaks of waves of immigrants moving into the Gokwe region

12 K. Helliker et al.
(originally sparsely populated by indigenous Shangwe), including labour migrants
from Malawi who worked on mines and settler farms and wanted a piece of land for
homes on retirement.
1.4.2 Ethnicity and Anti-colonial Struggles
The presence and significance of localised ethnic identities became increasingly
apparent as nationalist struggles emerged in the last 1950s (Scarnecchia 2008) and
the guerrilla struggle, though haltingly, began a decade later. There is now signifi-
cant literature which does not reduce—simplistically—the war of liberation to two
political-military-ethnic alliances, namely ZAPU, its guerrilla army and Ndebele
people on the one hand, and ZANU, its guerrilla army and Shona people on the
other. This literature considers localised belongings and the rural nationalisms of
ethnic minorities during the war, such as Tonga (McGregor 2009), Hlengwe (Chisi
2019) and Basotho (Mujere 2012). Nyachega (2017: 77, 78) focuses on the fron-
tier area of Honde Valley, arguing that the valley ‘remained on the fringes of the
colonial state’ up until the 1950s (with minimal state intrusions), such that a ‘strong
anti-colonial consciousness’ had not arisen. In a deep ethnography of the Honde
Valley, Schmidt (2013) likewise argues that, in the case of agitation around land,
‘grievances were expressedin vernacular mode, not in nationalist discourse’ (Schmidt
2013: 119). McGregor (2009) notes that, in Binga, Tonga cultural nationalism artic-
ulated with ZAPU’s overall political message, with ZAPU organisers stressing the
marginalisation of Tonga language and culture, as well as the broader anti-colonial
message based on national-based grievances. Maxwell (1993) examines the Katerere
area historically. Progressive, and relatively wealthy, Manyika immigrants from
Makoni had been evicted to Katerere, and they occupied a higher rank than the
local Hwesa and Barwe in the ethnic hierarchy. When ZANU’s guerrillas entered the
area, they first contacted the African Christian elites at the missions and those in the
Manyika-dominated villages.
All this implies that, as a general trend, ethnicisation became intrinsic to many
of the localised struggles of (and within) the African population, and that it charac-
terised the politics of mass nationalism from the late 1950s and the war of liberation
specifically in the 1970s. As well, to emphasise, just as ethnic projects and struggles
among the African population in colonial Zimbabwe are not reducible to the colo-
nial state’s configuration and stabilisation of ethnic identities, they are not wholly
explainable in terms of the machinations of anti-colonial elites and their high-politics
(Msindo 2012). In 1979, Masipule Sithole published Zimbabwe: Struggles within the
Struggle (Sithole 1999) in which he details the ongoing and intense conflict within
the nationalist movements (ZANU and ZAPU), dating back to the early 1960s, with
the key focus on ethnic tensions and battles in explaining this conflict (between
Shona and Ndebele generally, and within the sub-ethnic clusters among the Shona).
This inspired other studies to consider the instrumentalist use of ethnicity by polit-
ical elites (sometimes labelled as tribalism) within the nationalist movement during

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 13
the 1960s and 1970s, without concluding though that ethnicity was the key factor
in intra-nationalist antagonism and splits or that, in articulating projects of ethnic
belonging, ordinary people were simply borne along by the tribalism of nationalist
leaders.
1.4.3 Ethnicity in Post-1980 Zimbabwe
Colonial ethnic realities, as well as memories of a pre-colonial past, remain alive
in post-colonial Zimbabwe. In contemporary Zimbabwe, ‘ethnicity continues to
impinge on the ongoing nation-building processes’ (Mhlanga 2013: 48). Even
Zimbabwe’s current ten administrative provinces tend to be geographically demar-
cated along ethnic and sub-ethnic lines, and the identity cards of ‘indigenous’
Africans still bear the numbers of their ethnic districts of origin. Overall, the
post-colonial state inherited the colonial ethnic structures, practices and discourses
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009) and reproduced these as well, and quite deliberately so. As
Muzondidya and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2007: 275) argue, ethnicity has ‘continued to
shape and influence the economic, social, and political life of Zimbabwe since the
achievement of independence in 1980’. This includes a strong element of outright
tribalism, or the exploitation of ethnicity as a coalescing factor or rallying point in
building alliances of inclusion and exclusion.
There has been an array of instances of people from different ethnic affiliations
(such as the Karanga, the Manyika, the Zezuru and the Ndebele, among others)
trying to outwit each other in achieving certain political outcomes in the name of a
truncated form of nation-building. Certainly, ethnic categories and contestations are
important to the internal politics of the ruling ZANU-PF party (under both Mugabe
and Mnangagwa), and to the party’s conception of national belonging. Such exclu-
sionary and parochial approaches to post-colonial nation-building are carried out
and legitimised through discourses which construct ‘ethnic minorities’ as irrelevant
to national debates and politics. Elite members of socio-politically powerful ethnic
groups (notably, Shona) have adopted authoritarian approaches to nationhood that
have so far constricted democratic space for those perceived to be ethnic minorities
(Ndhlovu 2007). As Ndhlovu (2007: 133) argues, though perhaps too boldly: ‘The
issue of ethnic differences and the politics of [ethnic] minoritisation have come to
constitute the major determinants of struggles for socio-political and economic influ-
ence and the subsequent domination of ethnic polities that have limited access to the
corridors of power’.
In part, the ethnic question continues to loom large because of the legacy of the
massive state repression and violence (known as Gukurahundi) against Ndebele-
speakers (in the Matabeleland provinces and Midlands province) by ZANU-PF-
linked security forces during the first half of the 1980s, a political-military project
which sought the extermination of ZAPU and the establishment of a one-party state
by ZANU-PF (Doran 2017). Officially ‘resolved’ through the Unity Pact of 1987,
this period of extreme violence appeared to depict Zimbabwean society as consisting

14 K. Helliker et al.
exclusively of two ethnicities in battle for the soul of the nation. It formed part
of a larger narrative increasingly propagated by ZANU-PF about its fundamental
role in the war of liberation and its exclusive (almost divine) right and capacity
to rule over the post-colonial nation—a narrative (known alternatively as Patriotic
History or the Chimurenga Monologue) which became entrenched at the turn of
the century. Muzondidya (2007) demonstrates how this authoritarian and narrow
form of nationalist discourse further marginalised a range of ‘subject minorities’
which existed outside the parameters of national belonging and citizenship (including
foreign African workers and ethnic groups like the Tonga).
While the Gukurahundi episode saw ZANU-PF building and consolidating its
ethnocracy, and victimising and killing Ndebele people in the process, it is important
not to reduce any part of Zimbabwe to one ethnicity, including Matabeleland. As
Msindo (2012) notes, Matabeleland is not Ndebele-land as ethnic minorities live in
the area—not only Kalanga but also Tonga and Venda. Often in tension with others,
or in subordination to them, ethnic minorities in post-colonial rural Zimbabwe pursue
livelihoods to the best of their ability, as this volume seeks to show. In the case of
Matabeleland, Dzingirai (2003: 446), for example, examines conflicts in the early
1990s between Ndebele and Tonga in Binga District specifically, with ‘powerful
Ndebele migrants’ showing hostility towards the Tonga. The Tonga benefitted (at
least officially) from a Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous
Resources (CAMPFIRE) project, with Ndebele-speakers opposing the project and
seeking to replace it with commercial agriculture. The latter did this with the support
of ‘big men’ in ZANU-PF. Similarly, Madzudzo and Dzingirai (1995) analyse a
CAMPFIRE project in Bulilimamangwe and Binga districts, with a particular focus
on resource-based contestations between the Tshwa San and Kalanga/Ndebele. Later,
with respect to the national elections of June 2000, McGregor (2009) shows that
Binga District delivered the highest opposition vote for the new political opposition
(Movement for Democratic Change—MDC) of any rural constituency in the country.
In this case, ZANU-PF’s discourse on land (and race), as part of the emerging fast
track land reform programme, did not fully resonate with the memories of local Tonga
people, as those in Binga did not lose land to white farmers but to state conservation
bodies. Hence, ‘they did not want to be resettled on former commercial farms but
wanted access to state resources and reparations for unsettled grievances relating to
the [Kariba] dam and displacement’ (McGregor 2009: 170) dating back to the 1950s.
The strident nationalist rhetoric of ZANU-PF did not displace local Tonga claims
and aspirations.
Despite the fact that fast track land reform was a land redistribution programme
and not a restitution one, numerous cultural, ancestral and ethnic claims to partic-
ular tracts of land were prominent during the land occupations underpinning fast
track (see Helliker et al. 2021). Because of forced removals during the colonial
era, many occupiers cited the importance of reclaiming (specific pieces of) ances-
tral lands lost (Mkodzongi 2016). For example, while Shona and Ndebele ‘immi-
grants’ occupying farms and other lands in the Lowveld did so for redistributive
reasons, Shangaan people were motivated by ancestral-ethnic claims (Wolmer 2007).
Likewise, Ndau identity was of some significance for land occupations in Chipinge

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 15
(Maposa et al. 2010). Additionally, those occupying the Eastern Highlands Plantation
in Nyanga claimed it as the original home of the Tangwena, Zindi and Chavhanga
people (Marongwe 2003). During the occupation of Wolfscrag farm in Chipinge,
claims to ancestral lands were strong among those displaced under colonialism
(Zamchiya 2011). In Chiweshe, villagers from the Hwata/Chiweshe and Zumba
dynasties, then scattered around the country, organised to occupy an area called
Gomba on autochthonous grounds. In the Save Valley conservancy, many occupa-
tions of the ranches there related to ancestral longings and thus revealed ‘long-term
contests over the landscape’ (Wolmer 2007: 210). For instance, the (ethnically) Ndau
Gudo occupiers from Sangwe communal areas had burial sites and ritual pools on
Levanga Ranch. The literature abounds with such examples, often entailing ethnic
conflicts, with Mujere (2011) and Fontein (2006) providing examples from Masvingo
Province.
More generally, the land occupations, unintentionally, provided political space
for numerous and diverse indigenous African ethnicities and sub-ethnic clusters to
assert claims of belonging to lost lands which would, simultaneously, offer new
opportunities (on reclaimed lands) for livelihood construction. It is known though,
as Fontein (2009) shows in relation to certain occupations near Lake Mutirikwi, that
some occupiers made autochthonous claims ex post facto, or only after occupying
a farm. This entailed reinventing their reasons for the occupation based on some-
what dubious claims around cultural-ethnic belonging. Meanwhile, alien Africans
(i.e. those of foreign origin) were typically not among the ‘fast track’ occupiers, but
they felt the brunt of the occupations insofar as many laboured on white commercial
farms. Like indigenous African farm labourers, they belonged to the white farm or
white farmer; unlike the latter, though, they struggled to access communal (previ-
ously, Reserve) land because of their allochthonous status. Some workers of foreign
origins (for instance, Malawians) were able to replace belonging to the farm with
new forms of belonging. In a study from Mashonaland West, Daimon (2021:2)
argues that specific ex-migrant farm labourers (mainly former senior employees)
‘were and have been able to reinvent themselves and act as intermediaries between
war veterans, ZANU-PF officials and white farmers, and subsequently benefit from
the land reform’.
1.4.4 Language and Ethnicity
The original Independence constitution dating back to 1980 and adopted as per
the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 recognised only three languages (Shona,
Ndebele and English) for purposes of communication. English became the official
language of Zimbabwe while Shona and Ndebele were labelled as national languages.
The rest were categorised as minority languages and given neither priority nor promi-
nence (Hachipola 1998; Ndhlovu 2007). This historically perpetuated and cemented
the minority status of linguistic-cum-ethnic minorities. However, over time, the
languages of a number of linguistic minorities became increasingly promoted by

16 K. Helliker et al.
ethnic minorities, and by the Zimbabwean state at times. In 1997, the Zimbabwean
government set up the Language National Advisory Policy Panel that researched and
submitted recommendations to the government concerning a comprehensive national
language policy. Subsequently, the Education Minister (David Coltart) in the Govern-
ment of National Unity (2009–2013) invoked the Language Act to introduce Tonga,
Kalanga and Nambya languages into the education curricula. This process led to
further languages being officially recognised by the Zimbabwean state (by way of
the 2013 constitution), though likely at the expense of other minor languages (Dziva
and Dube 2014).
Thembani Dube (T. Dube 2020) notes how the Kalanga, through cultural soci-
eties, has sought recognition in the context of marginalisation and subordination to
Ndebele-speakers, particularly by promoting TjiKalanga language. In the case of the
Shona, Ndau-speakers have pursued autonomous recognition, with Sithole (2018:
427) arguing that ‘a sense of being Ndau continues to exist into the present albeit in
a modified form’. The languages recognised by the 2013 constitution are as follows:
Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani,
Shona, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Sign Language. Though ethnicity
is not reducible to language, giving formal status to minor languages goes a long way
to acknowledging the presence of ethnic minorities (Magwa and Mutasa 2007;Dziva
and Dube 2014). There is ongoing evidence in Zimbabwe of ethnic minorities, under
their own initiatives, pushing for social, economic and political inclusion (Manyena
2013). In this light, Bhebhe and Ngoepe (2021) discuss a number of ethnic asso-
ciations in Zimbabwe which document the history of ethnic minorities (including
Tonga, Nambya, Kalanga, Tshwa San, and Shangaan).
In 2012, Zimbabwe joined the rest of the world in celebrating the 20th anniversary
of the unanimously adopted United National Declaration for Minorities (1992), as
the key international document pertaining to the granting and protection of rights for
minority groups by states in all spheres of life (Dziva and Dube 2014). Among other
points, the Declaration stresses: ‘States shall protect the existence and the national or
ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective
territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity’. For
most African states, Zimbabwe included, the declaration’s anniversary came amidst
ubiquitous marginalisation of minority groups, including ethnic minorities. In the
case of Zimbabwe, despite some important advances, this continues to be the case,
with far-reaching implications for the livelihoods of ethnic minorities.
1.4.5 Ethnic Minorities and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe
As discussed, a large body of literature on ethnicity in Zimbabwe exists, but often
in relation to the colonial invention of ethnicity and with a focus on Shona and
Ndebele ethnicities and contestations (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009; Ranger 1984; Beach
1980). Questions around citizenship, nationhood and the nation-state with reference
to ethnicity and ethnic politics have captured the attention of a number of scholars

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 17
(Muzondidya 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009;Mlambo2013). Importantly, there is
now increasing literature giving purposeful attention to ethnic minorities, including
the agency of ethnic minorities in promoting and protecting their languages (Dziva
and Dube 2014; Makoni 2011; Mavesere 2010; Mumpande 2020), and the intersec-
tions between ethnicity, language and politics in the context of nation-building in
Zimbabwe (Ndhlovu 2007).
On the ground, though, regions and communities inhabited by ethnic minorities
continue to be marked by significant levels of underdevelopment and deprivation.
The lives and livelihoods of ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe entail high levels of
precariousness, vulnerability and poverty (Zishiri et al. 2021; Zhou 2014). In this
context, there is a growing number of studies on ethnicity which examine the liveli-
hoods of ethnic minorities, mainly through the prisms of landscape and belonging.
These studies unearth how ethnic minorities engage in a politics of landscape-
belonging as a basis for incorporation into national development processes—
primarily through recognition, on an ethnic basis, of a legitimate claim and access
to specific localised natural resources (McGregor 2009; Matanzima 2021; Mashin-
gaidze 2020; Matanzima and Saidi 2020). The contributors to this volume, who write
from the perspective of ethnicity, have been central to the development of this new
body of literature and their work provides an important bridge between two disparate
sets of literature: one on ethnicity and the other on livelihoods.
As with ethnicity, there is significant research explicitly on livelihoods in
Zimbabwe. But, generally, this literature does not incorporate questions of ethnicity.
These studies typically make some attempt to draw upon an analytical framing
of livelihoods via the Livelihoods Framework (Kabonga 2020; Mudimu 1997;
Chiweshe and Muzanago 2016). This includes a number of livelihood studies of rural
Zimbabwe (Bird and Shepherd 2003; Scoones et al. 1996; Shackleton et al. 2000;
Scoones 2015; Goebel 2007; Nyamwanza 2012). There are only a few livelihood
studies which seek to understand the relevance of ethnicity to livelihoods (Scoones
2015). These include a study by Dube et al. (2021), using the Livelihoods Framework,
on the ongoing marginalisation of the Tshwa San in Tsholotsho and Bulilima districts,
where they engage in casual labour for Kalanga and Ndebele neighbours; and the
book by Matsa (2021) which, in the context of ongoing climate change, examines
the marginal areas of Bulilma, Binga and Beitbridge in southwestern Zimbabwe and
the farming livelihood activities of ethnic minorities such as Venda, Tonga, San and
Suthu. This literature, alongside the ethnicity literature with a livelihoods dimension,
is beginning to provide us with a fuller understanding of the lives of ethnic minorities
in Zimbabwe, as well as with ways of framing analytically and linking projects of
belonging and projects of livelihoods.
At least implicitly, Mutopo (2014) considers the dual projects of identity and
livelihoods in relation to gender, by examining—from the perspective of women—
the simultaneous quest for belonging and land on a fast track farm. The work of
Rutherford (2011) opens up a similar approach with respect to the world of work,
specifically farm labour. In discussing the turbulent lives of Zimbabwean migrants in
northern South Africa, Rutherford talks about ‘working and belonging’ or ‘strategies
of livelihoods and belonging’: ‘the concept mode of belonging is used to examine the

18 K. Helliker et al.
relations through which people … can make claims to reside in, and possibly access
means of livelihood, in different spaces’ (Rutherford 2011: 1305). Belonging means
staking a claim and accessing resources on this basis, and this process constitutes an
important dimension to the livelihood projects of ethnic minorities, in both past and
present Zimbabwe.
1.5 Volume Outline
The book has 12 chapters, including this introductory chapter which theorises and
historicises the livelihoods of ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe. The following eleven
empirical chapters appear in three parts: Land, Livelihoods and Ethnicity;Wildlife,
Livelihoods and Ethnicity; and Crisis, Livelihoods and Ethnicity. The first two parts
cover the colonial and post-colonial periods, while the third part has a more specific
focus on the post-2000 period of economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe. The
chapters recognise the relational and situational character of ethnicity, and hence the
(often) troubled interactions between the ethnic minority studied and other ethnic
groups are brought to the fore, as is the shifting character of these ethnic minorities
in the context of disruptions and changes to their livelihoods.
The first three chapters, in Part I, focus on land, livelihoods and ethnicity. In
Chap. 2, Davy Ndlovu, Ben Begbie-Clench, Robert Hitchcock and Melinda Kelly
examine the Tshwa San living primarily in Tsholotsho District of Matabeleland North
and Bulilimamangwe District in Matabeleland South. Recent surveys indicate that
the population size of Tshwa is approximately 2,800. The vast majority of Tshwa
today are subsistence farmers, though some of them work for other groups including
Kalanga and Ndebele as cattle and goat herders, agricultural field hands, and domestic
workers. Many Tshwa supplement their subsistence with gathering of wild plants and
insects. After their forcible relocation from what is now Hwange National Park in the
late 1920s, Tshwa moved to commercial farming areas and worked as field hands.
Some Tshwa worked at the colliery in the town of Hwange, and a few were employed
by the wildlife department in the park. Currently, most live in communal areas. This
chapter documents the colonial and post-colonial issues facing the Tshwa, including
government policies, environmental factors, and economic stress. In the past decade,
the Tshwa have engaged in cultural empowerment and revitalisation efforts and are
organising themselves to promote social justice and human rights in the Zimbabwe
nation-state.
The following chapter by Joseph Mujere (Chap. 3) examines how Basotho
migrants from South Africa established livelihoods based on freehold land ownership
and agriculture in Southern Rhodesia. Basotho farmers migrated from South Africa
to Southern Rhodesia in the 1890s and were among the first Africans to purchase
freehold land in the colony. They were later displaced to African Purchase Areas
in the 1930s following the enactment of the Land Apportionment Act. Their early
success resulted in colonial officials viewing them as progressive Africans whose
work ethic needed to be emulated by indigenous Africans. They were also hailed for

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 19
being among the first African farmers to supply milk to creameries that had been
established in the colony. Basotho’s farmers sought to become examples to other
African farmers and to be considered ‘men of the soil.’ Despite their early success,
Basotho farmers faced several challenges that include displacement from their farms
and land disputes. The chapter concludes that Basotho migrants’ livelihoods were
intricately linked to their ownership of freehold farms and their quest for belonging.
In Chap. 4, Taderera Hebert Chisi provides an analysis of the Hlengwe people
of the south-east Lowveld of Zimbabwe, who are commonly known as Shangaan/
‘Machangana’ or Tsonga. Their traditional livelihood activities such as hunting,
fishing, gathering, agriculture and trade were unique to the extent that they could be
easily used as features of identity differentiation between the Hlengwe and neigh-
bouring ‘ethnic others’ such as Duma and Karanga. However, the uniqueness of some
of these activities has diminished over the years. This chapter is premised on the argu-
ment that the livelihood activities of ethnic communities are not static but shift with
time in response to changes in the social, political and physical environment. In this
context, it analyses the transformation of the Hlengwe livelihood activities from 1890
(the time of British colonialism) to the twenty-first century. Overall, the Hlengwe
livelihood activities morphed over the years to a point where, by the early twenty-first
century, ethno-commerce or commodification of marketable features of identity such
as cultural symbols, art and craft and living cultures remained the main livelihood
activity which still reflected Hlengwe ethnicity more than any other activities in the
modern multi-ethnic society of the south-east Lowveld.
In the following four chapters (in Part II), the central theme is wildlife, liveli-
hoods and ethnicity. Vincent Jani (Chap. 5) examines Zimbabwe’s community-based
natural resource management programme, called CAMPFIRE, which was aimed at
integrating biodiversity conservation with community livelihoods. This integration
is far from simple, especially when two ethnic groups with different livelihood prac-
tices are drawn into one project under local political leadership. Such is the case
in Chapoto Ward, in the north of Zimbabwe, where the Doma and Chikunda ethnic
groups co-exist. Thus, the focus of this chapter is on how the livelihoods of the
minority Doma group have been affected by the local CAMPFIRE project. Specific
objectives include: identifying the livelihood practices of the Doma; assessing the
impact that CAMPFIRE has had on their livelihood practices; and demonstrating
the negative reinforcement of politics and ethnic bias regarding Doma livelihoods.
Fieldwork-based research findings demonstrate the variety of livelihood practices in
existence and show how these practices were hampered by the CAMPFIRE initia-
tive. Ethnic discrimination and stigmatisation, which placed the Doma in a subor-
dinate position vis-a-vis other dominant groups, further demonstrate their restricted
circumstances.
In Chap. 6, Joshua Matanzima and Ivan Marowa draw upon the concept of precar-
ious livelihoods to unpack the conflicts occurring between people and wild animals
in the Tonga communities of north-western Zimbabwe. The chapter considers the
uncertainties and vulnerabilities of Tonga livelihoods due to the presence of, and
attacks, from wild animals. On a day-to-day basis, the Tonga experience harm caused
by animals to their lives, livelihoods and/or properties. The Tonga communities

20 K. Helliker et al.
studied survive mainly on fishing in Lake Kariba or the tributaries of the Zambezi
River as well as subsistence farming. Along Lake Kariba, they have conflicts with
such animals as hippos and crocodiles, their fields are often trampled by elephants,
buffaloes and duikers, and their livestock especially cattle and goats are attacked
by lions, leopards and hyenas. These human-wildlife conflicts take place within a
particular historical and spatial context, notably the forced displacement of the Tonga
from the Zambezi River in the late 1950s and their post-displacement presence in an
area of Zimbabwe marked by an arid ecosystem (in large part unsuitable for agricul-
ture) alongside poverty and hunger. Thus, currently, they are placed between a rock
and a hard place, between threatening wildlife and an arid environment. The chapter
is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork among the Tonga communities of in
particular the Mola, Musampakaruma and Sinakatenge chiefdoms.
In the case of Chap. 7, Emmanuel Ndhlovu provides a comprehensive examination
of the livelihoods of the ‘Shangane’ nation (and specifically the Chisa of Gotosa) in
south-eastern Zimbabwe. The Chisa people have a complex and convoluted history
because of multiple forced displacements including from their ancestral lands which
now form part of the Gonarezhou National Park. The chapter traces the origins
and livelihoods of the Chisa people from pre-colonial times, through the colonial
period, and into the post-independence period including in the context of the Fast
Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). The history of the Chisa people is a story
of incessant land displacements, but it is also one of resistance against top-down
colonial projects. Though they may have benefited from the FTLRP through access
to redistributed land, this falls far short of calls for restitution, that is, regaining access
to their ancestral lands in Gonarezhou and the sense of identity and nationhood which
would come with this. Hence, using the Chisa of Gotosa as a case study, the chapter
demonstrates how Chisa livelihoods were distorted with each displacement (since
the 1950s), with the FTLRP, in fact, actually pushing them further away from their
ancestral lands.
Oppenheimer Chiweshe, in Chap. 8, examines the lives and livelihoods of the
Nambya people of Hwange district in north-western Zimbabwe. This entails detailing
their origins, convoluted history, interactions with other African ethnicities (such as
the Ndebele), the barrenness of the lands occupied, and the involuntary and coerced
displacements to which they were subjected. Hwange is regarded as unproductive
land as it is characterised by sandy soils, and hot and dry conditions, such that
pursuing livelihoods there is deeply problematic. Despite this, the Nambya devised
diverse survivalist strategies to make a living out of the arid environment, and this
entailed adapting their agriculture to this marginal environment. The Nambya and
their livelihoods were affected by numerous waves of displacements. For example,
one wave saw the Nambya being displaced for making way for the mining of coal
and another involved the Nambya being removed to make way for Hwange National
Park. In each case, broad-based development was not forthcoming in the district and
the Nambya did not benefit in any significant manner. This is demonstrated by a
sweeping historical analysis from pre-colonial to post-colonial times.
In Part III, the focus becomes ethnicity and livelihoods in the context of the
current crisis in Zimbabwe. In Chap. 9, Codelia Govha Dhodho examines the Tonga

1 Theorising and Historicising the Livelihoods … 21
of Binga District, in particular the severe food crisis in 2008 which caused mass
starvation, given in particular the Zimbabwean government’s ban on the distribution
of relief food after the contested presidential elections. This chapter considers the
long-term marginalisation of the Tonga people and its contribution to the food crisis,
and the Tonga’s responses to the crisis. It traces events after the involuntary displace-
ment of the Tonga from the banks of the Zambezi River in the late 1950s and their
ensuing neglect by both the colonial and post-colonial governments. The political
and economic challenges in the country from 2000 to 2009 pushed the Tonga to
the edge of starvation. While non-governmental organisations (NGOs) distributed
food aid to the Tonga post-1980, this led to dependency as the people abandoned
their traditional coping mechanisms thereby weakening their livelihood resilience.
Further, the Zimbabwean government argued that NGOs were in a regime-change
alliance with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), with strong
Tonga support for the MDC. The government banned NGOs from providing food
aid to the Tonga during the 2008 drought, leading the Tonga to fall back on their
traditional food crisis coping mechanisms, notably wild foods.
Patience Chadambuka, in Chap. 10, highlights that the marginalisation of ethnic
minorities in Zimbabwe has been authored and reinforced by the nation-state and,
historically across both the colonial and post-colonial periods, this has had profound
implications on the livelihoods of ethnic minorities. These ethnic groups include
Africans of ‘foreign’ origin whose roots are often traced to neighbouring coun-
tries, mainly Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi. These ethnic communities are today
mainly a ‘colonial residue’, consisting of various generations of migrants who came
into the country mostly as covenanted labour during the colonial era. This chapter
focuses on one specific group, namely the Chewa originally from Malawi, who lived
and worked on white commercial farms in Zimbabwe for decades and over gener-
ations. From the year 2000, they were displaced from the farms in the context of
Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme and some migrated to communal
areas, as they had lost ties, or had no ties, to their purported country of origin. Through
a case study of Bushu communal areas in Shamva District, this chapter focuses on the
re(invention) of livelihoods by the displaced ex-farm workers in ethnicised communal
areas in the face of disputes around agrarian spaces and land access, and how they
sought to belong to these areas in the process.
In Chap. 11, Anusa Daimon emphasises that, in the aftermath of the Zimbab-
wean crisis, communities have sought alternative livelihoods to survive the economic
meltdown that has characterised the Zimbabwean political economy since 2000.
Existing historiography has detailed the numerous strategies and tactics that have
been deployed by Zimbabweans in the last two decades to circumvent the resultant
economic challenges. However, it has not detailed how some African ethnic minori-
ties, including those which have been pushed to, and subjugated at, the margins of
the Zimbabwean nation and are living in a ‘state of unbelonging’, have uniquely
engaged their cultural cosmologies as an alternative economic livelihood. Using the
case of people of Malawian ancestry and their Nyau/Gule Wamkulu cultural dances,
the chapter demonstrates how, among other survival strategies, these people have
distinctly resorted to their cultural practices for economic survival in the face of a

22 K. Helliker et al.
crisis that systematically displaced the majority of them from their traditional occu-
pations as farm workers and miners (through the agrarian-land reform, industrial
retrenchments and mine shutdowns). Malawian communities have thus uniquely
used their ethnicised Nyau cultural dances for income generation through perfor-
mances on Zimbabwean farms, mines and urban areas during local and national
events.
Finally, Nicholas Nyachega and Vongai Olivia Sagonda (in Chap. 12) demonstrate
how borderland livelihoods are always impacted, in significant ways, by the changing
economic and socio-political developments in both the “edges” and the “inlands” of
the state. The chapter explores how the Honde Valley’s ethnic minority groups of
Ndau, Malawian and Mozambican origins, as well as the majority Shona families
of Manyika roots undertook various forms of livelihoods from the late 1970s to
2020. Although historically diversified, working in the tea plantations, subsistence
farming, small businesses and cross-border trading have always remained central to
the Honde Valley communities’ livelihoods. The Zimbabwean economic and political
crisis that started in the early 2000s affected the operations of tea estates such as
Aberfoyle and Katiyo where most im/migrant families worked. The crisis affected
the livelihoods of people of foreign roots and the locals too. However, for the locals,
banana farming became the main source of their livelihoods, leading to what has been
termed the Honde Valley ‘banana boom’ which started in the early 2000s. While
the banana boom has witnessed a significant transformation of the Honde Valley
people’s livelihoods, it has been characterised by many challenges, including land
disputes, unstable markets and state meddling in the face of Zimbabwe’s deteriorating
economic and political contexts.
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Kirk Helliker is a Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University in
South Africa, where he also heads the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies, which he founded in 2015.
He publishes widely on Zimbabwean society and also supervises a significant number of PhD
and MA students, mostly on Zimbabwean topics. His most recent books focus on crisis-living in
contemporary Zimbabwe and the fast track land occupations in the context of zvimurenga.

28 K. Helliker et al.
Joshua Matanzima is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe
University, Australia. He is also a member of the Gwembe Tonga Research Project. He has done
extensive fieldwork in the Zambezi Valley among the Tonga people. His research interests lie
in the fields of human-wildlife interactions, anthropology of landscape and resettlement as well
as religion and social change. His previous publications appear in such journals as International
Journal of Water Resources DevelopmentAfrican Identities, Water International and Oryx.
Patience Chadambuka is a lecturer and Acting Chairperson in the Community Studies Depart-
ment (formerly Sociology Department), in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Midlands State
University, Zimbabwe. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Rhodes University, South Africa and
a MSc in Sociology and Anthropology as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Educa-
tion from the Midlands State University. Her areas of interest include land and agrarian studies,
migration, ethnicity, livelihoods and gender studies.

Part I
Land, Livelihoods and Ethnicity

Chapter 2
The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land,
Livelihoods, and Ethnicity
Davy Ndlovu, Ben Begbie-Clench, Robert K. Hitchcock,
and Melinda C. Kelly
Abstract Tshwa San live primarily in western Zimbabwe in Tsholotsho District of
Matabeleland North and Bulilimamangwe District in Matabeleland South and are one
of two groups in Zimbabwe who self-identify as indigenous people. Recent surveys
indicate that the population size of Tshwa is approximately 2,800. The vast majority
of Tshwa today are subsistence farmers, though some of them work for other groups
including Kalanga and Ndebele as cattle and goat herders, agricultural field hands,
and domestic workers. Many Tshwa supplement their subsistence with gathering of
wild plants and insects. After their forcible relocation from what is now Hwange
National Park in the late 1920s, Tshwa moved to commercial farming areas and
worked as field hands. Some Tshwa worked at the colliery in the town of Hwange, and
a few were employed by the wildlife department in the park. Currently, most live in
communal areas. This chapter documents the colonial and post-colonial issues facing
the Tshwa, including government policies, environmental factors, and economic
stress. In the past decade, the Tshwa have engaged in cultural empowerment and
revitalisation efforts and are organising themselves to promote social justice and
human rights in the Zimbabwe nation-state.
Keywords Tshwa ·Indigenous people ·Resettlement ·Agropastoralism ·Land
reform ·Labour migration
D. Ndlovu (B
)
Tsoro-O-Tso Development Trust, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
e-mail: mdavadavy@gmail.com
B. Begbie-Clench
Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia
R. K. Hitchcock
Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
M. C. Kelly
Kalahari Peoples Fund, Albuquerque, NM, USA
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_2
31

32 D. Ndlovu et al.
2.1 Introduction
There has been a long-standing debate in Zimbabwe about the human rights of indige-
nous people and other marginalised communities in the country (Human Rights
Watc h 2000; Howard-Hassmann 2009,2010;Ndlovu2010,2013,2017; Zimbabwe
Human Rights Commission 2017; Chingwe 2019). The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe
were among the first indigenous people in southern Africa whose communities were
relocated involuntarily from a protected area and whose rights were seriously abro-
gated. This relocation was a result of decisions by the then Southern Rhodesian
administration to create a game reserve in the western part of the country bordering
on the Bechuanaland Protectorate, which was done in 1927. The plan was to appoint a
warden to oversee the game reserve, part of whose job was to remove any people who
were living inside of its boundaries. The relocation focused mainly on ‘Bushmen’,
otherwise known as Abatwa or Amasili, many of whom now self-identify as Tshwa
San.
This chapter focuses on the Tshwa San of western Zimbabwe. It draws on research
undertaken over the last three decades by the authors and their colleagues. After a
discussion of the ethnohistory and ethnography of the Tshwa in Tsholotsho and
Bulilimamangwe Districts, we examine the ways in which the Tshwa were treated
by other people including the Ndebele, Kalanga, and European settlers. An important
event affecting the Tshwa was the creation of the Wankie Game Reserve in 1928 by
the Southern Rhodesian administration and the relocation of the resident Tshwa
populations to places outside of the reserve. As we show, the Tshwa were also
affected by government-imposed land reforms beginning in the 1920s and 1930s
which reduced the amounts of land available for Tshwa use. We then discuss what
happened to the Tshwa during the Zimbabwean liberation war (1965–1980) and their
subsequent experiences in the post-independence period, when Tshwa, Ndebele, and
Kalanga were dealt with harshly by the new Zimbabwean government in the period
known as Gukurahundi (1981–1987). After this, we assess the impact of the Fast-
Track Land Reform Programme that began in 2000, which the Tshwa did not benefit
from. The economic downturn of 2008 affected the Tshwa and other Zimbabweans,
resulting in increased poverty and declining economic and nutritional well-being.
We conclude with a discussion of the current livelihood and socio-political status of
the Tshwa.
2.2 The Tshwa
The Tshwa are a San-speaking group who today occupy western Zimbabwe and
northern Botswana. Numbering 2,800 people in Zimbabwe and 7,900 people in
Botswana, the Tshwa are former foragers who now are agropastoralists and wage
labourers who engage in foraging primarily as a source of supplemental food or, to
a lesser extent, cash income. Tshwa are found in western Zimbabwe, where they

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 33
reside primarily in Tsholotsho District in Matabeleland North Province and Bulili-
mamangwe District in Matabeleland South. The Tshwa speak a ‘Central San’ (Khoe)
language similar to the G/ui and G//ana of the western and central Kalahari and the
Naro San of the Ghanzi Ridge (Güldemann 2008,2014; Vossen 2013; Fehn and Phiri
2017; Pratchett 2018,2020). The Tshwa are sub-divided into a number of different
named groups, including /Aise, Ganade, and Danisan (Hitchcock 1988: 66, Table
1; Hitchcock et al. 2018). All of the Tshwa have totem animals which they honour
and generally avoid eating, and there are a sizeable number of different sub-groups
among the Tshwa with particular totems (Dornan 1925: 68; Cashdan 1979: 41–45;
Hitchcock 1982: 135–137). Tshwa differ somewhat from other peoples of hunting
and gathering origin in southern Africa in that they were generally sedentary for a
substantial portion of the year but engaged in mobile foraging the balance of the
year. It should be stressed that most Tshwa were heavily integrated into the regional
economies of Kalanga, Ndebele, and other agropastoral populations by the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.
The Tshwa were organised into bands of 20–60 persons in size. The bands were
connected through kinship, affinal (marital), and friendship ties. In the early twen-
tieth century, they were mobile, moving approximately three to eight times a year,
depending on the season and the availability of water, wild plants, and wild animals.
The Tshwa were generally egalitarian, though they did have local leaders (//Aiha)
from whom individuals and other groups sought permission to enter their territories.
They also had healers (tóò-khòè, plural: tóò-rà) who healed people through going
into trances, laying on of hands, or through recommending specific plants to treat
illnesses and infections. Long-distance hunts were led by specialised hunt leaders
(káè-tcá-bá-tcò).
In the late nineteenth century, the area along the border between Zimbabwe and
Botswana was called ‘the Hunters’ Road’, because of the number of European hunters
and traders who passed through this area on their way to Victoria Falls (Tabler 1963,
1966). Some of these hunters later established trading stores where goods were avail-
able for purchase by travellers and local people. These stores served as information
nodes along the road, as well as depots for the purchase of wildlife products such
as ostrich feathers, ivory, and skins in exchange for a variety of goods provided
to people including sugar, maize meal, blankets, and metal tools. The Tshwa were
known throughout southern Africa for their hunting abilities, and they sometimes
served as guides or trackers for people hunting large animals (Mohr 1876: 156–157;
Holub 1881: 82–83; Oates 1881: 25, 28; Hodson 1912: 205–206, 227–228). The
ethnohistoric literature on the Tshwa indicates that they underwent certain social,
economic, and technological transformations in part as a result of their contacts
with other groups. Exchanges of goods, ideas, and information between Tshwa and
their neighbours led to transformations in Tshwa social, economic, and political
organisation, including the rise of specialists such as hunt leaders and professional
healers.

34 D. Ndlovu et al.
2.3 Creation of the Wankie Game Reserve
The Tshwa were heavily affected by the creation of the Wankie Game Reserve in the
late 1920s. Wankie Game Reserve was originally declared in 1927 and was estab-
lished as Wankie (now Hwange) National Park on January 29, 1950. The protected
area is 14,651 km2in size and is the largest national park in Zimbabwe. The decla-
ration of Wankie as a game reserve came about partially because of the Southern
Rhodesian administration’s recognition of the large numbers of animals, plants, and
insects in the area (for a description of the wildlife in Wankie and adjacent areas, see
Wilson 1975; Smithers 1983).
In the latter part of the 1920s, the Southern Rhodesian administration required
substantial numbers of people, possibly up to 1,000 or more, to move out of the
Wankie protected area. According to oral testimony, some of the Tshwa moved south
towards Tsholotsho and Plumtree, while others moved into what is now Botswana.
Some Tshwa also moved north towards Wankie (now Hwange) District. According to
ethnohistoric information and contemporary ethnographic interviews, the livelihoods
of Tshwa declined significantly as a result of these moves. At the same time, some
Tshwa chose to enter into the local and regional economies, working in the coal mines
of Hwange and on commercial farms owned by Europeans. Others opted to remain
as foragers, engaging in wildlife utilisation and wild plant collection. About a dozen
Tshwa joined the National Parks and Wildlife Management Service, some of them
working in Wankie Game Reserve and later, Hwange National Park (Fanuel Nangati,
personal communications, 1992, 1993; David Cumming, personal communication,
2013; Gary Haynes, personal communications, 2014, 2020, 2021).
At the time that the British South Africa Company began devising its land policies
in what was to become Southern Rhodesia, the plan was to establish various land
categories, including freehold (private) land, reserved for whites; native reserves,
designated for black farmers; and state land, which would be protected areas (Palmer
1977; Ncube 2004;Mlambo2014). Two native reserves, Gwaai and Shangani, were
designated around Wankie, Gwaai to the south and Shangani (Lupane) to the north
of the game reserve.
In the park area itself, in the nineteenth century, Tshwa were mobile and obtained
water through digging pits close to pans or in the beds of seasonal rivers. There
was some use of Wankie by groups other than Tshwa San, including Nambiya,
Ndebele, and Kalanga, most of whom entered the area briefly for purposes of hunting
or seeking labourers to work on their farms. There is evidence in Wankie of Iron
Age archaeological sites, a number of which are stone-walled villages, indicating
that agropastoralists had occupied the Wankie area previously (McGregor 2005;
Wriston 2013; Simon Makuvaza, personal communication, 2020). Today, some of
these archaeological sites attract tourists and, in a few cases, Tshwa serve as guides
to the monuments.
Hwange and Tsholotsho initially were occupied by the ancestors of the Abatwa
San. The original name (Tjolotjo) was derived from the Tshwa word ‘Tsoro-o-tso’
meaning ‘the head of an elephant’. The area in the nineteenth century was a favoured

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 35
haunt of elephant herds which attracted early ivory hunters. When the Ndebele arrived
in western Zimbabwe in 1838, the area supported large herds of elephants and other
large animals (rhinoceros, lions, giraffes), a wide variety of predators, and a diverse
assemblage of smaller species.
The rinderpest epidemic of 1896–1897, combined with extensive hunting of large
mammals by both Europeans and local people, led to a reduction in wildlife numbers
in Southern Rhodesia and many other parts of southern Africa (van Oselen 1972).
Elephant populations in particular were disturbed considerably by hunters in the
latter part of the nineteenth century. As indicated by local people, one response of
the elephants in the Wankie and Tsholotsho regions was a tendency to bunch up
in small mixed herds. Without the leadership of the matriarchs, there was greater
destruction of crops, according to local community members. Some of the local
farmers responded accordingly, opting to shoot the animals on sight, especially if
they were in their fields.
The depletion of wildlife fuelled concerns in the British South Africa Company
and the colonial government of Southern Rhodesia that the resource potential of
the region would be lost unless steps were taken to stop the killing. One way to
deal with the problem, it was decided, was to utilise the ‘royal game’ principle of
the Ndebele and Kalanga chiefs and to declare wildlife species as state property. It
was made illegal for individuals to kill wild animals even if animals invaded their
fields or threatened their lives. As one Tshwa put it, ‘[t]he Europeans became the
gamekeepers, and the Africans became the poachers’. Killing of wild animals was
thus disallowed in the early part of the twentieth century.
In the period between 1890 and 1923, the Department of Agriculture oversaw
the administration of game in Southern Rhodesia. The first full-time officer with
responsibility for overseeing game management in the Wankie Game Reserve, Ted
Davison, was appointed in 1928. Davison undertook trips into the Reserve area to
assess its status and to tell Bushmen and other residents that they were breaking the
law for continuing to live in Wankie (Davison 1977: 17–24). These efforts were not
easy, as noted by Davison, who said, ‘Bushmen who knew the area kept their secrets,
refusing to divulge any information at all – probably because they felt this might
lead to the arrest of relatives engaged in poaching’ (Davison 1977: 16). One of his
tasks, as Davison noted, was to warn people that the area was now a game reserve
and that they were not allowed to live there (Davison 1977: 20). Davison, unlike
other Southern Rhodesian wildlife personnel, had a certain amount of empathy for
Bushmen. This is revealed in a statement he made in his book:
These Bushmen, in fact, evoked a degree of sympathy. They were not really poachers in the
worst sense. Just like a pride of lions, they killed only for their own needs, amounting to not
much more than an animal a week. However, the law had come to Wankie Game Reserve,
and it had to be implemented. (Davison 1977: 21)
Unfortunately, there were other, less positively inclined individuals, some of
whom worked for the Southern Rhodesian government, and others who were self-
appointed conservationists. One of these men, H.G. Robins, was a former hunter
who resided on a farm to the north of Wankie Game Reserve. Davison (1977: 23)

36 D. Ndlovu et al.
highlights that Robins was obsessed with the idea that the region was ‘infested with
poachers, all of whom were concentrating their efforts on his land’. Robins carried
out patrols both by vehicle and on foot, looking for the tracks of Bushmen who
he believed were responsible for what he saw as declining numbers of large game.
Tshwa in the region described how Robins hunted people down and either beat them
or turned them over to government authorities. Tshwa remember all too well the one-
humped camels (Camelus dromedarius) used by Southern Rhodesian police and the
military to search for alleged poachers and lawbreakers (Wilson 2007).
Davison concluded after his initial surveys of the Wankie region that the poaching
problem was not nearly as serious as he had been led to believe (Davison 1977: 23–
24). He admitted that there were indeed Bushmen families moving around the area,
some of them with muzzleloaders (Davison 1977: 24). These Bushmen apparently
were not using either poisoned arrows or wire snares, items that were considered
by game rangers to be highly lethal to game populations. In Davison’s opinion, the
biggest constraint affecting wildlife populations in Wankie was not poaching but
rather the availability of surface water.
In the period between 1927 and 1930, the Tshwa were informed that they had
to move out of the Wankie Game Reserve. As noted above, some of them did so,
but others retreated into the dry interior of the game reserve along the Botswana-
Zimbabwe border. Patrols were sent in to arrest people and to remove them from the
game reserve. While people were arrested and jailed, their families attempted to eke
out an existence in areas south of the park. A few Tshwa went to areas north of the
Wankie Game Reserve, and some moved to the Gwaai and Lupane areas where they
worked for African farmers.
2.4 Processes of Resettlement
Tshwa San are a transboundary people, living on both sides of the Botswana-
Zimbabwe border. Some Tshwa utilised areas on both sides of the border, with
territories ranging in size from 50 km2to 200 km2in size (Hitchcock 1982,1988).
Like the Tshwa in Zimbabwe, those living in Botswana experienced forced removals.
Thus, many of the Tshwa in Botswana who were living in what were known as
the Northern Crown Lands of the Bechuanaland Protectorate were rounded up and
relocated away from their ancestral areas, after an incident in which two Royal
Air Force flyers vanished while on a training flight from Kumalo in 1943 and local
Ganade Tshwa were blamed for their disappearance (Laverick 2015; Hitchcock et al.
2017; Skidmore-Hess 2021). The Bechuanaland Police Service and members of the
Bamangwato Tribe went into the Northern Crown Lands mounted on camels and
forced Tshwa families at gunpoint to relocate to places south of the Nata River in
what is now Central District.
Prior to their removals, groups of Tshwa who resided in the Wankie area utilised
the seasonal pans and rivers, wildlife, and vegetation before their eviction and reset-
tlement. The majority of Tshwa in Southern Rhodesia were moved from the Wankie

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 37
area in the late 1920s to ‘Native reserves’ which consist of communal lands. In line
with colonial government policy, all communal land is state land, as is also the case
in post-colonial Zimbabwe (Scoones et al. 2011). The Tshwa, therefore, did not have
de jure (legal) rights to the land that they occupied. They were able to obtain access
to plots of land for residential, agricultural, and income generation purposes from
traditional authorities or the central government, but they potentially could lose their
land at any time, as several informants noted happened to them in the 1920s, 1930s,
1940s, 1950s and 1960s as well as more recently, particularly after 2000.
The colonial government was reluctant to have Native reserves of farmers inside of
Wankie because (1) the soil fertility was low, (2) water distribution was problematic,
and (3) there were patches of a plant that was poisonous to cattle, known locally as
m’khauzaan (or mogau,Dichapetalum cymosum) (Bromwich 2014; Haynes, n.d.:
114). People who were relegated to the Native reserves on the boundaries of Wankie
thought of them as ‘cemeteries, not homes’ (Haynes, n.d.: 114). One reason for these
beliefs was that the Native reserves, as well as Wankie itself, were known to have
tsetse fly (Glossina morsitans) which carried sleeping sickness which caused high
rates of mortality among livestock and affected human beings as well.
Oral history testimony underscores the privation and hunger that occurred among
the Tshwa who were resettled and prevented from engaging in hunting and gath-
ering activities. As one Tshwa elder put it: ‘We were so hungry that we were
forced to eat leaves and bark of trees’ (Tshwa informant, December 1980). Famine
occurred among the Tshwa and their neighbours in 1901–1902, 1933, 1947, and after
Zimbabwe’s independence in April 1980. ‘Famine and hunger were the order of our
lives’, said one elderly Tshwa woman in December 2013.
Oral history data indicate that the Tshwa shifted towards a more mixed economic
system. Some of the Tshwa households raised crops, especially sorghum, millet,
melons, and, by the mid-twentieth century, maize and beans. During these ongoing
troubled times, the Tshwa were no longer mobile, and they depended as much as they
could on wild foods. An important source of protein for many Tshwa was mopane
worms (Imbrasia belina) which they sun dried to eat year-round or to sell (Hitchcock
et al. 2016: 40–44). Interactions between Tshwa and Kalanga also expanded during
this time (Ncube 2018). In this context, working for livestock producers played a
significant role. Tshwa male household heads became herders (badisa) for Ndebele,
Kalanga, and Ngwato cattle owners, receiving milk, grain, and sometimes a cow a
year in exchange for their labour.
In communal villages such as Tsholotsho, Tshwa were exploited as domestic
workers by Ndebele and Kalanga and they were paid little for their work. Some
Tshwa left the villages and moved out to places west of Tsholotsho to work as cattle
herders for Kalanga and Ndebele. In return for their work, they were sometimes
allowed to drink the milk of the livestock they were caring for, but they did not
receive any wages or other food. A few Tshwa said in interviews that they felt the
conditions they were working under were tantamount to slavery.
The Tshwa and other people in the Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe were well-
acquainted with military activities. During the Zimbabwean war of liberation (1965–
1980), they had been subjected to repeated military attacks by government forces and

38 D. Ndlovu et al.
were forcibly resettled into ‘protected villages’ where they were not allowed to have
weapons, carry out hunting activities, or even protect their crops from marauding
wildlife. Both sides of the war (Rhodesian and guerrilla forces) sought to utilise the
Tshwa for their own purposes. Most Tshwa, for their part, wanted to be simply left
alone, so some of them moved into remote parts of Tsholotsho or across the border
to Botswana.
After Zimbabwe achieved its independence on 18 April 1980, tensions continued
to be felt in Matabeleland, where one of the major groups of freedom fighters, the
Zimbabwe Peoples Liberation Army (ZIPRA), the military wing of the Zimbabwe
African Peoples Union (ZAPU), had its primary base of support. Some of the former
guerrillas felt that they had not been treated appropriately by the new government
under Robert Mugabe, and tensions erupted into conflict in late l980 and early 1981.
Some of the former guerrillas returned to the bush and began what turned into a
low level insurgency. Beginning in 1982 and continuing into the mid-1980s, the
Zimbabwean government carried out counter-insurgency operations against those
they termed ‘dissidents’. These operations included military attacks on villagers,
kidnappings of suspected terrorists, torture and murder of detainees, a wide range
of atrocities against the civilian population, and restriction of the movement of food
into the area.
This period was described by the Tshwa, Ndebele, and Kalanga, as ‘the time of
troubles’. It is known as ‘Gukurahundi’ in Shona, a term which is used to describe
the spring rains that wash away the chaff from the wheat (Catholic Commission
for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe and Legal Resources Foundation 2008; Mpofu
2016; Ngwenya 2018). Tshwa and others have helped to recover some of the human
remains from mass graves and old mines into which they were dumped during the
course of the genocide (see Eppel 2014; Fontein 2014 for a discussion of the recovery
of the remains). Testimonies from Tshwa provide insights into the ways in which the
genocide was carried out (see, for example, Hitchcock and Twedt 1997).
The government of Zimbabwe has since imposed strict censorship on discussions
and depictions of what transpired during that period. Tshwa remember this period
as one of state terror, and they, like the Ndebele and Kalanga, want to see a national
level investigation into what happened during this time, and have called for a Truth
and Reconciliation Commission along the lines of what was done in South Africa
after the end of Apartheid in 1994. The government of Zimbabwe, for its part, refuses
to acknowledge that Gukurahundi was a genocide.
The Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources
(CAMPFIRE) saw some early benefits for Tshwa communities, but those have
declined considerably in the past two decades (Rihoy et al. 2010;Ndlovu2020).
One of the problems with the CAMPFIRE programmes is that the benefits were
given directly to district councils, which used them for such projects as road devel-
opment and the construction of community centres (Peterson 1991; Patel 1998). In
Tsholotsho, the setting aside of an area in the west for use by safari hunting operations
led to a reduction in the amount of land available for Tshwa for residences, agricul-
ture, and grazing (Patel 1998). There were few direct impacts on Tshwa household
economic systems from CAMPFIRE.

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 39
Overall, the socio-economic status of the Tshwa in contemporary Zimbabwe
remains deeply problematic. A report on the nutritional situation among the San
in southern Africa (Dieckmann 2018) contains a section on Zimbabwe which indi-
cates a trend towards increased nutritional stress and impoverishment in recent years.
Some of the nutritional hardship among Tshwa has been offset by government social
safety net programmes as well as programmes of international agencies such as
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
2.5 Post-2000 Land Reform and Other Events
Beginning in 2000, Zimbabwe embarked on an extensive land reform programme,
the Fast-Track Land Reform (Chimhowu and Hulme 2006; Scoones et al. 2011),
which saw the resettlement of farmers and agropastoralists from communal lands
in other parts of Zimbabwe into areas historically inhabited by the Tshwa. Hence,
according to Tshwa in Tsholotsho, they did not move to the new fast track farms, as an
influx of farmers from other areas moved into western Zimbabwe to take advantage
of the opportunities afforded by the land reform programme, a process that increased
the local competition for land. The Tshwa applied for fast track land through village
headmen and headwomen and through the provincial administrations in Matabele-
land North and Matabeleland South. However, they were largely unsuccessful in
having farming land allocated to them. At the same time, as of 2021, no Tshwa had
been granted de jure rights to land in communal areas, an issue that was raised with
three government ministers who visited Tsholotsho in July 2021 (Zimbabwe Cabinet
Report, August 2021: 4–7).
In 2008, Zimbabwe, like much of the rest of the world, was affected by the global
slowdown in the economy brought about in part by the banking and real estate crisis.
During this period of hyperinflation, incomes of Tshwa and other people in Zimbabwe
declined, and poverty increased substantially (Larochelle et al. 2014; Zhou 2014;
UNICEF Zimbabwe 2019). In some cases, Tshwa sought employment in other coun-
tries, including Botswana and, to some extent, Zambia and South Africa. Labour
migrants would send remittances back to their households in Zimbabwe. Cross-
border migration has been affected by Botswana and South African government
immigration policies and the establishment of an increasing number of cross-border
checkpoints in the past decade.
In recent years, the government of Zimbabwe has complained about Botswana’s
construction of fences along the Botswana-Zimbabwe border. There are no fences
along the western side of Hwange National Park, so elephants have been moving out
of the park into Botswana because some of the water points in Hwange have been
shut down periodically to save fuel. A problem is that northeastern Botswana has
been also experiencing a drought and many of the pans which elephants had visited
in Botswana in the past were dry. As a result of this situation, elephants and buffalos
were entering into more heavily-populated areas where they came into greater contact
with both domestic animals and people, causing human-wildlife conflict. Several

40 D. Ndlovu et al.
people have been injured by wild animals in the Manxotae area along the Nata
River in northeastern Botswana, and local people were pressing the government
to protect them from elephants and buffalo (Masego Nkelekang Mogodu, personal
communication, 2013). There were also concerns about the potential spread of foot-
and-mouth disease from Zimbabwe into Botswana.
Resettlement pressures around Hwange increased substantially in September
2013, when the carcasses of elephants and other animals were discovered in the
southern portion of the park and in areas outside of the park in Tsholotsho District.
There were indications that cyanide was used to kill the animals (Muboko et al.
2014,2016). Ivory was taken from some of the elephant carcasses, indicating poten-
tial poaching or scavenging. Subsequently, over two dozen people from Tsholotsho,
Bulawayo, and other places, were arrested for alleged involvement in the procure-
ment, distribution, and use of cyanide. After the elephant and other animal deaths
were discovered, people residing in the areas close to the southern boundary of
Hwange National Park, including some Tshwa and Ndebele families, were told by
government and provincial officials that they had to move to new places away from
the southern boundary of the park. However, as of September 2021, they have not
been informed of any relocation plans or compensatory measures.
The security situation for the Tshwa was exacerbated by the killing of a well-
known collared lion named ‘Cecil’ by Walter Miller, an American dentist from
Minnesota, on 29 June 2013 (Lindsey et al. 2016; Buhrmester et al. 2018; Mkono
2018; McCubbin 2020). As it turned out, Cecil was lured out of Hwange National
Park by a professional safari guide who worked for a company known ironically as
Bushman Safaris, using a dead animal dragged by a vehicle. A worldwide outcry
about the ethics of trophy hunting ensued, which called into question the ethics of the
hunters and companies involved in the killing of Cecil. This incident worried some
local people (including Tshwa) because they felt it might contribute to a reduction
of safari hunting—or the outright banning of hunting—in Zimbabwe, which they
believed would reduce potential sources of jobs and income. The Tshwa community
in Tsholotsho lobbied for hunting permit waivers when they met with three govern-
ment ministers in Tsholotsho in July 2021, though no hunting permits were granted
(Tshili 2021a).
The Zimbabwean government has been pressuring the Tshwa to acculturate—to
adopt settled agriculture and to send their children to school. On a visit to Tsholotsho
in May of 2013, President Robert Mugabe said that the Tshwa ‘were a culture that
is resistant to change’ (Staff Reporter, New Zimbabwe 2013: 2). He went on to
say that the schools in Tsholotsho should have a deliberate policy to recruit chil-
dren from Bushman families, and that the aim should be to incorporate them into
the larger Zimbabwean society and, in doing so, to modernise them. The Tshwa
resented the idea that they were considered ‘vagrants’ or ‘nomadic’ and that they were
‘totally dependent on other groups for their very existence’ (Tshwa elder, personal
communication, November 2013).

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 41
2.6 Contemporary Livelihoods of Tshwa San in Western
Zimbabwe
In order to get some idea of the livelihood situations of Tshwa, surveys were under-
taken in Tsholotsho in 2013 (see Hitchcock et al. 2016) and in Tsholotsho and Bulil-
imamangwe in 2020 (Ndlovu 2020). The survey methodology that was employed
consisted of (a) individual and group interviews, (b) participant observation, (c)
archival research, (d) assessments of government and non-government organisation
(NGO) reports and documents, and (e) conducting interviews of government, provin-
cial, and district officials. Approximately 2,000 Tshwa lived in Tsholotsho District
in 2013. Data were collected in five wards which had a population of 1,021. A total
of 150 interviews were conducted. Several conclusions can be reached based on
evidence about the livelihoods of the Tshwa and the challenges that they are facing.
Tshwa households had gardens of their own, ranging from 100 square metres to
half a hectare in size, and approximately 15 different crops were grown, with the
majority of the domestic crops consisting of maize, sorghum, millet, and cowpeas
(Hitchcock et al. 2016: 39–41). Table 2.1 presents data on the livestock holdings of the
Tshwa sampled households, as well as on livestock-related labour being performed by
Tshwa household members. The number of households involved in livestock-related
labour, usually herding and livestock management for other non-Tshwa people, is
10 (out of a total of 150). In most of these cases, herders were allowed to drink the
milk of the animals they cared for and, in three cases, they were given food in the
form of a 50 kilogramme bag of maize meal for their work, but they were not paid
in cash.
Judging from the data collected in 2013, none of the 10 people involved in
livestock-related labour were given cash for their work, a situation which differs
substantially from the Tshwa on the Botswana side of the border. In terms of small
stock (sheep and goats) and livestock (cattle, donkeys, horses) holdings, the Tshwa
had relatively few small stock (totalling 64), only four households had cattle (for a
total of 18); and there were six donkeys in six households. Because of the lack of
livestock (notably, cattle), Tshwa used individual human labour to pull ploughs or,
in a few cases, they borrowed cattle, horses, or donkeys to form ploughing teams to
cultivate their fields (Hitchcock et al. 2016: 41). When they did this, they usually
had to provide a portion of the crops they produced to the (non-Tshwa) people from
whom they borrowed the draught animals. The system whereby Tshwa had to give
up some of their crops was relatively well-institutionalised, but there were numerous
complaints about its unfairness from people who took part in this system. Overall,
the majority of those Tshwa households that were interviewed said that they were
food insecure. Food insecurity and poverty have been on the increase in the past
several years, especially with the deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe and
the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
Considerable concerns were also expressed about the water situation faced by
the Tshwa. Some Tshwa households obtained water from the Gariya Dam and from
digging in the Amanzanyama River. In 2013, a dozen households reported obtaining

42 D. Ndlovu et al.
Table 2.1 Numbers of Livestock and Livestock Labour per Tshwa Household in Tsholotsho
Household
interview number
Chickens Goats Sheep Donkeys Horses Cattle Livestock related
labour
11 4 X
13 1
15 6 5
16 1
17 5
32 2
38 9 1
49 2 2
50 5
54 4
55 10 4
56 5
57 2
60 4 5
62 4 1
66 6
83 5
84 1 X
92 2
93 3 2
103 2
104 9
105 5
107 10 1
108 10
113 10
116 X
118 X
119 1
124 7 2
130 1
136 5 2
137 2 X
138 11 X
140 3
(continued)

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 43
Table 2.1 (continued)
Household
interview number
Chickens Goats Sheep Donkeys Horses Cattle Livestock related
labour
141 X
181 4
183 4 5
190 110
193 5 X
194 X
198 2
199 15 5 1
201 6 X
205 4 2 1
233 6 2
234 5
Tota l 47
households
173 62 2 6 0 18 10
Source Adapted from fieldwork in Tsholotsho, November–December, 2013
Note The household numbers in the first column go beyond 150 because the sample of 150 is part
of a larger research sample
water from puddles on the landscape after rains, which they said was their only source
of water. The local water quality was poor, and there were reportedly toxins from
petrol and other sources. Tshwa who would go under cover of darkness into Hwange
National Park said that they were worried about the quality of water in the pans,
which they had heard was affected by cyanobacteria—this was in fact thought to be
causing the deaths of elephants in 2020 (Farai 2020; Wang et al. 2021). Nearly all the
Tshwa to whom we spoke in 2013 and to whom Davy Ndlovu spoke in 2020 said that
they believed that access to water was a human right and that they were aware that
international organisations such as the United Nations guaranteed that right. Some
people pointed out that they were getting far less than the 3.7 L of water per person
that they required. They also said that the daily water needs of their domestic animals
were not being met, which was leading, they argued, to poor productivity and high
rates of animal mortality.
Carrying water to provide for people and livestock is very labour intensive, since
water weighs 1.0 kilogramme per 1.0 L. In this regard, the most common domestic
animal among the Tshwa (a goat) requires up to 7.5 L of water per day. Nearly 90 per
cent of the Tshwa households in Tsholotsho and Bulilimamangwe reported that they
were suffering from lack of adequate water and food in 2020 (Ndlovu 2020). Some
Tshwa who worked in Hwange National Park witnessed the degree of investment
by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management in artificial water
supplies for wild animals (see, for example, Sungirai and Ngwenya 2016). They said

44 D. Ndlovu et al.
that they wished that these artificial water supplies could be developed for people
in areas to the south of Hwange, enabling people to reduce their time and energy
investment in water procurement for themselves and their livestock.
Members of indigenous groups are often blamed for involvement in illegal hunting
even though the evidence suggests that they play a minor role in poaching. Pressure on
the San and other indigenous peoples continues in southern Africa, with arrests and
sometimes shootings of people for suspected violation of hunting laws expanding,
at least in Zimbabwe. The numbers of people arrested for alleged poaching have
increased during the coronavirus pandemic, despite the fact that the numbers of
wildlife department personnel have been reduced as a result of cost-saving measures
(Koro 2020). Resettlement of people away from the borders of Hwange National Park
continues to be a major issue in Zimbabwe, amongst Tshwa, Ndebele, and Kalanga.
The number of Tshwa who crossed the border for employment and other purposes
rose in the period between 2013 and March 2020, when there were lockdowns
declared by the Zimbabwe and Botswana governments due to the coronavirus
pandemic. Tshwa children left school in order to help their parents take care of house-
hold chores and watch over younger siblings (Ndlovu 2021). Household incomes
declined substantially in the period between March 2020 and September 2021 due
in part to coronavirus movement restrictions and the lack of food availability in
the small general dealerships and stores in Tsholotsho and Bulilimamangwe. The
government’s social safety net programmes were stretched thin by the coronavirus
pandemic, and sizable numbers of Tshwa households missed benefits in the past year
and a half, setting in motion a downward spiral in their well-being.
2.7 Conclusion
Tshwa in Zimbabwe have been dispossessed as a result of colonial and post-colonial
government policies. They were not only removed from Wankie Game Reserve in
the late 1920s, but their land rights were compromised by colonial laws including the
Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951. Their
land rights have not been recognised by the Zimbabwean government. Because of a
combination of factors, including environmental conditions and government policies,
in the period from 1980 to the present, the majority of Tshwa today live below the
poverty line, and many are food insecure. The periods of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe
(for example, in 2008) have led to an increase in poverty among Tshwa. Tshwa have
also been affected by land reform and poverty alleviation policies, with some Tshwa
receiving commodity support from the Zimbabwean government, NGOs and faith-
based organisations. Most Tshwa, however, continue to fall below the poverty datum
line (Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency 2019; UNICEF Zimbabwe 2019;Ndlovu
2020).
Current concerns among the Tshwa include the pandemic, climate change,
economic and political uncertainty, land tenure insecurity, the desire to expand
employment, education access, and the need to improve their health status and overall

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 45
social well-being in the Zimbabwean nation-state. Tshwa women say that they are
suffering from what they see as a ‘double injustice’—coping with the impacts of
climate change and the effects of the pandemic (for a comparable situation in the
Nyanga area of Zimbabwe, see Nyahunda et al. 2021). One of the outgrowths of the
impacts of climate change is that Tshwa and others believe they are experiencing the
loss of indigenous and cultural heritage knowledge, like many groups of indigenous
people in other parts of the world (Pearson et al. 2021). Another apparent impact
of climate change in western Zimbabwe is an increase in malaria and dengue and
Nile Valley Fever, which the Tshwa are worried about. The traditional mechanisms
for coping with climate change, such as mobility and diversifying their foraging
strategies, are no longer available for the Tshwa, so they are seeking to learn new
techniques for coping with drought, floods, disease, and climate change.
Access to education has been a general concern of Tshwa, who have the lowest
rates of primary and secondary school attendance of all groups in Zimbabwe. This
position is beginning to change, with grants being made by NGOs to Tshwa fami-
lies to cover school fees. Rates of school attendance were increasing up until 2020
when the pandemic hit (see Phiri et al. 2020). The Ministry of Home Affairs and
Cultural Heritage has promised that additional primary and secondary schools would
be established in Tshwa San areas. In 2021, it was noted that the first trio of Tshwa
students have made it to university (Tshili 2021b).
One issue raised with the three government ministers that visited Tsholotsho in
July 2021 was the lack among the Tshwa of birth certificates and identity documents,
which even affected the ability of the Tshwa to bury one of their community members.
The lack of identity documents also leaves some Tshwa unable to get access to food
and other commodities from government or NGOs when distributions occur. Tshwa
argue that the lack of identity documents ‘renders them stateless’ (Dibiti 2021). The
Tshwa in fact are sometimes described as Zimbabwe’s forgotten people (Ndlovu
2013; Rankomise 2015), but their efforts to gain national recognition have expanded
considerably in the past decade.
In 2012, the Tsoro-o-tso San Development Trust (TSDT) was founded, and this
organisation has pressed for human rights and fair treatment of Tshwa San, as has the
Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC). Relatively few Tshwa speak their
mother tongue language (Tjwao), so efforts are being made to promote cultural and
language revitalisation. The very ethnicity and identity of Tshwa have been ques-
tioned by government officials and even some scholars, but the Tshwa have contested
these assertions and point to their work in providing mother tongue language and
cultural heritage education at the local level. Some Tshwa do tend to hide their iden-
tities in order not to be discriminated against, but this strategy appears to be on the
decline in recent years. Many Tshwa see themselves as indigenous people first and
Zimbabwean citizens second. The reason for this is that the Tshwa believe that the
government does not recognise their citizenship or give them credit for their cultural
identity.
The Tshwa continue to push for their rights to participate in government develop-
ment programmes, get formal education opportunities, and have their own traditional
authorities recognised by government. The Zimbabwean government has given the

46 D. Ndlovu et al.
San the green light to start the process of identifying a person to take the position
of Chief among the San. In 2021, the Tsoro-o-tso San Development Trust under-
took investigations of the historical background of all the prominent Tshwa families
and has helped to create genealogies and family trees. These materials have been
submitted to the local government and the Tshwa are awaiting further instructions
from government on this matter.
The Tshwa, for their part, continue to proclaim their cultural identity proudly
at every opportunity, particularly when they meet government officials and visiting
members of NGOs and faith-based institutions. Tshwa are expending enormous effort
in promoting their human rights and demonstrating their unique cultural heritage in
Zimbabwe today, something that they hope to do at the international level once the
coronavirus pandemic situation is resolved.
Funding Funding for the research upon which this chapter is based was provided by the Interna-
tional Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) (Grant No. 2098), the Open Society Initiative
for Southern Africa (OSISA) (Grant No. 2650), and the Tsoro-o-tso San Development Trust.
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Ndlovu D (2017) A new age for the San in Zimbabwe. Bhabhu Books, Harare
Ndlovu D (2020) Decades of land dispossession and loss of ancestral land: cultural assets and
livelihoods: a case for the San in Zimbabwe. Tsoro-o-tso San Development Trust, Bulawayo
Ndlovu D (2021) A case study on How COVID-19 lockdown is impacting continued access to
education for Indigenous Minority San Students in Tsholotsho. Tsoro-o-tso San Development
Trust, Bulawayo
Ngwenya D (ed) (2018) Healing the wounds of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: a participatory action
project. Springer, Dordrecht
Nyahunda L, Chibvura S, Tirivangasi HM (2021) Social work practice: Accounting for double
injustices experienced by women under the confluence of Covid-19 pandemic and climate change
impacts in Nyanga, Zimbabwe. J Hum Rights Soc Work 6:213–224
Oates F (1881) Matabele land and the Victoria falls: a naturalist’s wanderings in the interior of
South Africa. Oates CG (ed). C. Kegan Paul and Company, London
Palmer R (1977) Land and racial domination in Rhodesia. Heinemann, London
Patel H (1998) Sustainable utilization and African wildlife policy: the case of Zimbabwe’s
Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE). Indigenous
Environmental Policy Center, Boston, MA
Pearson J, Jackson G, McNamara KE (2021) Climate-driven losses to Indigenous and local knowl-
edge and cultural heritage. The Anthropocene Review, April 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/205
30196211005482
Peterson, J (1991) CAMPFIRE: A Zimbabwean approach to sustainable development and commu-
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University of Zimbabwe, Harare.
Phiri K, Ndlovu S, Dube T, Nyath D, Ncube C, Tshuma N (2020) Access to formal education for
the San community in Tsholotsho, Zimbabwe: Challenges and prospects. Heliyon 6. https://doi.
org:/10016/j.heliyon.2020.e04470
Pratchett LJ (2018) Towards a reclassification of the Kalahari Khoe: arguments from the Tshwa
pronomial system. Paper presented to the Department of African Languages and Literatures,
University of Botswana, 17 August 2018

2 The Tshwa San of Zimbabwe—Land, Livelihoods, and Ethnicity 49
Pratchett LJ (2020) Language contact and change in eastern Botswana: new insights from the
pronominal system of an undocumented Kalahari Khoe language. Lang Afr 1(1):34–64
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Harare, Zimbabwe
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contested land: the politics of natural resource governance in Africa. Earthscan, London and
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and Captain Norman MacLeod, 1875–1876. University of California Press, Berkeley
Tabler EC (1966) Pioneers of Rhodesia. C. Struik, Cape Town
Tshili N (2021a) San community lobbies for hunting permit waivers. Chronicle, 20 July 2021
Tshili N (2021b) First San trip makes it to varsity. Chronicle, 19 June 2021
UNICEF Zimbabwe (2019) Zimbabwe child poverty report: an analysis using the Poverty, Income,
Consumption, and Expenditure Survey (PICES) 2017 Data. UNICEF Zimbabwe, Harare.
van Oselen C (1972) Reactions to rinderpest in southern Africa 1896–1897. J Afr Hist 13(3):473–488
Vossen R (ed) (2013) The Khoesan languages. Routledge, New York
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Ma J, Duan H, Fang J, Xie P (2021) From unusual suspect to serial killer: Cyanotoxins boosted
by climate change may jeopardize megafauna. Innovation 2(2):1–3. 100092
Wilson V. (1975) Mammals of the Wankie National Park, Rhodesia. Museum Memoir No. 5.
Salisbury: Trustees of the National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia
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(Zimbabwe) in the early twentieth century. South Afr J Anim Sci 8:21–28
Wriston TA (2013) The late stone age to early iron age in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe: using
archaeology, soils, sediments, and stable isotopes to trace past peoples and environments. PhD.
Dissertation, University of Nevada-Reno, Reno, Nevada
Zhou M (2014) The persistence of extreme poverty among ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe: a case of
the San Community in Tsholotsho District, Matabeleland North. BA Dissertation, Development
Studies, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe, Cabinet Report, 3 August 2021
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Community of Tsholotsho. Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC), Harare.
Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) (2019) Zimbabwe poverty report 2017.
Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT), Harare.
Davy Ndlovu is the founder and director of the Tsoro-o-tso San Development Trust (TSDT)
which was established in Zimbabwe in 2012. He has been living and working among Tshwa San
in the Tsholotsho District of Matabeleland North for over 20 years. Mr. Ndlovu has published

50 D. Ndlovu et al.
numerous articles, book chapters, and books on the Zimbabwe San. He is one of the leading advo-
cates for the human rights and the social, cultural, economic, and political empowerment of San
people in Zimbabwe.
Ben Begbie-Clench has worked with San communities in southern Africa for 15 years. He is a
former director of the regional indigenous peoples’ NGO, WIMSA (Working Group of Indigenous
Minorities in Southern Africa) which represents the San peoples in the Southern African region.
He has been an independent consultant since 2011, working in Namibia (for example, for the Nyae
Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia) and regionally (for instance, for for the Open Society
Initiative for Southern Africa, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.
Robert K. Hitchcock is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New
Mexico and a Board Member of the Kalahari Peoples Fund, a non-profit 501©3 organisation that
provides assistance to indigenous and minority peoples in southern Africa. He has done anthropo-
logical and development work with indigenous peoples, refugees, and farmers in Zimbabwe and
12 other African countries, and in North and South America. Much of his work is on indigenous
peoples’ rights, particularly those of the San peoples of Southern Africa.
Melinda C. Kelly has worked with Tshwa and other San since 1975 in Botswana and Namibia.
She has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and has done fieldwork in Botswana, Namibia,
South Africa, and the United States. She is a member of the Kalahari Peoples Fund, a non-profit
501©(3) organisation which was set up in 1973 to assist the peoples of Southern Africa. She has
done research with Tshwa in Botswana, most recently in 2015, and G/ui and G//ana San in 2019.

Chapter 3
‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers
in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s
Joseph Mujere
Abstract This chapter examines how Basotho migrants from South Africa estab-
lished livelihoods based on freehold land ownership and agriculture in Southern
Rhodesia. Basotho farmers migrated from South Africa to Southern Rhodesia in the
1890s and were among the first Africans to purchase freehold land in the colony.
They were later displaced to African Purchase Areas in the 1930s following the
enactment of the Land Apportionment Act. Their early success resulted in colo-
nial officials viewing them as progressive Africans whose work ethic needed to be
emulated by indigenous Africans. They were also hailed for being among the first
African farmers to supply milk to creameries that had been established in the colony.
Basotho’s farmers sought to become examples to other African farmers and to be
considered ‘men of the soil’. Despite their early success, Basotho farmers faced
several challenges that include displacement from their farms and land disputes. The
chapter concludes that Basotho migrants’ livelihoods were intricately linked to their
ownership of freehold farms and their quest for belonging.
Keywords Belonging ·Basotho ·Ethnicity ·Southern Rhodesia ·Livelihoods
3.1 Introduction
In 1924, Johannes Mokwile, a member of the Basotho community in Victoria
Province in Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe), published an article in the
Native Affairs Department Annual (NADA) in which he discussed entrepreneur-
ship among Africans who owned farms (Mokwile 1924). The article was based on
a discussion he had had with an Indian man during a train journey from Gwelo to
Victoria town. The Indian man had criticised Mokwile and other Africans who owned
freehold land for not being productive on the farms and for lacking entrepreneurial
skills. After the train conversation, Mokwile was left convinced that the Indian
J. Mujere (B
)
National University of Lesotho, Roma, Lesotho
e-mail: j.mujere@nul.ls
Research Associate, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_3
51

52 J. Mujere
community was doing better than African farmers economically because they were
more enterprising on their farms. He concluded that the economic success of Africans
in Southern Rhodesia did not lie in them acquiring education but in how they utilised
their land (Mokwile 1924: 97). Johannes Mokwile’s chance encounter with an Indian
entrepreneur during his train journey and the conclusions he drew from the conver-
sation encapsulates how the livelihoods of African migrants in Southern Rhodesia
were tied to ownership of freehold land and their aspirations to be leading African
farmers or what he called ‘men of the soil’.
Using the case study of the Basotho community in Victoria Province, this chapter
examines the interface between ownership of freehold land, livelihoods, and an ethnic
minority’s construction of belonging. In particular, the chapter considers how liveli-
hoods were central to the belonging project of this migrant ethnic minority group
during the colonial period. This approach helps to unravel the entanglement between
ethnicity, land ownership, belonging, and livelihoods. The chapter also examines
how African colonial migrants or ‘alien Natives’ as they were sometimes called,
participated in the colonial economy as well as the privileges they had over indige-
nous Africans in accessing freehold farms. This entails examining the effects of
colonial perceptions about African migrants from South Africa as ‘progressive’ or
‘more advanced Natives’ compared to indigenous Africans and how it impacted
their access to freehold land. The Basotho used their ownership of freehold land to
develop livelihoods such as agriculture, dairy farming, and stock breeding. These
livelihoods were augmented and complemented by transport riding, rental collection
from tenants, and running of grocery shops. The chapter contributes to debates about
African migrants and ethnic minorities’ access to freehold land and their livelihoods
during the colonial period in Zimbabwe.
This chapter is mainly based on an analysis of archival files on Basotho farmers
in Southern Rhodesia that are housed in the National Archives of Zimbabwe. Being
pioneer African freehold farm owners in Southern Rhodesia, Basotho farmers’
struggles to purchase farms as well as their farming activities generated significant
correspondence, especially with colonial administrators who included Native
Commissioners, the Superintendent of Natives, Chief Native Commissioner, and
the Director of Native Lands, among other colonial officials. In addition, Basotho
interacted with Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) missionaries who sought to patro-
nise them. For instance, Basotho’s struggles to purchase freehold land in Southern
Rhodesia saw them writing several letters to colonial administrators and seeking the
support of DRC missionaries. The large collection of correspondences reveal much
about Basotho struggles for belonging and their farming livelihoods. The chapter
also makes use of newspaper reports and commentaries by both Basotho farmers
and colonial officials published in the Native Affairs Department Annual.

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 53
3.2 Basotho Migrations and Struggles Over Freehold Land
in Southern Rhodesia
Although the largest community of Basotho in Zimbabwe is found in the Mata-
beleland region, in Gwanda district specifically, this chapter focuses on the Basotho
farmers who purchased farms in Victoria Province in 1907 and 1909. The latter’s
migration to Southern Rhodesia in the late nineteenth century was connected to
the evangelisation of the southern Shona as well as the colonisation of the country
(Mujere 2019). Basotho in Lesotho and South Africa were among some of the
earliest converts to the Paris Evangelical Mission Society (PEMS), the DRC, and
the Berlin Mission Society (BMS), and a number of them became evangelists and
lay preachers (Beach 1973: 27). Consequently, when the missionary societies set
out from Transvaal to evangelise communities to the north of the Limpopo River,
they relied on several Basotho converts. From the 1870s to 1894, the missionary
societies launched several expeditions from Goegedacht, a mission station that had
been established by Rev. Stephanus Hofmeyr in Transvaal in 1865 (van der Merwe
1981: 37). By 1890, several African converts, among them Basotho, Bapedi, Zulu,
and Coloured, had crossed the Limpopo as evangelists, porters, interpreters, and lay
preachers.
Basotho evangelists and lay preachers were instrumental in the BMS’s establish-
ment of Zimuto Mission in 1892 and Gutu Mission in 1894 as well as the DRC’s
establishment of Morgenster Mission in 1891 (Mujere 2013: 140). Rev. Louw of the
DRC journeyed from Transvaal to Chief Mugabe’s area close to Great Zimbabwe in
the company of seven Basotho evangelists—Joshua Masoha, Lucas Mokole, Micha
Maghatho, Jeremiah Morudu, Petrus Morudu, David Molea, and Izak Kumalo—who
worked as preachers, interpreters, porters, and teachers (van der Merwe 1981: 52).
The Basotho gradually established a community around Fort Victoria town that
was composed of evangelists who had worked with the DRC, PEMS, and BMS
in forming mission stations in the late nineteenth century among the Shona and
their relatives as well as African migrants who had worked as part of the Pioneer
Column that colonised the country in 1890. It is important to highlight that although
Basotho migrants had already received education and worked in the colonial civil
service and mission stations, most of them saw farming as providing a more sustain-
able livelihood. Consequently, they sought to acquire freehold farms where they
could engage in agricultural activities. However, although Section 83 of the 1898
Southern Rhodesia Order In Council had clearly stated that Africans ‘may acquire,
hold, encumber and dispose of land of the same conditions as a person who is not a
native..’, white settlers had largely blocked Africans from fully benefitting from this
law by making it difficult for Africans to purchase freehold land (Mujere and Mseba
2019).
The fact that white settlers were reluctant to sell freehold to Africans made it very
difficult for Africans who wanted to purchase freehold land. Another complication
was that Africans who wanted to purchase land were required to obtain testimonials
from missionaries and colonial officials before they could be judged to be fit to

54 J. Mujere
purchase farms. The colonial administration and white settlers, who were generally
averse to allowing Africans to own freehold land, treated African migrants differently.
Generally, ‘colonial Natives’ were viewed as ‘more advanced Natives’ with a better
appreciation of ownership of freehold land and good land husbandry compared to
indigenous Africans in Southern Rhodesia. As a result of this, colonial administrators
were generally amenable to the idea of allowing African migrants such as Basotho,
Mfengu, Xhosa, and Zulu to own freehold land. The first of these African migrants
to purchase freehold land in Southern Rhodesia were the Mfengu (Fingo) from the
Cape Colony, who settled in Bembesi in Matabeleland in Southern Rhodesia at the
behest of Cecil John Rhodes who wanted them to provide labour to the new colony
(Steele 1972: 451). The Fingo were allowed to own freehold land on condition that
they would provide labour ‘for at least three months (later changed to four months)
per year’ (Makambe 1982:7;1979: 310).
It is against this background that, when a group of ten Basotho migrants applied
to purchase land in Matabeleland in 1901, the Surveyor-General wrote a letter to the
Chief Magistrate of Griqualand inquiring about their suitability. The Chief Magistrate
responded:
The applicants are Basutos and are therefore the best class among the Native tribes as
agriculturalists and stock-breeders and are of a very progressive tendency. I imagine they
would wish to locate Basuto tenants on their farms in the same way as they are in the habit
of doing in this District. The farms owned by Natives in this District have been purchased by
them from the government and are held under similar conditions to farms held by Europeans,
viz at a perpetual annual quitrent of 2 pounds (together with stamp duty of 7/6) redeemable
as freehold at any time at twenty years purchase. The farms so held vary in size from 500
to 1500 morgen, and as a rule are excellent for agriculture and stock of all kinds, including
sheep.1
The fact that some members of the Basotho community in Southern Rhodesia had
owned freehold land in South Africa put them in a better position when they applied
for land in Southern Rhodesia. This is because they could demonstrate that they had
prior experience with individual tenure. As Steele (1972: 451) argues, ‘not only had
the typical Union Native been exposed to the cash nexus for a longer period of time
than local Africans, but also he was more familiar with the concept of individual
tenure’.
In this context, members of the Basotho community around Fort Victoria made
group purchases of two farms close to Fort Victoria. In 1907, Jacob Molebaleng and
three other Basotho farmers purchased Erichsthal Farm near Fort Victoria for £1,000.2
Following that successful group purchase, in 1909 a group of ten Basotho purchased
Niekerk’s Rust Farm, a few kilometres from Erichsthal Farm.3The Basotho’s group
purchase of the two farms became the springboard for the establishment of livelihoods
that revolved around agriculture and stock breeding. It is important to note that the
farms were not officially sub-divided but part-owners had portions they farmed. As
will be demonstrated later, this loose arrangement later became a source of tensions
among members which forced colonial officials to recommend official sub-division
of the farms.

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 55
Although the Basotho and some indigenous Africans (who were mostly teachers)
had managed to purchase freehold land around Fort Victoria, white farmers continued
to oppose such purchases as they argued that they devalued the neighbouring farms
owned by white settlers. Writing about a group of indigenous African teachers who
had purchased Rugby Farm, a white settler complained about how the African owners
of Rugby Farm were stealing his cattle.4In complaining that African freehold farm
owners were devaluing their farms, other white farmers called for the amendment
of laws to place a ban on African purchase of freehold land.5As one white farmer
wrote:
Now as regards the proposal to establish a native settlement in our midst, I cannot conceive
that any authority could be guilty of such a crime. If the law of the land permits such a
thing being done by private individuals then the sooner the law is amended so as to prevent
Europeans unloading their landed property onto natives the better.6
The white settlers were using colonial newspapers to register their disquiet at having
African farmers as their neighbours. This was based on, among other issues, the
perceived backwardness of African farming methods and racial segregation as well
as the claim that African farmers were still stuck in the communal mode of existence
even though they were farming on freehold land. The image of African farmers in the
eyes of their white neighbours was not helped by the fact that they had made group
purchases of the farms which engendered significant conflicts among the part-owners.
3.3 Becoming ‘Men of the Soil’: Freehold Land
and Agricultural Livelihoods
Despite white settler farmers’ negative perceptions about Africans’ ownership of
freehold farmers especially close to their farms, Basotho farmers were keen to prove
that they were progressive farmers. They were also encouraged by colonial admin-
istrators who viewed them as better farmers than locals. As soon as the Basotho
purchased their two farms, colonial administrators started making effusive reports
about developments on the farms and the many agricultural activities. In his 1911
Annual Report, the Native Commissioner for Victoria District reported that the
Basotho on the two farms owned twenty-one ploughs while indigenous Africans in
Victoria District owned twenty-seven.7This was meant to demonstrate that Basotho
farmers, who were a minority ethnic group in the area, were adopting the plough at
a faster pace than the indigenous farmers. The adoption of the plough was revolu-
tionising African agriculture as it enabled farmers to produce more crops and more
economically. Because of their experience in South Africa and their comparatively
higher levels of education, Basotho were quick to acquire ploughs and other farming
implements that made their farming activities more efficient.
Basotho farmers also were among the first African farmers to adopt cash crops such
as wheat (some of which they grew under irrigation), cotton, and tobacco.8Several
annual Native Commissioner’s reports for Victoria District commended Basotho for

56 J. Mujere
being the best African farmers in the district and for managing to produce a surplus
which they sold at the Victoria market. In 1926, under a section titled ‘Agriculture’,
the Native Commissioner reported that Basotho owners of Erichsthal and Niekerk’s
Rust farms together with the Karanga owners of Rugby farm were successful farmers
who owned wagons and grew a variety of crops, and were doing better than ordinary
communal farmers.9
A series of Native Commissioners in the district saw the African owners of the
three farms as ‘progressive’ and ‘more advanced’. In 1924, the Native Commissioner
reported about how Basotho owners of Erichsthal and Rust farms, Karanga owners
of Rugby Farm, and African teachers had joined a cotton farming experiment in the
district with the assistance of the colonial government and missionaries.10 Although
the plants were affected by pests, the Native Commissioner was impressed by the
initial results and the potential for cotton farming undertaken by what he characterised
as ‘intelligent Natives’ in the district.
Although dairy farming was largely a preserve of white settlers, as African farmers
were viewed as not being capable of observing the high levels of hygiene required in
the industry, several African farmers who were viewed as ‘intelligent’ and ‘progres-
sive’ did engage in dairy farming. Their involvement in dairy farming was by no
means easy given white settlers’ stereotypes about Africans’ hygienic practices.
According to Hove and Swart (2019: 922), ‘the general perception among settlers and
some government officials was that African producers were too slovenly to produce
clean milk and cream for commercial purposes, and hence had to be eliminated from
the trade’. White settlers expressed their discomfort with the involvement of African
farmers in the dairy industry through letters to the editor in The Rhodesian Herald,
with some going as far as threatening to boycott the industry if Africans continued
to supply dairy products (Hove and Swart 2019: 922).
Despite the settlers’ anxieties about the perceived unhygienic practices of African
dairy farmers (including the practice of milking in the kraals), Basotho farmers
developed a reputation as being some of the best dairy farmers and purveyors of dairy
produce in Victoria. The Native Commissioner of Victoria District was particularly
impressed by Basotho’s dairy farming and he estimated that half of the butter that was
being sold at the Fort Victoria market was being produced by the Basotho.11 Although
this might have been an exaggeration, especially given that the Native Commissioner
did not provide any statistics, it nonetheless demonstrates how Basotho farming
activities attracted so much attention from colonial officials. By the 1920s, together
with the Karanga owners of Rugby Farm, Basotho farmers had become the leading
producers of milk, butter, and cream among African farmers in Victoria.12 This took
place without any financial and technical support from the colonial government.
Ultimately, the colonial government believed that only a few ‘intelligent’ African
farmers such as Basotho farmers could pursue dairy farming because it was a highly
specialised industry requiring very high levels of hygiene.
Besides agriculture, Basotho also engaged in transport riding, especially after the
farmers would have harvested their crops. Transport riders in Southern Rhodesia
were predominantly white itinerant traders who used ox or donkey-drawn wagons to
trade a variety of consumer goods. Initially, they were trading in goods they brought

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 57
from South Africa, but later they traded mostly in grain and other types of farm
produce they bought from peasant farmers (Krammer 2001: 5). As Krammer (2001:
4) notes, transport riders ‘provided the service of buying cattle, grain, and other food
requirements from the peasant producers which they resold to the townsmen, miners
or railway builders’. Although transport riding was dominated by white traders, some
Basotho farmers also took it up as one of their livelihood options. They would travel
around the district and beyond buying grain and other farm produce which they
would, in turn, sell at markets in Fort Victoria and mining settlements.
In 1911, the Native Commissioner of Victoria District reported that, apart from
agricultural activities, members of the Basotho community were involved in ‘consid-
erable transport riding’, selling mostly farm produce or bartering.13 Their trans-
port riding activities were greatly aided by the fact that the Basotho owners of the
two farms were entrepreneurial and already owned at least twelve wagons.14 In the
following year, the Native Commissioner again reported that transport riding was
one of the economic activities in which the Basotho and indigenous African farmers
in the district were engaged. He noted that ‘the main industry of the Natives is agri-
cultural and pastoral farming. The Basutos [sic] who have farms in the district and
also several indigenous Natives do a certain amount of transport riding’, he wrote.15
Writing about transport riding in Victoria during the early years of colonial rule,
Sayce (1978: 59) described how transport riders ‘trundled the district in their rickety
carts and wagons buying grain and meal and selling in Victoria’. The Basotho’s two
farms were located close to Fort Victoria where there was a large market, therefore
enhancing their opportunity to sell farm produce.
Apart from farming activities, another way Basotho accumulated wealth was
through charging rentals on tenants on their farms as well as running grocery shops
(Mujere and Mseba 2019: 41). Some of the Basotho owners of Erichsthal Farm had
tenants who they charged an annual fee of 10/- or a bag of grain per individual (Mujere
and Mseba 2019: 41). Tenants provided an extra income to African farm owners and
were a common feature even on farms owned by white settlers. Furthermore, farm
owners also charged tenants dipping fees for dipping their cattle at the farm dip tank
(Mujere and Mseba 2019: 41).16
In the 1920s, Matthew Komo and Ernest Komo, who were part-owners of Erich-
sthal Farm, established a general dealer shop in the late 1920s in partnership with
a Coloured man called Van Blerk.17 This, however, caused tension with other part-
owners of the farm (Jacob Molebaleng, and Jona Makula) who felt that it was unfair
for the Komo brothers to establish a General Dealer Shop with an outsider without
first consulting other part-owners of the farm.18 The matter was taken to the Magis-
trate Court and the court resolved that the Komo brothers pay rentals to the other
part-owners of the farm or the farm be sub-divided. Col. Carbutt, the Superintendent
of Natives of Victoria, recommended that the farm be sub-divided to resolve the
disputes (Carbutt 1927: 42).

58 J. Mujere
3.4 ‘Men of the Soil’ or Mere Communal Farmers?
Although throughout the 1900s and into the 1920s, Native Commissioners were
writing glowing reports about Basotho farmers’ successes in growing different types
of food and cash crops as well as in dairy farming, some colonial administrators
observed that Basotho farmers did not appreciate freehold tenure and continued
with some communal practices.19 The communal practices were accentuated by
the fact that the two farms owned by the Basotho as well as the one owned by
Karanga farmers were all syndicate purchases and the farms were not sub-divided.
This led to constant tensions among the part-owners. It also made some colonial
administrators recommend the sub-division of the farms into individual shares so that
individuals could fully appreciate the value of freehold tenure (Carbutt 1927: 42).
Thus, notwithstanding the general colonial administrators’ perception of Basotho
as ‘progressive’, ‘more advanced’ or ‘intelligent Natives’, the reality was that they
were facing the same challenges experienced by other farmers who had concluded
syndicate purchases of farms, especially the constant bickering—and this affected
their livelihoods.
Against this background, Johannes Mokwile, whose father was part-owner of Rust
Farm, published an article alluded to in the introduction, reflecting on what he had
learnt from a conversation with an Indian man on a train journey from Gwelo to Fort
Victoria in 1922. The Indian had challenged him about his failure to make money out
of his father’s farm: ‘Why did your father buy a farm, yet you do not know how to
make money out of a farm?’ (Mokwile 1924: 94). Mokwile was left convinced that
Africans needed to improve their farming methods if they wanted to make a livelihood
out of farming. Although racial segregation was a reality, Mokwile refused to blame
it on Africans’ economic conditions compared to the Indians, reasoning thus:
It is so far clear that the way these Indians have worked or used the soil, even if it is only
rented, has overloaded them with profits. These profits, derived from the soil, came from the
character of the Indians themselves, and not from any special privileges given them which
Natives do not enjoy....Now then, unless we who live side by side with these White men
resolve to depart from primitive conditions, progress is impossible. Natives then must move
with times, use their opportunities, talk less, work more. Today I cannot go in where an
Indian goes, just because he is a worker and I am a talker. (Mokwile 1924: 96)
Mokwile implored his fellow African farmers to emulate Indian farmers who were
arguably making more profits from their farming activities. He also encouraged his
fellow African farmers to stop communal practices and embrace new methods of
farming. Mokwile felt that African farmers had to modernise their agriculture and
abandon some of their communal practices, and invest more in their land to be
successful farmers.
It is crucial to highlight that Mokwile’s article was, in part, aimed at criticising an
article that had been published earlier by John Tengo Jabavu titled ‘Native Opinion’
and to dissuade African farmers from following the radical politics of Jabavu. In
particular, he expressed discomfort with Jabavu’s claim that Africans had reached a
stage where they could see and speak against colonial injustices (Ranger 1970: 105).
He dismissed the radical politics of Jabavu by concluding that:

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 59
It will not be those who seek high education that natives will always listen to. Their real
leaders will be men of the soil; men who have learned how to use the soil, and who are not
ashamed to be seen with their coats off; because education is not a garment which a man
puts on to secure material advancement and to secure the applause of a crowd. (Mokwile
1924: 97)
Mokwile’s repudiation of Jabavu’s radical politics needs to be understood within
the context of him (Mokwile) having been the president of the Southern Rhodesia
Native Association (SRNA), a pliant association dominated by farmers. He was thus
addressing both his fellow Basotho farmers as well as broader membership of the
SRNA. Ranger (1970: 105) characterised the association as having been ‘a movement
of the “men of the soil”, the progressive farmers of Mashonaland’. It was also given
the moniker ‘Good Boy Association’ by rival associations such as the Rhodesia
Bantu Voters Association.
3.5 Colonial Displacement and Establishment of Purchase
Areas
As has already been highlighted, Basotho’s livelihoods and their belonging project
were tied to their ownership of freehold land. As a migrant and minority ethnic group,
they felt that without ownership of freehold land they could not effectively establish
themselves in the colony. Ownership of land was therefore an emotive subject to the
Basotho given the uncertainties surrounding colonial policies and Africans’ access
to land. When the colonial regime enacted the Land Apportionment Act in 1930, that
segregated land on racial grounds and established separate areas where Africans and
Europeans could purchase land, it created much anxiety among Basotho farmers.
The Land Apportionment Act effectively expunged Section 83 of the 1898 Order
in Council, and established areas of exclusive land purchase for Europeans and
Africans. African farmers who had purchased farms in areas designated as European
areas were expected to vacate the farms and purchase farms in the newly established
African Purchase Areas.
When by operation of the Land Apportionment Act, Basotho were evicted from
Rust and Erichsthal farms in 1932 and 1933 respectively, they were given the option
to take up land in the African Purchase Areas in lieu of their farms (which had
been deemed to fall in a European area according to the Land Apportionment Act).
Their eviction disrupted not only their livelihoods but also their belonging project.
To address this, Basotho asked to be allowed to purchase farms in a block of farms in
the Dewure Purchase Areas in Gutu. They argued that this would allow them to re-
establish their community and preserve their culture. In lieu of Niekerk’s Rust Farm,
Basotho owners (including Samuel Melete, Reuben Mphisa, Petrus Morudu, Joshua
Masoha, David Molea, and Peter Rasitoo) were offered 5,228 acres in the Dewure
Purchase Areas. In addition, they were paid a total of £374 as compensation.20 The
part-owners of Erichsthal Farm (Jacob Molebaleng, Ernest Komo, Matthew Komo,
and Joana Makula) were offered initially offered 11,656 acres in Mungezi Purchase

60 J. Mujere
Areas in Bikita District in exchange for their farm and £2,118 compensation (Palmer
1977: 280). They, however, turned down the offer arguing that they preferred to take
up farms close to other Basotho who had already settled in the Dewure Purchase
Areas. They were eventually allowed to settle in the Dewure Purchase Areas.
Although the majority of Basotho farmers either took up farms offered them
in exchange for Rust and Erichsthal farms or purchased farms independently in
the Dewure Purchase Areas, others purchased farms independently in the adjacent
Mungezi Purchase Areas in Bikita District. Several Basotho migrants who were
working in the colonial civil service or had recently migrated from South Africa
to join their relatives in Southern Rhodesia took the opportunity to purchase farms
and to settle close to other Basotho farmers in the Dewure and Mungezi Purchase
Areas. As I have argued elsewhere, the Native Land Board (NLB) encouraged all
Basotho who desired to purchase farms in the newly established African Purchase
Areas to buy farms in the Dewure Purchase Areas so that a Basotho community
could be formed there (Mujere 2019). Basotho were also considered ‘more advanced
Natives’ who would be emulated hopefully by indigenous Africans. In 1935, the
Native Commissioner of Gutu District wrote: ‘I find these Basutos [sic] decent law-
abiding members of the district and consider their presence among the Karanga will
induce a general urge amongst local natives to copy the Basutu’s [sic] more advanced
ideas and ideals’.21 Indigenous Africans were, though, largely against the settlements
of ‘alien Natives’ in the African Purchase Areas. They based this on the Chief Native
Commissioner’s claim that ‘the purchase areas were available for acquisition by
indigenous Natives only’.22 Although the NLB allowed Basotho to purchase farms in
the Dewure Purchase Areas, the remonstrations by indigenous Africans against what
they considered to be a ‘distasteful and undesirable’ settlement of ‘Alien Natives’
demonstrates the uncertainties around Basotho’s belonging and access to freehold.23
Basotho took advantage of the fact that they were allowed to settle in the Dewure
Purchase Areas to both develop their agricultural livelihoods and to construct a
renewed sense of belonging. Basotho farmers who previously owned Niekerk’s Rust
farm purchased individual farms that were close to each other in Dewure Purchase
Areas. Although, generally, the NLB was against syndicate purchases of farms,
arguing that it will create miniature chiefdoms, the Board acceded to Basotho’s
request to settle in one area and constitute themselves as a community (Shutt 2002:
496). Consequently, Basotho farmers were able to purchase individual farms in both
Dewure and Mungezi Purchase area and to coalesce in the area.
Apart from individual farm purchases, Basotho farmers also requested to be
allowed to purchase a communal farm on which they would establish a school, a
clinic, a dip tank, and a cemetery. In 1934, the Superintendent of Natives (Victoria)
wrote to the Chief Native Commissioner supporting Basotho’s application for a
communal farm, arguing that:
The Basutos [sic] have been scattered throughout this area and now wish to grasp the oppor-
tunity of building up the tribe into one harmonious whole and restoring their old customs
and manners which have to a large extent been lost through detribalisation.24

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 61
The Superintendent of Natives added that the farm would be run by Jacob Molebaleng
(who had been selected as the chief of the Basotho community) alongside a committee
of four. After a significant back and forth between Basotho farmers and colonial
authorities, the NLB finally granted Basotho the permission to purchase farm Number
24 in the Dewure Purchase Area. The farm was located in an area where most of the
Basotho evicted from Nierkerk’s Rust had purchased farms.
Unlike individual farms, Basotho’s communal farm, which they christened ‘Bethel
Farm’, was never meant for farming purposes. Instead, its main purpose was to help
Basotho maintain and develop a sense of belonging in Southern Rhodesia. As a
result, when they established a school on the farm, they insisted that only Sesotho
and English would be the languages of instruction, even though children of non-
Sotho farmers also attended the school. The Native Commissioner for Gutu district
was, however, concerned about what he considered to be Basotho’s attempt to form a
‘miniature nation’. In his 1935 Annual Report to the Chief Native Commissioner, the
Native Commissioner for Victoria district warned that Basotho’s desire to establish
a community for themselves in the Native Purchase Areas would set a bad precedent
for other Africans:
…were the government to aid in this isolation other settlers might feel that they, too, should
be aided in self-isolation and that eventually the government might be faced with the require-
ments and demands of a number of nations in miniature, all seeking to avoid coalescences
one with the other rather than unite and thus simplify a general programme of general control
and advancements as a whole.25
Although they succeeded in purchasing the communal farm and establishing a school,
a dip tank, and an exclusive cemetery, it is evident that Basotho’s strategies of
constructing their belonging and eking out a living in the purchase areas caused
some uneasiness in the colonial administration. Basotho’s purchase of a communal
farm and their desire to make it the centre of their construction of belonging in the
Dewure Purchase Areas evinces the imbrication between Basotho’s struggles for
belonging and their different forms of livelihoods.
In terms of their agricultural activities, most of the Basotho farmers continued
to grow different kinds of crops, breed cattle, and also engage in dairy farming.
The establishment of Native Councils in 1937 saw the Basotho farmers increasingly
working with other farmers towards the development of the Dewure Purchase Areas.
Native Councils were an attempt by the colonial government to introduce demo-
cratic institutions in local government while avoiding a situation whereby Africans in
communal (Native Reserve) and African Purchase Areas would be radicalised. They
were also viewed as structures that would aid ‘Native Development’ programmes.
The Native Councils were chaired by Native Commissioners and were composed
of chiefs and elected members. They were generally loathed by Africans in African
Purchase Areas as they were seen as exploitative and enhancing the powers of Native
Commissioners.
Because they considered themselves more progressive than other African farmers,
in 1938 Basotho requested to have their own Native Council. In addition, Basotho felt
that, ‘as more advanced Natives’, they would be able to foster development if they

62 J. Mujere
were separated from the rest of the African Purchase Areas farmers. Eventually, it was
agreed that Basotho would not have a separate Native Council but be integrated into
the Dewure Native Council. This created discord in the Native Council as tensions
emerged between the indigenous farmers and the Basotho farmers over issues such
as taxation. In 1948, the Native Commissioner for Gutu wrote a report in which he
praised Basotho councillors for realising they needed to levy higher taxes to develop
their areas. At the same time, he demonstrated his concern with the indigenous
African farmers’ reluctance to levy high taxes. He wrote:
We have in this division a minority of progressive Basutos and a majority of Karanga. The
two sections number at present about 150 farmers and for the success of any council it
was stressed that high taxation would be necessary. While the Basothos agreed and used
all forceful arguments in favour of taxation being from £2 to £5 a male, the Karanga were
bemoaning poverty and benefits of taxations from 2/6 to 10/-. One decision being called the
majority the Karanga voted for 5/- taxation and it was only when the disappointed Basuto cast
their votes for 10/- tax, that the higher taxation governed the majority to carry it through… It
is a pity that the advanced Basutos are to be held back by the cautious Karanga. A division of
the area, however, it is thought, would be a mistake from the points of emphasising tribalism
and the small yearly totals of revenue collected by each section.26
The Native Commissioner’s report reveals not only the tension between the indige-
nous Karanga farmers and the Basotho farmers but, most importantly, the enduring
colonial perceptions about Basotho as more progressive compared to the indigenous
farmers. Basotho’s position was also strengthened by the fact that, of the ten coun-
cillors in the Dewure Native Council in 1948, five were Basotho. Basotho’s support
of higher taxes was, arguably, influenced by their desire not only to develop their
areas but also to be perceived by colonial administrators as progressive.
By the 1950s, several purchase area farmers across Southern Rhodesia were sub-
dividing their farms and selling sub-divisions for various reasons (Shutt 2002: 292).
The reasons varied from family squabbles and a desire to pay off their arrears for the
purchase of the farms. Commenting on the farm sub-divisions among the Basotho
in 1964, the Delineation Officer for Gutu, C. J. Latham noted that Basotho’s farms
were very large and the majority of them had been sub-divided.27 The farm divisions
helped farm owners to clear their debts and to make their farms smaller and more
manageable as well. Thus, for a short period, farm sub-divisions were a form of
livelihood for farmers who desired to invest in their farms or were struggling to raise
money to pay off the arrears. It was generally difficult for purchase area farmers to
prosper because the farms were far from road and rail networks, had poor soils, and
were located in areas that received poor rains.
Although Basotho and their Karanga neighbours occasionally clashed, especially
in the Dewure Native Council where Basotho saw themselves as more progressive
compared to the Karanga farmers, the relationship between the two groups could not
be described as antagonistic. Several Basotho farmers sold portions of their farms
to the Karanga. Since the majority of Basotho farmers were members of the DRC,
it allowed them to interact closely with other non-Sotho members of the church
(Mujere 2019). Overall, in spite of their desire to establish a community where

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 63
they would maintain a sense of belonging, Basotho continued to closely interact
with their Karanga neighbours through the Dewure Native Council, the DRC and
schools, among other social areas.
3.6 Conclusion
Basotho migrants in Southern Rhodesia always felt vulnerable if and when they were
without access to freehold land. This was largely borne out of the fact that, as migrants
or ‘alien Natives’, they did not have any rights to communal lands. Consequently,
both their construction of belonging and forms of livelihoods hinged on ownership
of freehold land. It is evident that Basotho’s belonging strategy revolved around
ownership of freehold land and maintaining their language and culture. By the same
token, their livelihoods were also dependent upon ownership of freehold land. Having
been among the first Africans to purchase land on the basis of individual tenure,
they valued the security that came with individual tenure and the opportunities to
accumulate. They established different forms of livelihoods that included agriculture,
stock breeding, and dairy farming. These livelihoods were complemented by the
operation of grocery shops and transport riding. Although it is difficult to ascertain
the production levels in the absence of statistical data, reports by colonial officials
indicate that Basotho were among the best African farmers when they owned Rust
and Erichsthal farms and later when they took up farms in the purchase areas. Basotho
strove to become ‘men of the soil’ as well as an example for other African farmers
in Southern Rhodesia. While members of the Basotho community believed that
education was important, their livelihoods were mainly based on farming. In this
respect, then, individual tenure was central to Basotho’s construction of belonging
and establishment of livelihoods.
Notes
1. L2/2/8 Basutos January 1901–21 January 1902, Application by Basutos for
particulars regarding the purchase price of Government and other land in
Matabeleland, 14 March 1901.
2. AT1/2/1/10 Land owned by Natives in 1925.
3. S1542/F2/1 Superintendent of Natives (Fort Victoria) to C. Bullock Assis-
tant Chief Native Commissioner Salisbury, 2 August 1933. This group of ten
Basotho farmers was led by Ephraim Morudu. See also Palmer (1977).
4. Letter by E.W. Evans to the editor, The Bulawayo Chronicle, 23 March 1916.
5. Letter by H.M. Oakley to the editor, Bulawayo Chronicle, 15 March 1916.
6. Letter by H.M. Oakley to the editor, Bulawayo Chronicle, 15 March 1916.
7. N9 /1/14 Victoria District: Report for the year ended 31 December 1911.
8. N9 /1/14 Victoria District: Report for the year ended 31 December 1911.
9. N9/1/17 Victoria District: Report of the Native Commissioner for the year
ended 31 December 1926.

64 J. Mujere
10. N9/1/17 Victoria District: Report for the Year ended 31 December 1924.
11. N9/1/14 Victoria District: Report for the Year ended 31 December 1911.
12. N9/1/17 Victoria District: Report for the Year ended 31 December 1924.
13. N9/1/14 Victoria District: Report for the Year ended 31 December 1911.
14. N9/1/14 Victoria District: Report for the Year ended 31 December 1911.
15. N9/1/15 Victoria District, Report for the Year ended 31 December 1912.
16. S1044/9 Native Purchase Areas 1934–1942, Superintendent of Natives to
Assistant Director of Native Lands, Salisbury, 23 June 1934.
17. S1042 1924–1937, Letter from the Superintendent of Natives (Fort Victoria)
to CNC, 20 December 1927.
18. S1042 1924–1937, Letter from the Superintendent of Natives (Fort Victoria)
to CNC, 20 December 1927.
19. For a detailed discussion of this, see Mujere and Mseba (2019) and Carbutt
(1927).
20. S1542/F2/1 Assistant Director of Native Lands to Chief Native Commissioner,
9 December 1932.
21. S1859 Schools 1933–1949, Basuto Settlement, NC Gutu to CNC, 6 November
1935.
22. S1044/10 NC Victoria to CNC, 10 October 1935.
23. S1044/10 NC Victoria to CNC, 10 October 1935.
24. S1044/9 Native Purchase Areas 1934–1942, Superintendent of Natives to Chief
Native Commissioner, 28 March 1934.
25. S1859 NC Gutu to CNC Salisbury, 6 November 1935.
26. S2797/4663 NC Gutu to Provincial NC, Fort Victoria, 12 August 1948, Dewure
Division Council.
27. S2929/8/3 Delineation Report-Gutu: Report on Dewure NPA, By C. J. K.
Latham, 19 February 1964.
References
Beach, DN (1973) The initial impact of Christianity on the Shona: the protestants and the southern
Shona. In: Dachs AJ (ed) Christianity south of the Zambezi, vol. 1. Mambo Press, Gwelo
Carbutt CL (1927) Communal land tenure. Native Aff Depart Annu 5:43
Hove G, Swart S (2019) “Dairying is a White Man’s industry”: the Dairy Produce Act and the
segregation debate in colonial Zimbabwe, c. 1920–1937. J South Afr Stud 45 (5): 1465–3893
Krammer E (2001) Transport riders and traders in colonial Zimbabwe until 1923. Unpublished
Seminar Paper, Economic History Department, University of Zimbabwe, 1 June, pp 1–24
Makambe EP (1979) The African immigrant factor in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1930: the origins
and influence of external elements in a colonial setting. PhD Dissertation, York University
Makambe EP (1982) African protest movements in Southern Rhodesia before 1930: an ideological
appreciation of the socio-political roots of the protest movements. Munger Afr Libr Notes 65–66
Mokwile J (1924) Native ideals. Native Aff Depart Annu 2:95–97
Mujere J (2013) African intermediaries: African evangelists, the Dutch Reformed Church, and
the Evangelisation of the Southern Shona in the late 19th century. Stud Historiae Ecclesiasticae
39(2):133–148

3 ‘Men of the Soil’: Basotho Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1950s 65
Mujere J (2019) Land, migration and belonging: a history of Basotho in Southern Rhodesia c.1890–
1960s. James Currey, Suffolk
Mujere J, Mseba A (2019) The politics of African freehold land ownership in early colonial
Zimbabwe, 1890–1930. Afr Econ Hist 47(1):32–53
Palmer R (1977) Land and racial domination in Rhodesia. Heinemann, London
Ranger TO (1970) The African voice in Southern Rhodesia 1898–1930. Heinemann, London
Sayce K (1978) A town called Victoria or the rise and fall of the Thatched House Hotel. Books of
Rhodesia, Bulawayo
Shutt AK (2002) Squatters, land sales and intensification in Marirangwe purchase area, colonial
Zimbabwe, 1931–65. J Afr Hist 43(3):473–498
Steele ML (1972) The foundations of a native policy: Southern Rhodesia, 1923–1933. Unpublished
PhD Dissertation, Simon Fraser University
van der Merwe WJ (1981) From mission field to autonomous Church in Zimbabwe. N. G.
Kerkboehandel, Transvaal
Joseph Mujere Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in History at the National University of Lesotho and
a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University
of Johannesburg. He published his first book in 2019 titled: Land, Migration and Belonging: A
History of Basotho in Southern Rhodesia c.1890-1960s (Suffolk: James Currey, 2019).

Chapter 4
Transformations in the Livelihood
Activities of Hlengwe People
of the South-East Lowveld of Zimbabwe,
1890–2014
Taderera Hebert Chisi
Abstract The Hlengwe people of the south-east Lowveld of Zimbabwe are
commonly known as Shangaan/‘Machangana’ or Tsonga. Their traditional liveli-
hood activities such as hunting, fishing, gathering, agriculture and trade were unique
to the extent that they could be easily used as features of identity differentiation
between the Hlengwe and neighbouring ‘ethnic others’ such as Duma and Karanga.
However, the uniqueness of some of these activities has diminished over the years.
This chapter is premised on the argument that the livelihood activities of ethnic
communities are not static but shift with time in response to changes in the social,
political and physical environment. In this context, it analyses the transformation
of the Hlengwe livelihood activities from 1890 (the time of British colonialism) to
the twenty-first century. Overall, the Hlengwe livelihood activities morphed over
the years to a point where, by the early twenty-first century, ethno-commerce or
commodification of marketable features of identity such as cultural symbols, art and
craft and living cultures remained the main livelihood activity which still reflected
Hlengwe ethnicity more than any other activities in the modern multi-ethnic society
of the south-east Lowveld.
Keywords Livelihoods ·Ethno-commerce ·Transformation ·Identity ·Hlengwe ·
Karanga
4.1 Introduction
The Hlengwe people, who are commonly known as ‘Machangana’, ‘Shangaan’ or
Tsonga, inhabit parts of the south-east Lowveld of Zimbabwe between the Save and
Limpopo Rivers, mainly in what is now known as Chiredzi District (Bannerman
1978: 483). Their Shangaan label is problematic especially given that the term was
first applied only to the subjects of Soshangane, who fled from Nguniland to southern
T. H. C hisi (B
)
History Department, Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe
e-mail: chisith@staff.msu.ac.zw
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_4
67

68 T. H. C hisi
Mozambique in the early 1820s (Niehaus 2002: 101; Mtetwa 1976: 159; Rasmussen
1979: 293). It is clear that the Hlengwe were not descendants of the Shangaan and also
did not come to the south-east Lowveld with Soshangane. As Chisi (2018) highlights,
‘Shangaan’ is merely a political label for the Hlengwe ethnic group which only gained
importance in the public domain because of a combination of the colonial politics
of ethno-cartography and the politics of ethnic labelling by the Shona and Ndebele
who settled among the Hlengwe from the 1950s.
This chapter, however, is not focused centrally on arguments about Hlengwe
ethnicity but, rather, seeks to analyse Hlengwe livelihoods from the colonial to the
post-colonial period. It argues that, prior to the 1950s the Hlengwe were a visible
ethnic community, with livelihood activities which could be clearly used as Hlengwe
ethnic identity markers and could easily distinguish the Hlengwe from neighbouring
ethnic others such as Duma, Karanga and Ndebele. However, these Hlengwe liveli-
hood activities underwent major changes as a result of the implementation of colonial
policies, to a point where they ceased to be clear markers of Hlengwe ethnicity or
their identity in the south-east Lowveld. In this regard, for purposes of this chapter,
ethnicity entails ‘the capacity in people to classify themselves as social others’
(Msindo 2007: 268).
As shown in this chapter, most Hlengwe livelihood activities which in the past were
associated with ‘being Hlengwe’, did not remain static but changed to a point where
the only activities which still pointed to Hlengweness were found in Hlengwe ethno-
commerce. Ethno-commerce refers to the commodification of marketable features
of an ethnic identity, such as cultural symbols, arts and crafts and living cultures or
cultural artefacts for tourists or other buyers as souvenirs by members of the ethnic
group. A clear example of ethno-commerce is where a group like the Zulu or—in
this case—the Hlengwe make and sell items pertinent to their cultural identity such
as bead necklaces, head rings, clay pots and baskets. To remove any confusion when
reading this chapter, it should be noted that Chiredzi District was created in 1967
out of areas previously under the colonial Chibi, Nuanetsi and Ndanga Districts,
so reference will be made to these latter areas in the discussion. So, whenever these
former districts are mentioned, it is with reference to those parts of the districts which
were excised to create the current Chiredzi District.
4.2 Contextualisation
The south-east Lowveld of Zimbabwe, in which the Hlengwe chose to settle from
the eighteenth century, was generally a hostile and fragile environment and for a
long time was treated as uninhabitable by agricultural communities. It is an area
of harsh climatic conditions characterised by excessive heat and dryness. The area
receives very low and often uncertain rainfall ranging between 300 and 700 mm per
annum, and only receives sufficient rainfall for crop growth in one out of every three
or four years (Bannerman 1978: 483; Chisi 2018). The annual temperatures range
between 20 and 35 degrees centigrade but extreme temperatures reaching 40 degrees

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 69
centigrade are not uncommon in hot months (September to November) especially in
lower parts of the area towards the Limpopo valley. Though dry, it is an area through
which big rivers with sources in the Highveld (such as Runde, Mutirikwe, Tokwe,
Bubye, Mwenezi, Save and Limpopo) pass through on the way to the Indian Ocean.
Generally, the south-east Lowveld environment discouraged dense human settle-
ment leaving the Lowveld as an area of vast expanses of sparsely populated forest
land rich in flora and fauna. Bannerman (1978: 483) indicates that the whole area
is classified as Region 5, which means an area not suitable for crops of economic
importance. For this reason, it was an area of little interest to most people except
the Hlengwe and few scattered ethnic others like the Venda and Lomwe. At the time
of the colonisation of Zimbabwe, the area had no known mineral deposits to be of
interest to the colonialists, which explains the little interference with the Hlengwe
livelihoods up to the 1950s. In this environment, the livelihood activities that devel-
oped and became associated with being Hlengwe were hunting, gathering, fishing
and agriculture though livestock rearing, salt-production, pottery, and basketry were
also practised (Chisi 2013: 168).
The ‘sparsely’ populated south-east Lowveld became one of the areas that the
colonial regime could turn to in dealing with the problem of overpopulation, and
releasing and creating land for whites. The 1940s, and even more so the 1950s,
witnessed massive relocations of Hlengwe, Ndebele and Karanga people by colonial-
ists into Matibi 2, Sangwe and Sengwe reserves—which are all in Chiredzi District,
Masvingo (former Victoria) Province in the Lowveld. So, to create new farms for
whites in the Lowveld, the Hlengwe were driven from the area which became Hippo
Valley, Triangle and Mkwasine Sugar Estates as well as surrounding European alien-
ated land. To reduce overcrowding in Matabeleland and northern Victoria (Masvingo)
provinces’ densely populated reserves, the excess population of Karanga and Ndebele
was relocated to the south-east Lowveld as well (Bannerman 1978,1981;Chisi2013).
The overcrowding in the reserves was a consequence of the increased evictions of
Africans from their original homes, as more and more Europeans took over African
land following the promulgation of the Land Apportionment Act (LAA) of 1930.
The LAA created racial categories of land ownership so all Africans except workers
on European land had to move to the African reserves (Moyana 1984). The evictions
increased after the Second World War following an influx of poor Europeans who
were seeking for opportunities in Africa.
While saving the environment in overcrowded areas was pursued with vigour,
animal enthusiasts weighed in with the thought of conserving wild animals through
the creation of safaris, ranches and game parks. This saw the Gonarezhou National
Park being established first as a protected area in 1936 and then as a national park in
1975; by these deeds, Hlengwe access to most of the Park and the resources therein
was thereby blocked. As a result of this development, change in Hlengwe livelihoods
was inevitable, for the Hlengwe still had to survive.

70 T. H. C hisi
4.3 Methodology
The research for this study adopts a historical design and, in reconstructing the history
of the Hlengwe livelihoods, a number of sources were used. This includes archival
documents dated from 1902 to 1961, especially letters and reports of colonial admin-
istrators such as early Native and District Commissioners obtained from the National
Archives of Zimbabwe from 2012 to 2017. As well, I conducted oral interviews
among the Hlengwe in Chiredzi District in villages under tiHosi (chiefs/headmen)
Gezani, Chilonga, Masivamele, Tshovani, Mpapa and Sengwe (mainly during the
period from 2012 to 2014). Added to this were numerous secondary sources including
books by one former District Commissioner of Nuanetsi, and a missionary Tillman
Houser, both of whom worked among the Hlengwe for a long period of time.
4.4 Hlengwe Livelihood Activities from Pre-Colonial Times
Up Until the 1950s
Up to the 1950s, there were clear livelihood activities with which the Hlengwe could
be identified, and these could be easily used as Hlengwe ethnic identity markers vis-
à-vis neighbouring ethnic others in the Lowveld. This section looks at these major
livelihood activities such as hunting, gathering, fishing, agriculture, migrant labour
and trade, in some detail.
4.4.1 Hunting
It is difficult to establish with a high degree of accuracy the frequency with which
individual households hunted and how much game meat contributed to their diet, but
colonial records prove that most Hlengwe men devoted more time to hunting than
the neighbouring Shona groups. The records demonstrate that hunting contributed
immensely to the food basket of the Hlengwe, and hence it was a key livelihood
activity which took up much of their time until it was banned by the colonial govern-
ment, forcing them to venture into other activities. The Hlengwe devoted so much
time to hunting that early colonial administrators advanced the narrative that the
Hlengwe were mainly a ‘hunting tribe’. The Native Commissioner (NC) of Ndanga
District said of the Hlengwe:
They are born hunters and spend a great deal of their spare time in shooting game. (NAZ
N3/33/8, History of Ndanga District, n.d.)
The NC for Chibi District described the Hlengwe under Chief Chitanga in Chibi
District as follows:

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 71
The Bashlangwe tribe have always been hunters, and until quite lately have not gone in for
agriculture; even now it is only those who have Makalakas [Karangas] living with them who
do so to any extent. (NAZ, N3/33/8, Tshitanga Tribe, Bashlungwe People, n.d.)
Likewise, Wright (1972: 201) calls the Hlengwe ‘fearless and effective hunters’.
The Hlengwe hunter-gatherer’s bag would contain all sorts of animals and crea-
tures even those which neighbouring ethnic communities shunned. Oral sources
reveal that the Hlengwe ate the meat of most animals (such as impala, kudu,
bush-buck, eland and warthogs) and even killed animals as big as elephants and
rhinoceroses in their environment (Matsuve, interview, 09/08/2013). They also
consumed creatures like bull frogs (makuthla), big monitor lizards (makwahle) and
tortoises (swibhotse) which Nyai groups did not eat (Musengi, interview 5/7/2014).
Even up to the 1930s, the Native Commissioners continued to indicate in their reports
that that the Hlengwe survived on ‘game meat and mulala palm’ (NAZ, S235/1/18,
Assistant NC, Nuanetsi, Annual Report, 31 December 1934).
4.4.2 Gathering
Alongside hunting there also existed gathering, i.e. foraging for food. This was mainly
a woman’s pre-occupation but women were assisted at times by children and their
male counterparts especially during droughts. Also, from early colonial records, it is
evident that gathering was a key livelihood activity which the Hlengwe could not do
without in their hostile natural environment. Chisi (2013: 169) notes that gathering
secured diverse food items for the Hlengwe which included vegetables, insects and
wild fruits. The fruits included mawuyu (baobab fruit), makwakwa (wild oranges
or fruits of the Strychmos Madagascariensis tree), and mapfura (marula or fruits
of the nkanyi or Sclerocarya Caffra tree). They also brought back from the bush
grasshoppers, magandari and macimbi (green and black caterpillars respectively),
the sap of minala or ilala palm (hypahene natalansis), and honey.
Two of the gathered forest products appear to have been particularly important to
the Hlengwe. This does not mean that the other gathered products were not impor-
tant food items or raw materials for their art and craft. These were makwakwa (wild
oranges) and the ilala palm (called minala by the Hlengwe). Makwakwa and ilala
palm were important food resources in the Hlengwe diet, so that considerable time
was given to gathering them. Ilala palm was important in the brewing of an alco-
holic beverage called njemani, which learned Hlengwe jokingly call ‘German wine’.
The collected makwakwa were fire dried through a process called ekhurimba which
required large volumes of hot charcoal, such that large amounts of dry wood were
required. They were consumed either as fuma or mabhewu also called hwakwa.
Fuma was a powder made from the fire-dried seed cover of makwakwa fruits which
were ground or pounded into a tasty powder (Muninginisi, interview, 03/07/2014).
Mabhewu was the unground fire-dried soft seed cover of the makwakwa fruit.
Makwakwa was an important source of food during droughts and many Native

72 T. H. C hisi
Commissioners’ reports talk of the Hlengwe surviving on wild oranges and ilala
palm in dry years. During the 1911–1912 droughts, the Hlengwe are said to have
survived on roots, milk and edible wild fruits (NAZ, N9/1/15, NC Annual Report
1911 and 1912). The 1913 NC Chibi Report talks of a people living between the
Lundi (Runde) and Bubye Rivers who survived on makwakwa and ilala palm shoots
due to food shortages in that year. The NC says:
They are of the hunting or Bahlengwe tribe and are able to obtain food from their more
fortunate neighbours in the north and live on the wild oranges ‘wakwa’ and palm shoots
supplemented with fish and what game they kill or take away from wild carnivores. (NAZ,
N9/1/16, NC Chibi Annual Report, 1913)
During the 1914 drought, many Hlengwe left the country for Mozambique in search
of hwakwa, according to the NC’s annual report (NAZ, NVC2/1/1 Chibi District:
Annual Report for the Year Ended 31 December 1914). Also, in 1927, the Acting
NC for Nuanetsi said that the Hlengwe reaped ‘practically nothing’, but:
Subsisted throughout the year almost entirely on products of the malala palm combined with
a herbaceous diet. (NAZ S235/505 ANC Annual Report Nuanetsi Sub-District 1927)
These reports prove that gathering was an indispensable livelihood activity of the
Hlengwe. More so, considering that they lived in a hostile environment where
droughts were more common than wet seasons, this shows that the Hlengwe spent
time foraging for food over extended periods. The archaeological research by Thorp
(2005) highlights that the south-east Lowveld was a forager’s paradise in that it was
rich in flora and fauna from which the Hlengwe obtained sustenance.
4.4.3 Livestock Herding
The Hlengwe kept big and small livestock and fowls, as proven by the fact that the
initiates va ka hogo (attending the Hlengwe initiation school) paid their muxeki (or
the man responsible for circumcising males during initiation ceremonies) with cattle
(tihomu), goats (timbuti) and fowls (Johnston 1974: 346). Further, the Hlengwe had
indigenous names to denote these domestic animals which show that the keeping
of livestock was a traditional practice. What points in particular to the significance
of livestock to the Hlengwe is that, even after modern schools were opened in the
twentieth century, most Hlengwe boys were barred by their parents from attending
so as to tend the family herd (Chauke, interview, 10/07/2014; Gezani, interview
08/07/2014). This became a key difference marker between Ndebele and Karanga
on the one hand and Hlengwe on the other, from the 1950s. As cattle herders, most
Hlengwe were described by colonial administrators as ‘lackadaisical agriculturalists,
untidy hut-builders and not even good stockmen – they do not emulate the Ndebele,
their cousins who are fine cattlemen’ (Wright 1972: 201). So, from the perspective
of livelihood activities, it was still possible to distinguish Hlengwe from their ethnic-
other neighbours even as late as the 1950s.

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 73
4.4.4 Migrant Labour
While the Hlengwe rural economy was dominated by hunting and gathering and other
rural-based activities, some young Hlengwe men had started to seek job opportunities
in the South African mines before the colonisation of Zimbabwe. From colonial
records, it appears that there were more male Hlengwe migrant labourers than male
Shona migrant labourers from the south-east Lowveld in colonial times. One of
the earliest Ndanga NCs said that the Hlengwe were poor agricultural workers but
admitted that:
They are very good mine boys and go regularly to work without any persuasion. (NAZ,
N3/33/8, History of Ndanga District, n.d.)
In the same report, he acknowledges that the opposite was true of the Karangas and
he therefore says:
It is difficult to persuade them [Karanga men] to go to work and they care very little for clothes
or money as long as they have their paltry 10/- [shillings] or £1 to pay the government hut
tax. (NAZ, N3/33/8, History of Ndanga District, n.d.)
In 1917, the Chief Native Commissioner reported that for quite some time a consider-
able percentage of Hlengwe from Ndanga (southern portion) and Chibi were ‘in the
habit of seeking employment in the Transvaal’ (NAZ, S246/716 CNC in a letter to
the Secretary Department of Administrator, Salisbury, 11 October 1917). This trend
had not changed by 1939 because the NC Chibi reports that:
[L]ocal natives from Nuanetsi go to the Union [of South Africa] for employment. This exodus
is nothing new…. (NAZ, S235/517 Report NC Chibi, 31 December 1939)
It is clear that labour migration took root much earlier among the Hlengwe than
the Karanga, which is why migrant labour came to be mainly associated with the
Hlengwe and not Shona-speaking groups. Mtetwa (1976: 289) asserts that, by the
1890s, a very strong tradition of labour migration to South Africa had already been
established and he identifies three routes used by Hlengwe labour migrants to reach
the labour markets. One route was called the Shangaan route and passed through
the Save-Runde Rivers’ confluence area to Pafure in South Africa. A second route
was called Posokufa, which literally meant ‘you have risked death’ because of the
hazards on the way, while the third route was called Jibinjobo which meant: ‘The
skin-attire was snatched from behind by wild animals, particularly lions, from men
who were fleeing’ (Mtetwa 1976: 0020289).
The reasons for going to the mines were numerous. Cecil Barnard a European
poacher met some ‘Shangane’ speaking people close to the border with Mozambique
(which was the area of chiefs Ngwenyeni, Shilotlela and Masivamele) who had been
forced by drought to go and labour in South Africa, but they had worked the shortest
contract because they:
[W]ere hastening home with what little money they had earned hoping that the families they
left behind were still alive. (Bulpin 1955: 44)

74 T. H. C hisi
In his 1917 letter to the Administrator of Southern Rhodesia, the Chief Native
Commissioner (CNC) states that most migrant workers went to South Africa with the
desire to earn money with which to settle their government debts for grain advanced to
them during famines and to meet their other obligations (NAZ, S246/716, CNC, letter
to the Secretary Department of Administrator, Salisbury, 11 October 1917). Houser
(2007: 76) says they brought from South Africa colourful clothing, tools, blankets
and money for debt and tax payment. Some went to earn money for buying food from
the Makaranga and other traders (NAZ, N3/33/8, History of Ndanga District, n.d.).
Wolm er (2007: 77) says that, among the Hlengwe, the ‘repatriated wages became
an important part of the local economy’. This shows that migrant labour was a very
critical livelihood activity among the Hlengwe and, in the early years of colonial
rule and even well after the 1950s, it was mainly a Hlengwe activity with specific
reference to the south-eastern Lowveld of Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, they worked in copper mines around Messina, in Natal’s sugar
plantations and farms in Transvaal, and a few made it to the Rand mines. Most of
the Hlengwe were engaged as general hands. Some also worked for Europeans as
hunters and cattle herders, while many became house servants, farm labourers in
fields and citrus orchards, labourers in construction companies or tool boys for white
mechanics in garages (Bannerman 1978: 490; Houser 2000:7).
4.4.5 Agriculture
Based on agricultural practices, colonial administrators were able to tell the difference
between the Hlengwe and their Karanga neighbours. Describing the Karanga and
Hlengwe in his district, the NC Ndanga says:
Most natives in the northern part of the district are Makarangas….they are however, splendid
agricultural workers and excel almost any native race in South Africa in this respect. (NAZ,
N3/33/8, History of Ndanga District, n.d)
Describing the Hlengwe, he indicates:
In the Southern part of the district are to be found a totally different tribe of natives called
the Hlengwi…This tribe is quite the reverse to the Makarangas in nearly every aspect. They
are very poor agricultural workers. (NAZ, N3/33/8, History of Ndanga District, n.d.)
This difference between Karangas and Hlengwe was confirmed by the Karanga who
were resettled among the Hlengwe of Chiredzi District in the 1950s. One Karanga
informant said that it was very easy to distinguish between the Hlengwe and Karanga
back then, at least until the 1960s. He argued that, though the Hlengwe practised
agriculture, they only cleared very small patches of land where they simply broadcast
seed while the Karanga had big fields and would plant in lines. After germination,
the Hlengwe did not practise weeding until harvest time, so most of their crops were
choked by weeds. He attributed this to laziness and even said that a few of those who
weeded their crops with hoes did so while sitting down or on their knees (Manhumba,

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 75
interview, 17/07/2014). Even the Hlengwe confirmed that they had small patches
of land where they grew very few crops (Chikahu, interview, 02/07/2014). Beach
(1983: 247) also confirms that the Tsonga-Hlengwe speakers in the south-east placed
less emphasis than the Shona on agriculture. The main reason for this was that the
Hlengwe knew that:
Only in one year out of three or four would they have sufficient rainfall for good crops. They
therefore relied more heavily than the plateau-dwellers on fishing, hunting and gathering.
(Beach 1983: 250)
With all this said, there is still evidence suggesting that agriculture was an important
livelihood activity among the Hlengwe. Bannerman (1981) says that the Hlengwe
grew about six types of sorghum called xikombe,chibedlane,chiraxavane,maxalane,
xiponda and xitishi.Theyalsogrewmatimba (sweet-reeds), marhakarhaka (cucum-
bers) timangha (pea-nuts) tinyawa (beans) tindluwu (roundnuts), lininga (sesame)
from which they extracted oil, mahonti (pumpkins) mihlata (sweet potatoes) makha-
vathla (sweet-melons) and fole (tobacco) for making snuff. Bannerman (1981: 20)
says that one of his informants evicted from the Save-Runde junction in 1968 told
him that: ‘During the dry spells, we were always assured of having a crop. We could
irrigate with water at hand. We could grow pumpkins, maize and sweet potatoes’. It
is abundantly clear that in wet seasons and when the situation allowed, agriculture
was a significant Hlengwe livelihood practice. Most used very simple technology
(hoes and sticks) until when they adopted the plough after the 1950s.
4.4.6 Fishing
Fishing was a Hlengwe livelihood activity which also had a social function of uniting
the Hlengwe, as observed by Jubb (1981: 28–31) on a visit to the Marumbini area
close to the confluence of the Runde and Save Rivers in 1958. A similar fishing
event which was witnessed along the Runde River was recorded in The Rhodesia
Annual of 1926. Jubb (1981: 28) observed a Hlengwe annual fish drive, which he
describes as ‘a traditional event in which all able-bodied men took part’. He says
that it was a community event in which the event date was set by the chief. It was
carried out before the first thunderstorms of mid-October or November brought the
floods. About 500 to 600 Hlengwe took part in the drive and he describes the event
as follows:
First a fence of river reeds (phragmites) of some 500 metres in length is made with the reeds
space at about 50mm. Several hundred practically naked men man this fence and advance
with an encircling movement from the shallow end of the pool. With one end on the bottom,
the whole fence is carried forward in an upright position, the inner area being reduced until
there remains a small circular space of some 20m [metres] in diameter just boiling with
fish. The large fish are then speared, but in the end no fish, which cannot slip through the
spaced reed fence escapes. The haul is then examined and carefully distributed amongst the
community. (Jubb 1981: 28)

76 T. H. C hisi
So, besides providing food, fishing had a social-cohesion purpose among the
Hlengwe. The fish caught included saw-fish locally called chinyabanga (Pristis
microdon) which was said to be poisonous and had a fatal bite (unless the wound
was immediately treated with milk from a feeding mother), small sharks, tiger fish,
breams, tarpon and some unknown species (The Rhodesian Annual 1926: 71; Jubb
1981: 28; Wright 1972: 26, 40). The fish were a source of food and items of trade
which were exchanged for grain in times of drought and food shortages (Mtetwa
1976). Interestingly, it was believed that the Hlengwe had crocodile repellent ‘murhi’
or charms that they kept in leather pouches fastened to the waist to ward off any
crocodile attacks (Jubb 1981: 28).
4.4.7 Trade
Mtetwa (1976) argues that trade was very important in the Hlengwe household
economy. Beach (1983: 250) also hints on trade when he says that, during the
dry periods, the Hlengwe were able to obtain food from their plateau neighbours.
One NC Chibi (NAZ, N9/1/16, NC Annual Report Chibi, 1913) simply talks of
Hlengwe depending on their northern neighbours for food during droughts without
mentioning in detail how it was obtained. NC Ndanga (NAZ N3/33/8, History of
Ndanga District, n.d.) states in one report that most of the food consumed by the
Hlengwe was purchased with cash from the Makarangas and traders. In the absence
of extensive literature and evidence about it from NCs, it is difficult to say with much
certainty how much it was practised—but it must have been very important in times
of food crises.
However, Mtetwa (1976) claims it was in fact extensive. He says that the Hlengwe
were better craftsmen, fishermen and hunters than groups on the Highveld which
devoted more time to agricultural production because of the better climatic conditions
they experienced. This meant that the Hlengwe’s finer mats, baskets, pots, blankets
and bags had a ready market in Shona-speaking areas on higher ground. Mtetwa
(1976: 263–264) says that these Hlengwe items were sold in areas as far west as
beyond the Mutirikwe and Tokwe Rivers. He further notes that the dried game meat
and fish were also sold in areas around Great Zimbabwe and Chivi District. Salt which
was produced as well by the Hlengwe found a ready market among the Highveld
people mainly the Shona groups. One Hlengwe explained that salt was obtained from
a plant called dangala which used to be found in the Gonarezhou (Chisi 2013: 171).
Most of it came from salt pans and it was abundant at Chizenjele and Manyoweni
which are areas now enclosed in the Gonarezhou National Park (Chisi 2013: 171).

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 77
4.5 Changes in Hlengwe Livelihoods
The livelihood activities of some Hlengwe began to be affected negatively as from
the 1920s, as chiefs Mpapa and Masivamele’s Hlengwe were evicted by the colonial
government to the Matibi 2 reserve. However, it was the end of the Second World War
in Europe coupled with existing colonial land segregation policies which quickened
the demise of key Hlengwe livelihood activities while simultaneously transforming
some. The post-war era was followed by an influx of whites from war devastated
Europe to Zimbabwe. The colonial regime responded by radically implementing
the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and enacting the Native Land Husbandry Act
of 1951 in a bid to protect white interests (Phimister 1986; Nyambara 2002). As a
consequence of colonial policy shifts and enforcements, the period from 1952 to 1968
saw major evictions of Hlengwe from areas earmarked for European settlement (as
well as of Karanga and Ndebele from overcrowded reserves) into Matibi 2, Sengwe
and Sangwe reserves. which were predominantly Hlengwe areas in Chiredzi District.
The Ndebele came from Filabusi and Fort Rixon (Matabeleland) while Karanga came
from Gutu, Victoria and Shabane Districts (all in Victoria, now Masvingo, Province),
and were resettled in Matibi 2 and Sengwe reserves (Bannerman 1978: 492; NAZ,
S2827/2/2/7/3 Annual Report of the NC, Nuanetsi, for the Year Ended 31 December
1959).
The resettlement of the Ndebele and Karanga among the Hlengwe had a profound
impact on Hlengwe society, which made a missionary who was working among the
Hlengwe to comment:
Hlengwe culture is fast disappearing under the impact of relocation schemes where Karanga
are moving into the Nuanetsi District. (Houser 1972:2)
It was in the context of interacting with each other in the rural space of the south-
east Lowveld that cultural diffusion (and rejection) began to take place among the
different ethnic groups. In this shared space, it was mainly through and because
of ethnic labelling and ridiculing of Hlengwe (who were seen as ‘primitive’ by
Shona and Ndebele) that many Hlengwe gradually withdrew from certain historical
practices, such as the eating of monitor lizards, bull frogs and tortoises because
they were associated with ‘primitive diets’ (Mupereri, interview, 14/7/2014). This
adversely affected the composition of the Hlengwe forager’s bag as they became
more selective in hunting and gathering activities.
The coming of the Ndebele and Karanga into the south-east Lowveld also trans-
formed Hlengwe agricultural practices to a point where agriculture as a Hlengwe
livelihood activity ceased to be a Hlengwe identity marker. By 1955, the Hlengwe
were still practising their traditional ways of farming as indicated by one NC’s annual
report. He says:
The stumping of lands in the newly settled areas is progressing, the older inhabitants
[Hlengwe] are more difficult to persuade; they do not like innovations. (NAZ, S2827/2/2/3/2
Report of the NC, Nuanetsi for the Year Ended 31 December 1955)

78 T. H. C hisi
However, one year later in 1956, some changes were beginning to take place and,
in his annual report, the same NC says:
The people [Hlengwe] are very backward in this district and improvement in farmingmethods
is very slow…A certain amount of winter ploughing was done by new settlers [Karanga and
Ndebele] from other districts. This apparently aroused the interest of old residents [Hlengwe]
of whom a number followed suit. (NAZ, S2827/2/2/4/2 Report of the NC, Nuanetsi, for the
Year Ended 31 December 1956)
Wolm er (2007: 84) sums up the changes that took place in the agricultural practices
of the Hlengwe as a result of their interaction with Karanga and Ndebele, as follows:
[A]n influential factor in encouraging the adoption of ‘modern’ and ‘improved’ methods
of agriculture in the communal areas of the lowveld proved to be, not the activities of the
agricultural demonstrators, but the increasing immigration of Shona and Ndebele families to
the area from the 1950s. They brought maize, grew cash crops and practised winter ploughing
and planted in lines rather than broadcasting seeds. Initially Shangaan (Hlengwe) speakers
rejected many of these modern techniques but increasingly began to adopt some of them.
A noticeable change among the different ethnic groups was how each group adopted
the other groups’ crops. There is evidence that the Ndebele and Karanga quickly
adopted Hlengwe crops (especially the different types of sorghum as staple crops)
and mhunga (finger-millet), because maize their staple was not doing well in the
south-east Lowveld (Chisi, interview, 23/02/2013). The Hlengwe also adopted the
Karanga’s rukweza (rapoko) and maize though it was planted mainly in gardens. By
the 1960s, in areas with a mixture of Hlengwe, Karanga and Ndebele, crops grown
had ceased to be identity markers as all ethnic groups were now growing similar
crops.
The other Hlengwe activities such as hunting, fishing, gathering, trade and salt-
making also suffered as a result of implementation of colonial conservation policies,
including the Herbage Preservation Act of 1913 and Game and Fish Preservation Act
of 1929. The Herbage Preservation Act forbade the cutting of trees, shrubs, bush,
brushwood, undergrowth or grass and even made illegal the removal of honey or bees
from other people’s land. The ‘other’ simply referred to Europeans since, among the
Hlengwe, land was communally owned. These measures starved the Hlengwe of
resources that sustained most of their livelihood activities including trade. The acts
also barred hunting and fishing and any breach of these laws attracted hefty fines of
about British £100 (Chisi 2013: 180). Therefore, the creation of European ranches
and safaris as well as the Gonarezhou National Park actually suffocated most of
the Hlengwe livelihood activities as the Hlengwe were no longer allowed into the
European or wildlife areas where they used to hunt, fish, collect dangala and access
salt pans in areas like Manyoweni and Chizenjele (Chisi 2013: 171). To appreciate
the negative impact of colonial policies on Hlengwe livelihoods it is important to
emphasise that hunting, gathering and fishing were not sports for the Hlengwe, but
a means of survival.
This is why the daring Hlengwe responded by resorting to illegal hunting. As
observed by Steinhart (1989: 250) in colonial Kenya, as a new ethos of game preser-
vation emerged, the Africans who survived through hunting, fishing or gathering

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 79
found themselves ‘transformed into poachers’. This was true of the Hlengwe and the
growth in Hlengwe ‘poaching’ by 1958 made the NC Nuanetsi to say in his report:
Only two butcheries operate in the area [Matibi 2]. Both are fairly patronised but the
Shangaans (Hlengwe) prefer game meat and continue to hunt and snare game in the tradi-
tional manner. (NAZ, S2827/2/2/6/2, Annual Report of the NC, Nuanetsi, for the Year Ended
31 December 1958)
In 1961, the NC Nuanetsi even lamented that the heavy fines were not having a
deterrent effect on Hlengwe poaching (NAZ, S2827/2/2/8/3, Annual Report of the
Native Commissioner Nuanetsi, for the Year Ended 31 December 1961). Poaching
was only effectively reduced after the full enforcement of game protection laws in
the 1970s, but not without resistance from the Hlengwe.
From the above discussion, it is clear that Hlengwe livelihoods were drastically
affected by colonial policies, leading to the demise of most of these activities and the
transformation of others, especially agriculture. However, as control of their liveli-
hood activities by colonial administrators intensified, the Hlengwe like their Karanga
and Ndebele counterparts devoted more time to agriculture while most young men
joined the long trek to South Africa in search of jobs. From then on, it became increas-
ingly difficult to use livelihood activities as accurate identity difference markers
between the Hlengwe and their Ndebele and Karanga neighbours. However, it is
ethno-commerce activities which still reflect aspects of Hlengwe identity to some
extent.
4.6 Hlengwe Ethno-Commerce
Ethno-commerce is the commodification of cultural artefacts associated with an
ethnic identity. The growth of this business worldwide was spurred by the recognition
that indigenous or ethnic groups have a cultural entitlement to gain from products
of their way of life (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009). Ethno-commerce thus entails
the business of marketing unique cultural artefacts with which an indigenous group
is identified, for example, their traditional craft work such as baskets, attire, mats,
rugs, necklaces, headgear, bangles and even their performing arts especially cultural
dances. This is why Comaroff and Comaroff (2009: 29) say ‘otherness’ or identity
is now, ‘increasingly claimed as property by its living heirs who proceed to manage
it, —brand it, sell it—in self-consciously consumable forms’. This section examines
the Hlengwe ethno-enterprises with which the Hlengwe identity is still associated,
and argues that though ethno-commerce is practised at a very low scale, it represents
the livelihood activities which still clearly portray Hlengwe identity, more than any
others in the south-east Lowveld of Zimbabwe. The Hlengwe ethno-enterprises are
discussed under three categories: Hlengwe craft, cultural village and cultural dances.
From the pre-colonial era, Hlengwe were great craftspeople making all kinds
of articles such as finer mats, baskets, clay pots, blankets and bags for trade and

80 T. H. C hisi
domestic use (Mtetwa 1976). In the colonial period, this arts and crafts industry
almost collapsed, though there were many old men and women who continued to
make these items for everyday use within their communities. In the 1990s, a number
of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), which had realised the potential of
this indigenous industry to grow into a profitable venture, came to the assistance of
the local Hlengwe communities, including helping to set up ethno-businesses in the
Sengwe Communal lands. The NGOs included SEVACA a craft trading organisa-
tion, Terre des Homes, Environmental Development Activities—Zimbabwe (ENDA-
Zimbabwe) and Southern Alliance of Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE). They offered
financial support and training with regard to capacity building and aided in marketing
of craft wares (Sola 2004: 256).Two craft centres to facilitate the marketing of prod-
ucts were established in Sengwe along popular tourist routes. The NGOs equipped
women in particular with skills in production of wares for sale, marketing and finan-
cial management (Sola 2004: 256–258). However, the craft centres have since been
abandoned due to the economic meltdown and political instability following the Fast
Track Land Reform Programme which started in 2000.
Nevertheless, the Hlengwe women who saw the economic benefits of partici-
pating in these ventures began to make a number of cultural objects and even modi-
fied some to suit the tastes of the market. They made winnowing baskets called
lihlelo and baskets for carrying grain, fruits and other food items called nzala which
were miniaturised for easier handling by tourists on planes. Through the training
received, they also diversified the range of commodities that they made as they
began to make items such as sugar basins, wall hangings, washing baskets, fruit and
shopping baskets, brooms and mats. Though diversification resulted in a deviation
from marketing of ‘authentic’ Hlengwe products, the business was built around the
uniqueness of Hlengwe cultural artefacts. An informant revealed that the Hlengwe
products especially nzala and lihlelo were unique and different than those made
by Ndebele women in that, while the Ndebele also made baskets using minala like
the Hlengwe, they either made plain baskets or decorated them using artificial dyes
(Mathose, interview, 20/06/2014). The Hlengwe made stronger baskets using minala
and misisi which is a type of a climber, and their winnowing baskets (lihlelo), nzala
and most of their products are coloured with natural dyes. According to Sola (2004:
78), the Hlengwe dye was made from the bark of the Munyii tree (bird-plum or
Phyllogeiton discolour) and is at times darkened by mixing the bark with charcoal.
In 2000 and 2001, the women produced up to 6,000 items of four different products
which they sold to SEVACA and, at the time that business was booming, craft sales
were ranked the third most important source of household income for the Hlengwe
(Sola 2004: 253). Their markets included the National Handcraft Centre and National
Art Gallery in Harare and international buyers in South Africa, Mexico and Europe.
Unfortunately, by 2014, there existed only a few individual Hlengwe who were
making these items and selling them to South Africa. However, though there were
very few Hlengwe still involved in the craft sales business, it is evident that this
Hlengwe livelihood activity was one of the few remaining livelihood activities that
had qualities of a Hlengwe identity marker, and it also derived most of its uniqueness
from being associated with an activity from the Hlengwe pre-colonial past.

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 81
Cultural villages are also a way of commodifying features of a people’s identity. In
the 1970s, the former District Commissioner of what was then Nuanetsi District saw
the Hlengwe as people with a marketable ethnic identity, as he described them as ‘- a
group of unsophisticated Africans, who would make a wonderful tourist attraction’
(Wright 1972: 349–350). For this reason, he wanted them to be part of his big vision
about the Gonarezhou National Park but the colonial regime rejected this idea.
However, in 2011, the uniqueness of the Hlengwe ethnic identity was pack-
aged and commoditised in the form of a Hlengwe cultural village called Kambako
Museum of Living Bushcraft, which was located on the border of Malilangwe Conser-
vancy which adjoins the Gonarezhou National Park. The role of the local Hlengwe
from surrounding villages who were employed there was to re-enact the traditional
Hlengwe way of life. The village set up depicted a Hlengwe homestead (muti).
The architecture of traditional Hlengwe dwelling structures (tiyindlo), grain storage
facilities (nghula), a cattle pen (xivala xetihomu) and fowl run (xilugwi xatihuku)
which were found there, were typical of traditional Hlengwe homesteads in pre-
colonial times. The cultural village was popular with tourists to the conservancy and
in December 2012 it even attracted big names such as Bill Gates.1Tourists came to
see and learn about the traditional Hlengwe way of life.
On my visit to the place in 2013, it was the work of Julius Matsuve, the ‘patriarch’
of the village and his ‘sons’ to teach about the Hlengwe traditional fire-making skills
(using sticks) and the making of spears and arrow heads, while his many ‘wives’
(representing the Hlengwe polygamous marriage) and daughters wove baskets, fibre-
mats and other items from grass and cooked on open fires. They also performed
colourful Hlengwe cultural dances. The only problem with this kind of livelihood
activity is that, in an attempt to improve the market value of the portrayed identity,
its uniqueness tends to be falsified to sufficiently mystify it, because the more it is
mystified the better it sells. In this way, its authenticity may be compromised, which
is what Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) refer to as duping the market. However, at
the Shangaan/Hlengwe village, the greater part of the script tried as much as possible
to give the market or tourists a fair appreciation of the traditional Hlengwe way of
life.
Finally, the other ethno-commerce based livelihood activity which could be
associated with Hlengwe identity in the early years of the twenty-first century is
the commoditisation of Hlengwe cultural dances. The cultural dances have been
marketed through dance performances for tourists, or cultural dance groups being
hired to perform at special occasions or at dance competitions sponsored by the corpo-
rate world, or at cultural galas organised by various institutions including the state.
But, for most dancers this was a part-time activity. Matsuve (interview, 09/08/2013)
said that the Hlengwe dances include xinombela,muchongolo,xigubu,xifasi,xibelani
and mukhinyavezo. The Hlengweness in the cultural dances was seen in the dancers’
unique Hlengwe attire and dance styles which are different from those of the Ndebele
and Karanga. One common feature of cultural dances is that, in whatever form they

82 T. H. C hisi
are presented, there is a sense of ethnic pride that is exuded by the dancers and audi-
ence of the same identity. So when the Hlengwe cultural dances were performed,
there was a sense of Hlengwe pride exuded by the dancers and Hlengwe audience.
One other observation made about Hlengwe cultural dances was that, in the selec-
tion of cultural dance groups from the Lowveld to participate at local, regional,
national and international festivals, politics of identity was strongly played out in
Chiredzi district. For most of the regional, national and international events where
cultural dances were performed, Hlengwe ethnic strategists took advantage of every
opportunity to promote Hlengwe dance groups. To the Gaza Trust, an organisation
spearheading the Hlengwe fight for recognition, cultural dances became much more
than a form of social entertainment, as they were a declaration of intent. Cultural
dances became a mechanism for promoting Hlengwe culture, which the Gaza Trust
strongly felt was at the verge of collapse due to an onslaught from a combination
of sources—such as the presence of ethnic others who perceived themselves to be
superior ethnic groups than the Hlengwe and also government policies which did not
seem to take cognisance of the existence of Hlengwe as the dominant group (at least
in terms of numbers) in the south-east Lowveld (Director Gaza Trust, interview,
23/06/2013). The Gaza Trust was still very active in 2013and 2014, and different
Hlengwe cultural dance groups were being hired ahead of other groups to perform
at various cultural events such as Mapungubwe Heritage Tour Celebrations in South
Africa, the Harare International Carnival and the CISA commemorations.2It is there-
fore quite evident that, by 2014, commoditised cultural dances could still be used as
Hlengwe identity markers in the south-east Lowveld.
4.7 Conclusion
In the pre-colonial and early colonial period up to the 1950s, the Hlengwe pursued
unique livelihood activities that could be labelled and understood as Hlengwe identity
boundary markers. However, the vigorous implementation of colonial policies, such
as the evictions of Hlengwe to reserves, the resettlement of Ndebele and Karanga
among the Hlengwe and the creation of the Gonarezhou National Park, were a direct
attack on Hlengwe livelihoods. The Ndebele, Karanga and Hlengwe social interac-
tions in the shared social space led to a major transformation in livelihood activities for
Hlengwe, especially gathering and agriculture, while colonial policies also undercut
their hunting and gathering activities as Hlengwe access to game- and flora-rich areas
was curtailed through the creation of the Gonarezhou National Park. Now, in the
Chiredzi District and the south-east Lowveld as a whole, the multi-ethnic commu-
nity (composed of Hlengwe, Karanga, Ndebele and other smaller groups) grows
similar crops, follows similar agricultural practices and generally pursues similar
livelihood activities, dominated by agriculture and migrant labour to South Africa.
It is only in pockets scattered throughout the district, that there are Hlengwe people
who pursue ethno-commerce based livelihood activities which still portray Hlengwe
identity. These are people who make and sell Hlengwe cultural artefacts, with some

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 83
having formed cultural dance groups while a few are employed at the Shangaan
Village, where they make a living out of mimicking the traditional Hlengwe way of
life.
Notes
1. “Bill Gates on Zimbabwe Safari,” http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-9816-
Bill+Gates+on+Zimbabwe+safari/news.aspx.
2. www.facebook.com/pages/GazaTrustZimbabwe/156070247842575.
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of Central Africa, vol 1. Longman, London, pp 245–277
Bulpin T (1955) The ivory trail. Howard Timmins, Cape Town
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of the south east Lowveld of Zimbabwe: 1890–1965. Afr Zam 20(21):165–194
Chisi T (2018) Transformations in Hlengwe ethnicity in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe 1890 to 2014.
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musical analysis. J Amer Folk 87(346):328–339
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27:28–31
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Baloyi M (14/06/2014) interview, Great Zimbabwe University-Mashava Campus
Chauke N (10/07/2014) interview, Gezani, Chiredzi
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Chisi A (23/02/2013) interview, Village 12, Mushandike Resettlement Scheme, Masvingo
Director of Gaza Trust (23/06/2013) interview, Nesbitt Castle Inn, Chiredzi
Gezani A (08/07/2014) interview, Gezani, Chiredzi
Manhumba M (17//07/2014) interview, Masivamele, Chiredzi
Mathose E (20/06/2014) interview, Sengwe Communal area, Chiredzi
Matsuve J (09/08/2013) interview, Kambako Museum, Malilangwe Conservancy
Mbalati D (14/06/2014) interview, Great Zimbabwe University—Mashava Campus
Mupereri J (14/07/2014) interview, Chikombedzi, Chiredzi
Musengi T (05/07/2014) interview, Chibwedziva, Chiredzi
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NAZ, S235/517 Report NC Chibi, 31 December 1939
NAZ, S2827/2/2/3/2, Report of the NC, Nuanetsi for the Year Ended 31 December 1955
NAZ, S2827/2/2/4/2, Report of the NC, Nuanetsi, for the Year Ended 31 December 1956
NAZ, S2827/2/2/6/2, Annual Report of the NC, Nuanetsi, for the Year Ended 31 December 1958
NAZ, S2827/2/2/6/2, Annual Report of the NC, Nuanetsi, for the Year Ended 31 December 1961

4 Transformations in the Livelihood Activities of Hlengwe People … 85
Taderera Hebert Chisi is a senior lecturer in the History Department at the Midlands State
University, Zimbabwe. He has a Ph.D. (History) from Rhodes University and specialises in
Hlengwe ethnicity. His research passion focuses on ethnicity, land reform and Chinese in Africa.
He has published in books and journals and has also presented papers at international conferences,
in Uganda, Algeria, Botswana and South Africa.

Part II
Wildlife, Livelihoods and Ethnicity

Chapter 5
Resource Management, Livelihoods
and Ethnic Minorities: The Case
of the Doma, Northern Zimbabwe
Vincent Jani
Abstract Zimbabwe’s community-based natural resource management
programme, called CAMPFIRE, was aimed at integrating biodiversity conser-
vation with community livelihoods. This integration is far from simple, especially
when two ethnic groups with different livelihood practices are drawn into one project
under local political leadership. Such is the case in Chapoto Ward, in the north of
Zimbabwe, where the Doma and Chikunda ethnic groups co-exist. Thus, the focus
of this chapter is on how the livelihoods of the minority Doma group have been
affected by the local CAMPFIRE project. Specific objectives include: identifying
the livelihood practices of the Doma; assessing the impact that CAMPFIRE has
had on their livelihood practices; and demonstrating the negative reinforcement of
politics and ethnic bias regarding Doma livelihoods. Using a qualitative approach,
data were collected using in-depth interviews with heads of households and key
informant interviews, as well as document analysis. Thematic analysis was used
to code responses using both Open and Axial procedures. Findings demonstrate
the variety of livelihood practices in existence and show how these practices were
hampered by the CAMPFIRE initiative. Ethnic discrimination and stigmatisation,
which placed the Doma in a subordinate position vis-a-vis other dominant groups,
further demonstrate their restricted circumstances.
Keywords CAMPFIRE ·Doma ·Livelihoods ·Ethnicity ·Marginalisation
5.1 Introduction
Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) plays a potentially
important role in the sustainable development of rural people in poorer countries
(Machena et al. 2017; Mbaiwa 2015; Tantoh and Simatele 2017). It does this by
advocating for local community livelihoods to be integrated into biodiversity conser-
vation projects to achieve such development (Machena et al. 2017). This approach,
V. Jani (B
)
Geosciences, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
e-mail: vinjani2009@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_5
89

90 V. Ja n i
which emerged during the 1980s, was aimed at conferring the stewardship of natural
resources on local communities to spur them to use the resources sustainably (Child
1996; Gandiwa et al. 2013). The justification for the approach was that communities
would only use natural resources in a sustainable manner if they derived mean-
ingful economic benefits from them (Machena et al. 2017; Mbaiwa 2015; Tantoh
and Simatele 2017).
However, the CBNRM initiative seems to have resulted in severe restrictions on the
livelihoods of minority ethnic groups, especially those that depended on foraging for
nature-based resources (Hasler 1996;Rossetal.2011). This results in the reduction
of livelihood options for ethnic minorities and the escalation of illegal activities
such as bushmeat hunting by them (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2004). Furthermore,
CBNRM has been criticised for focusing on the commodification of resources instead
of supporting indigenous rights to land and biodiversity (Dressler et al. 2010). It has
also been observed that some ethnic minority groups are marginalised in natural
resource management programmes as they, in certain cases, fail to benefit in the
same way as dominant groups (Hasler 1996). As a result, minority ethnic groups
view wildlife conservation as infringing on their natural resource-based livelihoods
(Hitchcock et al. 2016; Mukamuri et al. 2013). For many of these communities,
foraging for wild foods is both a cultural practice and a way of attaining livelihoods
(Dieckmann et al. 2014).
Zimbabwe pioneered a CBNRM initiative, the Communal Areas Management
Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) programme, in marginal areas
in 1989, to alleviate poverty and improve the livelihoods of local communities neigh-
bouring protected areas (Martin 1986; Taylor 2009). However, the creation of safari
hunting areas to pave way for the introduction of CAMPFIRE resulted in the forced
relocation of minority ethnic communities from their erstwhile homes, leading to a
sedentary lifestyle and thereby depriving them of access to natural resources based
livelihoods (Mombeshora and Le Bel 2009). For instance, the San in Tsholotsho
were moved to Pelandaba Ward to pave way for safari hunting under the CAMPFIRE
programme (Mukamuri et al. 2013). Similarly, the San, who led a nomadic lifestyle of
hunting and gathering in Bulilimamangwe before the introduction of the CAMPFIRE
programme in 1990, were also resettled on the fringes of Makhulela Ward (Madzudzo
1996). Likewise, the VaDema (Dema) or VaDoma (Doma) or Tembomvura (Mvura),
who form the focus of this study, were moved from the Chewore Safari area, their
established home, to an area closer to the Mwanzamtanda River to pave the way for
safari hunting (Marindo-Ranganai and Zaba 1995; Mberengwa 2000).
While the relocation of these groups is relatively well documented, detailed studies
of the plight of ethnic minorities and their livelihood activities are still in its infancy.
This lack of information means that it is difficult to implement viable measures to
improve the conditions of such minorities. Other issues further complicate the lives
of ethnic minorities. For example, Zimbabwe has no laws on indigenous people’s
rights and, as a result, these communities are neglected and marginalised. In response
to the above situation, the focus of this chapter entails an examination of the liveli-
hoods of the minority Doma group in the context of the effects of the local CAMP-
FIRE project. Specific objectives include: identifying the livelihood practices of the

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 91
Doma; assessing the impact that CAMPFIRE has had on these livelihood practices;
and demonstrating the negative reinforcement of politics and ethnic bias on the
said livelihoods. The result should be greater clarity on how resource management,
livelihoods and ethnic issues interact in this and similar situations.
5.2 Context
The CAMPFIRE programme was introduced in 1989 following the amendment to
the 1975 Parks and Wildlife Act in 1982, which bestowed appropriate authority
(AA) status on Rural District Councils (RDCs) to manage and market wildlife to
international trophy hunters on behalf of the communities neighbouring protected
areas and for their economic benefit (Gandiwa et al. 2013; Muyengwa and Child
2017; Taylor 2009). It was premised on the idea that communities would cooperate
with conservation authorities to sustainably manage natural resources if they bene-
fited from them (Machena et al. 2017). The programme envisioned that benefits
from wildlife conservation would mitigate the impacts of human-wildlife conflicts
(HWCs), compensate for crop and livestock losses, minimise illegal hunting, reduce
poverty among the rural communities and instill positive attitudes towards wildlife
conservation (Gandiwa et al. 2013; Machena et al. 2017; Taylor 2009; Tchakatumba
et al. 2019).
The AA status was bestowed on RDCs on condition that benefits and wildlife
management would be further devolved to the producer (local) communities (Child
1993; Mushayavanhu 2017). Yet, it has remained at the RDC level (Machena et al.
2017) for over 30 years. When CAMPFIRE was introduced in 1989, local people were
told that they would be ‘owners’ of wildlife even though AA status was devolved
to RDCs (Dzingirai 2003). However, producer communities have not been made
owners of wildlife resources because they lack legal rights over wildlife (Dzingirai
2003; Machena et al. 2017). The communities’ lack of property rights over wildlife
is reaffirmed by Section 6 of the Communal Land Act, which states that communities
only enjoy use rights over land (Mushayavanhu 2017). This means the Zimbabwean
state is the ultimate owner of wildlife, as well as the communal land (Balint and
Mashinya 2006; Dzingirai 2003; Machena et al. 2017; Mushayavanhu 2017).
The CAMPFIRE programme was initiated in Chapoto Ward in 1989 following the
granting of AA status to Guruve RDC in 1988 (Muyengwa and Child 2017; Taylor
2009). Chapoto Ward is a 300m2area located in Mbire District in the mid-Zambezi
Valley, northern Zimbabwe. The mid-Zambezi Valley is characterised by low and
variable annual rainfall averaging 450–650 mm and a mean annual temperature of 25
°C (Gaidet et al. 2003). Because of rainfall variability, most of the people in Chapoto
engage in the subsistence-oriented growing of maize (Zea mays), mainly in riverine
fields as well as drought-tolerant crops such as sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and pearl
millet (Pennisetum glaucum) (Mberengwa 2000). Chapoto Ward is considered to be a
major wildlife producer ward because of the heavy wildlife presence in the Chewore
and Dande Safari areas (Jani et al. 2020). HWCs, which occur when interactions

92 V. Ja n i
between humans and wildlife become detrimental for either party (Gandiwa et al.
2013), are prevalent because of human encroachment into the wildlife habitat. HWC
poses a threat to local communities since it results in crop damage, competition for
resources, livestock predation and human injuries and deaths (Matema and Andersson
2015).
In Mbire District, the Doma are found on the margins of the Chewore Safari
Area in Ward 1 (Chapoto) and Ward 11 (Masoka) (Nyamwanza 2012). In Masoka,
the Doma are found in Mawocha to the north of Angwa River where they are
isolated from the Korekore (VaKorekore) and some Karanga (VaKaranga) immi-
grants who are found in Chemapango A, Chemapango B, Kanungwe and Mavabvu
to the south of the river (Jani 2013). In Chapoto Ward, the study area, the Doma (on the
margins of the Chewore Safari area) are along the western side of the Mwanzamtanda
River in Chiramba and Mariga and are isolated from the Chikunda (VaChikunda)
who are located in Chansato, Chiruhwe and Nyaruparo on the eastern side of the
Mwanzamtanda River (Jani et al. 2020). In Chapoto Ward, the Doma and Chikunda
(VaChikunda) comprised 296 and 695 households, respectively, as of December 2016
(Jani et al. 2019).
The main ethnic group in Chapoto Ward, the agriculturally-oriented Chikunda
(VaChikunda) or ‘the conquerors’, are believed to be the descendants of slaves
and soldiers in the Portuguese-run colonial estates called prazos along the Zambezi
River in contemporary Mozambique (Derman 1995; Isaacman and Peterson 2003;
Mberengwa 2000). They called themselves Chikunda to distinguish themselves from
the local peasantry and to celebrate their physical prowess (Isaacman and Peterson
2003).
The history and origins of the Doma are not well understood (Matema and Ander-
sson 2015) and remain subject to much speculation (Derman 1995). The Doma
people are believed to be descendants of the VaTawara people who originally came
from Mozambique around the Songo Hills near Lake Cahora Bassa where they led
a life of hunting, fishing and gathering wild fruits, honey and tubers (Mberengwa
2000). They are believed to possess significant traditional knowledge of wildlife
species (Marindo-Ranganai and Zaba 1995; Mberengwa 2000). After migrating into
Zimbabwe, they are believed to have settled on the Chirambakudomwa Mountain
and Karemwa Hills in the now Chewore Safari area where they continued to lead a
life of hunting and gathering as well as fishing (Marindo-Ranganai and Zaba 1995;
Mberengwa 2000). According to Marindo-Ranganai and Zaba (1995), the Doma
people were relocated to a place closer to the Mwanzamtanda River on the margins
of the Chewore Safari area when it was discovered that they were assisting freedom
fighters to cross into neighbouring Zambia for military training to fight the Rhode-
sian government during the 1970s’ war of liberation. Since then, the Doma have
continued to isolate themselves on the western side of the Mwanzamtanda River and
have not been integrated into mainstream society.

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 93
5.3 Research Methods
To gain a rich understanding of the livelihoods of the Doma, a qualitative approach
was employed (Drury et al. 2011). In this regard, the study employed in-depth inter-
views with heads of households and key informant interviews, which were comple-
mented by document analysis. The qualitative approach, unlike quantitative research,
is designed to seek a deep and intensive understanding of issues under investigation
and not to make broad claims about a population (Drury et al. 2011). Thus, in-
depth interviews were conducted with 24 randomly selected Doma heads of house-
holds in Chiramba and Mariga. Data was collected from January to March 2017.
In-depth face-to-face interviews with ten key informants knowledgeable about issues
under investigation also took place. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to
select key informants who included the Chief, ward Councilor, agricultural extension
officer, Safari Operator, ward anti-poaching unit (APU) chairperson and a field officer
for a local Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), namely, the Lower Guruve
Development Association (LGDA). Purposive sampling involved selecting inter-
viewees based on the researcher’s judgment (Etikan et al. 2016) while, in snowball
sampling, initial respondents identified other knowledgeable persons who were inter-
viewed (Evely et al. 2008). Data on illegal hunting, arrests of the Doma and CAMP-
FIRE benefits were obtained from the ward APU and Ward Wildlife Management
Committee (WWMC).
Thematic analysis was used to code interviews for themes and sub-themes (Elo
and Kyngäs 2008; Thomas 2006). The analysis was done using the coding proce-
dures suggested by Thomas (2006). Open coding was used to identify the emerging
themes in the data (Thomas 2006) while Axial coding was then used to further inter-
connect the categories and organise the identified themes, after which quotes from
the interviews were selected to support the themes and trends in the data (Creswell
2013).
5.4 Doma Current Livelihood Strategies
The Doma reside on the margins of the Chewore Safari area on the western bank
of the Mwanzamtanda River where there is abundant wildlife. Because of this, the
Doma mainly live in scattered pole-and-grass thatched enclosures on raised plat-
forms beyond the reach of wildlife in the midst of the thick bushes in Chiramba
(which has two villages) and Mariga (with three villages). The Doma have small
landholdings (between 0.4 and 0.8 of a hectare), and their area has no proper roads,
boreholes or toilets. The Chikunda live in dispersed homesteads on larger landhold-
ings (1.6–2.7 hectares) on the eastern side of the Mwanzamtanda River in Nyaruparo,
Chiruhwe and Chansato which comprise four, seven and eight villages, respectively.
The Chikunda graze their small herds of cattle in areas amongst thick bushes close to
their homesteads away from large carnivores. Chapoto Business Centre and all other

94 V. Ja n i
infrastructure constructed using CAMPFIRE revenue are found in the Chikunda
area. The Doma’s livelihoods are mainly based on subsistence-oriented field crop
production, gardening, rearing of small stock, fishing, drought relief provisioning,
pottery, and labour provision for the Chikunda, as well as harvesting non-timber
forest products (NTFPs) such as wild plant foods, wild fruits and honey.
5.4.1 Field Crop Farming
Field crop farming is an important livelihood activity for household survival. The
Doma are involved in the subsistence-oriented growing of maize and drought-
resistant crop varieties such as millet and sorghum. A few of them grow maize on
small riverine fields (minda yekugova) along the banks of the Mwanzamtanda River
because the majority of the local fields are owned by the Chikunda. Most of the Doma
cultivate small pieces of land in upland fields (minda yekunze) using hoes and have
very low agricultural production levels because they have no source of income to
purchase inputs (such as fertilisers and certified seeds), lack farming implements and
have inadequate farming knowledge. Similar observations were made by Mberengwa
(2000). Likewise, the San in Tsholotsho and Bulilimamangwe lack farming imple-
ments, draught power, ploughs and seed (Madzudzo 1996), as highlighted as well
for Tsholotsho by Mukamuri et al. (2013). Furthermore, the Doma’s failure to pay
for the transportation of free agricultural inputs provided by the government from
Mahuwe Business Centre about 150 kms from Chapoto perpetuate their poverty as
these are collected by the Chikunda who can afford to pay for them. As a result,
most of them end up planting maize seed from the previous harvests, hence the
low yields. Additionally, crop production is constrained by insufficient rainfall or
droughts. Similarly, among the San, low crop yields and food insecurity have been
attributed to unfavourable climatic conditions (Hitchcock et al. 2016).
Moreover, the location of the Doma’s settlements on the margins of the
Chewore Safari area results in their crops being destroyed mainly by elephants
(Loxodonta africana), hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) and buffaloes
(Syncerus caffer), which severely affects the Doma’s food security. In a parallel
situation, the San in Bulilimamangwe were prone to crop-raiding since their fields
were located away from the rest of the village and closest to areas of wildlife incur-
sion (Madzudzo 1996; Madzudzo and Dzingirai 1995). Crop destruction among the
Doma occurs despite the mitigation measures that are employed, such as guarding
fields using makeshift crop guarding structures, using chili bombs, lighting fires at
the edge of fields and beating drums or tins.

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 95
5.4.2 Gardening
Gardening is used for supplementing livelihoods by a few Doma people who grow
onions (Allium cepa), pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo), tomatoes (Solanum lycoper-
sicum), cabbages (Brussica oleracea) and pumpkin leaves or muboora (Cucurbita
maxima) in their small gardens along the Mwanzamtanda River, during the dry season
from April to October. Some of them sell muboora in the Luangwa area of Zambia
across the Zambezi River about 12 kms from Chapoto Business Centre.
5.4.3 Rearing of Small Stock
The Doma keep a few goats (Capra hircus) and free-range chickens (Gallas domes-
ticus) for family consumption, but this does not contribute much to livelihood secu-
rity because the goats are depredated by spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) and lion
(Panthera leo), while free-range chickens are killed and taken by the African wildcat
(Felis silvestris lybica) during the night.
5.4.4 Casual Agricultural Work
The Doma’s poverty and livelihood vulnerability result in their exploitation in the
Chikunda’s fields (maricho), working in exchange for a bowl of mealie meal or
maize. Men, women and children labour on Chikunda fields performing tasks such
as land preparation, planting, weeding and harvesting. In a similar vein, the Tshwa
in Tsholotsho worked in the fields of the Kalanga and Ndebele and also as herders
and domestic workers for a relatively low payment in cash and kind (Hitchcock
et al. 2016). As well, the San in Namibia provided cheap labour to other dominant
groups (Dieckmann et al. 2014) and those in Botswana were involved in herding
cattle (Cassidy et al. 2001).
5.4.5 Drought Relief Provisioning
Because of poverty and food insecurity, the Doma rely on drought relief which they
occasionally received from a local NGO (the LGDA) and the government’s Depart-
ment of Social Welfare. However, the share for the majority of the Doma is collected
by the Chikunda because the former cannot afford to pay for its transportation from
Mahuwe Business Centre, and no effort is made to ensure that the Doma’s share is
delivered to them. One respondent said:

96 V. Ja n i
We have no food to eat. We rely on maize we occasionally receive from the donor and
government, but we have not been receiving the maize because we cannot afford to pay for
its transportation. (Middle-aged Doma female respondent, Chiramba)
The Doma’s reliance on food assistance has also been reported by Matema and
Andersson (2015). Drought relief from NGOs was also an important source of liveli-
hood for the Tshwa in Tsholotsho, (Hitchcock et al. 2016) and the San in Namibia
(Dieckmann et al. 2014).
5.4.6 Gathering Non-timber Forest Products
Despite the fear of wildlife attacks and restrictions imposed on their movements by the
conservation authorities, the Doma gather NTFPs mainly for family consumption and
to mitigate chronic food shortages. These NTFPs include wild fruits such as matohwe
(Thespesia garckeana), masawu (Ziziphus mauritiana), matufu (Vangueria infausta),
mawuyu (Adansonia digitata), nharara (Gardenia thunbergia), chenje (Diospyros
mespiliformis), shuma (Diospyros mespiliformis), tsvanzva (Ximenia caffra), maroro
(Annona senegalensis), nhunguru (Dovyalis caffra) and matohwe (Azanza garck-
eana). Some respondents revealed that they bartered masawu for basic commodities
such as cooking oil, sugar and soap which were brought in by traders from Bindura
and Harare.
The Doma also gather edible tubers and indigenous wild vegetables for family
consumption. These include manyanya (Dioscorea steriscus), idiya (Dioscorea bulb-
ifera), bepe (Tacca leontapetaloides) and mupama (Boscia angustifolia). These
plants are also used for medicinal purposes because most of the Doma people do not
seek medical attention at Chapoto Clinic since they trust their herbs. One respondent
said:
We collect wild foods such as manyanya from the forest which we eat. But we cannot gather
the food freely because our movements are restricted. (Elderly Doma female respondent,
Mariga)
Likewise, the Tshwa in Tsholotsho relied on gathering bush foods such as mopane
worms (Gonimbrasia belina), wild fruits and tubers as part of their livelihoods (Hitch-
cock et al. 2016). Furthermore, harvesting honey from natural beehives, which is
another livelihood strategy for the Doma, is constrained by the fact that the Doma’s
movements are inhibited by the conservation authorities. Some of the honey is
supplied to the Chikunda in exchange for maize grain and sorghum while some
is used for family consumption.

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 97
5.4.7 Pottery
The Doma mould clay pots using clay soils which they collect from Kamota and
Mhembwe Hills in the Chewore Safari area. They exchange the clay pots locally in
the ward, for maize and sorghum for family consumption. Collecting good clay soil
for pottery is, however, hampered by the fact that the Doma’s access to the Chewore
Safari area is regularly undermined by game rangers and Safari Operator personnel.
This has also been reported by Matema and Andersson (2015). Respondents indicated
that the production of clay pots had significantly dropped in recent years because
of lack of access to good clay soils emanating from these restrictions. The Doma
wanted rights of access to forests to freely collect good clay soils without being put
under surveillance by game rangers and Safari Operator personnel.
5.4.8 Fishing
Finally, fishing plays an important role in the livelihood security of the Doma. It is
mainly carried out along the banks of the Zambezi and Mwanzamtanda Rivers. The
fish is exchanged for maize in the ward as well as for other basic commodities such as
sugar and cooking oil in the Bawa and Luangwa areas of Mozambique and Zambia,
respectively. Fishing along the Mwanzamtanda River is done using fish baskets
(duwo), lines and hooks, while those who fished along the Zambezi River use only
lines and hooks. The types of fish caught include barbels (Barbus barbus), African
sharp-tooth catfish (Clarias gariepinus) and Kurper bream (Oreocromis mortimeri).
Fishing was also a livelihood strategy among the Tshwa in Tsholotsho (Hitchcock
et al. 2016). The Doma are, again, impeded from freely engaging in fishing because
they are always under surveillance by the conservation authorities who accuse them
of engaging in poaching (of wildlife), as indicated by one respondent:
We can’t even go fishing on the banks of the Zambezi River because our movements are
always monitored. Zimparks [Zimbabwe Parks and WildlifeManagement Authority] rangers
accuse us of intending to engage in poaching when we go fishing. (Young Doma male
respondent, Chiramba)
5.5 Disruptions to Doma Livelihood Strategies
by CAMPFIRE
The Doma, whose way of life was based historically on fishing, hunting, gathering,
making clay pots and using traditional medicine, experienced the introduction of
CAMPFIRE as impeding these activities. This was because their movements were
restricted by conservation authorities which outlawed hunting and restricted other
traditional livelihood practices (such as foraging for NTFPs). These restrictions limit
the Doma’s livelihood options resulting in an indifferent attitude towards wildlife

98 V. Ja n i
conservation on their part. The restrictions in fact impoverished the Doma villagers
as they found it difficult to survive and feed their families. Importantly, the Doma
also saw wildlife conservation laws, which inhibited their traditional lifestyle, as
infringing on their identity. The Doma’s predicament was captured by a respondent
who said:
Our way of life as hunters and gatherers was disrupted by the introduction of CAMPFIRE.
The conservation authorities have put restrictions on our movements, which makesit difficult
for us to look for plant foods, fruits, honey and good clay soil for pottery. We treat ourselves
using herbs, but it is now difficult to look for herbs since we are accused of intending to
poach game for meat. (Elderly Doma male respondent, Chiramba)
This tendency has been reported by others, including Marindo-Ranganai and Zaba
(1995), Matema and Andersson (2015) and Mberengwa (2000). It is also a broader
tendency going beyond the lives of the Doma, including for the Tshwa in Tsholotsho
(Hitchcock et al. 2016). Likewise, the restriction of the Khwe’s movements by the
community game guards and resource monitors in the Bwabwata National Park
in Namibia negatively affected their access to natural resource-based livelihoods
(Dieckmann et al. 2014; Paksi and Pyhälä 2018). As a result, they felt that the
Namibian government prioritised wild animals and monetary benefits from tourism
at the expense of their food security and well-being (Paksi and Pyhälä 2018). Other
minority ethnic groups whose livelihood options have been inhibited following
the introduction of CBNRM initiatives include the San communities in Botswana
(Bolaane 2004; Magole 2009).
The Doma felt that the CAMPFIRE programme prevented them from preserving
their practices as well as continuing with the traditions and survival skills inherited
from their ancestors. A Doma respondent highlighted:
We have been forced to abandon the ways our ancestors taught us. We can no longer eat
plant foods that our ancestors used to eat. It has been difficult for us to make a transition to
a new lifestyle. (Elderly Doma male respondent, Mariga)
In this context, the CAMPFIRE programme disturbed and undercut the only forms
of livelihood that the Doma had known their entire life. This made the Doma feel
that they were being punished because of a lifestyle that defined their very identity.
The Doma saw benefits from CAMPFIRE as insufficient to offset losses caused
by wildlife. They indicated that they preferred the payment of dividends directly to
households, which was abandoned in 1997 in favour of funding community projects.
It was clear that the Doma were not supporting, and participating in, the CAMPFIRE
programme because they were no longer receiving wildlife-related benefits at the
household level. As one Doma respondent claimed:
At the inception of CAMPFIRE, we were told that wildlife belonged to us and that revenue
from wildlife would be used to improve our livelihoods. We also used to receive cash which
helped us a lot. Now we are not receiving anything at all. CAMPFIRE is now benefitting the
Chikunda, Council and the Safari Operator. (Elderly Doma male respondent, Mariga)
Although the local communities were told, at the inception of CAMPFIRE, that they
owned the local wildlife, this was not the case because AA status was devolved

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 99
to RDCs. Furthermore, as noted, devolution of ownership rights over wildlife to
sub-district institutions could not be implemented because local communities have
no property rights over land and its natural resources (Child 1996; Dzingirai 2003;
Machena et al. 2017; Mushayavanhu 2017).
CAMPFIRE did not bring about any meaningful improvement in the livelihoods
of the Doma as they did not benefit from even the limited employment opportunities
that were created by the programme. There were only two members from the Doma
ethnic group, out of the 11 community members, who were directly employed by
the programme as game scouts. Furthermore, the Doma community had one repre-
sentative only in the seven-member WWMC. Additionally, all community members
employed by the Safari Operator and in 13 lodges across the ward were Chikunda.
Similarly, less than five Tshwa people were employed by the CAMPFIRE programme
in Tsholotsho (Hitchcock et al. 2016). The insignificant number of Doma employed
by the CAMPFIRE programme is attributable to lack of formal education, which
made the Doma less competent to secure employment in the formal sector and in
generating income to improve their livelihoods. Only one educated Doma village
head from Chiramba, who owned three canoes, had managed to acquire assets.
The outlawing of hunting, which was traditionally a legitimate activity before the
advent of CAMPFIRE, is another way in which CAMPFIRE has undermined Doma
livelihoods. Before the introduction of CAMPFIRE, the Doma, who were intimately
connected to nature-based resources, hunted game for family consumption. However,
following the introduction of CAMPFIRE, they were barred from even hunting small
game as indicated by one respondent:
We are not allowed to hunt but white people from far away come here to kill our animals
for fun. We are not even allowed to hunt small game or catch mice for family consumption.
(Elderly Doma female respondent, Mariga)
The constriction of the Doma livelihoods following the introduction of CAMPFIRE
as well as the subsequent imposition of restrictions on the movements of the Doma
gave rise to clandestine snaring of wildlife for meat for family consumption. Their
reasons for engaging in illegal snaring of wildlife included loss of crops and live-
stock to wildlife, erratic provisioning of game meat from wild animals killed during
problem animal control and from safari hunts, deprivation of game meat by the Mbire
RDC officials, vulnerability to hunger because of drought, and failure to access free
food aid and agricultural inputs. Doma respondents complained that RDC officials,
who did not experience the damage caused by wildlife, were benefiting from game
meat at the expense of the local people who bore the negative consequences of
wildlife management. As one respondent explained:
People are expressing their disgruntlement over their failure to receive game meat by
engaging in illegal snaring of wild animals. Council officials share the bushmeat from
problem animal control instead of giving it to the people whose crops are destroyed by
wildlife. (Elderly Doma male respondent, Mariga)
Likewise, in Tsholotsho, game meat distributed from trophy hunting and problem
animal control was erratic (Hitchcock et al. 2016).

100 V. Ja n i
Another cause and form of illegal snaring was revenge-killing in protest against
failure by the authorities to effectively deal with damage-causing animals which
raided crops and depredated livestock, thereby compromising the Doma’s livelihood
security. The Doma indicated that their livelihood insecurity was compounded by
the fact that the conservation authorities did not attend to reports of damage-causing
animals. The conflict between the Doma and wildlife evolved into human–human
conflict as the Doma blamed the conservation authorities for prioritising the protec-
tion of wildlife instead of their livelihoods and safety. This has also been reported by
Matema and Andersson (2015) and Mberengwa (2000). As articulated by one Doma
respondent:
Game rangers are not responding to our reports of crop destruction by elephants and
hippopotamus. Lions and hyenas have also been depredating our goats. We are not
compensated for the losses. (Elderly Doma female respondent, Chiramba)
The prevalence of illegalwildlife s naring byt he Doma was evidence of their desperate
food security situation. Thus, out of a total of 838 recorded snares removed from 2007
to 2016, 705 were removed from the Doma areas of Chiramba and Mariga. Further-
more, out of the 23 people who were arrested for illegal hunting from 2008 to 2015, 18
were Doma while 5 were Chikunda. Most of the illegal hunting occurred specifically
in Mariga where 16 Doma poachers were arrested during that period as indicated
in the ward anti-poaching unit’s records. The ward anti-poaching unit indicated that
the most snared animals in Chapoto Ward were kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) and
impala (Aepyceros melampus). It added that illegal hunters preferred hunting impala
because the species was easy to carry and also difficult to detect by game scouts.
The prevalence of illegal snaring of wildlife in the Doma villages resulted in strained
relations between the Doma and game rangers. This culminated in the Doma being
physically assaulted by game rangers and Safari Operator personnel. The Doma felt
that the Chikunda played a role in their arrest and persecution by the conservation
authorities since the latter, who were also involved in illegal hunting, albeit on a
small scale, were rarely arrested. The selective law enforcement demonstrates the
conservation authorities’ perception of the Doma as poachers.
The occurrence of illegal wildlife snaring is contrary to the objective of the CAMP-
FIRE programme of minimising illegal hunting. The illegal snaring of wildlife in
Chapoto Ward was a consequence of not receiving adequate CAMPFIRE benefits at
the household level as well as limited livelihood alternatives overall. Such clandes-
tine hunting also continues among the San communities in Tsholotsho (Hitchcock
et al. 2016) and the Basarwa (neighbouring Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana)
(Mbaiwa 2005) because of limited livelihood activities. This is buttressed by other
studies which argue that illegal hunting emanates from the fact that local communi-
ties are expressing frustration with reduced or no returns accruing to them (Gandiwa
et al. 2014). Incidents of illegal hunting of wildlife have resulted in significant ques-
tioning of the effectiveness of the CAMPFIRE programme in conserving wildlife
outside protected areas (Machena et al. 2017).

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 101
5.6 Constrictions to Livelihoods by Discrimination
and Stigmatisation
In addition to the disruption of their livelihoods by the CAMPFIRE programme,
the Doma have had their activities further constricted by practices of discrimina-
tion and stigmatisation that occurred before CAMPFIRE and continued after the
introduction of the programme. The Doma’s survival skills and lifestyle of foraging
for veld resources, which defined their identity (at least in the past), were devalued
by others whose lifestyle differed from theirs. Because of their lifestyle, the Doma
endured marginalisation and negative stereotypes by Zimparks rangers, Safari Oper-
ator personnel, Mbire RDC officials and the Chikunda (Jani et al. 2020). Constant
surveillance and stereotypical perceptions of the Doma as poachers by conservation
authorities further curtailed their traditional livelihoods and livelihoods-based iden-
tity (Mukamuri et al. 2013). The game rangers and Safari Operator personnel always
had a preconceived view that the Doma were responsible for illegal hunting since
they were stereotyped as poachers.
The circumscription of the Doma livelihoods was compounded by the unequal
power relations manifested in the strong disparities existing between the Doma and
more powerful groupings. This was demonstrated by the dominance of the weaker
Doma (who comprised five villages) by the more powerful Chikunda, who comprised
19 villages, during Ward Development Committee (WADCO) meetings, which delib-
erated on CAMPFIRE issues. As well, the conservation authorities clearly did not
accept the Doma as equals of the Chikunda as evidenced by the marginalisation of the
former. For example, community projects funded by CAMPFIRE revenue were only
found in the Chikunda area on the eastern side of the Mwanzamtanda River. Addi-
tionally, government structures and traditional leadership did not attempt to address
the Doma’s problems as shown by their failure to ensure that the Doma benefitted
from seed packs and drought relief from government. Because of their position at
the lowest rung of the Chapoto hierarchy and their location on the western side
of the Mwanzamtanda River, the Doma had no sense of belonging to the main-
stream community. Their socio-spatial position meant that they suffered the most
from food insecurity at the local level. Such an ethnic hierarchy also exists else-
where in Zimbabwe. For instance, the Tshwa were dominated by the Kalanga and
Ndebele ethnic groups which made most of the decisions related to the CAMPFIRE
programme in Tsholotsho (Hitchcock et al. 2016). A similar situation existed for the
Basarwa in Botswana, who were not empowered to participate in the decision-making
related to CBNRM (Bolaane 2004; Magole 2009).
The restrictions placed on Doma livelihoods emanated from the fact that the
conservation authorities and the Chapoto Ward leadership did not consider—sympa-
thetically and seriously—the values, beliefs and needs of the Doma. The Doma
hunter-gatherer livelihood activities, as linked to their particular worldview and
value system, placed them in a subordinate position vis-à-vis the Chikunda, Mbire
RDC, park authorities and the Safari Operator, which further demonstrates the

102 V. Ja n i
Doma’s disabling circumstances. As a result, the Doma excluded themselves from
decision-making by adopting an indifferent approach to the CAMPFIRE programme.
Since the Doma depended on nature-based resources to make a living, authori-
ties should have involved and empowered them at the inception of the CAMPFIRE
programme. If the Doma had been empowered to participate fully in the CAMPFIRE
programme from the beginning, they would have made the best scouts and the best
assistants to professional hunters because they were intimately connected to those
activities and to the local landscape. Because of their erstwhile lifestyle of hunting
and gathering in the Chewore Safari area, the Doma knew the roles played by animals
in their culture, including delivering messages from their ancestors and providing
information about a potential drought or flooding. This expertise could have been
used by the local leadership and conservation authorities for the well-being of the
Chapoto community.
5.7 Conclusion
This chapter has examined the interaction between resource management, liveli-
hoods and ethnicity with specific reference to the Doma. It has shown that the
introduction of the CAMPFIRE programme disrupted the Doma’s traditional liveli-
hoods and increased their vulnerability to food insecurity. Additionally, the CAMP-
FIRE programme failed to demonstrate that wildlife utilisation is a viable livelihood
option for the Doma. The Doma community did not receive assistance following
their switch from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to subsistence-oriented farming. The
Doma’s agriculture-based livelihoods were inhibited by recurrent droughts, HWCs,
and shortages of agricultural inputs and draught power. The inability of CAMPFIRE
to improve the livelihoods of the Doma can be attributed to the misplaced assump-
tion that the integration of traditional livelihoods with natural resource management
would be relatively simple. However, the restriction of Doma livelihoods shows
the difficulties associated with trying to impose participatory wildlife management
on people whose way of life contradicts such top-down practices. This has led to
the undermining of the Doma’s self-identity as defined in terms of their historical
livelihood practices of foraging for veld resources. Their failure to receive tangible
CAMPFIRE benefits at the household level resulted in the Doma withdrawing from
participating in the programme.
The plight of the Doma has not been the subject of significant scholarly, media
or political attention. In this context, Zimbabwe’s First Lady, Auxillia Mnangagwa,
visited Mariga in May 2018 to develop an understanding and appreciation of the
way of life of the Doma. Through her Angel of Hope Foundation, she then launched
castor bean projects and nutrition gardens in Chiramba in August 2019 and also
started donating drought-tolerant small grain seeds in November 2019 to boost food
self-sufficiency and alleviate poverty among the Doma. As well, her Foundation has
started to fund income-generating projects for Doma women and provide support
for Doma education and health. In a related development, in April 2019, Zimparks

5 Resource Management, Livelihoods and Ethnic Minorities … 103
trained a group of 23 rangers, including 10 from the Doma community, in anti-
poaching operations, tracking, weaponry, problem animal control and monitoring
hunts, as a way of encouraging them to participate in the CAMPFIRE programme.
This is meant to also assist in reducing illegal hunting among the Doma. However,
other initiatives regarding CAMPFIRE are required to enhance the lives and liveli-
hoods of the Doma, including: devolving property rights over wildlife on a formal
basis to sub-district institutions after capacity building to enhance local ownership
(Balint and Mashinya 2006; Tchakatumba et al. 2019), and enable the Doma to
engage in problem animal control (Mutanga et al. 2017) with conservation authority
oversight (Gandiwa 2014; Mushayavanhu 2017). In addition, building alternative
income streams (Tchakatumba et al. 2019) beyond CAMPFIRE is necessary, as well
as policies which specifically seek to enhance the participation and power of minority
ethnic groups in decision-making, as in for example Vietnam (Hardcastle 2002).
Zimbabwe could also learn from Namibia which is the only country in Southern
Africa that has a policy on indigenous people’s rights specifically focusing on the
San and other marginalised communities (Dieckmann et al. 2014).
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Vincent Jani holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Geography from Nelson Mandela University, South
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resources, including the interface with local communities’ rights and livelihoods, as well as
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works for the government of Zimbabwe.

Chapter 6
Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious
Livelihoods of the Tonga-Speaking
People of North-Western Zimbabwe
Joshua Matanzima and Ivan Marowa
Abstract Using the concept of precarious livelihoods, this chapter examines the
conflicts occurring between people and wild animals in the Tonga communities
of north-western Zimbabwe. It focusses on the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of
Tonga livelihoods due to the presence of, and attacks from, wild animals. On a day-
to-day basis, the Tonga experience harm caused by animals to their lives, livelihoods
and/or properties. The Tonga communities studied survive mainly on fishing in Lake
Kariba or the tributaries of the Zambezi River as well as subsistence farming. Along
Lake Kariba, they have conflicts with such animals as hippos and crocodiles, their
fields are often trampled by elephants, buffaloes and duikers, and their livestock
especially cattle and goats are attacked by lions, leopards and hyenas. These human–
wildlife conflicts take place within a particular historical and spatial context, notably
the forced displacement of the Tonga from the Zambezi River in the late 1950s
and their post-displacement presence in an area of Zimbabwe marked by an arid
ecosystem (in large part unsuitable for agriculture) alongside poverty and hunger.
Thus, currently, they are placed between a rock and a hard place, between threatening
wildlife and an arid environment. The chapter is based on extended ethnographic
fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2020 among the Tonga communities of, in
particular, the Mola, Musampakaruma and Sinakatenge chiefdoms.
Keywords Animals ·Tonga people ·Conflict ·Livelihoods ·CAMPFIRE
J. Matanzima (B
)
Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia
e-mail: matanzimajosh@gmail.com
I. Marowa
Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems, University of Zimbabwe, Harare,
Zimbabwe
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_6
107

108 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
6.1 Introduction
This chapter examines the livelihoods among the Tonga people of north-western
Zimbabwe, with a particular focus on the Musampakaruma, Mola and Sinakatenge
chiefdoms. As members of a minority ethnic group, they are situated at the periphery
of national power so that their presence is insignificantly felt within wider Zimbab-
wean society and politics (Marowa 2010: 173). In fact, the Tonga became—under
colonialism—the forgotten orphans of the empire (Tombindo 2017). In the late 1950s,
they were forcibly displaced from the Zambezi Valley paving way for construction
of the Kariba Dam (Scudder 2005; Saidi and Matanzima 2021), and this involun-
tary move affected negatively their social, economic and religious practices (Colson
1971). As well, since independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean state has in large part
not been committed to curbing and overcoming the marginalisation of the Tonga.
The region to which the Tonga were moved in the late 1950s was vastly underde-
veloped, with for example minimal transport and communication networks as well as
health and education facilities (Matanzima 2021). Additionally, since then, they have
been denied full access to the Kariba Dam, with only a few fishing camps having been
opened to them. In the main, fishing and tourism industries along Lake Kariba have
been dominated by whites and other African groups like the Shona and the Ndebele
(McGregor 2008; Matanzima 2021). However, in trying to redress this situation, the
Tonga have engaged in a politics of the landscape at Lake Kariba, in which their past
interactions with the Zambezi is used to claim belonging and entitlement to Lake
Kariba and its resources (Matanzima and Saidi 2020; Tombindo 2017).
In examining the lives of the Tonga, the specific focus is on their precarious
livelihoods in the face of conflicts between them and local wildlife. The ways in
which people interact with animals in a particular area change over time and space.
Therefore, this study situates human–wildlife conflict in north-western Zimbabwe
within the timelines of change and continuity. For the Tonga people, their inter-
actions with animals during the pre-resettlement and post-resettlement have been
significantly different. During the pre-resettlement era (prior to Kariba’s construc-
tion), there was co-existence; whereas, in the post-resettlement era until now, there
are increased conflicts. This chapter examines the contemporary precariousness of
Tonga livelihoods by examining human–wildlife conflicts on a historical basis.
6.2 Context: Human–Wildlife Conflicts and Precarious
Livelihoods
The phrase human–wildlife conflicts (HWCs) is commonly used to describe situ-
ations that involve any negative interactions between humans and wildlife. These
conflicts can be real or perceived, economic or aesthetic, social or political (Messmer
2009: 11). They are pervasive in both developing and developed countries, frequently
not only in rural areas but also along urban fringes. As humans increasingly impinge

6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods … 109
upon wildlife habitats, and as local wildlife populations increase, humans experience
damages and losses regarding their livelihoods (Messmer 2009: 10). Conflicts are
not limited to selected species, but rather involve a variety of mammals, birds, fish,
insects and reptiles (Manfredo and Dayer 2004: 317).
Around the world, HWCs pose problems for people such as decreased food
security, increased workloads, decreased physical and psychological well-being and
economic hardship (Gore and Kahler 2012; Khumalo and Yung 2015). Conversely,
human retaliation leads to the killing and injuring of wild animals, including by way
of a rise in illegal or dangerous activities such as poaching, which further poses
conservation challenges and disrupts fragile ecosystems. These increasing wildlife
impacts on peoples’ lives and livelihoods generate and consolidate negative attitudes
towards animals (Mormile and Hill 2016). Thus, understanding local peoples’ atti-
tudes about wild animal conservation, particularly in complex biodiversity areas, is
of major importance for conservation efforts (Yang et al. 2010).
Wildlife encroachment onto people’s fields and homesteads threaten their liveli-
hoods, especially for those residing in the immediate vicinity of game corridors,
game parks and conservancies. This leads to precarious livelihoods. Precariousness
is a condition of vulnerability, uncertainty and insecurity that people encounter during
part or all of their lifetime (Hlatshwayo 2019; McKee et al. 2017), due to fluctuating or
ongoing socio-economic, political and environmental factors. The notion of precar-
iousness relates to the concepts of precarity and precariat which emerged within the
study of work, involving irregular, insecure and temporary employment devoid of
decent work characteristics. Contemporary class analysis highlights the growth of
this ‘precariat’ class marked by the instability of work and income (and, by extension,
livelihoods) that in turn impacts negatively on individual and household well-being
(McKee et al. 2017).
In this study, we therefore extend the use of precariousness to examine the precarity
of livelihoods, without making claims about the Tonga existing as a social class. As
McKee et al. (2017) write precariousness is not restricted to the spheres of work,
as it has been applied in different fields of study such as migration (Banki 2013),
involuntary resettlement (Wilmsen and Adjartey 2020) and livelihoods (Gukurume
2018; Scoones et al. 2018). Our particular focus is on the state of precariousness
characterising people’s livelihoods as engendered by wildlife encroachment, which
undercuts the sustainability of rural livelihoods. Certainly, the fishing and agricul-
turally based livelihood activities of the Tonga people are rendered precarious by the
existence of wildlife in the spaces where these activities are carried out. They engage
in these activities unsure of the outcome or output due to marauding animals.
The notion of precarity is entangled as well with issues of resistance, or what
scholars have termed ‘precarious resistance’ (Hlatshwayo 2019; Lewchuk and
Dassinger 2016). When applied to the sphere of work, precarious resistance describes
the individualised, informal and under-the-radar strategies that workers adapt to shape
workplace outcomes to their benefit, and how these strategies might translate into
broader collective action (Lewchuk and Dassinger 2016). This study also draws
upon the idea of precarious resistance in order to understand, more broadly, the
strategies and tactics of Tonga people to address the challenges arising from HWCs.

110 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
This includes the use of snares, chasing away wild animals with dogs, and fighting
with local conservationists, among many other responses Arguably, these retaliatory
actions are a threat to the conservation of wild animals, as they potentially engender
the depletion of wildlife.
6.3 Research Methods
This chapter draws upon qualitative research conducted in Musampakaruma and
Mola (Nyaminyami District) and Sinakatenge (Binga District) of north-western
Zimbabwe, which lay along the Zambezi Valley, between 2017 and 2020. The
majority of the Tonga people under study are victims of the involuntary resettle-
ment of the late 1950s which was necessitated by the construction of the Kariba
Dam (Colson 1971; Matanzima 2021; Scudder 1962). The research involved inter-
viewing both women and men across generations, carried out at people’s homesteads,
fields and along the Kariba lakeshore. A total number of 60 informants were inter-
viewed (30 females and 30 males). Informed consent was sought before any interview
session, with the topic and objectives fully and openly detailed to the interviewees
prior to any substantive questions raised. Observation was utilised as well, as the
researchers traversed through the Zambezi Valley landscape in a bid to learn more
about HWCs and how and why it occurs. Some evidence provided in the chapter
is also based on findings from previous research, conducted by other scholars, in
north-western Zimbabwe regarding the interactions between humans and wildlife.
6.4 Conflicts with Animals After Displacement
The Tonga argue that wild animals were not a problem, prior to displacement, in the
Zambezi Valley, unlike it is today. During fieldwork, one elder from Musampakaruma
stated that:
Although wildlife attacked people in the Zambezi Valley, they were not much of a problem.
We had many ways of dealing with animals such as building huts on stilts to avoid attacks
from wild animals. We made log fences where we fetched water for domestic purposes to
avoid crocodile attacks.
Similar sentiments were expressed to another scholar (Langely) by one elder who
compared his experiences with animals before and after relocation, highlighting that:
Down there, we used to raise crops. We would harvest without problems. But here, we plant
crops but then the elephants invade our fields. We report these elephants to the authorities but
are told that elephants are now the people and you people are now the animals. But downthere,
the elephants feared us, if they were troublesome, we reported them to Sikanyana [District
Commissioner Cockcroft]. They would kill some and scare the others away. Now, we have
buried four people who have been killed by elephants, not anyone from the authorities has
come to grieve with us. (cited in Langely 2007: 269)

6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods … 111
Another elder told Langely that, before their displacement, the Tonga would go across
the Zambezi river (into Zambia) and obtain homemade guns to scare the elephants
to go away but the National Parks officials confiscated the guns after displacement
(Langely 2007: 270). Combined, the displacement and the National Parks’ policies
disempowered the Tonga regard the presence of wildlife, and they bemoaned the loss
of the specialised skills they had developed for dealing with problem animals.
In the Zambezi Valley, Tonga people hunted wild animals for meat and this is one
of the crucial resources they were robbed of by the forced movement away from the
valley. In fact, they now required a permit to hunt (or fish) along the lakeshore such
that it is illegal to do so without one (Hughes 2010). What was ‘hunting’ for the
Tonga is now seen as ‘poaching’ by the National Parks’ authorities, which attracts
payment of a fine or possibly imprisonment. In the 1980s, Reynolds recorded a case
of a man who was arrested because he was found with some wire in the bush, and
he was likely to spend six months in jail if convicted (Reynolds 2019: 33).
In the past, Tonga people sought—successfully—to co-exist with certain wildlife
species, as dictated by their cultural practices as intertwined with particular aspects
of their local environment. For instance, one Tonga man (Mapfunde) narrated that
an eland could not be killed by just anyone and if, by mistake, it was caught in
a snare and was killed, the chief and spirit medium had to perform a cleansing
ceremony and intercede to the ancestral spirits for the community wrongdoing (see
Sibanda 2004: 252–253). In fact, spirit mediums were consulted all the time regarding
culturally appropriate interactions with land and wildlife (Sibanda 2004). The Tonga
also avoided hunting during the rainy season, and this was another way of sustainably
making use of the wildlife resources. They believed that May to September is the
period when hunting produces the least harm to wildlife. Animals generally produce
offspring in October and November, so hunting before these months helps with the
breeding process and protection of the young ones. The killing of female animals with
young offspring was prohibited to protect breeding patterns (Sibanda 2004). Thus,
the Tonga’s interaction with animals had its checks and balances that sustainably
safeguarded them from extinction.
The displacement and subsequent creation of Conservancies and National Parks
in the resettlement areas (i.e. where they were forcibly relocated) undermined the co-
existence between human and wildlife which soon culminated in the emergence of
hostilities between the two. Conservation efforts in north-western Zimbabwe from
colonial times have taken away the Tonga’s rights to defend themselves and their
fields from wildlife. Conservation policies have focussed on the rights of wildlife
and neglected the needs and fears of the local people (Langely 2007). As Langely
(2007: 266–268) observes, the proximity of the resettlement areas to the National
Parks placed the Tonga in close and inevitable contact with wildlife in the area. Tonga
elders claim that, during the 1990s, National Parks’ officials were not assisting those
living in the chiefdoms studied, in terms of ensuring the latter’s protection against
wildlife. Instead, most of the Tonga’s interactions with National Parks’ officials have
been very negative.
Since displacement, and the Tonga’s presence in areas characterised by an abun-
dance of wildlife, significant conflict between the Tonga and wildlife has taken place.

112 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
Previous researches testify to the occurrence of human–wildlife conflicts among the
Tonga in their resettlement areas (Langely 2007; Reynolds 2019; Weinrich 1977). For
instance, in her field diary for Mola Chiefdom in 1984–85, Reynolds recorded nearly
40 accounts of human–wildlife conflicts resulting from attacks by such animals as
elephants and buffaloes, as well as birds (Reynolds 2019). These animals trampled
on people’s fields and even injured and killed people. Some Tonga elders pointed
out that water and wildlife were the two main constraints to livelihoods in their area
(Langely 2007).
Our research found out that during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, there was serious
underreporting of human–wildlife and specifically human–crocodile conflicts in
north-western Zimbabwe. This was partly because the region was marginalised and
far removed from National Parks’ offices. Consistently, research has shown that
under-recording of crocodile attacks is common in cases where Conservancy offi-
cials have considerable distances to travel to report incidents and often forget or fail
to do so (Aust et al. 2009). Many of the unreported incidences (of wildlife gener-
ally) across the globe may involve minor injuries only (Pooley 2015), as they do
it appears among the Tonga, but deaths are not uncommon—how many, though,
remains unclear. The Tonga have endured isolation over the years (Weinrich 1977),
including undeveloped transport and communication networks, and this does not
allow for the easy transfer of information from local villages to government’s district
offices. Even in the 1980s, Mola Chiefdom had no post office, no bank, no library, no
market and no public means of transport (Reynolds 2019). Much of the HWC that
occurred immediately after resettlement in the 1960s went unreported, particularly in
colonial newspapers as this would tarnish the image of the resettlement programme.
Overall, then, there are no accurate records about the number of Tonga people who
are attacked by wildlife, including currently.
6.5 Wildlife, Livelihoods and the CAMPFIRE Programme
Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indige-
nous Resources) programme was an early post-independence effort to implement
community-based wildlife management on a national scale aimed at increasing
the participation of rural Zimbabweans in wildlife management and conserva-
tion (Sibanda 2004; Dzingirai 2003). In keeping with community-based manage-
ment practices, the programme proposed the passing of management benefits—in
particular, game meat, wildlife-generated revenue and protection from animal crop-
raids—to the ‘producer community’, i.e. those people who lived alongside wildlife
(Murphree 1995).
CAMPFIRE received international publicity and acclaim as an innovative
approach to natural resources management (Sibanda 2004: 248), as it was devel-
oped in response to failed wildlife conservation approaches that relied primarily
upon policing and law enforcement. It was also believed that the supposed lack
of interest in wildlife conservation by local people (such as the Tonga) might be

6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods … 113
resolved by giving them ultimate ownership and control over wildlife resources. In
this way, CAMPFIRE represented an attempt to find ways of facilitating communi-
ties to develop and prosper without depleting their natural environment, including
wildlife. It sought to enable communities to utilise natural resources, to grow crops
and to build roads and settlements without destroying forests, wildlife and degrading
soils (Sibanda 2004); and it hoped to alter the perverse incentives that otherwise
lead to conflicts between local livelihoods and protection of wildlife and associated
habitats (Balint 2006).
Before the implementation of CAMPFIRE, Zimbabwe’s government asserted full
authority over wildlife both in protected areas (for example, national parks) and in
communal lands. The locals bore the costs of wildlife conservation as they were
not permitted to hunt, either for subsistence purposes or to protect themselves from
depredation of crops and domestic livestock. Outsiders benefited as the Zimbab-
wean government and safari companies earned substantial revenue from the lucrative
trophy-hunting and game-viewing tourism ventures that depended on the presence of
protected wildlife (Balint and Mashinya 2008). CAMPFIRE was supposed to move
away from this scenario by somehow devolving control over wildlife to communi-
ties themselves, thereby incentivising them to care for wildlife and alter the perverse
incentives that otherwise lead to conflicts between local livelihoods and the protec-
tion of wildlife and associated habitats (Balint 2006). Cash and material benefits from
CAMPFIRE to local communities were viewed as major incentives for conservation.
Advocates of this wildlife management programme have stressed community
incorporation and inclusion as the only path to conservation (Murphree 1995). This
minimises everyday human–wildlife conflicts which threaten both wildlife conserva-
tion and livelihood sustainability. Undoubtedly, at times, CAMPFIRE did strengthen
the efficacy of conservation in north-western Zimbabwe. To its credit, it also rede-
fined the once-labelled poachers of wildlife as conservers of wildlife. In its initial
years, including in Nyaminyami and Binga, CAMPFIRE may have produced solid
and meaningful results (Sibanda 2004; Dzingirai 2003), including through some
cash benefits at household level and the provision of grinding mills, education and
health facilities at community level. However, control over CAMPFIRE was dele-
gated to rural district councils and never to communities themselves, and there is
some evidence of embezzlement of wildlife-generated revenue by councils (Sibanda
2004). In Sibanda’s study of Nyaminyami, 50% of respondents did not receive any
benefits (Sibanda 2004), including very vulnerable households and female-headed
households.
Despite the possible and actual benefits associated with CAMPFIRE, poverty
in participating Tonga and other communities remained entrenched, and human
activities often continued to threaten the protected wildlife and habitats (Balint and
Mashinya 2008). During the time of this research, CAMPFIRE only existed in local
council books and on billboards, as nothing was happening on the ground in terms
of providing benefits to the concerned people. The Tonga communities continued to
lead precarious lives (Matanzima 2021), with ongoing wildlife-human tensions.

114 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
6.5.1 Weaknesses of CAMPFIRE Among the Tonga
Though its aims have been laudable, CAMPFIRE has been beset with the same
ongoing problems during its decades of operation: animals destroying crops, a flawed
hunting contract system, lack of transparency by councils in the disbursement of
dividends, corruption at all levels, human settlements in the CAMPFIRE production
zones, intensified poaching and, above all, lack of community proprietorship over
wildlife (Manyena et al. 2013: 87–88).
The efficiency of CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe generally was seriously impacted
by the national economic and political turmoil in the post-2000 era. As Balint and
Mashinya (2008: 783) argue, ‘in 2000, local CAMPFIRE projects began to feel
the impact of two powerful external shocks: the end of international funding, and
the beginning of Zimbabwe’s severe political and economic crisis’. Hence, contrary
to expectations prior to the turmoil, programme revenues and conservation bene-
fits were rarely sustained, even in the most productive CAMPFIRE cases such as
Mahenye in Chipinge. From 1990 to 2000, USAID (the major international donor
for CAMPFIRE) had contributed approximately 30 million USD for programme
development (Balint and Mashinya 2008). This funding supported various national
and international NGOs that provided capacity building, monitoring and evalua-
tion for CAMPFIRE. Following the previously scheduled end of the USAID cycle
funding in 2000, these NGOs were no longer able to provide these services with any
consistency and certainty.
The fast track land reform programme from the year 2000 took place after weak
national economic performances during the 1990s (in part because of the unsuc-
cessful structural adjustment programme) and the emergence of a viable political
opposition in the preceding year which raised deep concerns about the legitimacy of
the ruling ZANU-PF party. In combination, the suppression of political opposition,
reoccurring droughts and uncompensated land seizures via fast track had further
severe repercussions for Zimbabwe’s agrarian and national economy. International
donors and investors withdrew or withheld funding, productivity in the agricultural
sector plummeted, supplies of hard currency constricted and inflation and unemploy-
ment soared. The systemic economic crisis lowered the prospects of sufficient state
funding for local governments in urban and rural spaces, and well as inducing high
levels of corruption within the rural district council system of Zimbabwe. In this
respect, the Binga and Nyaminyami Rural Districts were no exception. Council offi-
cials misappropriated CAMPFIRE funds which only served to weaken the efficacy
of the programme for the Tonga villagers.
Though fast track brought about a significant redistribution of land, it did not alter
the ownership status of communal land. Like the new fast track farms, communal
areas remain as state land under state ownership, with communal residents having
usufruct rights only. The reluctance of the Zimbabwean government to grant outright
ownership of land to rural communities tends to inhibit the sustainable management
of land-based natural resources such as wildlife by these communities under CAMP-
FIRE. Communities have often failed to fully support CAMPFIRE not only because

6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods … 115
of the ownership question but also due to the nagging control question. More specif-
ically, under CAMPFIRE, the administration of land and its resources continues to
be decentralised based on the notion that the district councils are the ‘appropriate
authority’—and, hence, Tonga communities are still in large part devoid of power.
Additionally, there exists the inadequate incorporation of Tonga’s indigenous
knowledge, traditional practices and local values into CAMPFIRE, and this affects
the responsiveness and efficiency of the programme. Admittedly, some indigenous
practices were incorporated such as traditional hunting seasons, but most were
ignored. For example, CAMPFIRE failed to include Tonga’s spiritual and worship
needs around hunting (in relation to, for example, the healing of the mentally sick)
(Sibanda 2004: 253), as well as for the masabe (alien) hunting spirits that require the
Tonga to act out the alien spirits possessing them through real hunting (Matanzima
and Saidi 2020). CAMPFIRE’s failure to recognise this, while granting permits for
sport hunting, has only served to create serious misunderstanding and mistrust. One
elder interviewed by Sibanda commented that:
Our people now die from mental illness because they can no longer hunt, as this is prohibited.
We are told that we cannot kill animals; but we see white men coming and killing even the
most sacred animals, such as elephants and the eland. We wonder if the white men from
overseas are coming to kill these animals in order to meet their own spiritual needs or maybe
to heal their own mental illness. The law forbids the Tonga from killing animals. Why are
white people allowed to kill animals and we cannot? If it is bad for Tonga to kill animals, it
is bad for White people to kill animals. (quoted in Sibanda 2004: 253–254)
Our own research observed that those possessed by the masabe among the Tonga
of Sinakatenge could suffer from chronic diseases for not having acted out as their
spirits required. Barring local people from hunting, while allowing White people to
hunt, caused frustration among many Tonga people which, in turn, weakened the
effectiveness of CAMPFIRE. The Tonga people were demotivated to participate in
the programme, as their embodied desire for hunting was/is defined as poaching.
In addition, there has been sabotage from communities near to (but outside of)
areas in which CAMPFIRE exists. People or districts excluded from benefitting
from CAMPFIRE became frustrated to the extent that they attempted to sabotage
the whole programme. For example, in specific parts of the Zambezi Valley, there
were contestations between the Tonga and Ndebele immigrants regarding access to
benefits from wildlife. The title of the article by Dzingirai (2003), ‘CAMPFIRE is not
for Ndebele immigrants’, brings to the fore the politics surrounding wildlife bene-
fits. The excluded Ndebele people never supported CAMPFIRE and indeed came to
oppose it, seeking its replacement with commercial agriculture that directly benefits
them. Ndebele migrants have sought to kill wildlife, the very basis of CAMPFIRE,
arguing that it constitutes a costly threat to their agricultural production. As Dzin-
girai (2003) argues, excluding certain social groups makes them hostile to CAMP-
FIRE initiatives and possibly wildlife conservation more broadly. In Nyaminyami
District, our research found that, while Tonga locals protected their wildlife, neigh-
bours from Gokwe (who are Tonga and Shangwe speakers) illegally hunted animals
from Nyaminyami. Similarly, in the case of Mola, Zambian-based poachers are said
to encroach into the Matusadona National Park for hunting purposes.

116 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
6.6 Livelihoods and Human–Wildlife Conflict: The
Contemporary Situation
Human–wildlife conflict has worsened in the contemporary period as a result of the
growing human population and the increase in numbers of wild animals. The Tonga
people find themselves in conflict with wild animals in the different spaces that they
carry out their livelihoods. Those who are carrying out hydro-based livelihoods like
fishing in Lake Kariba are prone to attacks from crocodiles and hippos. Those who
engage in farming also bemoan the trampling or destruction of their field crops by
wild animals such as birds, elephants and buffaloes. Livestock rearing has also been
made difficult by the prevalence of carnivores such as lions, leopards and hyenas that
frequently roam their villages.
6.6.1 Hydro-Based Livelihoods, Crocodile and Hippo Attacks
The Tonga people of Zimbabwe now engage in riverine cultivation along small local
rivers. These rivers are either tributaries of the Zambezi River such as Semwa River or
tributaries of the tributaries of the Zambezi (such as Tyuunga River which is tributary
to Semwa River in eastern Binga District). Though these rivers are not perennial, they
shelter huge crocodilians during the rainy season. These crocodiles migrate season-
ally from the Kariba Dam into (further inland) rivers. In rivers such as the Semwa
and Tyuunga of Sinakatenge (in Binga), cases of livestock (particularly goats) eaten
by crocodiles are very common. The keeping of goat has become precarious because
of the presence of crocodiles in local rivers. Goat keeping is an important dimension
of Tonga livelihoods, particularly for households which cannot afford cattle. The
Tonga keep goats for sale and exchange with other basic commodities like soap,
sugar and cooking oil, and they are used as a form of payment for children’s school
fees and bus fares. Ultimately, as with cattle, they are a measure of household wealth
for the Tonga (Cliggett 2007); hence, any reduction in their numbers has significant
implications for household livelihood viability. However, not only livestock (such as
goats) are attacked by crocodiles but also humans residing close to or encroaching
near water sources are also at risk from attacks by crocodiles (and hippos).
In the case of human–crocodile conflict at Lake Kariba, Tonga people residing
in certain chiefdoms, such as the Mola chiefdom, that lie along the lake’s littoral
encompass fishing camps where Tonga gillnet fishers live. These fishing camps were
opened in the 1960s by the colonial government for a few Tonga fishers. The colonial
government restricted black people’s access to Lake Kariba and its resources and,
as indicated, much of the littoral was reserved for white-owned commercial fishing
and tourism (Matanzima 2021). Upon independence in 1980, whites almost lost
control over the lake as many black people began making use of the fishing camps
and the number of gillnet fishers increased significantly—alongside an increase in
the Nile crocodile populations in Lake Kariba. The increased presence of crocodiles

6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods … 117
arose from its official protection and conservation as an endangered species by the
Zimbabwean government (McGregor 2005). This resulted in growing competition
for space between fishers and crocodiles in the Lake. Dwindling fish resources due
to climate change and low water volumes added to the intensity of the competition
for fish between humans and wildlife (Muringai et al. 2020).
Gillnet fishing is precarious in the sense that when fishers lay nets at night, they are
unsure if their nets will survive crocodile encroachment. Crocodiles steal fish from
the fishermen’s nets and destroy nets in the Lake, and replacing these nets has been
difficult for the Tonga in the crises-laden situation in Zimbabwe (McGregor 2005). In
our research, many fishers revealed their anger against crocodiles as they bring uncer-
tainties and losses to their livelihoods. They actually want to see the crocodile popu-
lation reduced as they feel that the crocodile population is increasing at an alarming
rate. Such fishers’ negative attitudes ‘threaten the future of crocodile conservation
programmes’ (McGregor 2005: 353), as local villagers may resort to lethal means
when retaliating for problems the crocodiles cause. In Binga, for example, McGregor
(2005) found that fishermen often killed problem crocodiles with spears. Rod and
line fishers, mostly women, are also attacked by crocodiles. They fish on the shores
of the Lake and are the most vulnerable to crocodile attacks, either being attacked
while sitting on the shores fishing or as they enter into the Lake to waist level to catch
large fish. Given the high levels of poverty among the Tonga, these fishers often take
major risks to catch sizeable fish in shallow water for purposes of income generation
through market sales.
As Dunham et al. (2010) argue in the case of Mozambique, poverty may prompt
fishermen to risk crocodile attacks by entering rivers or lakes (Dunham et al. 2010).
Fishermen often have specific spots, such as river estuaries, with good potential for
catching fish, and where crocodiles often attack them clandestinely. Crocodiles will
be highly concentrated in such sites where both fish and humans are available as prey
(Marowa et al.2021). Pooley (2016) argues more broadly that crocodiles observe
where animals (including humans) regularly cross water-courses or go to drink or
bathe, and, when hungry, they will wait patiently near these places for the prey to
approach. Crocodiles may, as well, steal the bags of fishers containing caught fish
they store in the water during fishing to protect them from rotting.
Further, not only are the gillnetters exposed to crocodile attacks but they may
become victims of hippo attacks. During fieldwork, we found that hippos cause
many serious problems for Tonga fishing communities, including capsizing boats,
disturbing the laying of nets, killing people, chasing people on harbours, damaging
boats, drowning people and biting people. Thus, both lives and livelihoods are under
threat from hippos. Regarding livelihoods, the damaging of boats and disturbing
the laying of nets impact on fishing, including in terms of the costs of repair or
replacement. Disturbances of nets leads to fishermen spending considerable time
looking for good fishing spaces without a high concentration of hippos. Hippos
move in groups including babies and, when with babies, they tend to be very hostile
which disturbs fishers from laying nets and accessing specific fishing spots.

118 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
6.6.2 Animal Encroachment on People’s Fields
Aside from the attacks from crocodiles and hippos along the Lake and local rivers,
the Tonga people in rural homes also face attacks from elephants, buffaloes, lions,
birds and so on that encroach on their farming fields and livestock kraals and thereby
disturb their crop production and cattle rearing. Currently, there are no schemes to
compensate the victims of wildlife attacks in north-western Zimbabwe and CAMP-
FIRE is no longer effective in this region. Because of this, Tonga people are not
even benefitting from living close to wildlife. Consequently, their attitudes towards
wildlife are negative and increasingly so. Though we emphasise the vulnerability
of farming in the context of wild animal encroachment, farming in this region is
also vulnerable to climate changes and natural resource conservation policies which
prohibit certain agricultural practices (Tombindo 2018).
Different kinds of birds eat crops such as millets (nzembwe) and sorghum (maila)
in people’s fields. For example, in 2017, people from Chitenge Village in Mola
complained to us that birds were a major menace, just like elephants. As one Tonga
man highlighted, ‘birds are tiny creatures but they cause much damage in our fields’.
Birds enter into the fields during the day and not at night and, due to their tininess
and swift encroachment, they are also difficult to monitor. The deer (antelopes) also
cause problems, eating legumes (nyemba) and groundnuts during the night. During
our research in 2017, it was observed that people made dummies of humans from
tree branches, which they clothed with bright colours so as to scare away the deer.
To make matters worse, deer are small animals difficult to monitor as compared to
elephants. Another problem comes from lions and hyenas. In situations where wild
animals become scarce due to poaching or in the rainy season when it is difficult
for these carnivores to sight this prey, they encroach on the villages where easier
domestic prey can be found. Lions attack cattle and goats while hyenas attack goats.
Elephants trample on people’s fields throughout the Zambezi Valley. Elephants
were mentioned several times during our research as a major problem-animal espe-
cially in the chiefdoms of Musampakaruma and Mola that lie close to the Matu-
sadonha National Park. In Musampakaruma, where a few Tonga people live and
farm along Marowa River, elephants caused major damage in the peoples’ riverine
fields in the 2019 farming seasoning and some people were in fact killed. People who
had farmed there for several years had built busanza/tsaka (storey huts) in which they
lived protecting their crops from animals. During the 2019 farming season, though,
the sheer extent of the elephants’ encroachment displaced them such that, in the 2020
farming season, no one returned to farm along the Marowa River. Commenting on
the problems caused by elephants along Marowa River, one male informant stated
that:
We farmed along Marowa for many years. People started farming there in 2008 due to
drought and poverty. Even though elephants were coming, they were not a big problem. But
since 2019 they became a big problem. Big elephants were coming trampling on our riverine
fields and gardens, destroying our storey huts, and chasing away people. The place became
dangerous, it was no longer habitable. All the maize we planted was destroyed and eaten by
elephants.

6 Human–Wildlife Conflict and Precarious Livelihoods … 119
Another local, commenting on the same elephant problem, stated that:
Gore rino hakuna kana chatikabva nacho (This year we did not harvest anything). There
were many elephants this year. We farmed for elephants. … [S]even years ago, there were
few elephants and we could chase them away. I could see 2 or 3 elephants a day. But, last
season huge numbers of elephants were encroaching our fields. they came in hundreds, 300
to 400 elephants every day. And when they could enter into one field, they left nothing but
their foot prints. The elephants that are now there are big elephants and not small elephants.
Kune mazikarakata. (Extraordinarily huge elephants)
People had their crops eaten and the majority survived by working for local elites
within Musampakaruma. To make matters worse, there were no government social
grants in the second half of 2020, leading to hunger among the impacted households.
Besides challenges at riverine fields, elephants also trampled on maize fields that
are closer to their homesteads. In Musampakaruma, this typically occurs during the
harvesting season around March to April. These elephants come from the nearby
Matusadona park so that, each year, Tonga people harvest early and quickly prior to
the arrival of the marauding elephants.
6.7 Conclusion
This chapter has examined the interactions between humans and animals in north-
western Zimbabwe with particular reference to the Tonga people. Though, in the
past, the Tonga had a symbiotic relationship with wildlife, there are now a multi-
plicity of negative socio-economic effects inflicted on the Tonga people’s lives and
livelihoods by wild animals, particularly from the time of the Kariba Dam construc-
tion. These ongoing human–wildlife conflicts perpetuate the impoverishment of the
Tonga people, as indicated by way of the many challenges they face when under-
taking fishing and farming. Because of this, the livelihoods of the Tonga people are
rendered precarious by the presence of wild animals. Their fishing gear, crops and
livestock are always insecure due to the encroachment of wild animals; yet, despite
the laudable goals around the CAMPFIRE programme, the government and local
conservation authorities have made only minimal efforts to mitigate human–wildlife
conflicts and their effects in any meaningful way. In order to alleviate these problems,
the government should seriously consider formulating HWC mitigation policies that
promote co-existence between animals and humans in north-western Zimbabwe in
particular and Zimbabwe in general. Currently, Zimbabwe has no HWC policy, and
the absence of this serves to perpetuate the occurrence of HWCs.

120 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
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Joshua Matanzima is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe
University, Australia. He is also a member of the Gwembe Tonga Research Project. He has done
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in the fields of human-wildlife interactions, anthropology of landscape and resettlement as well

122 J. Matanzima and I. Marowa
as religion and social change. His previous publications appear in such journals as International
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Ivan Marowa holds a Ph.D. in African History from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He is
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research in the Zambezi Valley and its escarpment focusing on human and non-human agents of
history.

Chapter 7
Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods
in Rural Zimbabwe
Emmanuel Ndhlovu
Abstract This chapter provides a comprehensive examination of the livelihoods
of the ‘Shangane’ nation (and specifically the Chisa of Gotosa) in south-eastern
Zimbabwe. The Chisa people have a complex and convoluted history because of
multiple forced displacements including from their ancestral lands which now form
part of the Gonarezhou National Park. It traces the origins and livelihoods of the
Chisa people from precolonial times, through the colonial period, and into the
post-independence period including in the context of the Fast Track Land Reform
Programme (FTLRP). The history of the Chisa people is not only a story of inces-
sant land displacements but it is also one of the resistances against top-down colonial
projects. Though they may have benefited from the FTLRP through access to redis-
tributed land, this falls far short of calls for restitution, that is, regaining access to
their ancestral lands in Gonarezhou and the sense of identity and nationhood which
would come with this. Hence, using the Chisa of Gotosa as a case study, the chapter
demonstrates how Chisa livelihoods were distorted with each displacement (since
the 1950s), with the FTLRP, in fact, actually pushing them further away from their
ancestral lands.
Keywords Colonial regime ·Chisa of Gotosa ·Gonarezhou ·Livelihoods ·
Shangane
7.1 Introduction
The people commonly referred to as the ‘Shangane’ in Zimbabwe represent minority
groups that fought and won a liberation war, but still lost a nation—defined as the
land and the culture, identity, and livelihood strategies embedded in the land. Ever
since the Shangane were first displaced from Gonarezhou National Park (GNP) in the
mid-1950s following a 1934 declaration of their land as a game reserve and then as
a national park in 1975, they have always been people on the move. The GNP, which
E. Ndhlovu (B
)
Freelance Researcher, Pretoria, South Africa
e-mail: matahemanu@yahoo.co.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_7
123

124 E. Ndhlovu
is now the second-largest national park in the country after the Hwange National
Park, is located in south-eastern Zimbabwe along the border with Mozambique. It
covers a surface area of 5,053 km2incorporating a vast expanse of open grasslands
and dense woodlands (Gandiwa 2011: 305).
The area historically belongs to the Shangane who, as of today, are scattered
outside of the GNP where they continue to see their ancestral lands as a remote
object of veneration. As a result, unlike other ethnic groups, the Shangane people
have not been able to reclaim their nation (in the Gonarezhou). With their initial
forced removals from the GNP between 1957 and 1959, they became incorporated
into nearby Reserves (now communal areas), including Marhumbini to the south and
Sangwe and Chizvirizvi to the north. The Ndali communal area was later formed from
a severed piece of the Gonarezhou in the far northern tip along the Save River to ease
overpopulation in the Sangwe communal area. Some Shangane also crossed the Save
River to settle in the adjacent communal areas of Vheneka, Chitepo, Mtandahwe,
Maparadze, Chipote, and Mahenye in the Chipinge District, while others crossed
the border to settle in Zambareja and Masenjeni, in Mozambique. Currently, the
Shangane inhabits the communal areas of Sangwe, Ndowoyo, and Chizvirizvi to
the north; Matibi No. 2 to the west; and Chikombedzi, Malipati, and Sengwe to the
south.
In the year 2000, Zimbabwe initiated the Fast Track Land Reform Programme
(FTLRP) to correct the racially skewed landownership pattern designed by the colo-
nial regime and which had been inherited at independence in 1980. Less than 6,000
white farmers owned about 51% of all the farming land, while blacks, who made
up 72% of the national population, eked out a living in agro-ecologically dry areas
(Mugandani et al. 2012). While the Shangane participated in the radicalised land
reforms of the 2000s, the FTLRP did not provide for any land restitution. Instead,
those who managed to acquire land under the programme were placed further away
from their ancestral lands (the Gonarezhou) to ‘foreign nations’ such as Fair Range,
Mhandababwe, and Nyangambe—areas that originally belong to Karanga-speaking
people. All of these displacements and relocations have had huge implications
not only for citizenship, identity, and culture but also for the Shangane capacity
to construct resilient livelihoods—central to this has been their relationship with
wildlife.
In this context, the chapter examines in particular the livelihood trajectories of
the Chisa people of Gotora, since their colonial displacement from the Gonarezhou
ancestral lands and with regard to their ongoing placement in ‘foreign nations’. After
noting the research methodology, the chapter sets out the context by discussing the
question of wildlife conservation and human displacements, as well as the origins
of the Shangane nation and the repression and resistance story of the Chisa people
of Gotosa. The chapter focuses specifically on the Chisa community by identifying
and analysing the trajectory of their livelihoods since the first displacement from
Gotosa and their relocation to Chingoji; and then to the Seven Jack area, to Ndali,
into the Protected Villages during the 1970s’ liberation war, back to Ndali and nearby
communal areas, and lastly to the nearby farms acquired under the FTLRP.

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 125
7.2 Research Methods
Based on a qualitative research methodology, this chapter makes use of archival
sources, including colonial government documents and reports by colonial officials
such as Allan Wright who, during the Shangane colonial displacements, served as the
Commissioner of the Nuanetsi District. It also draws heavily from secondary sources
on the colonial empire, forced displacements, and national parks. Most importantly,
the chapter incorporates informal day-to-day oral testimonies, which the author
continuously gathers from Shangane elders who either experienced and witnessed,
or have in-depth knowledge about, the Shangane evictions from the Gonarezhou. It
also benefits from the author’s lived experiences as a ‘Shangane’.
7.3 Wildlife Conservation and Human Displacements
Protected areas are considered to offer the best protection for conserving biodiversity
and ecosystems worldwide (Brockington and Schmidt-Soltau 2004;Rai2019). As
a result, whole communities worldwide have experienced displacements to accom-
modate wildlife. The Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872 in the United
States, was the world’s first protected area which thus became the model for park
planning globally (Brandon and Wells 1992). The park was created for tourism, and
the ‘natives [living there] were seen as an unfortunate blight’ (Poirier and Osten-
gren 2002: 333). Accordingly, the park was cleared of native inhabitants who then
were confined to native Indian reserves. This top-down approach of order and disci-
pline was executed through a policy of expulsion, fences, and fines (Brandon and
Wells 1992). The same strategy was used in the creation of game reserves elsewhere,
including in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, South Africa, Tanganyika, Kenya, and
Uganda (Adams 2005; Borgerhoff and Coppolillo 2005).
Since the creation of the Yellowstone National Park, more than sixty million
people have been displaced by conservation projects worldwide, often handicapping
livelihoods (Brockington and Igoe 2006; Ndhlovu 2020). In Africa alone, just over
a decade ago, an estimated 14 million people had been displaced in the creation of
parks and protected areas (DeGeorges and Reilly 2008). Where such projects were
colonially motivated, such as in Zimbabwe (Tavuyanago 2017), the disregard of the
social and economic lives and objectives of local people have had huge consequences
for indigenous or native livelihoods. In fact, Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau (2003) posit
that evictions during park creations result in at least eight impoverishment risks,
namely: landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalisation, food insecurity,
increased morbidity and mortality, loss of access to common property, and social
disarticulation.
Tavuyanago (2017) views these evictions in Africa as permeated by racial notions
whereby natives were (and are) regarded as unrepentant poachers who fail to appre-
ciate nature and, therefore, had to be moved away from it. This view motivated

126 E. Ndhlovu
the massive and callous eviction of natives during the establishment of the Kruger
National Park in South Africa. In Rhodesia, the creation of the Wankie and Matopos
game reserves was characterised by determined efforts by colonial administers to
evict natives from their lands (Gandiwa 2011). Likewise, the declaration of the
Gonarezhou land area as a game reserve in 1934 would be accompanied by eviction
of the Shangane natives who inhabited the area and were viewed as ‘of a most unde-
sirable type … not properly looked after, being apparently too far away from a Native
Commissioner to be visited in person. Also they are in, or claim to be in, a perpetual
state of semi-starvation as the country has too little rainfall to support crops’1The
land was considered to be arid, scorched, boring, disease-ridden, impractical for
cropping, and unhealthy for human occupancy (Bulpin 1967).
The Gonarezhou land could only assume a value after being converted to a game
reserve. This conversion of the land into a Game Reserve was viewed not only as
having the potential for revenue generation through tourism but also the capacity
to create jobs, alleviate poverty, and consequently improve the livelihoods of the
Shangane nation (Mombeshora and Le Bel 2009). It was also considered largely
intolerable to have a game sanctuary and an insubordinate Shangane nation within it,
particularly as the Shangane were viewed by the colonial regime as having wasteful
and destructive conservation practices (Tavuyanago 2017). Furthermore, colonial
authorities claimed that most of the land designated for the park had been unoccupied
in 1890 when they took over (Gandiwa 2011), without the presence of indigenous
people including the Shangane.
The description of the Gonarezhou as inhabitable is unfortunate as the Shangane
had always lived and fared well in their nation, located in the Gonarezhou area.
They also did not welcome the proposed ‘assistance’ arising in the context of the
establishment of this wildlife sanctuary. In protest to the evictions of the mid-1950s,
headman Ngwenyeni Maguwu of Marhumbini openly told officials from the Wildlife
Department that:
We cannot leave the area where we have lived all our lives. Our fathers and grandfathers were
born here. They lived and died here without harming anybody. The spirits of our ancestors
are here. The area is said to be a game reserve—but how can this be? We have lived here
since before the Europeans came to this country … When we were told we would have to
leave, we asked the District Commissioner [Wright] if we could remain in our ancestral area.
The District Commissioner consulted with the Department of National Parks and Wild Life
Management, and later informed us we could remain … now we were again being told we
cannot remain here forever, and that we should move.2
The quiet diplomacy of resistance to eviction by the Marhumbini and the open defi-
ance by the Chisa communities demonstrated a clear case of the Shangane’s self-
assertion and a rebuttal to being taken for granted by the colonial regime. It was also a
declaration and confirmation of the Shangane nation’s rootedness in the Gonarezhou
area, and an affirmation of the value they placed on a heritage which they would
defend. Their satisfaction with the Gonarezhou environment exposes the barbarity
of the self-imposed duty by colonial imperialists to improve the lives of natives by
removing them from their land. If anything, for the regime, the conversion of the
Gonarezhou into a game reserve was part of its continued commitment to place the

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 127
Shangane nation within the jurisdiction of colonial administrative power (such as the
Native Commissioner’s office) so as to control and use them to advance the colonial
project. However, the likely eviction of the Shangane from their land stirred mixed
views in government departments. While the Department of Commerce required
an immediate eviction, the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands disapproved of the
displacement due to its large scale and possible implications for livelihoods (Wolmer
2007). The Chief Native Commissioner was particularly wary of the resettlement of
the people in Matibi No. 2 which was very small and unlikely to support a larger
population due to its poor agro-ecological conditions (Tavuyanago 2017).
In the end, Shangane displacements did not start immediately in 1934 due to
tsetse fly control priorities (Mavhunga 2008). Evictions only commenced in earnest
in the mid-1950s with the Chisa, Ngwenyeni, and Xilotlela communities being the
first targets for eviction. Communities located around the Sabi-Lundi junction were
temporarily spared, although labelled and earmarked as illegal occupancies, and
hence they would have to vacate the area sooner or later. The Chisa of Gotosa,
Ngwenyeni of Marhumbini, and Xilotlela of Vila Salazar communities put up fierce
resistance to eviction from their ancestral home which did not only harbour their
culture and identity but also formed the basis of their livelihood strategies.
7.4 Origins of the Shangane Nation and the Chisa People
The Gaza-Nguni Kingdom, which at its full strength stretched from southern Mozam-
bique up to the Zambezi River in the north, was founded by Soshangane Manukosi
Nxumalo (1780–1858). Soshangane was one of King Shaka’s greatest generals who,
tired of the Zulu king’s dictatorship, migrated from South Africa during the Nguni
wars and settled at Biyeni on the lower Limpopo River in 1821, far away from
Shaka’s harm (Mavhunga 2008). Through military prowess, Soshangane conquered
and assimilated the various clans in the area, namely: the Tsonga, Hlengwe, Rhonga,
Chopi, Ndau, and Tswa, to establish the Gaza-Nguni kingdom (Ndhlovu 2020).
Soshangane ruled over the Gaza-Nguni state from 1825 until his demise in 1858.
It is, therefore, untrue to claim that all the people who are labelled as ‘Shangane’
migrated from South Africa.
To highlight, Soshangane arrived with a small group of military men with their
households and then conquered local clans. These clans, in their diversity are
now commonly known as ‘Shangane’—a label derived from Soshangane’s name.
But Soshangane did not only assimilate through conquest but also by consent.
In this respect, various families from different clans accepted intermarriages with
Soshangane’s group possibly as a strategy to escape the status of being minorities or
in exchange for protection during battles. This enabled the establishment of a strong
kingdom which would remain intact and undisputed until the occupation by white
settlers in 1896 (MacGonagle 2007).
In south-eastern Zimbabwe, the Hlengwe clan conquered by Soshangane traces
its origin to Zari who migrated from Mozambique to Zimbabwe around 1600

128 E. Ndhlovu
(Bannerman 1980). Zari had several sons, the eldest of whom were Mihingo and
Tshovani (with the latter founding the Tshovani dynasty). Mihingo had two sons,
namely Chisa (who founded the Chisa dynasty) and Banga (who founded the
Mahenye dynasty). The other Hlengwe chief in the Chiredzi District is Sengwe
who is descended from Mantsena the grandfather of Zari and is located south of
Runde River. There are disagreements on which of these chiefly dynasties is more
senior. Chisa, whose chieftainship was downgraded by colonial settlers to headman,
contends that Mihingo was senior to Tshovani and that, therefore, Chisa should be
the senior figure in the current royal hierarchy. Chisa considers his current status as
headman to be an anomaly that must be corrected. While he acknowledges common
descent, Chief Tshovani requires the current status hierarchy to be maintained. Impor-
tantly, in the past, all of these dynasties, in harmony and cooperation, once inhabited
the Gonarezhou and pursued their lives in the face of shared challenges.
7.5 Repression and Resistance
Of the Shangane dynasties, the Chisa of Gotosa community quickly gained a label
as a disobedient people due to its vocal and open rejection of colonial encroachment
in the Gonarezhou. On several occasions, the community mounted open confronta-
tion with the colonial government which its members viewed as a direct threat to
its age-old livelihood sources and strategies in their ancestral lands. The conflict
first started in the 1890s when the community’s land was identified by colonial offi-
cials as a Controlled Hunting Area prior to 1933 and it became more pronounced
when the Chisa lands were quarantined as a tsetse fly selective animal elimination
zone in 1962 (Mombeshora and Le Bel 2009). Both these developments prohibited
the development of household livelihood strategies, including hunting, fishing, gath-
ering, and cropping. The protests of the Chisa manifested in various forms, including
open resistance to the game reserve scheme, disregard of imposed laws, poaching,
grazing livestock in prohibited areas, and insulting wildlife officials. Defiance to
colonial impositions was accompanied by threats of eviction during the post-1934
period (Tavuyanago 2017).
The revision of game boundaries in 1957 deliberately saw the downgrading of
the Chisa chieftainship to a headmanship. The demotion was meant to punish Chief
Chisa for opposing the Game Reserve project and for his general insubordination
(Mombeshora and Le Bel 2009). It was also meant to disempower the entire commu-
nity since a people without land of its own has no right to claim equality with others.
Contrary to colonial expectations, the demotion further transformed the Chisa people
into a tough, restless, and uncooperative nation for the rest of the colonial period. The
people of Chisa were finally forcibly ejected from their Gotosa ancestral land and
resettled in Chingoji in 1957, after they were given a 15-day notice to vacate Gotosa.
The open refusal by the people of Chisa to move was to have major consequences in
terms of household livelihoods, as discussed later in the chapter.

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 129
In 1960, overpopulation saw the colonial regime moving the people of Chisa
back into the GNP, albeit to the Seven Jack area, just inside the park periphery.
Two years later, in 1962, and in response to the tsetse fly outbreak, the people of
Chisa were moved again from the Seven Jack area to the Ndali locale in the adjacent
Sangwe Tribal Trust Land. A tsetse-control fence was erected along the Chivonja
Hills, barring entry into the game park by the people of Chisa, who now struggled
for pastures, could no longer hunt and were unable to have gatherings for their
traditional practices (in their Gotosa lands). They were promised that they would
return to the Seven Jack area after the elimination of tsetse flies—a promise that was
never honoured as the area was afterwards leased to Ray Sparrow of the Lone Star
Ranch who, ironically, converted it into a cattle-grazing area (Tavuyanago 2017).
The loss of the Gonarezhou land and the livelihoods it offered was cemented in
1975 when the Game Reserve status was changed to a National Park, with all the
Gonarezhou lands being incorporated into it.
In protest, some of the Chisa people crossed the border into Mozambique, and
others joined the Karanga-speaking people in the neighbouring Ndanga District, or
Chief Tshovani, while still others joined Chief Sengwe. Further, some people crossed
the Save River into the now Checheche District.3For the Chisa people who chose to
resettle in the Ndanga District, tribal animosities arose with the Karanga who accused
the Shangane of overpopulation and stealing their lands, and for being backward
and unhygienic. This animosity further complicated the Chisa people’s capacity to
integrate and forge alliances for livelihoods development. A significant number of
people moved into nearby sugarcane and citrus plantations in Triangle, Hippo Valley,
and Mkwasine, thus totally abandoning the notion of emuti (homestead) which is so
revered in Shangane cosmology as the basis for household livelihood development.4
The defiance of the people of Chisa, therefore, should be placed within the context
of the broader liberation efforts across the country at the time (Tavuyanago 2017),
with eviction from Gonarezhou virtually leaving the people of Chisa with no land on
which to base livelihood activities. Indeed, every displacement to which the people
were subjected resulted in property and livestock losses due to its hurried and violent
nature as people resisted the move (Ndhlovu 2020).
At the height of Zimbabwe’s national liberation struggle against colonial rule
(1975–1979), the people of Chisa were moved into Protected Villages (called ‘keeps’)
along the Save River, stretching from Ndali to Muteo via Rupangwana near the
Jack Quinton Bridge. These ‘keeps’ were strategically meant to thwart the people’s
participation in the national liberation struggle. Survival in the ‘keeps’ was dependent
upon the hand-outs distributed by the state and donor agencies. Households from
Tshovani and Sangwe Tribal Trust areas, although also residing in the ‘keeps’, had the
opportunity to continue cropping activities in their Tribal Trust areas to supplement
the meagre donations received. On the contrary, the people of Chisa had no communal
area to which to return. Thus, while in the ‘keeps’, they constantly offered their
labour to the people of Chief Tshovani and Sangwe in exchange for wages or for
pieces of land to cultivate for livelihoods. Some also created gardens in which they
grew vegetables along the Save River, and the Machoka and Mkwasine streams, for
personal consumption and for sale. The Save River offered fish as a supplementary

130 E. Ndhlovu
source of food although the catch dwindled each day due to overpopulation. The
use of fishing nets and funnel traps were also prohibited, thus limiting the size of
the catch. This placed further strain on the people of Chisa whose livelihoods assets
continued to be exhausted—both by the ongoing liberation struggle and by personal
sale to meet basic household needs such as food, clothing, and medication. In this
context, the next section focuses on the changing livelihoods of the Chisa community
over a long duration.
7.6 Shangane Livelihoods
The changing of Chisa livelihoods overa long duration can best be observed by paying
particular attention to four periods in the nation’s history: before colonialism; during
colonialism; after independence in 1980; and after the infamous FTLRP in the 2000s.
7.6.1 Livelihoods Prior to Colonialism
The GNP area experiences harsh climatological conditions. It experiences two
seasons: a wet season of an annual average rainfall of about 466 mm typically
between October and March and a dry season normally between April and September
(Gandiwa and Kativu 2009). It also has an average monthly maximum temperature
of about 25.9 °C in July and 36 °C in January while average monthly minimum
temperatures range between 9 °C in June and 24 °C in January (Gandiwa et al.
2011). Due to the harsh climate as well as traditional skills possessed by various
assimilated clans, the Shangane developed pastoralist livelihoods and a subsistence
mixed economy consistent with the conditions. This economy involved small-scale
cropping, raising of livestock and flocks, fishing, hunting, and gathering of fruits
and plants (Carruthers 1995; Gandiwa 2011; Ndhlovu 2020; Tavuyanago 2017). The
Shangane became strategic crop producers specialising mainly in drought-resistant
crops, such as sorghum (mabele), millet varieties (such as mahuvu and mpowo), and
cassava. They, however, also excelled in maize (xifake), sweet potatoes (muhlate), and
groundnuts (timanga) production which they adapted to the extremely hot weather
and low annual precipitation characterising the Gonarezhou. Adaption included prac-
ticing crop rotation on dry lands, growing small grains that required little moisture,
and pursuing irrigated riverbed farming (Tavuyanago 2017). Although persistent
droughts and diseases compromised production efforts, the adaptation practices by
the Shangane allowed them to excel in crop production, thereby forging a food secu-
rity status at the communal level (Ndhlovu 2020). This evidence contradicts European
narratives on the laziness of the Shangane as the major cause of poor agricultural
activities (Alvord 1929).
The Shangane were also renowned vahloti (hunters), whose stalking and tracking
skills were equivalent to those of modern soldiers (Parker 2006). There is a wide

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 131
variety of large herbivore species in the area, including African buffalo, giraffe,
roan antelope, waterbuck, sable, zebra, blue wildebeest, elephant, and hippopotamus
(Zisadza et al. 2010). The presence of bows and arrows (vurha ne paxa)inalmost
every Shangane home underlined the importance of hunting as a livelihood strategy
for the Shangane (Tavuyanago 2017). Other instruments used for hunting included
the assegai, sling shots (xipelupelu), and traps (thaka). Poison was also smeared on
arrows for an instant kill. Hunters killed only enough game at a time to meet their
immediate needs (Mavhunga 2008).
The Gonarezhou forest offered wildlife upon which they relied for food, medicine,
and clothing. Hunting was a mobile task which entailed tracking the spoor, and it
was a skill the training of which began in early boyhood. Before teenage years, every
boy would be able to identify and interpret the implications of most game footprints.
Starting off early in the morning, Shangane hunters relied on the spoor to lead them
to game, hence the importance of starting off before the dew had dried (Junod 1927).
The status of the spoor determined whether the animal should be tracked or not.
Where there was no spoor to track, other means existed. The Shangane developed
a symbiotic relationship with flora and fauna and would take cues from animals.
When the hunter or any person got into the forest, he became part of it and was even
able to communicate with animals through signs (Mavhunga 2008). Since the tsetse
frustrated livestock rearing, wild animals were the major sources of meat and skins.
Fishing was also an important source of food. A number of rivers which are home
to different varieties of fish run through the Gonarezhou—the Save, Runde, Mwenezi,
Mutirikwi, Guluweni, and Chileji. Pools such as Tembohata, Chasuku, Chipinda, and
Chivhileni, provided fish as well as a supplementary food source (Ndhlovu 2020).
Various methods, such as the use of vutavala (fishing nets), xivasa (funnel traps),
xivejo (fishing lines), and herbal poison (Zombwe) were used to catch fish. Women,
in addition, used long nets (masaka) to drag fish to the shores (ku kukuta). Poison
was used sparingly and subject to approval by chiefs who first needed to inform their
ancestors prior to its use, which ensured that fish were not poisoned with abandon.
It also protected the zombwe plant from overuse since it was fed to livestock during
droughts, thus sustaining the physical capital of household livelihoods.
Further, the pastoralist Shangane were gatherers—an activity in which women
excelled more than men. Women harvested masonja (mopane worms), baby birds,
and ants, which they fried and dried in the sun. These would be eaten as a snack or
with vusva (pap). Women also collected various edible tree roots and fruits. Marula
(mankanyi) and palm fruits (kwangwali), in particular, were processed into wines
used during get-togethers and ceremonies while mabuwu (baobab fruits) were used
to make sour porridge (Ndhlovu 2020).
The Shangane reared livestock, flocks, and poultry. In fact, despite the existence of
tsetse flies and diseases such as rinderpest, foot and mouth, and theileriosis, Rennie
(1973) observes that the Shangane economy was largely based on livestock rearing
rather than crop production. This is because, historically, the Shangane were in large
pastoralists but, over the years, they engaged in crop production to diversify their
livelihoods in the face of rampant animal disease and frequent droughts. Hence, the

132 E. Ndhlovu
Shangane excelled in livestock rearing, even in tsetse fly belts such as Malipati, as
is the case with the Chisa of Gotosa (Garlake 1978).
The Gonarezhou provided not only food but also trees and grasses used to meet the
Shangane people’s physical capital needs, including farmagricultural equipment and
shelter for people and livestock. The Shangane also discovered many salt pans that
supplied them with iodine, collecting the earth, dissolving it in water, and extracting
salt using processes of evaporation. The Gonarezhou offered good locations for
circumcision schools (ngoma for males) and initiation schools (khomba for females)
in which young men received training in multiple skills, such as hunting, farming,
and self-defence skills tips, while young women received training on how to run
future households. Shared natural assets such as pastures, trees, and water bodies
were collectively protected from contamination and abuse. As well, chiefs mobilised
their subjects to construct infrastructure such as roads and also to dig wells. These
activities enabled the people to cooperate for their collective good. This sustained
the Shangane social capital which they drew upon to survive in the Gonarezhou.
Traditional healers obtained medicines from the forest, thereby sustaining the
Shangane’s human capital, including labour, skills related to farming knowledge, and
quality of health. Chiefs ensured social protection through the regulation of traditional
health services offered by sangomas (traditional healers). Sangomas who endangered
others were expelled or stopped from practicing, while those who displayed ability
received recommendation, promotion, and fame (Ndhlovu 2020). The Gonarezhou
lands, therefore, offered a generously diversified natural capital which the Shangane
‘exploited’ for their livelihood needs: housing and farming equipment, food, fuel-
wood, medicines, graveyards, pastures, and space for traditional functions. The land
also defined their nationhood and citizenship.
7.6.2 Livelihoods Under Colonialism
Under colonialism, the people of Chisa continued to practice a number of their liveli-
hood strategies, particularly farming. They were, however, prohibited to hunt as a
livelihood strategy. Livestock movements were also now controlled as a result of the
tsetse disease. Further assessments of the suitability of the Gonarezhou for human
habitation resulted in the total eviction of the people from the area. The consequences
of their evictions were dire, as households lost their livelihood means.5With the
callous and hurried evictions, households left behind diverse assets (natural, phys-
ical, and social assets) on which their livelihoods were based. These included fields
in which they practiced farming, svithlati (granaries) in which they stored food and
farming inputs (such as seeds); svifuyo (livestock and flocks); and farming equip-
ment, such as ploughs, cattle yokes, and plough chains, as well as ancestral graves
which were the main source of unity and cooperation. Men also left behind game
traps (thaka), bows, and arrows, fishing nets and rods which, although prohibited
by colonial authorities, provided families with meat and fish for own consumption
or for exchange with other goods (Ndhlovu 2020). Households also lost medicines

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 133
and traditional schools which nourished their human capital.6Women left hoes,
grinding stones, mortar and pestles, clay pots, winnowing baskets, blankets, and
clothes, among others, by which they ensured household livelihoods (Tavuyanago
2017). They also left rivers and lakes (natural capital) where they caught fish as a
livelihoods strategy.
Overall, in losing access to Gonarezhou, the people of Chisa left behind the land
that had provided them with food, shelter, and medicines for decades, a land which
was the basis for their livelihoods and in which their fathers and umbilical cords
were buried (Mombeshora and Le Bel 2009). They left behind a land in which their
livelihoods and identity had been crafted over the years. In the Shangane cosmology,
the burial site of the ancestors, as well as the land where an individual’s umbilical
cord is buried give people the duty and obligation to protect and defend that land.7
The Shangane evictions in the Gonarezhou were, therefore, not only insensitive and
callous but also traumatic for people whose livelihood sources and assets (gathered
over many years under adverse climatological conditions) were being destroyed in
a single day by colonial forces. The evictions not only shattered the Shangane’s
capacity to produce but also disrupted social cohesion and cooperation which are
basic assets required for resilient livelihoods.
7.6.3 Livelihoods After Independence
The ‘keeps’ were dissolved in 1980 when Zimbabwe gained independence. The
dissolution of ‘keeps’ saw people returning to their respective Tribal Trust Lands
(now named communal areas). The people of Chisa had no land of their own to
which to return, since their agreement with the District Commissioner of the Nuanetsi
District (Allan Wright) to be offered their land back had already been undercut by
the upgrading of the Gonarezhou from being a Game Reserve to a National Park. The
Chisa people simply sojourned in nearby communal areas. With no natural capital of
their own (land, pastures, and water sources, among others), and with their physical
capital (livestock, farming, and hunting equipment) virtually depleted, the people of
Chisa became the most vulnerable. The human capital (young able-bodied men and
women) that was most needed to invent new livelihood strategies in the Gonarezhou
area migrated to towns, but most crossed the border to work on South African farms
to send remittances back home. Others migrated permanently, thereby undermining
the social capital (social networks, affiliations, or cooperatives) that local households
could have used to forge new ways of survival.8Those who remained cooperated
with other members of communal areas to establish irrigation schemes. The only
known successful example today is the St Joseph Irrigation Scheme in Rupangwana,
while others either failed or did not even take off, such as the Machoka Irrigation
Scheme.

134 E. Ndhlovu
7.6.4 Shangane and the Fast Track Land Reform Programme
The main focus, after independence, is the post-2000 fast track period. The people of
Chisa participated in the nationwide occupations from the year 2000 in which indige-
nous Zimbabweans moved onto white commercial farms, after which the FTLRP
was implemented (from mid-2000). Affectionately named the Third Chimurenga
(the ideological banner under which the programme was undertaken), the FTLRP
emanated initially from grassroots initiatives which had, out of desperation and
frustration, arisen to reclaim land dispossessed under colonialism. Led in part by
the poverty-stricken Svosve community in Hwedza in Mashonaland East Province
(Ndhlovu 2017), the occupations and then FTLRP were embraced by the people of
Chisa as a cost-effective method of land acquisition. Teaming up with the inhabi-
tants of Tshovani and Sangwe, the people of Chisa participated in the acquisition
of the Sangwe and Fair Range farms. On the Sangwe, unlike in other nearby farms
in the Chiredzi District (Fair Range, Chizvirizvi, Mhandamabwe, and Uswaushava)
where the invasions or occupations were led by war veterans (Marongwe 2004),
the invasion of the Sangwe farm was initiated by the inhabitants of the Sangwe
communal area. They undertook this together with the people of Chisa on the basis
of a long-standing dispute they had with Mr. Otterson, a white commercial farmer
whose Wildlife Conservancy had fenced in the people’s traditional sacred sites, a
burial site for traditional leaders, and a sacred pool from which the people harvested
fish as a supplementary source of food (Ndhlovu 2017).
At the national level, the FTLRP was meant to be undertaken in a short-circuited
manner relying on domestic resources to acquire over 3,000 farms and redistribute
them to indigenous blacks under the A1 small-sized model and A2 (commercial
farming) fast track models (Utete 2003). At the district level in Chiredzi, a total of
7,598 people acquired land on a total area of 125,009 hectares under the FTLRP and
benefiting about 6,009 males (71%) and 1,589 females (29%) (Marongwe 2004).
There is no disaggregated data on the exact number of Shangane nationalities who
acquired land under the FTLRP. However, there is evidence that some people of
Chisa finally managed to acquire land as a physical asset which they could identify
as their own. In this respect, Ndhlovu (2020) found that about 50% of the Shangane
households on the Sangwe and Fair Range farms indicated that they were able to
produce enough food for personal consumption on their plots. He thus argues that,
although the FTLRP did not bring about redistributive justice in returning lost ances-
tral land to the Shangane in the GNP, it offered some relief in that households could
now settle down, produce their own food, and enhance their livelihood status.
In terms of income generation, Ndhlovu (2017) notes that while sources of income
had emerged, farming was not the major activity for the Shangane. Instead, only a
total of 16.6% of Shangane households depended entirely on crop production on
the Sangwe, while another 4.1% relied on livestock and poultry as a major source
of income. The remaining participants in that study pursued the mixed economy

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 135
of Gotosa (Ndhlovu 2017). On the Fair Range farm, Chaumba (2006) discovered
that, instead of farming, most households relied on off-farm activities for income,
including: sales of fruit and vegetables, home-brewed beer, marijuana and firewood;
war-veteran pensions; remittances; prostitution; poaching; traditional healing; and
money changing. Muregerera (2009) also demonstrates that, at Sangwe, the sale
of crafts, mats/baskets, and construction materials, as well as hunting were crucial
income sources. While the production tendencies and levels of the Shangane do not
translate into a meaningful contribution to the national economy, this should be seen
in the context of a beleaguered community trying to forge and revive its lost mixed
economy that flourished in the Gonarezhou prior to displacement. Chaumba (2006)
also found that, while some farmers fared well at Fair Range, a significant number
continued to sink steadily into poverty. While this evidence is disturbing, considering
how agriculture was expected to transform livelihoods and boost the rural economy,
it does expose the lack of context-specific solutions to the country’s land challenges
by the government which expected a pastoralist community to engage in full-time
farming.
Another issue that highlights the government’s lack of touch with the Shangane
people is its disregard for social capital which, for minority ethnic groups such as the
Shangane, is a livelihood asset more important than the acquired land itself. While
multi-faceted, social cohesion is generally expressed under four main classes: social
relations; task relations; perceived utility; and emotion. It is the degree to which
people are co-operative, within and across group boundaries, without coercion, but
with self-interested motivation (Burns et al. 2018). It involves ‘understanding the
social infrastructure, institutions, customs, and material and non-material relations
that either constrain or enable the individual in whatever pursuit they are engaged’
(Murisa 2007: 2). On the Sangwe and Fair Range farms, social cohesion in the form
of networks (political and communal), cultural norms, and other social attributes
were found to have played huge roles in livelihoods development through promoting
knowledge sharing and cooperation among households, thereby increasing produc-
tivity. Households engaged in ploughing, planting, weeding, and harvesting coop-
eratives (Chaumba 2006; Ndhlovu 2017). However, overall, social cohesion under
FTLRP beneficiaries in south-eastern Zimbabwe is generally problematic (Ndhlovu
2020).
The FTLRP did not regard the different backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs of
people when resettling them. The local people had initially successfully cooper-
ated on basic issues relating to the occupation of targeted white farmland, including
intimidating the former farmers not to reoccupy the land and pushing for recogni-
tion as new owners. Despite this, ethnic tensions were quickly revived between the
Shangane on the one hand, and the Karanga and Ndau speakers on the other, as the
latter groups viewed the former as foreigners who needed to focus on fighting for the
restitution of their Gonarezhou lands. When the Shangane were displaced initially
from Gonarezhou, some joined the Ndau and Karanga, thereby igniting contests for
space. Hostility arose between the Karanga and the Shangane over the ownership

136 E. Ndhlovu
of land stretching from Chiredzi town to Zaka Jerera, which is inhabited by both
ethnicities, but which falls under Chief Hlaisi Tshovani of the Shangane nation.
When people were resettled at Sangwe and Fair Range, these issues were not consid-
ered of significance, thereby sustaining age-old tensions which in turn compromise
the realisation of collective livelihoods development.
Identity and nationhood in the Gonarezhou had enabled Shangane clans to stick
together and to cooperate as they developed their livelihoods through farming,
hunting, and other activities that enabled them to survive. The cohesion and coopera-
tion challenges witnessed on the Sangwe and Fair Range farms are very different from
other FTLRP farms where beneficiaries were not victims of repeated land displace-
ments and where ethnic issues are not at play. For example, using the numbers of
farm networks and network sizes to measure social cohesion, it was found that social
cohesion had greatly increased with the FTLRP in areas such as Mazowe (Chiweshe
2014), Mhondoro Ngezi (Mkodzongi 2013), Goromonzi, and Zvimba (Murisa 2007).
The displacement of the Shangane nation from the Gonarezhou, therefore, did not
only disrupt livelihoods and compromise their identity, as it also gave birth to a huge
spectrum of integration and cohesion challenges which now affect other nations,
such as the Karanga and Ndau, thus creating a vicious cycle of livelihood-based
development challenges in the entire south-eastern part of Zimbabwe.
7.7 Conclusion
This chapter has examined the livelihoods of the Shangane people, with a particular
focus on the people of Chisa, in south-eastern Zimbabwe prior to their displacement
from the Gonarezhou and then through their various relocations since the 1950s until
the FTLRP of the 2000s. It shows how Chisa livelihoods changed continuously over a
long duration since their original displacement following the declaration of their land
as a Game Reserve in 1934. The original displacements, including during the 1970s,
were part of a broader colonial project meant to deprive indigenous people of the
use of their lands to disarm them socio-economically and politically such that they
succumb to colonial domination perpetually. In their ancestral lands of Gonarezhou,
and despite adverse agro-ecological conditions, the Chisa people had developed a
vigorous mixed economy, forging ‘alliances with nature’ in constructing their liveli-
hoods. The Gonarezhou land provided them with land for cropping, pasture lands,
meat, fruits, and vegetables, as well as medicines. Its conversion to a Game Reserve
(and later National Park) by colonial administrators was based on a distorted ‘meta-
physical obligation’ to redeem the Shangane from the harsh conditions of the land.
However, this served to disfigure and shatter their livelihoods while compromising
their notions of identity and nationhood. The FTLRP of the 2000s, instead of bringing

7 Political Economy of Chisa Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe 137
about land restitution, actually pushed the Shangane further away from their ances-
tral lands. The result of this has been, as Fanon (1963: 175) would have called it,
‘individuals without an anchor, without a horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless—a
race of angels.’
Notes
1. NAZ: S914/12/1B, Acting Secretary, Commerce and Transport to Col. the
Hon. Deneys Reitz, Minister of Lands, Pretoria, ‘Gona-re-Zhou Game Reserve,
National Park and Game Reserve Scheme, Government Proclamation Gazetted’,
28 September 1934.
2. MRC: MS 22, Delineation Report on Ngwenyenye or Marumbini Headmanship
and Community, p 87.
3. Informal oral testimonies by Shangane elders.
4. Informal oral testimonies by Shangane elders.
5. Informal oral testimonies by Shangane elders.
6. Informal oral testimonies by Shangane elders.
7. Informal oral testimonies by Shangane elders.
8. Informal oral testimonies by Shangane elders.
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Chapter 8
Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods
Strategies Among the Nambya
in North-Western Zimbabwe
Oppenheimer Chiweshe
Abstract This chapter examines the lives and livelihoods of the Nambya people
of Hwange district in north-western Zimbabwe. This entails detailing their origins,
convoluted history, interactions with other African ethnicities (such as the Ndebele),
the barrenness of the lands occupied, and the involuntary and coerced displacements
to which they were subjected. Hwange is regarded as unproductive land as it is char-
acterised by sandy soils, and hot and dry conditions, such that pursuing livelihoods
there is deeply problematic. Despite this, the Nambya devised diverse survivalist
strategies to make a living out of the arid environment, and this entailed adapting
their agriculture to this marginal environment. The Nambya and their livelihoods
were affected by numerous waves of displacements. For example, one wave saw the
Nambya being displaced for making way for the mining of coal and another involved
the Nambya being removed to make way for Hwange National Park. In each case,
broad-based development was not forthcoming in the district and the Nambya did
not benefit in any significant manner. This is demonstrated by a sweeping historical
analysis from pre-colonial to post-colonial times.
Keywords Hwange ·Displacements ·Livelihoods ·Coping strategies ·Nambya
8.1 Introduction
This chapter examines the livelihoods of the Nambya people located in north-western
Zimbabwe, how they were affected by waves of displacements during the colonial
period and, briefly, their post-independence lives and livelihoods. This entails a focus
on the Hwange area and the ways in which this area was regarded as a wilderness
where no productive resources for human habitation existed. The chapter demon-
strates the diverse survival strategies devised by the Nambya under colonialism
in making a living in an environment deemed inhospitable. After considering the
origins of the Nambya people and their establishment within the Hwange area, the
O. Chiweshe (B
)
ZADRT, Harare, Zimbabwe
e-mail: oppenheimertale@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_8
141

142 O. Chiweshe
different waves of displacements experienced by the Nambya, and the effects of
these displacements, are brought forth. These displacements were influenced by
the changing priorities of the colonial government, including the establishment of
the Hwange National Park and the broader history of racial land alienation in the
country. After independence, there has been no significant improvement in so far as
the livelihoods of the Nambya are concerned, despite development projects initiated
by the Zimbabwean government and non-governmental organisations. Because of
this, the Nambya people have shown significant agency in constructing post-colonial
livelihoods under highly vulnerable conditions.
8.2 Research Methodology
This chapter was written from primary published literature, field notes, interviews,
and documentary materials which included correspondences, official operational
records, and annual and monthly Native Commissioners’ reports. Since the period
of the study is situated primarily in the colonial period, the National Archives of
Zimbabwe was utilised to access the pertinent historical reports and correspondences.
Unstructured oral interviews, based on the life history approach, were carried out in
order to probe deeply into the daily experiences of those who were evicted. Interviews
were conducted when the researcher went to the field in November 2018 and June
2020, and they entailed a semi-structured and informal format (Patton 2002). The
researcher preferred this to structured interviews as unstructured interviews facilitate
an atmosphere conducive to intimate conversations about past lives. Snowball or
chain sampling was used in order to identify well-informed Nambya people with
knowledge about dislocations and livelihoods. This technique was used to locate the
elders who have knowledge and history of the colonial period and Nambya culture.
8.3 Origins of the Nambya People
The Nambya people are said to be a breakaway group from the Changamire Rozvi
dynasty (Ncube 2004). It is alleged that one of the Rozvi Mambo’s sons (named
Dhende Sadunhu) decided to set himself up as an independent ruler and this infu-
riated the Rozvi Mambo; as a result, the latter ordered the abduction and execution
of Dhende. Under these circumstances, Dhende was able to escape with a consid-
erable following early in the eighteenth century, heading northwards towards the
Mafungabusi plateau, then turning westwards following the Kana River until they
got to Lumbi in Tonga country where they stayed for some time (Beach 1994: 49).
They later continued with their migrations and reached today’s Hwange area. When
they arrived in the Hwange district, they settled at a strategic hill which they named
Shangano near the junction of the Lukosi and Chibungo rivers. The Nambya settled
on hill tops for security reasons, so that they could spot any intruders or enemies

8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies … 143
from a distance. They announced their arrival in the area through the building of a
stone-walled enclosure at the top of a hill. The stone enclosure was a sign of wealth,
prestige, and authority of a ruling class. Their first capital was called Shangano.
In this regard, the Nambya did not find the land which they inhabited empty. The
area was inhabited already by, for example, the Leya, Dombe, Dama, and Haka; and,
under such circumstances, wars had to be waged in trying to assert Nambya control.
Most of the existing groups submitted peacefully and without resistance, if only
because Dende had a strong army which made his authority difficult to challenge.
Before settling in Hwange district, the Nambya were called the Nyai. Oral traditions
indicate that Dende, after conquering the district, changed his name to Hwange
(related to kuhwanga, or ‘to mend’) and his people became the Nambya based on the
word kunambisa (‘to smoothen’) Ncube (2004). Their language came to be known
as Nambya as well.
8.4 Nambya Coping Strategies in Hwange
Hwange was not a desolate wilderness devoid of human presence and unproductive
activities. Contrary to this widely accepted perception commonly set out in the colo-
nial archive, evidence gathered for this study demonstrates that though the Hwange
landscape was characterised by sandy soils and erratic rainfall, the occupiers of this
area were not simple victims of it. Rather, during this historical period, they devised
diverse livelihood strategies to make a living out of such a seemingly unproductive
environment. In doing so, they accessed and used ‘any number of resources that they
identif[ied] as important for their well-being’ (Owuor 2006: 11).
The land which was occupied by the Nambya upon their arrival in Hwange in
north-western Zimbabwe offered only limited patches of good land for cultivation.
Most of the Nambya, like their neighbours (the Tonga), were able to adapt their
agriculture to the marginal environment by growing their crops in river valleys and
developing preferences for certain crops depending on local suitability for growing
specific crops (Ncube 2004: 46). In Nambyan society, bulrush millet was grown in
abundance and was the staple crop followed by sorghum and maize, and these crops
became essential to their socio-cultural lives as well. After harvesting, the grains
were pounded into fine flour used to prepare thick porridge which formed the staple
food of the Nambya people, and this porridge remains crucial to Nambyan diets
today. The flour was also used for brewing traditional beer which was consumed
during social gatherings like work parties and many rituals.
Among the many Nambya rituals that required beer was the rain-making ceremony
(Kutebula ivula). Beer for rain-making ceremonies was brewed by elderly women,
strictly in the postmenopausal stage as it was believed menstrual blood was unclean.
Beer was consumed by both male and female elders during the ceremony, usually
held annually between September and October. Some of the beer was put in clay
pots and left in the sacred place. The elders believed that it would be consumed by
the spirits of the land who guarded the area against enemies. The Nambya interacted

144 O. Chiweshe
with their physical space in establishing areas where other ceremonies were held.
For instance, sacred places were established for ceremonies like Mande or Kubatwa
nompempo involving possession by the ancestral spirits of a spirit medium. During
such ceremonies, the spirit medium would predict drought, good rainy seasons and
the outbreak of diseases. These ceremonies involved visiting ancestral gravesites, so
that the Nambya embedded their histories in their landscape in creating a cultural
landscape. Apart from Mande,Chipelu was another ceremony, taking place after
the death of a Nambya member in order to bring home the spirit of the deceased.
Also involving visiting gravesites, this ceremony would take place over seven days
and, on the seventh day, drums would be played throughout the whole night, with
people merry-making and drinking traditional beer. The continuous performance of
these many ceremonies saw the Nambya maintaining a close link with their land
and helped in maintaining kinship ties. Local Nambya chiefs were crucial in all
aspects of Nambya culture through their co-ordination of rituals performances, rain
supplication ceremonies, and control over the general populace.
Family connections and kinship networks were essential for mobilising resources.
Traditional grain crops tied the Nambya people socially through teamwork needed in
everyday life, in particular during the planting and harvesting seasons. Work parties
thus were organised during high labour-demand periods of the year like sowing,
weeding, and harvesting. On the day of the work party, an indigenous brew from
sorghum or millet flour was made available to the people (usually neighbours) to
consume while working. The need for more suitable land for crop cultivation (of
bulrush) saw the Nambya moving from or abandoning their first capital (Shangano)
(Tauyanago 2002). Besides food crop cultivation, evidence suggests that, as a way
to survive, the Nambya at some point were involved in cotton cultivation (sometime
before the Mfecane period from 1815 to 1830s) (Beach 1980: 264).
The landscape on which the Nambya lived abounded with wild animals and,
because of this, their crops in some instances were damaged or destroyed by game,
usually towards the harvest period. At the same time, because wild game existed,
hunting and gathering was also another source of food that could supplement agricul-
tural produce. Any harvested grain would be stored for as long as possible before use,
but at least one explorer (Livingstone) noted that in most cases the grain stored after
each harvest was almost exhausted before the next harvest because of storage prob-
lems (Livingstone 1865: 221). Livestock (cattle and goats were also kept). Although
rainfall was erratic in Hwange, the area was favourable for livestock production. The
thick forests were full of mopane trees and provided nutritious leaves for cattle and
this encouraged people to keep large herds of cattle.
Livestock was crucial in the day-to-day life of the Nambya as cows and goats
provided milk and meat. Besides this food function, livestock acted as a stored
surplus of wealth that could be exchanged for surplus crops from other areas in the
event of local scarcity. Thus, due to the challenges of poor harvest and poor storage,
animal husbandry existed as the main insurance against scarcity of food throughout
the area. Indeed, the slaughter of livestock in times of food shortages occasioned by
crop failure became the major solution to the woes of food shortages. Although cattle
in particular were important for a number of reasons like draught power, paying bride

8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies … 145
wealth, and for indicating economic status, they were particularly essential in times
of food shortages/drought Schmidt (1992: 16–20). During times of food shortages,
people who possessed cattle were left with no option than bartering the cattle for
grain with people from neighbouring communities.
However, the spread of tsetse flies around the 1830s is said to have affected live-
stock in the Nambya state in a significant manner. In 1855, Livingstone observed
that the people of the region could not keep any livestock except goats due to the
widespread prevalence of tsetse fly (Livingstone 1865: 25). Besides agriculture and
hunting, the Nambya engaged in iron smelting and trade in order to sustain them-
selves. The Nambya iron trade before the Ndebele invasions dominated the upper-
middle river areas of Gwembe. This was supported by the archaeological discovery
of heavy Nambya hoes; the iron trade, though, was affected by the Ndebele invasions
in the 1850s.
8.5 Effects of the Ndebele Invasions on Nambya Livelihoods
The year 1850 onwards was characterised by succession disputes. Lusumbami the
Nambya chief is said to have been killed by the Ndebele in 1853 (Ncube 2004: 52). It
is argued that Mzilikazi gave orders to have Lusumbami killed because he suspected
Lusumbami of playing off the Ndebele and Kololo in a sporadic war (McGregor
2009: 29). There had been a feud between Mzilikazi and Sebetwane (king of Kololo)
over the control of the Nambya and Tonga in the middle Zambezi valley, hence they
apparently competed for allegiance of those residing there. The major attraction and
reason for raids among the Nambya and Tonga was the seizing of herds of cattle.
The Nambya and Tonga are said to have realised this vying for control and they
decided to pursue a bi-partisan policy, and thus Mzilikazi suspected that Lusumbami
was also scheming with the Kololo. In these clashes, hundreds of people were killed.
Under these circumstances, Wange Chilisa (who came into power after the death of
Lusumbami) was forced to flee across the Zambezi in October 1862. In 1862 after
Wange Chilisa and his people fled, James Chapman and Thomas Baines travelled
through the region of today’s Hwange National Park, and they mention the presence
of burnt-out houses arising from the Ndebele raiding (Haynes 2002; Ncube 2004).
Not all the Nambya crossed the Zambezi, as some remained scattered in the rough
hilly country near the mouth of the Deka River. The Nambya, having lost their land
and form of life, now had to find a way to survive.
Due to the Ndebele invasions, the Nambya lost their control of the iron trade,
with this trade now dominated by the Tokelo iron trade from the Lozi kingdom
(Ncube 2004). However, while on the north bank of the Zambezi, the Nambya under
Hwange Chilisa did engage in trade. Thomas Baines observed that Ovimbundu
traders came from Angola to Hwange Chilisa in the 1860s. As well, Livingstone
noted that Chikunda traders visited Hwange Chilisa to buy slaves. This is supported
by Henry Stabb who came across a Nambya village in 1875 where he observed that
the people around the village had plenty of Portuguese cloth, beads, and guns (Ncube

146 O. Chiweshe
2004). Leach (NAZ, N9/1/11) also indicates that, in 1869, the north bank Nambya
were engaged in weaving, which means that they continued with cotton cultivation
across the river as a way to survive. Further, as noted by Blockey (NAZ, N3/24/35),
the Nambya were involved in the ivory trade, with the trading house being located
on the Zambezi River at the mouth of the river Deka opposite the Hwange village on
the north bank. Traders came as far away as South Africa to buy ivory (Ncube 2004).
Over two decades after fleeing the Ndebele, the Nambya crossed back to the south
of the Zambezi River, around 1888 and 1893 (McGregor 2009: 29). The major reason
for the return of the Nambya during this period was in fact the Ndebele invasion on the
north bank and the defeat of the Ndebele by the white settlers who entered from South
Africa. During these movements, the Nambya incorporated the Leya and the Tonga
through intermarriages, leading to a fusion of cultures. McGregor (2009) argues that,
while on the north bank, Nambya leaders never forgot their home on the south bank
and they did not succumb to Tonga assimilatory pressures (NAZ S2929/5/7).
8.6 The Nambya and the Early Settlers
The coming of British colonialism affected the social networks and livelihood strate-
gies of the Nambya. Before the rulership of the British South Africa Company and
Native administration was established in the Hwange (then, Wankie district), Euro-
peans set up farms by force, thereby dispersing the Nambya (NAZ S707 W193/12).
For instance, a Geise is said to have acquired two extensive farms on the Nambya’s
land in the upper Deka area, and another farm was surveyed on other Nambya land
in the far west near Victoria Falls (Ncube 2004: 75). The European settlers who were
present during this period recommended the forced removals of all Nambya who
were living on what had been now designated as European land, to areas where a
Reserve would be established. Most of the Nambyas who were evicted moved to the
Nyantuwe valley, which was mountainous and relatively dry, leading to significant
pressure on the little arable land available. What made the removal of Nambyans
from the European farms most problematic was the fact that most of the farms were
not put to productive use after the forced removals.
Giese was appointed as a government pass officer over the Hwange district and he
was expected to register the Nambya and others in the district. In trying to achieve this,
he introduced the use of rations (NAZ S707 W193/12). More specifically, because
they were alienated from their lands, the Nambya were forced by harsh conditions
and shortage of food to settle on or near European farms and work for the white settler
in return for rations. Giese stated that: ‘Rations reclaimed ‘Bushmen,’ in ordinary
years any bushmen wishing to settle down would find no difficulty in obtaining
rations in return for their services’ (NAZ S707 W193/12). The displacement of the
Nambya was further worsened by the pegging of coal concessions after the discovery
of major deposits of good quality coal in the Hwange area. In 1895, Giese pegged
1,036 square kilometres of southern Nambya land that lay between the Deka and
Lukosi rivers (the Bumbusi area) as coal claims on behalf of Mashonaland Agency.

8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies … 147
When the development of the railway line and Hwange coal concession area began
in 1903, all the Nambya who lived within the concession area were moved to the
east of it and settled in the Lukosi and Nyantuwe area. The only way the Nambya
could survive was to work at the Hwange colliery or nearby farms.
At the same time, the livelihood prospects and strategies of the Nambya were
affected adversely by the need for labour on the mine and railway construction. The
object of colonial taxation was to force Africans into the labour market and sell their
labour to earn their tax money—the greatest requirement of the Rhodesian mining
industry in those early years was a supply of cheap African labour (Ncube 2004).
Hence, as a way of ensuring a supply of labour, Nambyans were meant to pay hut
tax. The hut tax had been inaugurated in Southern Rhodesia by Ordinance No. 5
of 1894, which demanded each household to pay a tax of 10 shillings for every hut
in the homestead (this was to be paid in cash or kind). An extra 10 shillings were
charged if the man was polygamous for each extra wife’s hut, with polygamy very
common among the Nambya. Most Nambya people resented paying tax. A record
of tax payments from the Native Commissioner indicated that only seven pounds
was collected from the Nambya (NAZ S2929/5/7). In a bid to escape working in
mines and elsewhere, the Nambya sought to raise the required tax money by selling
their herds of small stock and also through the sale of small-leaf tobacco (which
they grew at a very small scale) to the mineworkers at Hwange coal mine and the
Ndebele villages in Nyamandhlovhu (Ncube 2004: 69). Also, Nambya women from
the surrounding villages were selling traditional opaque beer to the workers at the
colliery, despite the fact that the Kaffir Beer Ordinance had made it illegal to trade in
beer at the colliery and railway compounds. Van Onsleen (1976: 7) highlights as well
that, during the colonial era, women sold large quantities of grain and fresh produce
to the mine and, by so doing, earned sufficient income for tax and other purposes.
In a bid to get the Nambyas under their total control, the colonial officials appointed
chiefs who were loyal to them (such as Nemanga and Nekatambe).
In his work, Theodore Downing notes that displacements are associated with
resettlement effects, defined as the loss of physical and non-physical assets, including
homes, communities, productive land, cultural sites, and social structures, networks,
and ties (Downing 2002: 3). This notion is pertinent in trying to understand the
effects of continuous evictions on the Nambya, as land alienation resulted in the
loss of access to natural resources, cultural sites, and social structures. Typically,
the colonial government never considered where those who were evicted were to be
settled or they would provide alternative places to settle which could not support
their agricultural activities. As one interviewee exclaimed:
The Europeans chased our forefathers like dogs; they were forced to take refuge in the Rocky
Mountains which could not support any agricultural activities. At the same time, those who
wished to settle near the Settler farms were subjected to forced labour and had to submit to
the European farmers. Those who wanted their freedom settled on the mountains without any
help from the colonial officials. (Interview with Clemence Chinyati, Mpumalanga residential
area, Hwange, 1 November 2018)
In 1914, the Native Reserves Commission demarcated 317,481 acres of extremely
hilly and waterless country (that had only a small proportion of land suitable for crop

148 O. Chiweshe
cultivation) as Hwange Reserve. The Nambya population was opposed to moving
into the reserve, given their knowledge of its arid environment. A land rent imposed
on the Nambya (who had refused to move into the Reserves) was met with overt
resistance and it failed to achieve the desired goal of driving the Nambya into the
reserve (Ncube 2004). Prior to colonialism, the Nambya were sparsely settled and
they followed the system of shifting cultivation, rarely using the same piece of land
for an extended period of time (Robertson 1969). Further, they were familiar with
a genuine form of communal tenure, where individual land ownership was alien to
them and where the chief owned the land. This land and farming arrangement did
not exist under the colonial reserve system.
In addition to this, in 1928, 4,000,000 acres of unalienated land was demarcated
as Hwange Game Reserve (Davison 1971: 343). The game reserve took up the whole
southern part of Hwange district and all of the Nambya land south of the railway
line between Dete and Lukosi rivers. This establishment of the game reserve saw
the Nambya being forcibly removed from the north of the railway line in 1928
and resettled in the Native reserves. The declaration of the game reserve reduced
the size of the land which was not alienated in the district from 4,286,000 acres
to 286,000 acres, and this was soon followed by the formation of the Deka Native
Purchase Area in 1930 (Ncube 2004). Making the area a game reserve saw the
Nambya being relegated to the margins of the park while the settlers increasingly
occupied the surrounding area. It was recommended by the government that the
Nambya be removed from the margins of the park so that they would become a ready
labour force to work on farms and the mine.
As a consequence of the white settlers’ ongoing penetration into Hwange district,
including via commercial farms, the game reserve, and the Wankie colliery, the
Nambya were continuously being alienated from their land, thereby losing their
political autonomy as well. In 1930, as land dispossession was taking place, the
chiefs of the local African people were called together by the colonial administrators.
Despite the fact that the area received low rainfall, some of the Nambya chiefs like
Nekatombe and his people lived in an area within the confines of the game reserve,
around Tshakabika, Mzizi, and Nehimba springs, a good place to raise cattle and
plant millet—they were told to ‘go back to where they came from,’ which, in the
eyes of the colonial government, was the Nata River area which is in Botswana at the
present day (McGregor 2009: 131–136). However, they refused to go since it was
not where most of them had come from. The government relented somewhat, and
said they could go in the other direction (i.e. east), as long as they crossed the railway
line and left behind the lands where new farms for white settlers were to be pegged
(McGregor 2005). In the end, Nekatombe’s people moved eastwards and settled in
the northern hills in the Inyantue River region. Some of the evicted people though
had other ideas; they headed to the newly established white farms such as the one at
Sinamatella, on the river originally called Lumbambala, where the white farmer was
prepared to receive them as a ready labour force (NAZ A 3 2/8). They lived on the
farms and cultivated fields for white farmers as a way of securing a living.
In spite of the fact that the Nambya were not completely barred from visiting
and maintaining their past cultural–social places, they became alienated from their

8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies … 149
previous lands and landscapes. For instance, when the Nambya wanted to visit
Bumbusi for ritual purposes, they could apply for permission to do so from the
Park authorities. In this context, one Nambya elder noted that:
My grandfather was bitter about how the European treated them with regards to visiting
the graves of their ancestors, performing ceremonies at sacred sites. They were treated like
foreigners as if they were not the real owners of the land. (Interview with Nhanhanga F, St.
Marys, Hwange, 03 November 2016)
This alienation also affected their livelihoods. Hence, through the establishment
of the game reserve, the Nambya people lost the option of hunting wild game as
colonial administrators laid down rules forbidding snaring, mass-driving of game,
and the digging of game pits, which were the methods mostly used by Nambya
hunters. After the evictions, the Nambya had two choices in order to survive in the
new unfamiliar landscape: they could go to work for strangers as wage labourers, or
they could stay in their unproductive Native reserves and struggle to survive. In fact,
having fewer cattle now, and with minimal stored food and without access to their
ancestral fields, many sought work in the white man’s mines, farms, and warehouses,
or on the rail line.
As well, the town of Wankie grew up around the colliery, and both the colliery
and the town itself tended to employ foreign Africans rather than locals, including
the Nambya (Phimister 1994). Most notable was the coming in of foreigners who
came as employees at the Colliery. In an interview, a Nambya member named Sikula
noted that:
We were being disadvantaged because we had very little influence in our own area. We had
very little say, even the language spoken in the Colliery was foreign. When job opportunities
came, they were not given to us because those with important positions were from Zambia
and Malawi. Also our language and culture was dying. (Interview, Maxwell Sikuka, 17
March 2001) (quoted in McGregor 2005: 328)
When local Nambya people from the Native reserves (later called Tribal Trust Lands)
went to Wankie for whatever reason, including to buy or sell goods, they had to use a
non-Nambya (or foreign) language and found themselves stigmatised as uncivilised
and backward. Government administrative policies compounded this problems. The
north-western part of the country had always been part of Matabeleland and, as colo-
nial authorities consolidated Southern Rhodesia’s supposedly two dominant ‘tribes’
and languages, they did so to fit prior administrative boundaries (Doke 1931), Thus,
Ndebele continued to be central as a vernacular language throughout Matabeleland.
Missionary activities were also gaining pace from the 1930s. In 1935, St. Marys
Mission centre was established in Hwange and this saw the development of evange-
lism. Missionaries imbued with thenineteenth and twentieth Century Western attitude
of ‘bringing light to the dark continent’ sought to instil the concept of God and moral
rules of conduct and civilisation in the minds of the Nambya. This included Spanish
missionaries who came through to the district in the late 1940s. The conversion of the
Nambya met with some resistance as they were told to do away with their traditional
religion. However, some Nambya were converted to Christianity.

150 O. Chiweshe
The fact that Hwange is located in the north-western part of Zimbabwe meant
that the area was strategically important during the war of liberation (the Second
Chimurenga). This was mainly because Zambia was independent, and it served as
the launch pad for the guerrilla forces of Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army
(ZIPRA). With the escalation of the war in the mid- 1970s, the social networks and
livelihood strategies of the Nambya were profoundly disrupted. In this regard, the
Rhodesian government created protected villages as part of its counter-insurgency
campaign. Displacement into protected villages had detrimental effects on people’s
ways of securing a living, including crop cultivation. This is because, by isolating
the guerrillas from the local population, the government also separated people from
their crop fields—at times, this led to food shortages and starvation in Rhodesia’s
rural areas (Chadya 2005). Agricultural activities were interrupted by dawn-to-dusk
curfews and the often long distances between the crop fields and the Protected
Villages, thereby reduced the time that Nambya and other villagers could work in
their fields. Hence, although the colonial government claimed that protected villages
were created to protect the civilian population from the brutalities and food demands
of the guerilla insurgents, and other devastating impacts of the war, the fact remains
was that, protected villages undermined the villagers’ ways of securing a living.
8.7 Nambya’s Survival Strategies Post-Independence
After independence in 1980, the Native Reserves/Tribal Trust Lands became known
as communal areas. The Nambya continued to live on these lands, which could not
yield much in the way of harvests, certainly without expensive inorganic fertilisers
which few farmers can afford. Historically, rains within the Hwange district are
unpredictable and the soils often stony, and climate change has put further stress
on agricultural livelihoods. From the mid-1980s onwards, Nambya people had to
combine food production with diverse ways of generating income like beer brewing,
making charcoal, repairing shoes, queuing for food aid, undertaking casual wage-
labour, receiving remittances and pension payments, and selling livestock.
The Hwange Colliery mine remains the life-blood of Hwange district, providing
employment to over 3,000 people (Machoma 2017). The many infrastructural and
social services now existing in the area (including schools and hospitals) were estab-
lished in large part to offer services to colliery employees, their families, and the
nearby villages. However, of late, Hwange Colliery has been in sharp decline owing
to deficient management practices following the takeover of the majority shares by
the government during the period from 2000 (through the gradual introduction of the
indigenisation policy). Interviewed workers and community members reveal signif-
icant changes in their lives in Hwange over time due to the scaling down of colliery
operations. For instance, there was once a welfare department run by the colliery
company providing support for orphans, sponsoring social activities, and giving out
Christmas presents each year.

8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies … 151
As it stands, locals are usually employed at the colliery on short-term contracts as
general-hand workers which do not give them any sense of job security. Furthermore,
the contract workers are not paid on time and, at the time of the fieldwork, they
had not been paid in six months. One interviewee, who has been working at the
colliery company since 1992, claimed that they had gone for over four years without
getting their salaries (Interview with anonymous worker on 20 June 2020 at Hwange
Colliery). Failure by the company and contractors to pay their workers has had a huge
effect on the entire Hwange community, including the business sector. Further, only
a few Nambya locals are employed by either the power company or the coal mining
company. In most cases, these companies prefer outsourcing workers from as far away
as Harare and Bulawayo, leaving the locals with no concrete job opportunities. The
absence of meaningful alternative livelihoods (apart from coal) is a major problem
in the area, and it has led to illicit activities such as petty crime and prostitution.
The attainment of independence witnessed the proliferation of non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) with the main aim of rural development. Hwange became one
of the favourite destinations of NGOs because of inadequate infrastructural develop-
ment, unemployment, and climatic conditions which affected food production. The
NGOs in Hwange include World Vision, Intengwe, and Caritas Zimbabwe (Euro-
pean Union 2014). In a bid to improve the food security and livelihoods of the local
communities, food items have been distributed by these NGOs, including maize,
sorghum, millet, beans, cowpeas, and cooking oil. Besides food items, income-
generating projects have been introduced into the study area. Although irrigation
schemes were initiated by the government, the lack of necessary inputs and main-
tenance has inhibited their functionality. One interviewee (Mr. Muleya) indicated
that NGOs like World Vision helped in reviving the irrigation schemes and irriga-
tion gardening projects, thereby enhancing food supply among the communal areas
of Jambezi and St. Marys (Interview with Mr. Muleya on 6 June 2020 at Hwange
Colliery). The gardening projects are watered by borehole water provided by World
Vision, hence helping to solve the water crisis within the area.
In also trying to resuscitate livestock production in the area, there is a goat breeding
project run by Caritas Zimbabwe in Hwange. Caritas has provided male goats which
are being circulated for breeding purposes among a defined group of households.
With the study area being arid and having little or no grazing grass in many places,
goats by their nature are the most suitable livestock (Makiwa et al. 2017). In and of
themselves, these projects have not provided Nambya households with meaningful
cash in hand. Projects without substantial financial benefits are insufficient as cash
is required for the local monetary economy. Because of this, men tend to delegate
participation in these projects to women and children as they search for sources of
cash income.
There are other projects being run by organisations such as Cosv, Lead Trust,
and Lubancho House. Their projects seek to address food and nutrition insecurity
challenges faced by households in the Hwange area. They seek to increase food access
through sustainable livelihood choices and more diverse food production techniques,
therefore improving household sustenance by way of increasing agricultural yields,
enhancing diet, generating income from surplus production, and creating viable and

152 O. Chiweshe
enduring links between beneficiary farmers and the market. The main component of
the intervention involves increasing small grains productivity alongside Conservation
Agriculture techniques. These projects are not inclusive as they are targeted at specific
vulnerable groups (for example, persons living with HIV, orphans, and widows).
Currently, the Nambya replies on multiple sources for accessing food and earning
income. These include own crop production, livestock production, remittances, wild
food sales, purchasing food, payments in cash or kind, gifts, and food aid. Combined,
crop and livestock production are the most important, including vegetable sales from
their gardens and irrigated areas. In most cases, though, households rarely own cattle
and they rely upon goats and chickens as a food and income source. Labour and self-
employment activities are essential for acquiring cash. Self-employment among the
Nambya comprises a range of activities which includes firewood and grass collection,
carving, construction work, the sale of handicrafts and petty trade. However, the
harvest of wild products is by far the most common self-employment activity. Very
vulnerable members of Nambya communities (for example, the aged and orphans)
are exposed to chronic levels of poverty, and hence the need for NGO support.
The operation of shebeens, taxi/minibus transport services, vending, and cross-
border trading are new survival strategies adopted by the Nambya living within the
Hwange township. Women from the nearby villages have joined the vending trade
in Hwange town. They became part of the vendors who occupied the space available
at the Colliery 1 bus terminus. Vending was an immediate option for trying to secure
a living for those who had some capital to buy goods at a wholesale price and re-
sell them to the public. It is mostly undertaken in places regarded as illegal by the
city authorities—in particular, in front of shops, and on the pavements in the central
business district of Hwange. Selling firewood has also become increasingly visible,
but this entails the use at times of child labour and disruption of learning since children
perform this during school days when they are supposed to be attending classes. The
advantage of proximity to labour markets in South Africa and Botswana has seen
some Nambya migrating to these countries. This is an increasingly important aspect
of the Nambya household economy, as having someone working elsewhere provides
the basis for remittances.
Overall, the general Nambya community is bitter about being neglected by the
government and the companies within the region. Thus, despite the area generating
electricity that powers other parts of Zimbabwe, the majority of the households use
candles for lighting and firewood for cooking.

8 Land, Displacement, and Livelihoods Strategies … 153
8.8 Conclusion
This chapter has examined the lives and livelihoods of the Nambya people of Hwange
district in north-western Zimbabwe, with a pronounced focus on the colonial period.
It detailed their origins, convoluted history, interactions with other African ethnici-
ties (such as the Ndebele), the barrenness of the lands occupied, and the involuntary
and coerced displacements to which they were subjected. The Nambya and their
livelihoods were affected detrimentally by numerous waves of displacements. For
example, one wave saw the Nambya being displaced for making way for the mining
of coal and another involved the Nambya being removed to make way for Hwange
National Park. These interventions, involving the establishment of capitalist enter-
prises and wildlife sanctuaries, failed to bring about any meaningful socio-economic
development for the Nambya. As a result, even up until, the Nambya struggle to
pursue livelihoods beyond the survivalist stage. In this way, their ethnic minority
status remains firmly fixed within the broader Zimbabwean political economy.
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Part III
Crisis, Livelihoods and Ethnicity

Chapter 9
Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food
Crisis and Marginalisation of the Tonga
of Binga in Zimbabwe
Codelia Govha Dhodho
Abstract The Tonga of Binga District faced a severe food crisis in 2008 which
caused mass starvation, given in particular the Zimbabwean government’s ban on
the distribution of relief food after the contested presidential elections. This chapter
examines the long-term marginalisation of the Tonga people and its contribution
to the food crisis and the Tonga’s responses to the crisis. It traces events after the
involuntary displacement of the Tonga from the banks of the Zambezi River in the late
1950s and their ensuing neglect by both the colonial and post-colonial governments.
The political and economic challenges in the country from 2000 to 2009 pushed
the Tonga to the edge of starvation. While non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
distributed food aid to the Tonga post-1980, this led to dependency as the people
abandoned their traditional coping mechanisms thereby weakening their livelihood
resilience. Further, the Zimbabwean government argued that NGOs were in a regime-
change alliance with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), with
strong Tonga support for the MDC. The government banned NGOs from providing
food aid to the Tonga during the 2008 drought and, leading the Tonga to fall back on
their traditional food crisis coping mechanisms, notably wild foods.
Keywords Tonga ·Binga ·Marginalisation ·Food crisis ·Coping mechanisms ·
Wild foods
9.1 Introduction
This study identifies and examines the marginalisation and neglect of the Tonga
people and their livelihoods by the Zimbabwean government and how this contributes
to their impoverishment, with particular reference to the food crisis among the Tonga
in Binga District in 2008. At this time, there was mass starvation in Binga because of
poor harvests due to drought and the government’s decision to ban relief food aid in
the context of broader political contestations in Zimbabwe. The Tonga people make
C. G. Dhodho (B
)
Department of History, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
e-mail: dhodhoc@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_9
157

158 C. G. Dhodho
up most of the population in Binga District which lies in the Zambezi Valley in the
north-western part of Zimbabwe. Living in nearby districts as well, the Tonga are
an ethnic minority group whose lives and livelihoods have been a constant struggle
due to their adverse treatment by both the colonial and post-colonial governments
(McGregor 2009: 140). Marginalisation for the Tonga is both a process and a state
of discrimination, based on their ethnic identity and status as well as their spatial
location along the country’s border (Mowat 2015), such that Tonga people have also
been pushed to the periphery of the nation and away from the centre of socio-political
power (Mashingaidze 2013; Manyena 2013).
This chapter argues that traditional food crisis coping mechanisms are a significant
basis for survival of marginalised communities, particularly the Tonga of Binga. It
examines how the Zimbabwean political and economic crisis between 2000 and 2009
threatened the food security of the Tonga of Binga and analyses how the protracted
food aid and the politicisation of this aid weakened their resilience to the food crisis.
In doing, it highlights the agency of the Tonga and how living off wild foods saved
them from starvation.
9.2 Research Methodology and Research Site
The Binga District is a marginal area consisting of minority ethnic groups located
in the northwest of the country along the border with Zambia. About 58,000 Tonga-
speaking people were evicted from the banks of the Zambezi River between 1956
and 1958 following the construction of the Kariba Dam during the colonial era. The
majority were resettled in Northern Rhodesia while an estimated 23,000 were reset-
tled in Binga District in Southern Rhodesia (Colson 1960). Most of the people on the
southern bank of the Zambezi River lived at the upper end of Lake Kariba in chief-
doms of Binga, Siachilaba, Sikalenge, Siansali and Sinakoma (Weinrich 1977: 14).
This study of Binga District focuses on Tonga people living under some of these chief-
doms. They are largely illiterate because there are few schools in the district. They
make a living through cultivation of drought-tolerant crops, goat-rearing, fishing,
crafts and petty trading. There are very few formal employment opportunities, and
the people possess only minimal livelihood assets.
As a case study, a qualitative research paradigm was adopted to select, interpret and
analyse evidence obtained from secondary and fieldwork sources. Oral testimonies
were collected in Binga District in December 2020 using in-depth interviews, as
evidence about the Binga food crisis in 2008 is not well reported or documented.
The in-depth interviews with Tonga villagers took place specifically in the Sinakoma,
Siachilaba and Binga chiefdoms of Binga District. These included seven women and
four men whose ages ranged from twenty to seventy years, who provided narra-
tives of their experiences after displacement up to and including the 2007/08 food
crisis. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with two health officials at
Binga hospital and two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders at Binga

9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis … 159
Centre. Real names are used for all interviewees in the chapter, as they consented to
being openly identified. Some of the oral evidence was obtained through telephonic
interviews due to Covid-19 virus restriction regulations in Zimbabwe.
9.3 Context
Like all indigenous people, the Tonga people were excluded from participating in the
political and economic affairs of the colonial state. Further, they had their own specific
and unique experiences and challenges under colonialism. Most dramatically, this
entailed their involuntary and forced displacement from the banks of the Zambezi
River following the construction of the Kariba Dam in 1958. They were violently
evicted from their lands along the Zambezi River and those who resisted were killed
by Rhodesian soldiers (Howarth 1961: 73). The soldiers violently shot and killed
eight men and wounded many people in Chipepo village in 1958 when they resisted
eviction (Tremmel 1994: 31). The police also burnt huts and arrested thirty Makaza
villagers in Chief Sinakoma’s area who refused to leave the river when Lake Kariba
started to expand (McGregor 2009: 38). Particularly disturbing was that the Tonga
were simply dumped in an arid environment with no compensation forthcoming
from the state. As a result, the people lost access to and control over crucial resources
necessary for making a living, such as alluvial soils and water, as well as fish from the
new Lake Kariba formed. The colonial government turned its back on the hardships
of the Tonga people in not restoring any of their past entitlements to the Zambezi
River and its shoreline.
The people were resettled in a harsh and hostile environment that was not fit for
human settlement, and this left them with few opportunities to craft a living (Colson
1960). Dam-induced displacement affected detrimentally their livelihoods and made
meeting their food needs a major challenge. None of the crucial assets and capabilities
necessary for constructing and pursuing sustainable livelihoods (Ellis 1999; Scoones
1998) were available to the Tonga post-displacement in Binga. Binga District is in
agro-ecological Region V which receives less than 650 mm of rainfall on average
annually. The Tonga people thus began to face immediately the challenge of perennial
food shortages due to persistent drought and erratic rainfall patterns. In addition, the
poor sandy soils on the Zambezi plateau were not conducive for farming, despite
the new centrality of agriculture to displaced Tonga in Binga (Reynolds and Cousins
1993: 47). Moreover, the proliferation of wildlife in the district made farming risky
due to day and night crop raiders such as birds, baboons, buffalos and elephants.
The region was infested with tsetse fly which made rearing livestock for food a
serious problem, with cattle, sheep and goats dying of trypanosomiasis (Weinrich
1977: 21). Availability of adequate food for survival was also constrained by the
state’s prohibition of hunting and fishing after forced resettlement, which could have
provided them with sources of cash as well as food.
Despite all these formidable challenges to livelihoods after resettlement, notably
chronic food shortages, the Tonga survived for more than two decades up until

160 C. G. Dhodho
independence in 1980 without any external assistance. The colonial government
did not provide them with relief food to supplement their poor harvests after the
inundation of their well-watered lands with the damming of the Zambezi River and
simultaneous formation of Lake Kariba (Colson 1960: 204). As well, there were no
international or local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) of any significance
during the colonial era which could distribute food aid. Hence, the Tonga had to
find ways of supplementing their meagre harvests by using “traditional” food crisis
coping mechanisms.
The term “traditional coping mechanisms” describes the temporary strategies
instituted historically to minimise the risk of losses, for example, crop losses due to
drought and to manage and limit the effects of food shortages. The Tonga’s tradi-
tional coping mechanisms included intensive cultivation of alluvial riverbank fields,
hunting, fishing and gathering wild foods. However, following displacement, they
lost their riverbank fields and were prohibited from hunting and fishing, and this
undermined their way of making a living on the drought-prone Zambezi plateau
(Colson 1971). They had to be innovative and create new coping mechanisms which
could somehow increase the prospects of a reasonable harvest in Binga District by
practising extensive shifting cultivation, intercropping, and staggered planting as
agriculture became their main livelihood (Interview with Sialubbe, in Sinakoma, on
21 December 2020). They also defied the ban on hunting and fishing, illegally killed
animals for food and regularly guarded their fields from wild animal crop raiders.
Further, they lived on “famine foods” during periods of total crop failure (Scudder
1971). These famine foods were mostly unpalatable and less nutritious forest foods
which were only eaten during times of severe food shortages.
Overall, as a regional study shows, the food crisis coping mechanisms of people in
Southern Africa are shaped by the local context such as the socio-cultural, economic
and political factors embedded within communities (Schrimpf and Feil 2012). Soon
after Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, the Binga District was identified as a
major food-shortages area that needed food aid because it was one of the poorest and
underdeveloped regions in the country (McGregor 2009). This led to the proliferation
of NGOs which started to continuously distribute food to the people in the district on
an annual basis. After the formation of the MDC in 1999 and the electoral challenge
it posed to the ruling Zimbabwe Africa National Union—People’s Front (ZANU-
PF) party, food became increasingly politicised. The NGOs were interpreted by the
Zimbabwean government as in a firm alliance with the MDC in a regime-change
strategy, with food aid being used to bolster MDC support in rural areas. This had
serious food insecurity implications for the Tonga. For instance, in 2008, the politi-
cisation of food aid during national elections led to a temporary ban on food aid
distribution in the Binga District. Coupled with the drought in the area, this pushed
the Tonga into a condition of absolute destitution. In not sitting back and waiting to
die, the Tonga in Binga fell back on their historically configured indigenous knowl-
edge and coping systems by surviving on wild foods, a food-crisis coping mechanism
that had supported them for centuries before their forced resettlement.

9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis … 161
9.4 Factors Contributing to the Tonga Food Crisis in 2008
From colonialism onwards, the Tonga people became vulnerable to chronic poverty
and severe food shortages due to deprivation and denial of access to key resources.
The general region where the Tonga reside is endowed with rich resources but the
people have lived in abject poverty without access to water, electricity and fish from
Lake Kariba, as well as wildlife and tourism opportunities (Mashingaidze 2013),
including in the Binga District. Food shortages and food insecurity challenges for the
Tonga were pronounced in 2008, and this section details three key factors contributing
to the Tonga’s food crisis in this year.
9.4.1 National Political and Economic Crisis
The Tonga people’s food crisis in 2008, and their lack of resilience to it, can be
largely blamed on the Zimbabwean political and economic crisis from 2000 to 2008,
as adverse conditions in the country impinged widely on both urban and rural liveli-
hoods (Manyena 2009). Deepening political polarisation and contestation between
the ruling ZANU-PF party and the MDC opposition, along with a marked economic
decline from the year 2000, were key characteristics of the systemic crisis, which
likely reached its nadir in 2008. Though the economic decline began in the 1990s
under the influence of a neoliberal structural adjustment programme, the fast track
land reform from the year 2000 was undoubtedly central to the post-2000 economic
crisis, leading to a shrinkage in the agrarian and national economies. The government-
led fast track programme redistributed land from a minority of white farmers to black
Zimbabweans without compensation for the reclaimed land. The global community,
as well as both international and local NGOs, condemned this programme for its
gross violation of human rights, with targeted sanctions being imposed by Great
Britain and the United States in response.
The decline of the economy from 2000 to 2008 led to massive declines in the
production of key agricultural crops such as maize and wheat, with the fast-track
resettled farmers unable to cover the production losses arising from the undermining
of the white commercial agricultural sector. The large white-owned commercial
farms were parceled out into A1 small plots as well as A2 medium scale commercial
farms which were allocated to black farmers. With only minimal if any state support,
the resettled farmers on both A1 and A2 farms could not meet the national demand
for food because they lacked capital and other key agricultural resources, with most
A1 farmers relying on rain-fed agriculture (like their counterparts in the communal
areas) and prone to risks of crop failure. Economic shocks in the country were
compounded by climate change and the ensuing successive droughts from the year
2000 which ravaged the Southern African region more broadly. The Meteorological
Services Department in Zimbabwe recorded that there were mild or serious droughts
in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 which deepened the food crisis

162 C. G. Dhodho
as the country became a net importer of foodstuffs such as the staple food of maize
(Nangombe 2015). In part at least, Zimbabwe had the ability to respond to droughts
prior to 2000 but the fast track land reform programme collapsed and incapacitated
the national agricultural system (Manyena 2009: 112).
The post-land reform economic downturn led to deindustrialisation, loss of formal
employment and a massive rise in the informal economic sector, hyperinflation and
shortages of foreign currency, which in turn increased the likelihood of shortages
of food, fuel and other imported goods (Madimu 2019). The local currency in fact
collapsed due to the spiraling inflation and this further affected the capacity of urban
and rural households to purchase essential commodities (Raftopoulos 2009). Those
on the margins of society, including the Tonga, suffered the most. Certainly, in the
context of ongoing poor harvests, Tonga people typically depended on buying mealie
meal every year to supplement these crop failures. During the 2002/2003 nationwide
drought, for instance, many rural households in Binga had to barter for grain using
livestock, because of shortfalls in subsidised food aid relief from government as well
as the temporary ban on Save the Children (UK) to distribute food in the district.
International NGOs responded to the deepening agricultural crisis in the country
by intensifying their distribution of relief food to the Tonga during successive years of
drought and crop failure to avert starvation. Food aid therefore became a more reliable
food source for Tonga households in meeting their food needs, compared to farming,
in the drought prone area of Binga, where they also often spent months sleeping in
fields guarding crops against elephants as well as scaring birds and baboons from
destroying their crops during the day.
9.4.2 Drought and Dependency Syndrome
The Tonga survived successive droughts from the second year of forced resettle-
ment using traditional coping mechanisms which both increased food production
and sustained communities during periods of food shortages. There were droughts
in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1978, 1980, and 1982, but the people survived
without accessing any drought relief food from the colonial government (Muyambi
1980: 137). However, their traditional food crisis coping strategies were affected by
the influx of protracted emergency food which poured every year into the district in
the post-independence period, notably from 1983. National media first drew interna-
tional attention to Binga by publicising the district’s leading status as a hunger-prone
area during the 1982/3 nationwide drought (McGregor 2009: 155). This publicity
led to an influx of international NGOs which set up various development projects
and started issuing out relief food aid. Since 1983, NGOs such as Save the Chil-
dren (UK), Adventist Development and Relief Agency Zimbabwe (ADRA), and
Catholic Agency for Development (CADEC) have been distributing food in all of
Binga District, and every year, because of chronic food shortages due to frequent
periods of drought and famine.

9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis … 163
This provision of long-term food aid significantly affected food production among
the Tonga, as evidenced by the 2008 food crisis when households and communities
had literally nothing to eat. More than 90% of the people in Binga were so food
insecure that they received emergency food aid every year (Maclaine 2006;World
Commission on Dams 2000). The NGOs brought relief rather than development aid,
which largely failed to empower the Tonga to deal with the challenge of pervasive
food insecurity. The pouring in of food aid entrenched poverty among the Tonga
people as the NGOs regarded food insecurity as a technical problem that could
be solved by regular distribution of food handouts—without addressing the root
causes of the problem which continued to threaten livelihoods. As Schrimpf and Feil
(2012) argue, the distribution of food aid (even in times without food crises) tends to
lead to a dependency syndrome such that people become incapable of maintaining
sustainable food security mechanisms (Schrimpf and Feil 2012). At the same time,
the Tonga were regularly labelled as lazy by the Shona and Ndebele people due to
their dependence on food aid, as if they sought to exploit donor food as a panacea
for their food insecurity (Manyena 2013). In fact, the incapacity of the Tonga to
pursue meaningful and resilient livelihoods in the barren and game-infested district
of Binga, without access to their traditional ways of coping during times of food
crisis, left them with no option but to rely on food aid. Their livelihoods in fishing
and hunting had been decimated by displacement and resettlement, hence they now
regarded food aid as a food crisis coping strategy.
9.4.3 Politicisation of Food Aid
The economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe peaked in 2008 with the highly
contested and controversial national parliamentary and presidential elections. By
the beginning of 2008, an estimated nine million people were facing severe hunger
in Zimbabwe, as the national granary was empty (WFP Annual Report 2008). The
pertinent parastatal, the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), had been importing maize
and wheat to meet the increasing demand for food in the country. However, due to
shortages of foreign currency, the parastatal was not able to import sufficient maize
to meet the demand for grain in the country, as witnessed in 2008.
The GMB had a monopoly on the sale and distribution of staple grains in the
country as the government had banned the private sector from importing and selling
maize since 2001. To alleviate starvation of vulnerable rural populations, the govern-
ment launched a subsidised maize distribution programme. The level and figures of
vulnerability of households, districts or provinces was determined by the Zimbabwe
Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC). However, in 2008, the committee
did not carry out surveys because of financial constraints as resources were chan-
nelled towards the presidential elections (ZIMVAC 2009). Therefore the extreme
vulnerability of the Tonga during that year was largely not reported and this affected
the delivery of food to the district.

164 C. G. Dhodho
To add to this, the GMB subsidised maize was used to support political objec-
tives and largely distributed to districts that supported and voted for the ruling party
during national elections. The Human Rights Watch reported that the government
manipulated the GMB food for political gain as perceived supporters of the opposi-
tion were denied access to maize (Relief Web 2007). Binga District was perceived
as largely supporting the MDC party which received significant numbers of votes in
both Binga North and Binga South constituencies during national elections from the
year 2000. The MDC officials interviewed in Binga pointed out that very few people
were card-holder members of ZANU-PF hence they were not legible to receive the
GMB maize, even during times of crisis. This caused critical shortages of maize and
mealie meal as only the GMB could legally import food and distribute it throughout
the country.
The politicisation of relief food also implicated international NGOs which were
offering emergency food aid in the country and, in the end, this caused chronic
food shortages in Binga. These NGOs were at loggerheads with the government,
as the former were reluctant to provide food aid and agricultural implements to
those in need in fast-track resettled areas. This is because of the on-farm violence
and violation of private property rights which formed part of fast track land reform
programme. Organisations such as Christian Care and World Vision did, however,
distribute food in drought-prone regions of the country (outside of fast track areas).
But the government sometimes accused them of using food handouts to influence
people to vote for the main opposition party, the MDC (Muderedzi 2017).
There had been very little development in Binga after independence because of
neglect and negligence by the government, and hence the Tonga people had not
been voting in any significant way for the ruling party (Mashingaidze 2013). The
ruling ZANU-PF party blamed NGOs, as part of a foreign-driven regime change
agenda inclusive of the MDC, for using food handouts in Binga to gain and consol-
idate support for the opposition party. As well, the governor of Matabeleland North
for over a decade after the formation of the MDC blamed the Tonga’s support for
the opposition party as the main reason for their poverty, implying that the central
government refrained from using public funds for Binga’s development because of
its political affiliation to the MDC (Zimbabwe Daily 2015). This is part of a broader
national project of uneven development propagated by the ruling party since 1980,
with Matabeleland broadly speaking being penalised for its anti-ZANU-PF stance.
The work of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) in the Binga
district likely increased the tension between the government and NGOs in the region.
The CCJP, as part of the Catholic Church which spoke out strongly about the Guku-
rahundi in the first half of the 1980s, implemented a programme from 1996 to 2005 to
address the root causes of poverty in Binga through increasing awareness of the local
people’s developmental rights and entitlements (Manyena 2009: 118). It was blamed
for stirring the pot and being stridently opposed to the ZANU-PF government when
the Tonga started questioning the government over their developmental neglect in
the district. The work of CCJP was allegedly associated with the opposition MDC
party when its presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai won more than 27,000 votes
out of 37,000 in Binga, accounting for the largest votes in any rural constituency in

9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis … 165
Zimbabwe for the presidential election in 2002 (Manyena 2009: 138). CCJP was
also linked to long-term food aid distribution in Binga through CADEC.
In using liberation war-like language, the ZANU–PF-led national government
called most NGOs operating in Binga at the time as sell-outs, leading to the absence
of the GMB subsidised food aid distribution in the district during times of dire need.
Indeed, the food shortages in the country during the 2002 period of drought and
starvation were particularly pronounced in Binga which had no government aid,
with some relief food received mainly from Save the Children (UK) and CADEC.
The government temporarily banned Save the Children (UK) from distributing food
in Binga for five weeks following the 2002 elections (Meldrum 2002). Again, during
the 2005 Senate elections, the government temporarily barred food aid distribution
in the district as it accused NGOs of “playing politics with food” and “using food
handouts to influence our people to vote for imperial lapdogs, the MDC” (Muderedzi
2017: 5). However, in averting a major food security disaster, food aid distribution
resumed soon after the elections.
There was a mild drought throughout the country during the 2006/07 and 2007/08
cropping seasons which, however, was severe in Binga due to long dry spells and
the inability among most Tonga to harvest any grain. There were widespread food
shortages in the country but the government became more repressive and intolerant as
it concentrated mainly on retaining power (Madimu 2019). However, the food crisis
in Binga was largely state-induced. The district voted significantly for the MDC
party in both the parliamentary and presidential elections. In the 2008 parliamentary
elections, MDC received 16,335 votes (85% of the votes) against ZANU-PF’s 2,946
(15%) in Binga North Constituency, accounting for the largest voter turn-out for the
MDC in any rural constituency in Zimbabwe (Manyena 2009: 138). The Presidential
elections were also held on 29 March 2008 but results were only released on 2
May 2008 with the opposition candidate (Tsvangirai) winning but with no overall
majority—he won with 47.9% and Robert Mugabe had 43.2%, necessitating a run-
off election. The lead up to this election was marred by violence and intimidation
of voters by ZANU-PF’s militias, leading to the withdrawal of Tsvangirai from the
run-off. Meanwhile, the government through the Minister of Home Affairs banned
all NGOs on 5 June 2008 as it once again used food as a political weapon by blaming
them for the loss of the ruling party during the 2008 elections (Shoko 2008). Binga
Rural District Council effected this ban immediately as the NGOs were seen as part
of the political agenda. This took place at a time of massive food insecurity in the
Binga District, when there was no government relief aid either.
9.5 Living Off the Wild
In the context of these factors, there was the possibility that the Tonga would gradually
abandon their traditional food crisis coping mechanisms, or that a generation of Tonga
people might experience a fundamental loss of the knowledge and practice of these
mechanisms which had been passed down through generations. For instance, by 2008

166 C. G. Dhodho
there was a generation among the Tonga in Binga which was not acutely aware of
these coping strategies because they were born, grew up and got married at a time
when food aid was being distributed annually.
Despite this, the Tonga in Binga during the crisis year of 2008 were able to
draw upon historical ways of coping with food shortfalls. In particular, gathering
wild foods provided them with cheap food which could sustain them, if only on a
survivalist basis, until the next harvest. Most studies show that wild foods played
a more important role in the food economy of the Tonga than has generally been
recognised in any agricultural society (Scudder 1971: xi; Reynolds 1968; Cliggett
2005; Muyambi 1980: 137). Scudder (1971) adds that the Tonga tended to gather
even more plants than the hunter-gatherer Khoisan of the Kalahari Desert to enhance
food supply.
A number of chiefdoms, such as Binga, Sinansengwe, Sinakoma Siachilaba, and
Sikalenge in Binga North, experienced major food shortages from the 2006/07 agri-
cultural season because of the drought in the area. The 2007/08 drought worsened
food shortages. The people could not get sufficient food from fishing in areas desig-
nated for fishing camps and cooperatives on the Lake because of restrictions by the
government. Illegal hunting of big game such as buffalo, elephants and hippopotamus
for food could not sustain households and communities because of conflict with
game rangers. Tonga people underwent untold suffering as basic commodities such
as bread, cooking oil and flour were being sold on the informal market only and
in foreign currency; and these were even hard to come by, for most people who
had nothing to sell. Their common response to “good morning” greetings became
twabuka a nzala, which means that they were always hungry, without knowing where,
when and how they would obtain their next meal.
When all the harvested sorghum, millet, cucumbers and watermelons were
finished around Ma 2008, villagers ate sorghum and millet husks with the hope
that food aid would soon be restored. Tonga in Simatelele under chief Siachilaba
who had not used the agricultural inputs received from CADEC during the previous
farming season because of drought, crossed the Lake using canoes and sold their
maize seed and fertiliser in Zambia and bought grain with the cash received (Inter-
view with Judith Munenge on 19 December 2020 at Simandala, Siachilaba). As
hunger persisted, other women simply washed the maize seed and boiled it for food
as children fainted from hunger. Most families could not afford or access a single
meal per day, and they skipped days without eating. The situation became so dire
that people survived on picking up the droppings of goats which they then dissolved
in a cup of water and drank just to remain alive.
The food crisis further impoverished the Tonga who possessed cattle, sheep and
goats as they bartered livestock for grain. Unscrupulous Shona-speaking businessmen
from other provinces brought truckloads of maize or mealie meal to business centres
such as Manjolo, Siachilaba, Sianzundu or Muchesu which they exchanged for live-
stock. Families lost their valuable assets as they tried to cushion themselves against
hunger. In Sinansengwe, a goat was exchanged for only five to ten kilogrammes of
mealie meal and a cow for fifty to one hundred kilogrammes of mealie meal (Ndlovu

9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis … 167
2010: 14). Famine led to many deaths of young children and the elderly due to malnu-
trition as Tonga households no longer received monthly packages of maize, beans
and cooking oil from donors.
The food crisis at the time was complicated by the fact that there was no transport
coming into Binga Centre, and to areas such as Tyunga, Kariangwe, Mabobolo, or
Simatelele, from outside, and hence the district literally became cut off from the
rest of the country for many months. There was also no local radio nor television
transmission and telephone lines had not been repaired and working for years. It thus
became difficult to transmit information about the presence of hunger and famine in
the district to government authorities even if they would listen, and it also inhibited
people from travelling outside the district to buy food if indeed they had the resources
to do so. Those who could afford to purchase food had to canoe across the crocodile-
infested Lake to Zambia. The situation was so desperate that, when there was an
outbreak of cholera in Siabuwa, the Ministry of Health officials at Binga District
Hospital could not communicate with the Provincial epidemiological response team
in Bulawayo for three weeks. They had to call them via the neighbouring country
Zambia when many people had lost their lives due to the epidemic (Interview with
a health official on 22 December 2020, Binga District Hospital).
The food crisis of 2008 thus required indigenous knowledge systems and coping
mechanisms for most Tonga communities and households to survive. In this light,
gathering wild food became one of the key adaptation strategies in response to the
food crisis. It is quite common that wild foods for rural Zimbabwe communities are
mainly used to supplement the diet during periods of severe stress (Zinyama et al.
2010). However, foraging in Binga during the 2008 food crisis was done to survive,
and not for supplementing any crop harvest and relief food which were not available.
Women in particular were responsible for food provision because of the Tonga’s
matrilineal inheritance practices and polygamous marriages. Women were able to
draw upon their indigenous knowledges so as to unlock the potential of rarely used
wild foods. Most families had to survive on a wide variety of wild fruits, tubers,
vegetables and insects which could assist in coping with hunger and contribute to
nutrition.
Tonga communities mobilised themselves along kinship relations to gather food
as they shared knowledge of edible flora and fauna from the forest. There was
widespread exploitation of wild foods as the elderly women who were knowledgeable
of edible roots crucial for survival accompanied groups of younger women and chil-
dren into the bushes and forests. They displayed a level of assertiveness as they even
looked for food from the ecologically rich but dangerous Chizarira National Park
which teemed with elephants, buffalos and lions. Out of sheer desperation, these old
women would even climb tall trees to access the precious fruits for survival (Inter-
view with Kandimba Mudimba on 21 December 2020 in Sinakoma). There were
also some bitter and poisonous roots, tubers and fruits which were collected and well
prepared for purposes of fighting off starvation. The older women also showed their
ingenuity as they passed on their knowledge of collecting and preparing toxic edible
roots and bulbs as a buffer against hunger to the younger generations.

168 C. G. Dhodho
Scudder (1971: 29) notes that, traditionally, during periods of severe food short-
ages, the Tonga used to identify and use certain plants and roots which they normally
did not consider edible, cooking them only as famine food for survival. Though the
Tonga in 2008 were indeed forced to eat whatever food they could obtain, they had
to find certain types of wild food which contained carbohydrates that would supple-
ment their traditional sorghum or millet staple foods. They thus collected tiny seeds
of wild grasses in the mountains and pounded them to make flour, but this provided
very little food. As noted by Cliggett (2005: 4), this was a traditional famine food
but it would take at least three hours to collect enough grains to make a bowl of food
for just one person.
The busikka fruit (Tamarindus indica) which the people used in the past on an
annual basis was widely used during the food crisis. During better years, the Tonga
mixed the pulp of tamarind with some millet porridge to make a nutritious beverage
called muvwipwa. However, there was no grain to mix with the pulp during the 2008
famine. Instead, they used ash from Mopani trees to make a type of porridge called
chintobola which though caused diarrhoea. The Tonga have always argued that this
meal was only prepared as a survivalist strategy when the situation became partic-
ularly desperate (Tremmel 1994). The people also collected the pods of the apple-
ring thorn (Acacia albid)—which ripened between September and November—when
there was nothing in the fields. Women and children gathered these (maunga) pods in
large quantities for their bean seeds, but they contained hydro-cyanide which is toxic.
Scudder (1971: 28) confirms that, before their forced resettlement, the Tonga relied
on these pods as famine foods. They had to carefully prepare them for twenty-four
hours to remove the toxicity. They boiled the bean seeds to remove the hard outer
cover and later reboiled them with ashes during the night, before soaking them in
clean water (Interview with Chipego Msaka on 20 December 2020 in Sikalenge).
Seeds of blanket mahogany (nsikili) were boiled as well as beans and eaten to abate
hunger during 2008, as were sozwe fruits and seeds although they were unpalatable.
Additionally, the Tonga resorted to eating dangerous toxic tubers which they
dug from the forest, again a practice undertaken only during times of critical food
shortages. They dug the plant called Amorpholous abyssinicus until they obtained
a white potato-sized tuber which was cut into small pieces and washed (Maclaine
2006: 62). This willowleaf (kabombwe) tuber had to be boiled throughout the night
to remove all the poison, and tamarind leaves were added to purify it and improve
the taste. This plant intoxicated people, as they became drunk and slept as a way of
conserving energy and forgetting about food for a while (Tremmel 1994). Tubers like
morning glory (lusale) and bwidi were also boiled and eaten to fight against hunger,
and they boiled the sweet roots of masangu and drank the juice for energy. Women
and children spent considerable time looking for edible leaves, barks and stems from
trees which they boiled with salt and ate. The most popular drought-resistant bushes
included the nkomba plant which grew to about half a metre in height and whose
leaves were used to prepare telele soup for energy to alleviate the effects of famine.
The Tonga continued living off wild foods until the rains came and they were able
to access some food from their fields in December 2008. This included cucurbits,

9 Letting Them Starve: The 2008 Food Crisis … 169
beans, or watermelons, but they had to continue to forage to obtain supplementary
foods until the main harvest of sorghum (which came from March 2009).
The signing of the Global Political Agreement led to a power sharing deal between
the main political parties which saw the formation of the Government of National
Unity (GNU) in February 2009. The formation of this inclusive government was,
however, merely a temporary solution to the political and economic crises marking
the country. Consequently, for a few years, this political solution helped to stabilise
the economy up until the contested national elections of 2013, which brought ZANU-
PF back as sole ruling party. Although the country’s political environment between
2009 and 2013 became more conducive for pursuing livelihoods, the marginalised
Tonga could not easily escape from poverty and food insecurity due to the entrenched
structural constraints inhibiting their capacity to make a living. Though food aid
distribution was soon restored, poverty remained. What clear lesson for the Tonga
during the 2008 food crisis was the significance of traditional food crisis coping
mechanisms as a basis for sheer survival.
9.6 Conclusion
Food security is central to cushioning rural people against poverty and it is enhanced
by traditional food crisis coping mechanisms in drought-prone areas such as Binga.
Although the Tonga suffered significantly from the famine of 2008 which pushed
them towards destitution, they were culturally conscious of the uniqueness and
strengths of their indigenous knowledge systems of living from wild foods. Living
off the wild as a traditional food crisis coping mechanism was crucial for fighting
famine and it enabled the Tonga in Binga to survive pronounced food insecurity and
the food aid crisis. Marginalisation and neglect by the government, over an extended
period of time, has impoverished the Tonga and this contributed significantly to the
food crisis of 2008. Although facing severe famine under conditions of massive
livelihood constraints, the Tonga were not passive victims of disaster unable to enact
agency. They displayed their resilience by living off the wild, with the collection
and use of wild foods increasing significantly when food aid stopped. While, on
humanitarian grounds, it makes sense for NGOs (and government) to provide relief
food aid during periods of food crisis, if done over lengthy periods it negatively
affects traditional coping mechanisms in the face of food shortages by stimulating a
dependency syndrome. This requires more development-focused (not aid-focused)
programmes which focus on medium- to long-term food security, for instance by
facilitating Tonga access to water from Lake Kariba through extensive irrigation
schemes in the face of climate change and increasing episodes of drought. There is
also a need for further research on how forest foods can be harnessed to improve
food security in Binga.

170 C. G. Dhodho
Funding Research for this chapter was partly funded by Rhodes University’s African Studies
Centre through its funding from the DFG, the German Research Foundation under Germany’s
Excellent Strategy (Funding No. EXC2052/1).
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Word Food Programme Annual Report (2008) https://www.wfp.org.publications
Zimbabwe Daily Newspaper (20 January 2015) Binga MP blasts Obert Mpofu
Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC) (May 2009) Interim rural food security
assessment
Zimbabwe Food Security Outlook October 2007 to March 2008, Relief Web, September 2007
https://www.reliefweb.int/report/zim-foodsecurity-outlook
Zinyama LM et al (2010) The us of willd foods during periods of food shortages in rural Zimbabwe.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03670244.1990.9991144
Codelia Govha Dhodho writes about the social history of the Tonga of Binga District, and
she has a keen interest in their livelihoods. She is a Ph.D. student studying African History at
Rhodes University, South Africa, and is also a Lecturer at the Catholic University of Zimbabwe
in Bulawayo, teaching History and Development Studies.

Chapter 10
(Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest
for Belonging—The Case of (Chewa)
Ex-Farm Workers in Shamva’s
Communal Areas
Patience Chadambuka
Abstract The marginalisation of ethnic minorities in Zimbabwe has been authored
and reinforced by the nation state and, historically across both the colonial and
postcolonial periods, this has had profound implications on the livelihoods of ethnic
minorities. These ethnic groups include Africans of ‘foreign’ origin whose roots are
often traced to neighbouring countries, mainly Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi.
These ethnic communities are today mainly a ‘colonial residue’, consisting of various
generations of migrants who came into the country mostly as covenanted labour
during the colonial era. This chapter focusses on one specific group, namely the
Chewa originally from Malawi, who lived and worked on white commercial farms
in Zimbabwe for decades and over generations. From the year 2000, they were
displaced from the farms in the context of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform
Programme and some migrated to communal areas, as they had lost ties, or had no
ties, to their purported country of origin. Through a case study Bushu communal
areas in Shamva District, this chapter focusses on the re(invention) of livelihoods by
the displaced ex-farm workers in ethnicised communal areas in the face of disputes
around agrarian spaces and land access, and how they sought to belong to these areas
in the process.
Keywords Chewa ·Ex-farm workers ·Livelihoods ·Belonging ·Autochthon ·
Allochthon
10.1 Introduction
The marginalisation of Africans of foreign origin in Zimbabwe remains deeply
rooted in their historical colonial migration into the country. The origins of these
ethnic groups can be traced to neighbouring countries in the region, mainly Zambia,
Mozambique and Malawi, including the Chewa from Malawi (who are the focus
P. Chadambuka (B
)
Department of Community Studies, Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe
e-mail: pchadambuka@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_10
173

174 P. Chadambuka
of this study). These Africans of foreign origin incorporate a number of genera-
tions of migrants who entered into the country mostly as covenanted labour during
the colonial era (1890s–1980), with migration persisting after 1980 albeit in less
numbers.
As people who were engaged strictly for labour purposes in white settler mines,
farms and urban areas, they were (and continue to be in many instances) excluded
from mainstream autochthonous privileges including voting and access to common
goods and welfare (Rutherford 2001; Muzondidya 2007;Daimon2014). Effectively,
they have led precarious lives under both colonial and postcolonial conditions. While
those in mines and towns, including people born in the country as descendants of
earlier migrants, continue to provide their labour, the situation is different for those
who worked in white commercial farms. Their lives were permanently altered by
Zimbabwe’s widely documented Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP),
starting from early 2000. This chapter focusses on the livelihood strategies adopted
by former farm workers of Chewa origin who moved into communal areas following
displacements in the context of Zimbabwe’s FTLRP.
10.2 Chewa (Ex-Farm Workers) in Zimbabwe
The Chewa constitute the largest ethnic group in Malawi, and their disputed origin
(together with other ethnic groups found in present-day Malawi, including the
Bemba, Nsenga, Senga and Tumbuka) is often traced to present-day Democratic
Republic of Congo (Groves 2020; Juwayeyi 2020). Others claim the Chewa origi-
nate from North Africa notably Libya and Egypt (Juwayeyi 2020). In short, like most
ethnic groups existing in Southern Africa, the Chewa are part of the ‘millions’ who
migrated in complex patterns within Africa particularly during the precolonial era
and thus their origin story is not short of contestations (Groves 2020: 15).
Chewa migration in general and into Zimbabwe in particular became more
pronounced, controlled, and documented through state regulations during the colo-
nial era, with the rate slowly waning in the late 1970s and into postcolonial Zimbabwe
(Groves 2020). The need for labour in the newly established settler mines, farms
and growing urban centres in Southern Rhodesia (named simply Rhodesia from the
early 1960s) catapulted state regulated and unregulated (i.e. autonomous) waged
labour migration from the nearby colonies of mainly Nyasaland (now Malawi),
Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) and,
to a lesser extent, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Bechuanaland (now Botswana)
(Scott 1954; Chadya and Mayavo 2002). At the same time, the reliance of indigenous
or autochthonous blacks in Southern Rhodesia on farming, particularly subsistence
farming in the Native Reserves (later named Tribal Trust Lands, and then communal
areas post-independence), made them reluctant to join the settler economy labour
force.
Because of this, the Southern Rhodesian government entered into labour agree-
ments (such as the Tripartite Agreements of 1936 and 1942) with the colonial

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 175
governments of other southern African nations (including Nyasaland) in order to
facilitate the controlled or regulated migration of covenanted Nyasa and other labour
into Southern Rhodesia (Scott 1954; Johnson 2000). The (Foreign) Migrant Labour
Department and a labour recruitment parastatal, the Rhodesia Native Labour Supply
Commission (RNLSC), were established to facilitate recruitment and repatriation of
foreign workers (Groves 2020).
Most Nyasa migrants including the Chewa though migrated clandestinely (i.e.
unregulated), often on foot, evading tax obligations and forced repatriation (which
habitually accompanied covenanted labour conditions). A panoply of dynamics
ensuing in both Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia created the need for Nyasas
(including the Chewa) to move into Southern Rhodesia. A series of colonial tax
regimes, land appropriation by white settlers and discriminatory suppression of
African agriculture among other factors in Nyasaland compelled the Chewa and
other ethnic groups from Malawi to opt for labour migration into Southern Rhodesia
and also South Africa (Chadya and Mayavo 2002). Others fled forced First World War
army conscription. Higher wages and wider employment opportunities attracted the
Chewa to Southern Rhodesia, or beyond to South Africa. In fact, some Chewa who
ended up permanently settling in Southern Rhodesia initially planned to use Southern
Rhodesia as a temporary stopover on their intended journey to South Africa (Johnson
2000).
Most Nyasas entered the country through the central and northern parts of
Southern Rhodesia (Scott 1954) and this explains why the Chewa tended to domi-
nate the farm labour forces in Mashonaland districts including in the research site
for this study (Shamva). The number of Malawians signed up by official recruitment
agencies peaked at 78,492 by 1970, with clandestine migration rates thought to be
even higher (Groves 2020: 44).
Nyasa migrants differed in terms of ethnic origin, class and gender variables,
which had profound effects on their livelihood chances once in Southern Rhodesia
(and later, Rhodesia). Ethnic groups originating in the Northern and Southern
provinces of Malawi, including the Tonga and Tumbuka, were relatively better
educated, making it easier for them to secure privileged jobs such as mission teachers,
evangelists and police officers (Groves 2020). These esteemed professions (at least
by African standards at the time) often facilitated access to a variety of goods and
services including, though on a limited basis, stands in the Native Reserves once in the
country. The situation was, however, quite different for the mostly uneducated Chewa
found in the marginalised central Nyasaland provinces. Lack of education implied
that they often landed in inferior jobs in Rhodesia—working mainly as unskilled farm
and mine labourers (Groves 2020). Their inferior status, as poor and deprived farm
labourers, limited both their livelihood strategies and chances of obtaining stands in
the Reserves, thus confining them to a cycle of farm poverty.

176 P. Chadambuka
10.3 Chewa Farm Labourers and Fast Track Land Reform
Chewas are some of the first foreign workers to be employed in the white settler-
owned commercial farms (Johnson 2000). Together with most foreign farm workers,
they constituted the poorest of the poor labourers in both colonial and independent
Zimbabwe, living and working ‘on the margins’ (Rutherford 2001). Their physical,
socio-economic and political marginalisation differentiated them from other workers
living in other rural as well as urban areas. Exclusion from the nation (as articulated
by the state) implied exclusion from any social welfare or benefits flowing from
the state. Instead, farm workers generally (local and foreign) existed within the
confines of what Rutherford (2001) calls ‘domestic government’ on white farms,
whereby farmers provided welfarist measures for their workers, including education,
health, food, groceries, credit and, at times, portions of land to specifically permanent
employees. These measures though were not guaranteed, as they were overseen by
the farmer at his own whim, and they came with coercive conditions meant to control
and retain farm workers while subjecting them to ‘conditional belonging’ on and to
the farm (Rutherford 2001). In essence, conditional belonging entailed that farm
workers would access work, housing and farm-based welfare in exchange for their
commitment and allegiance to the farmer. Failure to observe the ‘rules of the farm’
meant loss of employment and all the benefits arising from it, including access to
land and shelter. Farm labourers’ ‘right’ to the farm was conditional on labouring
properly for the farmer. Domestic government, by ensuring that labourers came
under the direct and independent control of the farmer (thereby belonging to the
latter), legitimised the state’s exclusion of farm workers from national belonging,
diminishing their livelihood chances in the process. This was reinforced because of
the foreign status of many if not most farm labourers.
The position of farm labourers post-1980 did not undergo significant changes over
the first two decades, with domestic government remaining in force and land reform
being insignificant. However, fast track land reform from the year 2000 brought about
massive insecurities for farm labourers on white farms, particularly labourers of
foreign origin. While autochthonous labourers might have access to communal land
if displaced from the farms, this was not necessarily the case for foreign labourers.
Loss of work and farm displacement within the context of FTLRP led to the need to
reinvent life in general and livelihoods in particular for ex-farm workers, especially
migrant ex-farm labourers and their families.
Following the FTLRP, many ex-workers remained on the farms under precarious
and insecure conditions. But there were massive displacements as well, with some
ex-farm workers migrating to towns, informal settlements or other farms, while a few
ended up in the highly ethnicised communal areas, places specifically and exclusively
created for autochthones and thus closed off to Africans of foreign origin. At least
initially, scholarly attention neglected the fate of ex-farm workers (post fast track),
with any pertinent literature tending to document those who stayed on the farms,
therefore falling short of capturing the lives of those who migrated off-farm and
particularly those who moved into communal areas in relation to livelihoods. As

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 177
Hartnack (2017: 279) highlights, ‘[it] is not clear how displaced former workers
now living in communal areas have fared given the severe lack of literature on their
situation’. This chapter contributes to filling this scholarly gap by focussing on how
Chewa ex-farm workers have re(invented) livelihoods in communal areas in Shamva,
particularly given the exclusionary ethnic undertones that characterise these areas.
10.4 Zimbabwe’s Communal Areas, Belonging
and Livelihoods
Native Reserves were set aside for native Africans following the 1890s’ annexation
of the territory by the British South African Company. Settler administrators also
promulgated indirect rule through autochthonous patriarchs in their various forms (as
chiefs, headmen and village heads). Colonial administrators accorded autochthonous
Africans rights to access land in the Reserves (later, Tribal Trusts Lands), while
openly denying Africans of foreign origin, including the Chewa, the right to settle
in the Reserves. Early colonial legislation such as Government Notice No. 223 of
1898 decisively prohibited the settlement of non-autochthonous Africans in African
Reserve villages. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which racially bifurcated
the country into black and white landscapes on an official basis, also made it illegal
for non-autochthonous Africans and their descendants to possess land. Later, the
Tribal Trust Land Act of 1967 clearly stated that land should not be occupied by non-
autochthonous Africans, but should be used and occupied exclusively by ‘tribesmen’
(or ‘aboriginal natives’). This system was inherited and reproduced by the postcolo-
nial government, which adopted an exclusionary stance towards Africans of foreign
origin in relation to communal areas. By the year 2000, when the FTLRP took centre
stage, up to 180,000 farm worker households (of foreign origin) lacked access to
land in communal areas because of their foreign origin (Moyo et al. 2000: 196).
Communal land is vital for rural Zimbabweans who form the bulk of the country’s
population and thrive on land-based livelihoods. Lack of access to land for non-
autochthonous Africans, particularly for those displaced from white farms post fast
track, thus entails limited access to livelihoods in rural Zimbabwe. These liveli-
hoods include on-farm activities mainly in the form of subsistence crop and livestock
production. Crops grown by communal farmers include the staple maize, sorghum,
millet, groundnuts and lately beans. As well, cash crops including cotton and tobacco
are becoming more important sources of income for many communal households.
Most communal households also possess small gardens in which they grow various
vegetables such as leafy vegetables, tomatoes and onions, which act as a relish for the
staple food of sadza (i.e. thick porridge made from maize meal). Off-farm activities
include the pursuance of artisanal mining and petty trading. However, households are
differentiated in socio-economic terms (Scoones et al. 2017). Despite the presence
of poverty in communal areas, they do provide a socio-spatial arrangement for rural

178 P. Chadambuka
livelihoods, which Africans of foreign origin are denied typically (despite even being
born in Zimbabwe).
10.5 Methodology
This study is framed within a constructivist-interpretive methodology and, resul-
tantly, I adopted qualitative research methods as they help ‘to understand, explain,
explore, discover and clarify situations, feelings, perceptions, attitudes, values,
beliefs and experiences of a group of people’ (Kumar 2011: 103). It entailed a semi-
ethnographic case study of two villages within Ward 13 of Bushu communal areas
in Shamva District, into which a number of former (Chewa) farm workers moved
subsequently to fast track. For purposes of ensuring confidentiality of my partici-
pants, I do not provide the names of the villages. There is no claim to the effect that
the two sites represent (at least statistically) sites more broadly in Shamva or other
communal areas in the country. However, the evidence collected, and conclusions
reached, should have relevance in terms of understanding similar dynamics around
livelihoods and politics of belonging for former farm labourers of foreign origin in
similar or comparable sites.
The two villages were selected through non-random purposive sampling, as sub-
case studies. Formal clearance was sought and received from the Provincial Develop-
ment Coordinator and the Shamva District Development Coordinator (DDC). From
the DDC’s office, I went to the Ward Councillor who introduced me to the village
heads. The village heads assisted me by identifying potential research participants
who then introduced me to more participants, thus a snowball effect became part
of my data sampling. Fieldwork entailed simultaneous and multiple data collection
methods (interviews and participant observation), including in-depth semi-structured
interviews with 18 former farm workers of Chewa origin now residing in Bushu
communal areas. The fieldwork was undertaken between September 2019 and March
2020.
Shamva District falls under the auspices of Chaminuka Rural District Council
in Mashonaland Central Province. Shamva town is 86 kms northeast of the capital
of Harare. Currently, Shamva consists of communal areas, older resettlement areas
from the 1980s, model A1 and model A2 fast track farms and a few remaining
white- and black-owned commercial farms. Shamva is a politically volatile area
with a large support base for the ruling ZANU-PF party. For an extended period, pre-
dating 1980, communal areas in Shamva District were characterised by ‘frequent and
bitter struggles’ (Matondi 2001: 8) over the finite communal land and limited liveli-
hoods available, with these struggles taking place among the autochthones. Hence,
historically, practices of social and spatial boundary making, including clashes over
livelihoods and ancestral land claims, were prevalent in the district. Chewa ex-farm
labourers migrated into Shamva’s Bushu communal areas during fast track within
this historical and political context.

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 179
10.6 Conceptualising Livelihoods and Belonging
In this chapter, I consider how livelihoods are embedded in broader projects of
belonging in ethnicised communal areas of Zimbabwe. In doing so, I pay particular
attention to how ethnic identity and belonging form the basis on which livelihood
chances are enhanced or confined. In this context, ethnic identity is framed, at least
initially, within the prism of the autochthone–allochthon dichotomy. The concept
of autochthony has been popularised by scholars such as Geschierre and Nyamnjoh
chiefly to analyse political dynamics ensuing in Africa since the dawn of democratic
movements on the continent. These scholars highlight how Africans believed to have
a primordial origin to a particular geographical location (autochthones) are consid-
ered (or consider themselves) as ‘sons and daughters of the soil’, thus belonging
to a particular nation, while using the same claim to marginalise those Africans
said to have originated elsewhere or beyond the territorial and social boundaries of
the nation (allochthones) (Geschiere 2009,2011; Geschiere and Nyamnjoh 2000).
The autochthone/allochthone dichotomy becomes the basis of ethnicised belonging
(inclusion and exclusion).
For the former farm workers of foreign origin in Zimbabwe, the allochthone iden-
tity has earned them an outsider status which legitimises their exclusion from access to
common goods (particularly land) that are accorded to autochthonous ethnic groups
labelled as belonging to Zimbabwe. In an agro-based rural economy where access
to land configures life and livelihood chances, ethnic exclusion compels Africans of
foreign origin into conditions of perpetual vulnerability and poverty. Lack of access
to (communal) land entails lack of residential and agricultural plots together with
accompanying land-based livelihoods. Seeking to move into communal areas, as
many foreign former farm labourers sought to do after the fast track disruptions,
goes beyond a mere change in geographical location and residency. It raises ques-
tions of belonging, given in particular their ‘white farmers’ people’ identity, and
thereby entails a broad project of belonging in relation to communal land and other
sources of livelihoods long closed to these farm workers and reserved exclusively
for autochthonous Zimbabweans community members and its landscape.
In this way, former farm workers’ ability to reinvent livelihoods in communal
areas entails a quest on their part to belong to (and in) a territory from which they
have been historically excluded. Interfaces and interactions ensuing between the
newcomers (Chewa) and autochthonous villagers, as the newcomers negotiate entry
into the communal area and start engaging in livelihood strategies, become key in
structuring the degree of acceptance and belonging of the former farm workers. The
following section discusses my empirical findings in Bushu.

180 P. Chadambuka
10.7 Former Chewa Farm Workers and Livelihoods
in Bushu Communal Areas
Most of those displaced by fast track and now living in communal areas left (the once)
white commercial farms for Bushu communal area between 2000 and 2002 when fast
track was at its peak. A few left between 2002 and 2007, while the number escalated in
2008 as farm takeovers resurfaced around the time of the presidential elections in that
year. Some came to Bushu after 2010. By 2020, when I was conducting my fieldwork,
some former farm workers of foreign origin were still seeking access to communal
land stands. The stands were accessed through various means including clandestine
purchases from ordinary villagers and village heads. Others were formally settled
through the DDC and chief’s offices. Social networks also facilitated access to stands,
through relatives and friends who negotiated the stands on behalf of the ex-farm
labourers.
Generally, the Chewa ex-farm workers livingin Bushu communal areas expressed
mixed feelings about their new forms of livelihoods. While the majority bemoaned
the economic hardships that they now faced, some were quick to point out that their
lives have improved compared to white commercial farm life. Most stated that they
now had diversified sources of livelihoods in the communal areas, compared to the
monotonous and singular on-farm work (i.e. as labourers) on the commercial farms.
Most former farm workers currently earn a living through farming, gold panning,
brick laying, petty trading and piece work.
They linked this pursuit of a range of livelihood activities to the newly felt freedom
in the communal areas, after leaving behind the domestic government and conditional
belonging of the white commercial farm and, in many cases, the subsequent fast track
farm. Caleb for instance notes that he is now free to purchase and own possessions
for his homestead without some authoritative figure asking him about the source of
his new possessions (Interview with Caleb, 19 September 2019). At the commercial
farms, farm labourers were under surveillance, with the farmer constantly checking
on his workers’ possessions and their sources, fearing the workers were stealing from
him. At the same time, the end of paternalism under farm-based domestic govern-
ment, particularly in relation to the availability of farm-store credit and food handouts,
limited their safety nets in Bushu. Below, I discuss some of the key livelihood strate-
gies that the former farm workers pursue in Bushu, including the challenges they
face with reference to their quest to belong to Bushu.
10.7.1 Farming
Some former farm workers were able to secure only residential plots in Bushu, while
others were demarcated agricultural plots as well. However, even those who failed
to secure agricultural plots claimed to now have at least a piece of land (i.e. their
residential plot) on which to practice some level of subsistence farming. Overall,

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 181
the land available for crops among former labourers remains inferior to those of the
autochthones in terms of both size and quality. Some had residential stands together
with farming stands located in rocky areas, making it difficult to realise sufficient
agricultural yields and contributing to their vulnerability.
Augusto, for example, bemoaned the poor-quality land that he possessed. He
claims that former work colleagues remaining at the commercial farm were resettled
later in a grazing area on that farm, receiving better land than what he got in Bushu.
He complained that most Africans of foreign origin are treated as ‘second class
citizens’ in Bushu, as they were often fed with leftovers and crumbs in the form of
land that the indigenes no longer wanted (interview with Augusto, 21 September
2019). For the former farm labourers, the inferior land received signified at least a
limited belonging in the communal area, but one that often reminded them of their
foreign origin. The newcomers’ ongoing ‘otherness’ was symbolised by the rocky
areas where they lived and farmed. As Augusto narrated:
Sometimes you only have to look and you can tell that that place belongs to a former farm
person. They [autochthones] don’t give their relatives such types of land. It’s for us. When
we came here in our numbers, they probably said “let’s settle them in places where no one
else wants”. We are given crumbs every time. (Interview with Augusto 21 September 2019)
Still, the land available for cropping was significant compared to any land which
white farmers gave them as workers, which sometimes was no land at all. The
former workers also added that they felt more secure and freer to control and use
the land compared to their regimented lives as farm labourers. As a result, those
who worked hard could realise good crop yields in Bushu, and they could even sell
surplus produce since they now had many years of farming experience. Crops grown
included maize, groundnuts and vegetables. They used any cash proceeds from crop
sales to purchase basic household goods and to pay for their children’s school fees.
They yearned, however, for larger and more productive pieces of cropping land, as
they could improve their lives on this basis. In this regard, they complained that some
autochthones were holding on to large tracts of land that they were not utilising at
all. Some autochthones possessing land in Bushu let it lie fallow, opting to farm in
the former commercial farm (now fast track) lands, or becoming employed in urban
centres.
Some former farm workers received agricultural plots in the grazing lands of
Bushu that, historically, were for collective usage. Typically, these grazing lands
required extensive land clearance that was inherently tiresome to the newcomers
in the absence of advanced technologies. The new Chewa occupiers had to work
extremely hard using hand axes and hoes in order to clear the land for cropping
purposes. Establishing themselves as farmers in Bushu was a longer and more
strenuous process, compared to those receiving well-used agricultural plots.
Besides growing crops, the former farm workers also spoke about the capacity to
keep livestock in Bushu, something which white farmers denied them. In communal
areas like Bushu, cattle are indispensable for draught power by way of ox-drawn
ploughing and weeding (alongside scotch carts for transporting agricultural inputs
and produce). Livestock more generally (including goats and sheep) serve as a safety

182 P. Chadambuka
net as they can be sold for cash for paying for school fees and other critical household
needs, or during times of emergency (for instance, family funerals and illnesses).
Domestic animals are slaughtered as well for family gatherings and celebrations,
or during the dry season when homestead gardens cannot produce vegetables as a
relish. Finally, cattle form a crucial component of bride price (lobola) which is so
central to Shona culture in Bushu.
In this context, in an interview (25 October 2019), John highlighted that it used
to be difficult for farm workers (before fast track) to marry autochthones, as they did
not own cattle. But, they are now able to accumulate livestock (including cattle) and,
because of this, they felt like ‘human beings’ (Interview with Bazil, 15 November
2019). Thus, livestock ownership could facilitate a sense of personhood (or manhood)
as well as belonging in the autochthonous communities of Bushu. Those ex-workers
who now own cattle were able to meet required social obligations (for example, bride
price) on an easier basis, and cattle enhanced their overall social status. They were,
at least from their perspective, becoming like the autochthones.
However, not all former farm workers of Chewa origin managed to accumulate
even small herds of livestock. At a very minimum, they all had chickens. For example,
Chipo reared boschveld chickens in association with other villagers, and she had 23
chickens at the time of the fieldwork (Interview with Chipo, 11 February 2020). Some
had a significant number of goats, which are relatively cheap to buy (compared to
cattle) and breed faster. The majority of ex-farm labourers in fact still failed to acquire
or purchase cattle, even those who entered Bushu almost twenty years ago. Those
who did own cattle had less than three cattle, except for two who had four cattle.
Overall, their livestock holdings fall far short of the status of successful communal
area subsistence farmers.
10.7.2 Gold Panning
Most male ex-labourers reported that they were now actively involved in gold panning
to earn a living. Shamva is a mineral-rich area, being home to one of the country’s
wealthiest gold deposits. Large-scale mining takes place, but there is also informal
gold panning in nearby rivers such as the Mazowe River. Just before the time of my
fieldwork, there was the discovery of a gold deposit at Shamva’s New Line farm
village. Part of this farm was once designated solely as a grazing area for A1 farmers
who initially occupied the farm in 2000; and it later became a former farm workers’
place of residence (with most of the workers being of foreign origin, mainly Chewa).
A gold rush arose at New Line, specifically where the former farm workers reside,
and former (Chewa) labourers living in Bushu communal areas became involved in
this. Located near Kajakata and Chakonda villages in Bushu, to where many former
farm workers migrated and now resided, this A1 farm became a haven for the former
workers involved in gold panning. Most former farm workers living and ‘plying their
trade’ at New Line happened to be well acquainted with the former farm workers
who presently lived in Bushu, having worked and lived together on commercial farms

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 183
prior to fast track. Thus, the pre-existing social networks between the two groups
facilitated the entry of the latter into the goldfields.
Gold panning further signalled the former farm workers’ freedom from domestic
government, as they had the leeway, liberty and autonomy to act out their working
lives according to their own tempos and rhythms. Certainly, on white farms, gold
panning was prohibited, and labourers were expected to devote their working time
exclusively to the agricultural demands of the white farmer. Though experiencing the
loss of full-time and permanent agricultural employment because of fast track, they
were now free to venture into multiple sources of income (including gold panning).
For some ex-labourers (such as Shadreck and James), gold panning was their primary
source of livelihood as Bushu villagers, earning more than they did formerly as
agricultural labourers (Interview with Shadreck, 18 October 2019; Interview with
James, 19 September 2019).
Because of the vigorous labour involved in gold panning, it was more appealing
to the younger and able-bodied men. Others preferred on-farm labour (within Bushu)
since it was less cumbersome and safer compared to gold panning. Likewise, women
indicated that gold panning was a male-dominated activity, and none of the former
female farm workers indicated that they were actively involved—at least directly—in
gold mining. Instead, the women would sell goods and services such as beer, food,
clothes and sex to the gold panners. The Chewa former farm workers turned gold
panners were quick to point out as well that not all was rosy in the world of gold
panning. They panned for gold illegally without the proper documentation, and the
activity was very risky and full of hazards. There were reports that some panners
had succumbed to mysterious deaths, and others died or suffered injuries through
accidents. Incidences of infighting, deceit and jealousy also characterised the life of
the panners.
Despite its challenges, gold panning proceeds ensured at times the acquisition
of certain possessions for the former labourers. One mentioned that he built a five-
roomed brick house in Bushu. Another mentioned that, on top of building a four-
roomed house in Bushu, he managed to make a deposit on a residential stand in
Shamva town’s Wadzanai Township. He hoped to build a decent house in Wadzanai
and possibly diversify his income through collecting rentals from the house (Inter-
view with Shadreck, 18 October 2019; Interview with Ndoro, 18 October 2019).
Others indicated that they were able to buy such goods as radios, television sets and
cell phones, and they were paying their children’s school fees through funds accrued
from mining proceeds.
10.7.3 Piece Work
Besides farming their own crops in the communal areas, many former farm workers
still worked in the former white-owned commercial farms, but now as part-time
employees. The A1 and A2 farmers would arrange to ferry the ex-labourers from
their communal homes in the morning to nearby fast track farms where they would

184 P. Chadambuka
work during the day. In the evening, they would return to their homes. For former
farm workers of foreign origin, working in this way (only as and when they wanted)
signified a break from domestic government—as they could choose when they wanted
to work or rest, thereby giving them time to concentrate on their own communal
agricultural plots when necessary. Conditional belonging, whereby they traded their
labour and loyalty to the white farmer in return for work and shelter, no longer
existed.
Former permanent now turned part-time farm workers, however, complained that
their new farm employers (both A1 and A2 farmers) did not want to pay them at the
same wage standard as set by their former white bosses. Ndebvu, for instance, had
this to say:
Our very own [black farmers] are just stingy. They want to get rich overnight. White farmers
invested patiently, for years, even though what they paid us was low. These people are worse.
They see us as donkeys and a cheap gateway to getting rich. They just do not want to pay.
(Interview with Ndebvu, 31 October 2019)
Others pointed out that sometimes the new farmers did not pay them at all. The
ex-labourers would not demand their payments or seek recourse for fear of victim-
isation. Caleb, for example, feared the new fast track farmers would follow him to
his communal home and cause a scene. As such, in an endeavour to avoid noise and
raising alarm (and prevent any further harm), Caleb would ignore pursuing the new
farmers who owed him wages for work done (Interview with Caleb, 19 September
2019).
Beyond performing part-time work on the A1 and some A2 farms, some former
farm workers performed piece work on the agricultural plots of certain Bushu
villagers. They would weed and harvest crops for autochthonous Bushu villagers in
return for money, clothes or groceries. Communal piece work, though, was hard to
come by considering the general poverty characteristic of communal areas including
Bushu. Due to the subsistence character of Bushu agriculture, most homesteads in
fact depended upon family labour exclusively. There were, however, a few (compara-
tively) well-off communal villagers who could afford to hire additional labour. These
included small business owners, successful full-time communal farmers, salaried
communal workers and those who depended on remittances from grown-up children
or spouses.
Most interviewees indicated that the few villagers who could afford to employ
part-time labourers preferred former (Chewa) farm workers because they were hard-
working. The Chewas’ years of experience on white-owned farms gave them supe-
rior expertise and dexterity in performing agricultural labour. One ex-worker, for
instance, claimed that he was capable of weeding in one day a portion of a plot that
an autochthone would take four days to finish. The former labourers also pointed out
that, back in the days before fast track when they worked together with communal
area autochthones on the former commercial farms, the latter (labouring on a part-
time basis) would struggle to complete their required tasks. Overall, they claimed
that white farmers preferred Africans of foreign origin as farm labourers to even

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 185
permanent autochthones labouring on their farms. The former farm workers there-
fore migrated with their competitive labour advantage over autochthones into the
communal areas.
Additionally, tensions existed between the Chewa ex-labourers and some
autochthones over scarce communal piece work in Bushu. The Chewa indicated
that some of their autochthonous piece work-labouring counterparts blamed the
newcomers for taking away their jobs. The autochthones’ ostensible bitterness
became manifested in different ways, including gossip, name calling and witchcraft
accusations. Thus, in their endeavour to earn a living, the former farm workers would
at times unintentionally spark tensions with the autochthones. Realising their vulner-
ability, most former workers as newcomers would try to avoid confrontations, as the
case of Caleb shows.
10.7.4 Petty Trading
Most female interviewees were trying to make a living through buying and selling
commodities that included groceries, footwear and clothing. Only a handful of men
were engaged in this trade. Generally, petty trading was highly gendered (and femi-
nised) and it involved low safety risks compared to masculinised trades such as
mining. The women bought commodities in the nearby Wadzanai township (in
Shamva town) or as far as South Africa, which we then sold in the communal
areas, fast track farms or nearby mines. Social networks established during years
of commercial farm life enabled the petty traders to sell their merchandise in the
former white-owned farms. Most of their customers were labouring people who
once or still lived on the farms, the majority being Chewa and other Africans of
foreign origin. Their shared foreign origins, alongside their common experiences as
allochthones, facilitated this.
For petty trading with the gold panners, the Chewa women sold commodities to
both autochthones and those of foreign origins. However, as with the fast track farms,
the petty traders indicated that most of their gold panning customers were Chewa ex-
labourers and non-Chewa of foreign origin. Though gold panners are feared because
of their tendency for violence, the female traders were comforted by the fact that
they knew some of the panners, as they were also living in Bushu. As well, the
large Shamva Gold Mine closed in 2018, resulting in former mine workers using
their mining expertise to seek personal fortunes by gold panning informally in the
district. Most of the former mine workers are of foreign origin, including Chewa.
Again, the shared ‘foreign’ language, culture and origin significantly enhanced busi-
ness opportunities for the former farm workers turned traders. Most panners were
reliable customers since they were accumulating a reasonable amount of wealth.
Commodities in demand from the panners included alcohol, cigarettes, clothes and
food.
Apart from selling to the farm and mining communities, the petty traders had a
customer base among the autochthones in the communal areas. Business transactions

186 P. Chadambuka
enabled the establishment of social networks with their new autochthonous neigh-
bours. As they were selling, the petty traders would sit down with their communal
area customers, ask for drinking water and engage in conversations, leading at times
to the formation of friendships. Some commodities were sold on credit to certain
neighbours, and trust based on anticipated payments was often formed between the
Chewa traders and their autochthonous customers. Social relationships were there-
fore established, helping to bridge the social distance between the autochthones and
allochthones.
However, in some instances, relationships were not consequentially cordial.
Nyasha for instance complained that some autochthones thought that former farm
workers in general and former Chewa farm workers in particular were dull, unedu-
cated and possibly lacking business skills. Hence, in their exchanges, autochthones
would attempt to cheat the Chewa traders. Intended non-payment and negotiating for
ridiculously low prices were some of the dishonest ploys that the buyers would use
in an attempt to manipulate the traders. Failure to pay debts often resulted in threats
engraved in claims of witchcraft and sorcery, used by the traders in attempts to coerce
autochthones to honour their debts. The Chewa were indeed thought to possess super-
natural powers by the autochthones, and they used this supposed divine capacity to
recover their money. Thus, at one level, traders of foreign origin were able to build
social capital to sustain their livelihoods. At another level, strained autochthone–
allochthone relationships developed in Bushu, putting any quest for belonging to
Bushu in question.
10.7.5 Mukando
Communal area people particularly women are actively involved in small savings
and lending groups, known as mukando in the vernacular. Former (Chewa) farm
workers in Bushu joined these small savings groups and participated in them along-
side autochthones. Villagers paid monthly contributions into a common pool (i.e.
fund) between USD1 and USD2 each. Withdrawal from the fund involved payment
of a debt at a 10 per cent rate of interest. The funds served a panoply of purposes.
For instance, at times, a member would withdraw a lump sum from the accumulated
funds to start or boost her income-generating projects. Those who needed emergency
funds such as school, funeral or health expenses would also borrow from the fund.
Generally, mukando provided a readily available albeit small loan scheme for
the former farm workers, whose lack of collateral security rendered them ineligible
to borrow from banks and micro-finance institutions. Due to the meagre amounts
accumulated in the fund, and the constant demands by members for various expenses,
the fund was often depleted (notably towards school opening days), leaving potential
borrowers in a precarious state. Nonetheless, mukando became a key source of credit
for the former farm workers in Bushu.

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 187
To the former farm workers, though, mukando was reminiscent of how the white
farmer would always lend them money, only to deduct it from their wages in accor-
dance with the dictates of domestic government. Nevertheless, the amount of credit
made available to labourers by white farmers far exceeded the amounts drawn through
mukando. The former farm workers spoke about the mukando funds as very insignif-
icant and insufficient to meet their most basic needs, thus reflecting favourably on
their former lives with reference to this particular issue.
Besides serving as a social safety net for women specifically, mukando also
became an important form of social capital for Chewa and other women in the Bushu
villages. Mukando meetings gave the female villagers (including ex-labourers) a
chance to meet and interact at least once a month, and to exchange thoughts about
income-generating activities. Sometimes government employees (notably the Ward
Coordinator from the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Develop-
ment) would visit villagers during their mukando gatherings. The Ward Coordinator
would speak to the female mukando members about income-generating skills, as well
as about domestic and gender-based violence. At the mukando meetings, the Chewa
female ex-labourers interfaced with the female autochthones, entailing the devel-
oping and nurturing of friendships. Becoming and staying as a member of the lending
schemes facilitated cross-cutting ties between allochthones and autochthones, and
this enhanced a sense of belonging for the allochthones, thereby undercutting their
strangeness in Bushu.
However, the economic crisis in the country (post the Mugabe era) threatened
constantly the viability of most mukando groups in Bushu. By February 2020,
female interviewees indicated that the vibrancy of the mukando groups had deterio-
rated significantly because of challenges around currency owing to the government’s
inconsistent currency policy. Female members of the mukando also highlighted that
the hyper-inflationary environment coupled with a perpetually weak Zimbabwean
dollar threatened the sustainability of mukando. They were, therefore, insisting on
forex-based mukando contributions. However, ‘forex’ (foreign exchange) in the form
of the US dollar was difficult for members to access, since other sources of income
were in local currency. As a result, there were signs of a decline in the Bushu mukando
groups, including through the withdrawal of members.
10.7.6 Food Handouts
The elderly and orphans received food handouts availed by the government and
non-governmental organisations in Bushu communal areas. In times of drought
(notably the years 2007, 2008, 2018, 2019 and 2020), food handouts (mainly maize,
Zimbabwe’s staple food) were also availed to vulnerable households. The elderly
received 50 kilogrammes of maize on a monthly basis through the Department of
Social Welfare. Former farm workers of foreign origin residing in Bushu, who met
the overall requirements of the programmes, received maize. The ward councillor
highlighted to me that there was no exclusion whatsoever in terms of beneficiaries

188 P. Chadambuka
of the maize packages and, on two visits, I witnessed maize being distributed among
former farm workers of Chewa origin. The interviewees stated that, in most cases,
a 50-kilogramme bag of maize was sufficient for the whole month and they might
share their maize with neighbours who had maize shortfalls. At times, they also sold
part of the maize package in order to have money to grind the rest of the maize into
mealie meal (for cooking sadza).
The former farm workers benefiting from the maize expressed their gratitude high-
lighting that, when they were working and living on the commercial farms, no maize
support was forthcoming from central government. Instead, the farms’ domestic
government implied that the farmer was solely responsible for his employees’
welfare, as farm spaces were privatised spaces under the sole control of the white
farmer. At the same time, they claimed that what they now received in the communal
areas (in terms of maize donations) was less—comparatively speaking—to what
white farmers used to give them. Martha and Mary, for instance, both stated that the
farmer would give them ‘enough’ food handouts—not just maize, but also kapenta,
beans, cooking oil, sugar and salt (which they deemed indispensable for their diet).
Now it was only maize. As a result, Chewa ex-labourers spoke about suffering from
hunger and malnutrition in the Bushu communal areas.
In this regard, it is important to note that not every former farm worker of foreign
origin was eligible to receive maize handouts in Bushu. The able-bodied and those
of working age were not eligible, even for those in autochthonous households. This
was a serious problem, again compared to working and living on white farms—
where permanent employment guaranteed a monthly wage along with any available
handouts. As Shadreck indicated with reference to the communal areas, there was
simply no steady income-stream, as crop production was seasonal.
Despite the inclusiveness of governmental food handouts, the former labourers
spoke about certain hidden dynamics that bordered on the politicisation of food. As
Augusto stressed:
You have to be obedient for you to have peace and get something [maize]. You saw what
was happening there. You heard the slogans. (Interview with Augusto, 19 September 2019)
Augusto was referring to a government maize programme witnessed by me. By
slogans, Augusto was speaking about the ZANU-PF slogans chanted at the Depart-
ment of Social Welfare’s food-handout distribution point at Kajakata Business
Centre. Ward-based party leaders took the opportunity to campaign for ZANU-PF,
even though food handouts are not supposed to be ‘politicised’. Augusto, like other
food beneficiaries, reasoned that he had to chant political slogans so that he would
benefit from the handout programme on an ongoing basis. More broadly, from the
perspective of Augusto and other ex-labourers, the showing of allegiance to the ruling
party (or ‘performing ZANU-PF’) was a necessary condition for belonging fully to
the Bushu community. This form of belonging would, in turn, bring about food bene-
fits, the type of benefits enjoyed by the former farm workers when they conditionally
belonged to the farm.

10 (Re)Inventing Livelihoods Amid a Quest … 189
10.7.7 Family Members’ Support
Elderly former farm workers relied quite significantly on family members’ financial
support, with remittances from children providing a reliable social safety net for
most parents. Admittedly, most of their children were working merely as unskilled
general labourers on fast track farms, while others were involved in mining or working
in towns such as Shamva and Bindura. The majority of these children, born and
raised on commercial farms, were not professionals and they had only minimal
education (attending farm schools, which usually ended at primary school level and
involved basic reading and writing skills only). Despite their low standard of living
and precarious existence, children remitted money to help their parents purchase
basic food and groceries. Similarly, husbands working elsewhere would send money
to their wives and children.
Generally, young widows among the ex-labouring villagers in Bushu experienced
especially harsh economic conditions, since their dependent children were too young
to look after them. With children to care for, they often found it difficult to work
their lands on a sustainable basis or even to find local casual work. Some young
widows did rely on piece work, particularly weeding fields and harvesting crops in
both communal areas and nearby fast track farms. Young children would assist their
parents in accomplishing the agricultural work. Young boys would also complement
the meagre family income through herding neighbours’ cattle, specifically during
school holidays (with the earnings put towards paying school fees). Therefore, child
labour acted as a safety cushion for these de jure female-headed households in Bushu.
These strategies were, though, not unique to the ‘newcomers’ (ex-farm labourers)
but were practiced by female-headed households among the autochthones. Simul-
taneously, the former farm workers had weaker and less extensive social networks
compared to the longer-established communal area autochthonous villagers, and the
latter could draw more readily on networks (including kinship relations) for support.
10.8 Conclusion
This chapter has demonstrated how new livelihoods (including farming, piecework,
mining, petty trading and saving schemes, among others) have been constructed
and practiced by the Chewa newcomers in Bushu. In this way, moving to Bushu
communal areas involved the adoption of a panoply of livelihoods which were not
accessible to the Chewa ex-farm workers when they were still living and working
on the commercial farms. Thus, moving into Bushu has meant liberty and freedom
to pursue farm-based, off-farm and non-farm livelihoods, allowing a handful of the
former farm labourers to pursue standards of life comparatively better to those they
had on white farms. At the same time, their lives in Bushu are conditioned by ethnic
identities.

190 P. Chadambuka
As newcomers (allochthones) entering the space of an autochthonous ethnic
community and seeking to establish a home there for the first time, conflicts arise over
limited resources (including land). This tends to lead to and perpetuate fixed bound-
aries between the newcomers and the long-established residents (autochthones) in
Bushu. In other ways, though, the quest by the Chewa newcomers to earn a living
facilitates interactions with autochthones, resulting in the development of mutual
relations which appear to facilitate and enhance a wider project of belonging for the
newcomers. For the Chewa ex-farm workers, coming to Bushu in the aftermath of
the FTLRP was not an easy and linear process, as it happened against a troubled
background of loss (of home and livelihood). As well, it has entailed contradictory
tendencies in terms of communal area belonging—both breaking down and rein-
forcing ethnic boundaries. Belonging to Bushu thus remains an ongoing process and
an act of becoming for the Chewa.
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commercial farms, with particular reference to “foreign” farm labourers up to 2000. Midlands
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voices from Malawian descendants. J Afr Insight 44(1):137–150
Geschiere P (2009) The perils of belonging: autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion Africa and
Europe. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
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belonging in Africa and Europe. In: Albiez S, Castro N, Jüssen L, Youkhana E (eds) Etni-
cidad, ciudadanía y perte-nencia: Práticas, teoría y dimensiones especiales. am Main, Frankfurt,
pp 175–198
Geschiere P, Nyamnjoh FB (2000) Capitalism and autochthony: the seesaw of mobility and
belonging. J Pub Culture 12(2):423–452
Groves ZR (2020) Malawian migration to Zimbabwe, 1900–1965: tracing Machona. Palgrave
Macmillan, Cambridge
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fast-track land reform. Anthropol Southern Afri 40(4):276–289
Johnson D (2000) World war 2 and the scramble for labour in colonial Zimbabwe, 1939–1948.
University of Zimbabwe Publications, Harare
Juwayeyi Y (2020) References. In Archaeology and oral tradition in Malawi: origins and early
history of the Chewa. Boydell & Brewer, Rochester NY.
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Delhi
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study of Shamva district. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences,
Sweden
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workers in Zimbabwe. Rev Afr Polit Econ 27(84):181–202
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ownership in Zimbabwe. J South Afr Stud 33(2):325–341
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Zimbabwe. Weaver Press, Harare

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Patience Chadambuka is a lecturer and Acting Chairperson in the Community Studies Depart-
ment (formerly Sociology Department), in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Midlands State
University, Zimbabwe. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Rhodes University, South Africa and
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migration, ethnicity, livelihoods and gender studies.

Chapter 11
Cultural Economic Survival
under Crisis—Malawian Nyau/Gule
Wamkulu Dances and Zimbabwe’s
Economic Meltdown
Anusa Daimon
Abstract In the aftermath of the Zimbabwean crisis, communities have sought
alternative livelihoods to survive the economic meltdown that has characterised the
Zimbabwean political economy since 2000. Existing historiography has detailed
the numerous strategies and tactics that have been deployed by Zimbabweans in
the last two decades to circumvent the resultant economic challenges. However, it
has not detailed how some African ethnic minorities, including those which have
been pushed to, and subjugated at, the margins of the Zimbabwean nation and are
living in a ‘state of unbelonging’, have uniquely engaged their cultural cosmolo-
gies as an alternative economic livelihood. Using the case of people of Malawian
ancestry and their Nyau/Gule Wamkulu cultural dances, the chapter demonstrates
how, amongst other survival strategies, these people have distinctly resorted to their
cultural practices for economic survival in the face of a crisis that systematically
displaced the majority of them from their traditional occupations as farm workers
and miners (through the agrarian-land reform, industrial retrenchments and mine
shutdowns). Malawian communities have thus uniquely used their ethnicised Nyau
cultural dances for income generation through performances on Zimbabwean farms,
mines and urban areas during local and national events.
Keywords Cultural dances ·Economic livelihoods ·Migrant minorities ·
Malawian migrants ·Zimbabwean crisis
11.1 Introduction
In the aftermath of the Zimbabwean crisis, communities have sought alternativeliveli-
hoods to survive the economic meltdown that has characterised the Zimbabwean
political economy since 2000. Existing historiography has detailed the numerous
strategies and tactics that have been deployed by Zimbabweans in the last two decades
to circumvent the resultant economic challenges. However, it has not detailed how
A. Daimon (B
)
International Studies Group, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
e-mail: adaimon4@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_11
193

194 A. Daimon
some African ethnic minorities, including those which have been pushed to, and
subjugated at, the margins of the Zimbabwean nation and are living in a ‘state
of unbelonging’, have uniquely engaged their cultural cosmologies as an alterna-
tive economic livelihood. Using the case of people of Malawian ancestry and their
Nyau/Gule Wamkulu cultural dances, the chapter demonstrates how, amongst other
survival strategies, these people have distinctly resorted to their cultural practices for
economic survival in the face of a crisis that systematically displaced the majority
of them from their traditional occupations as farm workers and miners (through
the agrarian-land reform, industrial retrenchments and mine shutdowns). Malawian
communities have thus uniquely used their ethnicised Nyau cultural dances for
income generation through performances on Zimbabwean farms, mines and urban
areas as well as during localised and national competitions.
The volatile Zimbabwean crisis was pregnant with toxic and partisan political
rhetoric aimed at excluding a formidable opposition movement, both its white
minority funders and by proxy its proletarianised urban, farm and mine workers’
support base, a number of whom were of migrant descent. The crisis saw system-
atic othering of invisible subject minorities through the agrarian-land reform, the
infamous urban clean-up exercise Operation Murambatsvina, and reconfigurations
of citizenship and belonging, as well as their systematic disenfranchisement during
numerous post-2000 political elections (2002, 2005 and 2008). For the Malawian
diaspora and other migrants from Zambia and Mozambique, the crisis saw a
deepening reconfiguration of their identity and belonging in the context of the
broader Zimbabwean nation-identity and nation-state. The protracted and multi-
staged Zimbabwean economic and political crisis was accompanied by politically
charged, narrowed-down definitions of national identity and citizenship (Mano and
Willems 2010). All this drastically altered the economic livelihoods of Malawian
communities as the Zimbabwean state’s methodical victimisation and displacements
of regime change advocates suffocated all their traditional economic spaces on the
farms, mines and industrial towns, leaving many in destitution.
Despite encountering numerous untold hardships, migrant minorities have
remained active in navigating obstacles emerging from the crisis. Many have inge-
niously employed alternative forms of subaltern agency or what Jeremy Jones (Jones
2010) loosely terms ‘kukiya-kiya’ (multiple forms of making ends meet), during
the Zimbabwean crisis. Some have stayed on the farms (now fast track farms) and
mines in the hope that the situation will improve, while others sought sanctuary
elsewhere. On the farms, the sexual division of labour has been shelved as men and
women continuously seek alternative livelihoods, engaging in insecure and poorly
paid casual or piecework jobs, commonly known as maricho.Somehavediversi-
fied into informal occupations like gold panning, fishing, hunting and gathering,
poultry, shoe repairing and vending (Sachikonye 2003;Daimon2014). In order to
benefit from government food aid, many have perfected the art of ‘shifting political
identities’ by conveniently associating with ZANU-PF through the acquisition of its
party cards during electoral seasons. Rutherford (2008) observes that most former
farm workers have sought new forms of dependencies, typically more precarious
and generating fewer resources and services than they had accessed on commercial

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 195
farms (when under the authority of the white farmer). This entails developing their
own particular cultural politics of recognition, often tied to demonstrating support
to the ruling political party.
Amidst all this, some Malawians have uniquely engaged their cultural motifs as an
alternative economic livelihood to survive the economic obstacles of the Zimbabwean
crisis. As the mines, farms and industrial complexes shutdown, Malawian cultural
practices such as the Gule Wamkulu/Nyau dance became pivotal in providing income
streams (in cash and kind) to sustain families of the dance groups across Zimbabwe.
Faced by an unprecedented economic meltdown which was complicated by system-
atic political persecution, various Nyau members resorted to and ramped up Gule
Wamkulu performances in their localities and across the Zimbabwean landscape. The
chapter unpacks these dynamics using mainly ethnographic oral material gathered
from Malawian migrant communities and custodians of the Nyau/Gule Wamkulu
tradition in selected case study farms, mines and urban locales across Zimbabwe.
11.2 Nyau Secret Societies and the Gule Wamkulu Dance
in Zimbabwe
The Gule Wamkulu dance or Nyau/Gule/Zvigure (as it is known in Zimbabwe) has
been the most notable cultural trait associated with Malawian descendants. Gule
Wamkulu literally means ‘the big or great dance’.1It involves dancers wearing masks
representing human beings or animals, intricate footwork and high tempo drum
rhythms. The dance reflects religious beliefs in spirits and is connected to the activities
of secret societies in which dancers (termed zilombo or wild animals) are dressed
in ragged costumes of cloth and animal skins, wearing a mask, and occasionally
performing on stilts. Gule Wamkulu is thus a name for the masked dance performed
by Nyau secret societies for purposes of initiating members into adulthood and for
entertainment (Schoffeleers 1972,1976). These societies treat Nyau as their tradition
or mwambo, the totalising ritual system, which defines contours and categories of
the specifically Chewa community, a spiritual institution that forms an important
part of their cosmology and religious beliefs. Gough (2004) adds that Gule Wamkulu
consists of formally organised initiation rituals and dances of masked individuals
in a spiritual state. Albeit Chewa in character, the dance has been an important
platform for expressing a broader migrant Malawian identity and visibility as well
as fostering mutual relations between different ethnicities in Zimbabwe. Though
forming a critical component of the Malawian cultural paraphernalia and rites, the
dances assumed new significance in generating income during the Zimbabwean crisis
through entertainment and national competitions in the new millennium.
The dance is indigenous to the Chewa of central Malawi and eastern Zambia, but
other smaller Malawian groups such as the Manganja and Chipeta also enjoyed
it (Daimon 2008).2The practice originated in Malawi and spread to Zambia,
Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa through labour migration and regional

196 A. Daimon
ethno-linguistic commonalities. In the late nineteenth century, Southern Africa expe-
rienced an extensive quest for a cheap regional African migrant labour supply, under
the infamous ‘Chibaro’, ‘Wenera’or‘Mthandizi’ labour migration system, to work in
Rhodesian and South African colonial economic enterprises (Gelfand 1961; Groves
2012). This saw a southern influx of trans-Zambezian labour migrants from colonial
Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique such that, by 1936, there were a total of 74,266
migrant labourers working in Rhodesia, rising to 150,150 in 1948 and 246,772 by
1951.3With the further opening of the transnational boundaries at the inception
of the Central African Federation in 1953, the figures grew steadily with many
migrant workers involuntarily and voluntarily flocking to Rhodesia to seek employ-
ment under the colonial capital economy (Daimon 2016). By 1966, about 229,000
Malawians were working elsewhere, to which could be added 22,000 women and
33,000 men over 50 who had settled permanently outside Malawi (Daimon 2018).
Of these 139,000 were in Rhodesia and 68,000 in South Africa (Boeder 1974).
While some remained genuine migrant labourers, maintaining strong transnational
continuous connections with their homeland, others settled permanently across the
Rhodesian territory. In Malawi, those who migrated to the southern labour markets
and never returned to their ancestral homeland were commonly referred to as the
Machona (or lost ones) and their offspring were also deemed sons and daughters
of the Machona.4These were individuals who got entrapped by the ravages and
comforts of the diaspora and had cut ties with their homeland and were unlikely
to return. No one knew where they were, and they were written off as ‘lost’ to the
village. Creech Jones of the Central African Council explained in 1947 that many
were ‘reluctant to return home without something to show for it, while the expense
of the journey is a formidable charge on their savings; so their general tendency is
to stay away for long periods, a proportion being permanently lost to Nyasaland.’5
Some left relatives behind; others left wives and children, starting new families with
local women or fellow Nyasa females who had independently migrated to Rhodesia.
These Machona entrenched their cultural cosmology in the localities of settlement
in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe with Nyau/Gule Wamkulu being the most popular, reputable
and ingrained cultural motif in Zimbabwe. Early evidence of Gule Wamkulu in colo-
nial Zimbabwe came from the Native Commissioner of Lomagundi, E.G. Howman,
who in 1935 reported that the dances were performed by alien Natives, particularly
those from Nyasaland.6The Chief Native Commissioner, Sergeant H.M.G. Jackson,
also echoed in 1930 that ‘the Minister of Internal Affairs was informed that Gule
Wamkulu dances are practiced on farms and mines and have been introduced from
outside the colony by native aliens, from Nyasaland.’7By the start of the liberation
war in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of these African labour migrants had
permanently settled and become proletarianised as farm workers, miners and urban
dwellers. These spaces became theatres in which the Nyau/Gule Wamkulu flourished
as Malawian migrant labourers relived and remembered their homeland as well as
expressed their cultural identity in foreign lands.
Nyau has traditionally thrived on mystery and secrecy. The fact that Nyau was
shrouded in mystery and secrecy created infinite myths and curiosity amongst

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 197
Zimbabweans. For years, people of Malawian origin in Zimbabwe have been gener-
ally associated with sorcery, witchcraft and magic. Such prejudices are entrenched
in oral traditions, with Linden (1974) stating that Malawian mythology is full of
sorcery narratives involving hyenas, owls, snakes, and flying saucers and brooms.
Oral histories about the escapades of Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s founding president
have also fuelled the stereotypes. Though he was a qualified medical doctor, many
classified him as a Sangoma (traditional witchdoctor) president, namely, a practi-
tioner of traditional medicine who always carried around a flywhisk, the Sangoma’s
ultimate prop.8One of the popular myths that followed the Banda cult, claimed that
he left his jacket hanging in mid-air in a Gweru prison cell in Zimbabwe when he
was incarcerated for political activities from March 1959 to April 1960.
Nyau myths lost nothing in the telling. It was alleged that initiated members
spent nights at cemeteries, ate raw chicken and drank its blood. If anyone fell when
chased by a Nyau dancer and was injured, the wound would not heal. Nyau members
always denied such myths. One Nyau associate, Aaron Wemba, insisted that ‘we
are not witches and do not socialise with the dead; ours is just like other cultures
that serve social and spiritual purposes.’9The fact that Gule dancers emerged from
sacred ritual wildernesses, known as the Runde or Dambwe, and then performed
wearing masks to hide their identities, greatly contributed to preserving the mystery of
Nyau (Mukonyora 2000/01;Wolmer2007). Examples of Runde/Dambwe sacrosanct
ritual shrines include cemeteries/graveyards and protected bush camps/shrines where
Nyau members converged to initiate, train and keep their paraphernalia.10 Graveyards
mystified the practice by linking it to the dead. It is also claimed that Gule Wamkulu
operated from graveyards because of an environment that scared off intruders and
provided an ideal location for secret rituals.11 The precincts of bush camps, often
near a village or urban settlements, were marked and protected by red cloths planted
on visibly strategic locales. This transformed the area into a sacred space of power
and control for its custodians.
Gule Wamkulu was sanctified by various types of masked dancers (zilombo)who
emerged out of the Runde to perform. These included the Akapoli or kamwimwi
(the semi-naked dancer), Makanje (the tall dancer on stilts), Mwanawamasiye (the
orphaned dancer), Chisimoni (the cruel white colonial official) and Maria or Dona
(Mary mother of Jesus).12 Each of the zilombo plays a particular character repre-
senting forms of misbehaviour to teach moral and social values to the audience.
These figures perform dances and artistic movements with extraordinary energy,
partly entertaining and partly frightening the audience (Bell 2010). The masks come
in different forms and include traditional representations of ancestral spirits, ghostly
creatures, flora and animals such as lions, elephants, hyenas, snakes and giraffes.
Research on the meaning of masks and the Nyau was conducted by the renowned
anthropologist, Laurel Birch de Aguilar, in Malawi from 1984 into the late 1990s.
She sees masks as metaphoric social phenomena or texts projecting various interpre-
tative meaning over life and death (de Aguilar 1994,1996).Theyarerichinnarra-
tives about social roles and community, historical experience, ritual and religious
beliefs, leadership, warfare, resistance to foreigners, colonisation, labour migration
and modernity. De Aguilar emphasises that Nyau masks convey a sense of dread, so

198 A. Daimon
the word ‘Nyau’ makes some people ‘catch their breath and step back’ (de Aguilar
1996). The secrecy of masquerading in masks is an important subtext and a crucial
means by which Gule Wamkulu mystifies Nyau society and earns respect through
fear. Contemporary Gule Wamkulu masks, attire and dances are a site of discourse
on history, social relationships and experiences of Africans in foreign lands.
Nyau societies traditionally reasserted male patrilinity through its gendered dele-
gation of duties during performances, with women usually at the peripheries. Women
were never initiated into the secret society, just as the females barred their male coun-
terparts from their ‘chisamba’ female initiation rites. There were no female dancers
and the inclusion of the feminine male ‘Maria’ dancer was thus a cosmetic gimmick to
engender Gule Wamkulu. Women simply played a supportive role and were confined
to singing, ululating and praising the male dancers. Nyau outfits thus employed a
minimum of three women, known as Man’ombe, as backing vocals to sing traditional
songs.13 As echoed by de Aguilar (1996), those who create and wear the masks for
the Gule Wamkulu are male, and those who sing and clap with the masked dancers
are female; and only men are masked dancers, whose identities are intended to be
hidden by the masks they wear.
11.3 Zimbabwean Crisis and Suffocation of Minority
Livelihoods
Beginning in early 1998, Zimbabwe entered a period that has come to be generally
known as the ‘Crisis in Zimbabwe’ (Raftopoulos 2009). This chaotic phase witnessed
‘a once vibrant and dynamic society and economy virtually collapsing as political
instability, lawlessness, mis-governance and a relentless economic meltdown trans-
formed this erstwhile leading southern African nation into an international pariah and
the proverbial basket case’ (Mlambo and Raftopoulos 2010: 1). It was characterised
by a mosaic of trajectories or ‘crises within a crisis’ that adversely transformed
people’s livelihoods and altered the country’s socio-economic and political land-
scape. For Mlambo and Raftopoulos (2010), what was occurring in the country since
the turn of the new millennium was a complex and inter-related multi-layered and
pervasive catastrophe that could, perhaps, best be described as a series of ‘Zimbab-
wean crises’, for no aspect of Zimbabwean existence escaped the deleterious effects
of this phenomenon. The crisis exhibited itself varyingly. It involved confronta-
tions over land and property rights; contestations over nationalism and citizenship;
the emergence of critical civil society groups campaigning around trade unionism,
human rights and constitutionalism; state authoritarianism; the broader pan-African
and anti-imperialist meanings of the struggles in Zimbabwe; the cultural represen-
tations of the crisis in Zimbabwean literature and the central role of Robert Mugabe
(Raftopoulos 2009). These multiple crises were related but had heterogeneous effects
that varied according to gender, identity, class, age, geographical and spatial vari-
ables. The multi-faceted character of the crisis has generated significant debate, with

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 199
a surfeit of studies, known as crisis literature or historiography, grappling to make
sense of the cataclysm of the post-2000 period (Raftopoulos 2009; Phimister 2005;
Raftopoulos and Phimister 2004; Bond and Manyanya 2003; Hammar et al. 2003;
Primorac and Chan 2007; Chiumbu and Musemwa 2012).
The crisis worsened the experiences of migrant descendants in Zimbabwe. For
Pilossof (2012), it marked a fundamental shift in Zimbabwean politics that had been
building since the mid-1990s. In response to these new political currents, ZANU-PF
changed the rules of engagement and the start of the new millennium witnessed a new
era of political, social and economic violence (authoritarian nationalism) that accel-
erated Zimbabwe’s slide into crisis. Southall (2013) demonstrates that the period
was characterised by ZANU-PF’s negation of electoral democracy with the party
ascribing the rejection of the proposed constitution via a referendum (in February
2000) to a conspiracy between the black urban middle class, white farmers and
their workers, and the government’s external enemies, and the ruling party saw an
opportunity to fight the subsequent elections as if they were a re-run of the war
for liberation. For Phimister (2005), the post-2000 period was generally marked
by increasing autocracy, ruthless repression and widespread human rights abuses,
forcing many into exile and impacting with disastrous effects on the lives of workers
and peasants. A key characteristic of this process was the restructuring of the state
itself, through dramatic re-organisation and militarisation of state structures (judi-
ciary and civil service); passing of repressive laws such as Public Order and Security
Act (POSA) and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) in
2002; widespread violence, murder, torture, rape and disappearances perpetrated by
ZANU-PF youth militia and war veterans against the opposition and the recasting of
the party’s nationalist ideology in more authoritarian, selective and racialised notions
of citizenship and belonging, constituted around the centrality of the land question
and the contribution of ZANU-PF to the liberation struggle (Raftopoulos 2009). The
crisis reached a crescendo in 2008, with Zimbabwe experiencing a world record
inflation rate for countries not at war; total political and governmental dysfunction
and epic food shortages and starvation (Nyambi 2013; Mason 2019).
The ZANU-PF regime thus spearheaded narrow and exclusionary nationalism
which discriminated against people of migrant descent in its fight to consolidate and
hold on to power in the face of rising civil and political opposition. In the process,
Malawian diaspora and other minorities were denied the right to suffrage. Mugabe
and his supporters blackmailed them on the pretext that, unlike the autochthons who
had totems that attached them to Zimbabwe as ‘children of the soil’ (vana vevhu),
immigrants or the so-called ‘aliens’ did not have a sense of identity and belonging to
Zimbabwe. The resultant anti-migrant discourse became overtly rhetorical and detri-
mental during the Zimbabwean political and economic crisis in the new millennium,
with descendants of regional migrants being systematically objectified or ‘othered’ by
hegemonic socio-political structures during Zimbabwe’s agrarian reform and elec-
toral processes (Daimon 2018). Migrant descendants experienced unprecedented
victimisation during the fast track land reform exercise, the 2005 urban clean-up

200 A. Daimon
exercise (Operation Restore Order or Murambatsvina), the subsequent denial of citi-
zenship rights with amendments of the Citizenship Act in 2001 and 2003 and during
the volatile 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 political elections (Daimon 2016).
Despite this, Malawians and other regional migrants exuded agency and tried to
mediate the crisis through various forms of adaptation and resistance in the face of
systematic victimisation, with Nyau dance groups uniquely employing their cultural
dance for economic reprieve. They thus enacted diverse collective agency to cope
with the challenges, anxieties and uncertainties of the Zimbabwean crisis. Many made
their own history and found ways to assert and express themselves through inventing
intricate everyday modes of survival anchored in gender and class dichotomies,
historical configurations, ethnic orientation and cultural interests.
Malawians in Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe were men, women and juveniles
toiling as first, second, third and fourth generation descendants. Some of them are,
or were, farm workers, miners, factory workers, maids, gardeners, the educated and
uneducated, students and house owners from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It is in
this diversity that they reproduced a sense of their own identities moored in ethno-
cultural motifs, as have other minority groups—for instance, the Yao being visible
through their Islamic initiation customs and Beni dances, while the Tonga became
renowned for the Watchtower movement. In the context of the post-2000 crisis, the
Chewa propped themselves up through their Nyau/Gule Wamkulu dances, with their
culture assuming a pivotal role as an economic livelihood in the new millennium.
11.4 Nyau/Gule Wamkulu as an Economic Survival Practice
during Zimbabwe’s Crisis
Other than being traditionally critical as a rite of passage in initiating its members into
an exalted status of adulthood, Nyau/Gule Wamkulu was initially used as a mechanism
for resistance against colonial civil law in Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia. As Kerr
(1995: 46) notes, ‘[m]any adaptations of pre-colonial art forms in a colonial context
displayed resistance by peasants to capital’s penetration into a pre-capitalist economy
and one form of indirect resistance was for peasants to pour aesthetic energy into
festival drama/theatre performances associated with local celebrations, especially
for commemorating historically significant events.’ According to Kaspin (1993),
colonial governments were seriously concerned about Nyau’s potential threat. The
British South Africa Police’s Criminal Investigation Department and Native author-
ities across Southern Rhodesia produced numerous reports concerning the dance’s
mystery and the possible hazards it posed. Many police investigationswere conducted
following various incidences linked to Nyau members such as: the poisoning of a
Tonga at Shamva Mine in 1917; assault of individuals in Salisbury in 1926 and 1927;
malicious injury to animals in the Gatooma area in 1926 and the higher degrees of
excitement that the dances generated amongst locals across the colony.

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 201
In Malawi, Nyau emerged as a vehicle of political opposition to the British colonial
administration and the power of missionary churches. Kaspin (1993) asserts that
Nyau members exercised their licence as ‘wild animals’ to attack the uninitiated, a
behaviour justified by members as part of the dancers’ mystique as beasts and spirits,
creatures ungovernable by the laws of humans. However, Nyau ‘animalism’ was not
a ritual entitlement but an act of defiance against civil law (Kaspin 1993). Curran
(2005) adds that Christian missionaries and colonial administrators viewed Nyau
as an exhibition of obscenity, sensuality and cruelty and a national evil. Authorities
remained suspicious of the dance throughout the colonial era. Parry (1999) claims that
the Gule Wamkulu culture threatened the ‘colonial peace’ in Rhodesia and was banned
in the mid-1920s. Its continued underground operation subsequently enhanced its
reputation for being a law unto itself (Parry 1999). Despite concerted efforts to
outlaw Nyau culture, it retained its hold on the spiritual imagination of the Chewa in
Malawi, as well as migrant labourers in Zimbabwe (Curran 2005).
After Zimbabwe’s independence, and faced with the anxieties and uncertainties
over Gukurahundi and national belonging in the 1980s and 1990s, Nyau became
increasingly useful for coping with these challenges. Nyau communities turned into
bastions of cohesion amongst the Malawian diaspora. Over time and space, Nyau
communities in Zimbabwe defined and negotiated territorial autonomy and space by
exploiting elements of secrecy, sacred environments and masked dances to create
a collective identity and forge cohesion amongst members. Malawian descendants
used Gule Wamkulu as a means to distinguish themselves from outsiders, particularly
hegemonic Zimbabwean groups. As Linden (1975) notes, cultural practices such as
the Gule Wamkulu are an institution of remarkable resilience and vitality, which serve
to unite people in times of social stress and act as powerful curbs on the influence
of foreign or dominant identities. Migrant communities expressed their identity and
views in order to counter incidences of exclusion, domination and popular images of
‘foreignness’. This was achieved by the symbolic ritualisation of the Nyau initiation
rites where members have to drink chicken blood and undergo required training.14
This shared initiation experience, emotion, symbolism, masked dances and secrecy
generated a collective bond within the Nyau community.
Nyau deeply entrenched itself within Zimbabwean local communities following
the government’s accommodation of the dance as part of local culture through invi-
tations to perform at national and local functions from the mid-1980s onwards.
This mimicked the promotion of Chewa culture by Kamuzu Banda in independent
Malawi. Curran (2005) argues that Banda used Nyau to maintain political power at
a national level. It graced national functions in becoming the face of Banda’s pres-
idential rallies. Likewise, the ZANU-PF government sought to exploit the dances’
popularity on migrant-dominated farms and mines. As a result, the dances were
performed weekly or sometimes daily on farms, plantations, mines and towns. They
ordinarily took place on Friday and Saturday nights, followed by a Sunday afternoon
performance, though they could be performed on any day of the week.15 Resultantly,
Gule Wamkulu became a common feature at Zimbabwean public holidays, anniver-
saries, national events such as the Independence, Workers and Heroes celebrations,
cultural festivals, at special functions or community gatherings such as funerals,

202 A. Daimon
weddings and the initiation of members. Nyau’s popularity was further enhanced
by the 25 November 2005 classification and inscription of the Nyau/Gule Wamkulu
dance as one of the 90 masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity, a
programme by UNESCO to preserve intangible cultural heritage.16 The significance
of this proclamation was not only confined to Malawi but also reverberated across the
Southern African region where multitudes of Malawian immigrants, a large number
of whom are products the colonial labour migration system, have continued with
the Nyau/Gule Wamkulu practice and its associated cults/rites. The UNESCO listing
thus resonated with all the Nyau and Gule Wamkulu custodians and practitioners in
Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique who have maintained
the tradition for generations.
Numerous Nyau dance clubs emerged after Zimbabwean independence such that,
by the late 1990s, about 450 dance groups existed in Zimbabwe with member-
ship in excess of 20,000 members.17 Almost every major Zimbabwean mine, as
well as migrant-dominated urban and farm localities, had a Nyau club. The dance
groups had their own names, songs and dance routines. These include the Chegutu
Nyau club, the Chitungwiza-based Amanyawa under the leadership of Albert Luke
Suwane, Zikuvave Zambia from Kwekwe, Zikuvave Gure Malawi from Zvishavane,
Tagwilizana in Mbare, Mufakose Gule in Mufakose, Dalny Gule in Chakari, DZ
Nyau in Dzivarasekwa Harare, Kitsiyatota in Alaska and Ayrshire Mine Nyau club
in Banket, amongst many others. The Zimbabwe National Dance Organisation of
Gure, under the presidency of Kennedy Kachuruka, administered the community of
Nyau dancers. The organisation represents traditional dancers and has a mandate to
preserve their culture.
Nyau groups usually dominate traditional dance competitions such as the Chibuku
Neshamwari traditional dance competition, which has been held in collabora-
tion between Delta Beverages, Zimbabwe Traditional Dancers Association and the
National Arts Council of Zimbabwe. Inaugurated in 2001, the competition has
become a lucrative high-stakes event. It has managed to bring different cultural dance
groups from across Zimbabwe together, giving people a glimpse of how elders used
to entertain as well as convey several messages, rituals, customs and taboos through
dance. Some Nyau dance groups have received sponsorship from their employers on
farms and mines across Zimbabwe. At Ayrshire Mine near Banket in Mashonaland
West Province, the local club receives sponsorship for its uniforms, transport and
subsistence from the Mine and normally performs for entertainment during week-
ends. The group sometimes travels to neighbouring mining communities such as
Muriel, Arcturus, Mhangura and Alaska for performances.18
It was from these gatherings and performances that Nyau dance groups began to
generate income in cash and kind to survive the Zimbabwean crisis. The Chibuku
Neshamwari competition was particularly lucrative. For example, on Saturday 14
May 2016, the Mbare based Nyau dance outfit, Agure Maramure or Maramure Gure
won the Chibuku Neshamwari annual provincial traditional dance competition at
Warren Park 1 Bar in Harare after stiff competition and battling it out for top honours

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 203
with more than ten other traditional dance groups from Harare Province. The group
walked away with US$500 while second-placed Pasichgare of Glen Norah pocketed
US$300, who staged a medley of Isithsikithsa,Mbende,Muchongoyo and Mbakumba
dances.19 Another Nyau dance group Kondanani of Dzivarasekwa went home with
US$200 for clinching third position. Other Nyau dance groups that took part in the
festival were Dedza Chitandizo Gure, Gasani Moto and Landilani Amanyau. The
Maramure leader was ecstatic about winning the competition, with his goal being to
win the national festival, saying it was just the beginning as they sought to claim the
top position at national level: ‘Winning at provincial level is good for us as we have
already booked our ticket to the national finals and this prize money will be shared
equally among our members for their upkeep’, he said.20
Indeed, national finals were more rewarding. Five years before Maramure Gure
had won the provincial event, another Nyau dance outfit from Harare, the Villa 1 Nyau
group beat nine other traditional dance groups on 3 September 2011, and walked away
with the prize money of US$4,000 at the Chibuku Neshamwari Traditional Dance
Festival which was held at the Harare Gardens.21 Umkhathi Theatre Works, a sepata
dance group which was representing the Bulawayo Province, settled for second
position and walked away with US$3,000 while Budiriro Cultural Arts (Mashonaland
West ), a mbakumba dance group, came third and walked away US$2,000 richer.22
Other groups which participated were drawn from the country’s 10 provinces and
performed to different traditional dances including: sepata,jerusarema,amabhiza,
chihodha,bira,dinhe and gure; and included Redwing Mine (Manicaland), Zevezeve
(Mashonaland), Black Amakhwezi (Matabeleland North), How Mine (Matabeleland
South), Lundi Dance Group (Masvingo), Mangoma Ngaatsve (Mashonaland Central)
and Malawi Globe and Phoenix (Midlands).23
Financial proceeds from provincial and national competitions proved critical for
Nyau members in navigating the economic meltdown. Some went as far as buying
tangible properties from their winnings. When Villa 1 Nyau won its US$4,000 in the
2011 Chibuku Neshamwari festival, its leader Kennedy Kachuruka used his portion
of the money and other savings from other performances to eventually buy a car
a year later, on 20 June 2012.24 The reward in foreign currency was also useful
in Zimbabwe’s hyper-inflationary environment of 2008 as Nyau members could
exchange it for the almost worthless Zimbabwean currency at huge margins: ‘We
used to exchange (burn) our American dollars with forex dealers on the streets and
get large amounts of the Zimbabwe dollar at a profit’, said Kachuruka. Some even
used the forex to become money changers on the streets, which has continued to be
a lucrative informal business in an unstable Zimbabwe economy.
Nyau female support singers also used income from the groups to sustain their
families with some wisely investing in other informal business such as vending, cross-
border trading and kindred societies. Emma Banda of Tagwilazana Nyau group stated
that, in 2014, ‘I invested the income that we got as our share for singing for the Nyau
dancers around Harare into vending of vegetables, a business that I still use to sustain
my family’.25 Laiza Phiri went into cross-border trading buying groceries and clothes

204 A. Daimon
from South Africa and Zambia for resale in Harare.26 Some women joined hands
using their Nyau income to establish a mutual kindred welfare society. As Esther
Chaponda, Alice Malunga, Violet Chiromo and Asiyatu Kwenda (who sang for the
Aryshire Mine Nyau club) note, ‘we realised that we could increase our savings and
purchasing power from the Nyau income by establishing a self-help club in 2009
where we sometimes buy groceries in bulk or give money at intervals to members for
the welfare of their families.’27 Regarding such welfare societies in Zimbabwe more
broadly, Hall (1987: 49) notes that they ‘provided mutual help and were examples
of self-reliance in practice that generally offered a measure of financial security
in the event of bereavement and also catered for some of the other social needs of
their members.’ Thus, the current Nyau societies functioned as self-supporting social
networks that assisted members during the crisis.
While regular Nyau performances on farms, mines and urban residential areas
mainly during weekends traditionally provided a regular source of cash income for
the members, the crisis saw rewards taking the form of in-kind payments. As the crisis
intensified in 2008 with food shortages and hyperinflation becoming the order of the
day, Nyau groups increasingly accepted food packages and other sellable goods as
rewards during performances. As Harare based Tagwilizana Nyau member, Admire
Banda, narrates, ‘between 2006 and 2008 we could no longer accept the Zimbabwe
currency due to inflation and were left with little option but to receive food donations
as rewards during our routine dances.’28 Audiences came with groceries such as
mealie-meal, salt, sugar and beer amongst other basic foodstuffs to give out to Nyau
dancers during events. Performing at anniversaries, Zimbabwean national events and
other functions or community gatherings also guaranteed at least basic foodstuffs and
thus became a common tactic to survive the crisis.
Additionally, Nyau offered employment opportunities to desperate Malawians
during the crisis. Faced with unprecedented job losses due to the land reform and
industrial shutdowns on the farms and mines, some migrant descendants turned to
their Nyau dancing skills to obtain alternative employment across Zimbabwe. Going
by the Nyau moniker, Tsemura Ndinde, Brian Kanjanda was able to get employed
at Dalny Mine in Chakari near Kadoma in 2005 because of his Nyau membership.29
Having grown up and worked at a former white commercial farm prior to fast track
land reform, Edward Malunga used his Nyau dancing prowess and membership to
gain employment at Aryshire Mine in Banket at the height of the crisis in 2008.
He narrates that after he lost his job at Peji farm and became destitute, he went to
Aryshire mine and joined the local Nyau club, and it was during his first dancing
performance (which thrilled the audience) that an impressed mine manager, News
Phiri, decided to offer him a job on the spot.30 Malunga had never worked on a
mine but his skills gave him the chance to escape poverty and earn a steady income
as a mine worker. News Phiri’s ambition was to turn the Aryshire Mine Nyau club
into a formidable outfit through consistent sponsorship and methodical recruitment
of excellent dancers from surrounding farms and mines. This he did by recruiting
and employing such brilliant performers as Aaron Wemba from Muriel mine, Isaac

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 205
and Lameck Chaponda from Sutton mine and Papura Kamuchikunda from Hydock
farm.31 As Kamuchikunda remembers, getting a job at Aryshire through Nyau was
uplifting because it not only rescued him from the ravages of Zimbabwe’s economic
meltdown but also significantly increased his income as compared to his previous
farm wage. He indicated that his salary increased almost tenfold from about US$30
at Hydock farm to close to US$300 at Ayrshire mine and this went a long way in
sustaining himself as well as his extended family (relatives) during the crisis.32
Through its entertainment value, Gule Wamkulu also had a therapeutic function
for its audience and dancers during the Zimbabwean crisis. A Gule Wamkulu perfor-
mance brought people together in times of celebration and mourning. It made people
to briefly forget about the daily political and economic hardships after 2000. The
practice became part of the everyday cosmology, or what David Chaney termed
‘part of daily activities that are so widely shared … that they have become unre-
markable’ (Chaney 2002: 34). Nyau weekend performances and festivals such as the
Chibuku Neshamwari became a way of passing time and not only brought excite-
ment and thrills to the large crowds but helped in relieving the stress and trauma of
Zimbabwe’s political and economic meltdown: ‘It’s quite exciting because it is the
only entertaining activity on a Sunday … At times, electricity will be gone so we
will be just killing time,’ said Tatenda Masayiti, a Unit L resident of Chitungwiza.33
11.5 Conclusion
In the two decades that the Zimbabwean political and economic quagmire has panned
out, ordinary citizens and communities have responded to the crisis varyingly. The
crisis historiography has extensively captured the resultant strategies showing how
communities employed various everyday socio-economic mechanisms to survive the
Zimbabwean crisis. However, by emphasising how ethnic minorities have uniquely
deployed their cultural motif as an alternative economic livelihood, this chapter
has punctured the orthodox crisis narrative in showcasing how culture has been
instrumentalised in becoming part of the multiple forms of making ends meet. In
the face of a crisis that systematically obliterated the proletarianised livelihoods of
migrant minorities on commercial farms, industrial complexes and mines, Malawian
descendants, who for decades have been living on the margins of the Zimbabwean
nation, have ingeniously and distinctly engaged their Nyau/Gule Wamkulu cultural
dance to navigate economic challenges in the new millennium. Nyau/Gule Wamkulu
became a critical source for income generation through performances during week-
ends, anniversaries and competitions. Nyau members generated revenue as well as
received rewards in kind such as food hampers. Not only did Nyau help in relieving
stress of the audience during the crisis, but it also enabled many to acquire gainful
employment through their dancing skills. Others also manged to use the proceeds

206 A. Daimon
from the practice to establish self-help societies as well as venture into informal busi-
nesses such as vending and cross-border trading. In a way, the Nyau/Gule Wamkulu
culture became an economic weapon of the weak for its Malawian practitioners
which, in their ‘state of unbelonging’, became pivotal in offering a unique platform
for economic survival during Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown.
Notes
1. Interview with Isaac Chaponda, Leader of Ayrshire Mine Nyau Club, Ayrshire
Mine, Banket, 18 July 2021.
2. National Archives of Zimbabwe (hereafter NAZ) S715/1, Chinyao Dance, CID
Salisbury, Chinyao Dance at Shamva Mine, 20 September 1926.
3. National Archives, Kew, UK (hereafter NA) CO525/201/1, Report of the
Central African Council, 1947; NA CO936/62/3, Report of the Secretary for
Native Affairs, Chief Native Commissioner, and Director of Native Develop-
ment, 1948; NA CO936/62/3, Report of the Commissioner of Native Labour,
1949; NAZ S2960, Department of Native Labour, Male Non-Indigenous
Natives in Employment, 1951; NA CO936/62/3, Report of the Commissioner
of Native Labour, 1949.
4. “Machona: Come Back Home,” Mutende, 21, November 1937; Malawi
National Archives (hereafter MNA) Com8/1, Report on the Commission to
Enquire into Emigrant Labour (Travers Lacey Report), 1935.
5. NA CO525/193/5, Nyasaland Native Labour: Recruitment for the Union of
South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, Mr. Creech Jones personal minutes on
Recruitment of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Labour, 1947.
6. NAZ S308, Native Commissioner Lomagundi at Sinoia: Miscellaneous, 01
August 1916 - June 25 1935.
7. NAZ/S235/392–393, Native Dances and Immorality, Chief Native Commis-
sioner, Sgd. H.M.G. Jackson, Salisbury, Circular Letter No. C551/4150/N/M,
02 September 1930.
8. Percy Zvomuya, “Of Power, Presidents and Medicine Men,” Mail and
Guardian, 20 April 2011.
9. Interview with Aaron Wemba, Member of Ayrshire Mine Nyau Club, Ayrshire
Mine, Banket, 18 July 2021.
10. Interview with Edward Malunga, Deputy Leader of Ayrshire Mine Nyau Club,
Ayrshire Mine, Banket, 18 July 2021.
11. Interview with Edward Malunga.
12. Interview with Lameck Chaponda, Nyau Member, Ayrshire Mine, Banket, 18
July 2021.
13. Interview with Isaac Chaponda.
14. Ibid.
15. Interview with Edward Malunga.
16. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/doc/src/Leaflet-2011_inscriptions-EN.
pdf. Intangible cultural heritage includes practices, representations, expres-
sions, knowledge and know-how that communities recognise as part of their

11 Cultural Economic Survival under Crisis … 207
cultural heritage. Passed down from generation to generation, it is constantly
recreated by communities in response to their environment, their interaction
with nature and their history, providing them with a sense of identity and
continuity. Gule Wamkulu dance was declared a world heritage under the
UNESCO cultural tradition list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity on 25 November 2005. The dance was put on the
Representative List under the 2003 Convention on the Protection of the
Diversity of Cultural Expressions under which Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia
and Mozambique are signatories. The UNESCO listing was important for all
the regional Gule Wamkulu custodians and practitioners who have stuck to
the tradition for generations.
17. Andrew Moyo, “Nyau Gun for Prophet Magaya,” Sunday Mail, 17 May 2015.
18. Interview with Isaac Chaponda.
19. https://www.herald.co.zw/maramure-gure-wins-chibuku-dance-showcase.
20. Ibid.
21. https://www.newsday.co.zw/2011/09/2011-09-04-harare-group-wins-chi
buku-neshamwari-national-finals/.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Interview with Kennedy Kachuruka, Dzivarasekwa, Harare, 11 July 2021.
25. Interview with Emma Banda, Mbare, Harare, 11 July 2021.
26. Interview with Laiza Phiri, Mbare, Harare, 11 July 2021.
27. Focus group discussion with Esther Chaponda, Alice Malunga, Violet Chiromo
and Asiyatu Kwenda, Aryshire Mine, Banket, 18 July 2021.
28. Interview with Admire Banda, Mbare, Harare, 11 July 2021.
29. Interview with Brian Kanjanda, Chakari, 25 July 2021.
30. Interview with Edward Malunga.
31. Interview with Isaac Chaponda.
32. Interview with Papura Kamuchikunda, Aryshire Mine, Banket, 18 July 2021.
33. A. Rushesha, Nyau Dancers Gain Popularity, https://www.thezimbabwean.co/
2012/10/nyau-dancers-gain-popularity/, 30 October 2012.
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Chapter 12
Changing Livelihoods and Coping
Strategies Among Ethnic Minorities
and the Manyikas in the Honde Valley
Borderlands Since the 1970s
Nicholas Nyachega and Vongai Olivia Sagonda
Abstract Borderland livelihoods are always impacted, in significant ways, by the
changing economic and socio-political developments in both the “edges” and the
“inlands” of the state. In this chapter, we explore how the Honde Valley’s ethnic
minority groups of Ndau, Malawian and Mozambican origins, as well as the majority
Shona families of Manyika roots undertook various forms of livelihoods from the
late 1970s to 2020. Although historically diversified, working in the tea planta-
tions, subsistence farming, small businesses and cross-border trading have always
remained central to the Honde Valley communities’ livelihoods. The Zimbabwean
economic and political crisis that started in the early 2000s affected the operations
of tea estates such as Aberfoyle and Katiyo where most im/migrant families worked.
The crisis affected the livelihoods of people of foreign roots and the locals too.
However, for the locals, banana farming became the main source of their livelihoods,
leading to what has been termed the Honde Valley “banana boom” which started in
the early 2000s. While the banana boom has witnessed a significant transformation
of the Honde Valley people’s livelihoods, it has been characterised by many chal-
lenges, including land disputes, unstable markets and state meddling in the face of
Zimbabwe’s deteriorating economic and political contexts.
Keywords Honde Valley ·Borderlands ·Livelihoods ·Manyika ·Ndau ·
Mozambicans ·Malawians
N. Nyachega (B
)
Department of History, University of Minnesota, 1110 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave S, Minneapolis,
MN 55455, USA
e-mail: nyach006@umn.edu
V. O. Sagonda
Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems, University of Zimbabwe, Harare,
Zimbabwe
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
K. Helliker et al. (eds.), Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe,
Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800- 9_12
211

212 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
12.1 Introduction
On 19 January 2021, it was reported that a parastatal organisation named Agricul-
tural Rural Development Authority (ARDA) Katiyo arbitrarily slashed villagers’
crops which included maize, bananas, yams, avocado pears and sugarcane in the
Honde Valley along the Mozambican border. The parastatal wanted to construct “a
perimeter fence” boundary to protect its estate lands.1A few months after this inci-
dent, another community (Chilonga) near the southern-eastern border of Zimbabwe,
in Chiredzi, was also reported to be facing displacement from their ancestral home-
lands to set aside land for lucerne grass production for stockfeed. In Chiredzi, thou-
sands of people on 12,940 hectares of Chilonga communal land were given a legal
notice to “leave immediately unless they acquire fresh rights of use or occupation
to that land” (Mavhinga 2021). In Honde Valley, following the Katiyo incident, the
villagers wanted ARDA, the local Mutasa Rural District Council and the Lands,
Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Minister (Anxious Masuka) to
be held accountable for the slashed crops and interdicted from encroaching into their
homelands.
ARDA Katiyo’s management justified its actions, arguing that the villagers were
trespassers whose livelihood activities undermined the power of the estate. The map
of ARDA Katiyo, as villagers recently learned from the estate’s representatives,
showed that the estate “was so big that their homesteads and fields were under the
estate’s map”. As narrated by Dafren, a migrant of Nyasa (Malawian) origin who
lives in Mazirwe village along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, near Katiyo,
We were told that our homes are under ARDA Katiyo’s land. All those living in the Mazirwe
area, from Nyamukombe River up to the Kamba area, have been warned to look for other
places where they can be moved. It has been said that the Binya road is the boundary of
Katiyo to the north and, to the eastern side of Mazirwe, the boundary would be the Rwera
River and Pungwe River junction. This is surprising news to me. Since I came here during the
1960s, no one told us about these boundaries. We had lived in the keeps [protected villages]
from 1976 to 1980 [during the war], and we were given new places to settle at independence
by the village heads. I did not know that someone would one day tell us to leave this place.
Is this what we fought for? We were here first before Katiyo. (Interview)
Another Honde Valley resident, but of (Barwe) Mozambican origin (Mr. Manyanga),
who in fact lives on the Mozambican side of the border noted that,
As a village head in this area, I have under my jurisdiction, people who live on both sides of
the border. The news about Katiyo, and the possible displacement that the people living near
Katiyo are facing, is not only sad, but an example of how things are very uncertain for us
who live in the border [area]. When war comes, we are always in difficult situations. When
RENAMO came, they attacked us in the border villages. Now, it is Katiyo, and they want
people moved. I hope that the responsible authorities can intervene and help people. No one
wants to lose their homes. This land is fertile, and it will be difficult for people to get an
equivalent of this land. There are good rains, food, and everything you want throughout the
year. We live from our land. Where can you get this Honde richness elsewhere in Zimbabwe?
(Interview)

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 213
Both Dafren and Manyanga’s stories, and the recent developments in the Honde
Valley area, highlight the predicaments, uncertainties and insecurities that commu-
nities along borders (or borderland communities) have always faced in the light of
state-sponsored projects or even non-state initiatives and developments. Understand-
ably, scholars of borders in Africa have long investigated the creation and character
of African borders, including their policing aspects, conflicts and permeability, to
demonstrate that borders are barriers and conduits vis-à-vis nation-states (Asiwaju
1985; Nugent and Asiwaju 1996). Others have explored borders as constraints by
emphasising the centrality of experiences of violence and suffering especially during
wars and crises (Schmidt 2013; Korf and Raeymaekers 2013). However, there is an
uncharted story of livelihoods along territorial borders among groups labelled as
ethnic minorities.
Using the case study of the rural Honde Valley borderland communities stretched
along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, we investigate the changing borderland
livelihoods and coping strategies among several ethnic minorities such as the Ndaus
from Chipinge, Nyasas and Chewas from Malawi and Barwes from Mozambique,
since the 1970s. Because these ethnic minorities live in an area inhabited by the
Manyika people, who are the ethnic majority of the Honde Valley populations,
we explore the livelihood experiences of ethnic minorities vis-as vis those of the
Manyikas. While the Honde Valley has people of Ndebele origin, whose existence
in the region can be traced to the long history of trans-territorial migrations during
the nineteenth century, it is almost impossible to clearly identify them. The Rhodesia
officials for Katiyo Tea Estates reported in 1972 that:
The tribal population of the valley has never been large, the majority being of Shona extrac-
tion. There are a few Ndebele descendants of Lobengula’s Impis who, when they failed to
carry out his orders in the area, decided to settle rather than return to Matabeleland and face
the royal wrath. (NAZ, Katiyo Tea Estates, Rhodesia Calls No. 96, March 1976: 33)
Our study shows that Zimbabwe–Mozambique borderlands are zones of opportu-
nities, where communities of different ethnicities have historically exploited various
social-economic and political boundaries to earn a living. Existing strands of scholar-
ship principally emphasise experiences of violence and suffering in the Zimbabwe–
Mozambique borderlands, and thus our study revises a long-held notion that borders
are “barriers”, “battlefields” and “bloodlands”. Borders are an everyday reality, yet
they become irrelevant or at best insignificant when livelihoods and identity forma-
tions are embedded in local perspectives and local circumstances. As Hoehne and
Feyissa (2010) argue, borders are frequently of no importance when transnational
and global processes of exchanges and identity formations are considered.
We argue that borderland livelihoods in the Honde Valley have been historically
conditioned by the fluidity and porousness of the border(s) since the colonial period.
Because the Honde Valley region is highly “unpoliced”, people from either side of the
border engage in various socio-economic and political activities that have enabled
them to sustain their livelihoods since the establishment of the Anglo-Portuguese
colonial border in 1891. Although the livelihoods of Honde Valley’s ethnic minority
and majority groups are historically diverse, maricho (piece jobs), working on the tea

214 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
plantations, subsistence farming and banana farming are central to their livelihoods.
Im/migrant families have also become entrepreneurs, selling second-hand clothes
and mabakayawo (dried fish) that they obtained from neighbouring countries such as
Mozambique and Zambia. Their livelihoods, overall, are influenced by the historical
socio-economic and political relationships that transcend national boundaries.
12.2 Interdependent Borderlands and Cross-Border
Networks
Conceptually, we view the Honde Valley as an interdependent borderland, an area
that offers many corridors of opportunities. In particular, interdependent border-
lands create many options for border people to establish socio-economic and polit-
ical networks across state boundaries (Asiwaju and Adeniyi 1989). In the Honde
Valley borderlands, as Nyachega (2016) argues, borderlanders establish for them-
selves various frontiers of opportunities and sanctuaries for self-determination, even
in the context of heightened state surveillance and wartime situations. Often, the
everyday activities of the borderlanders are viewed within state lenses of criminality.
Such views obscure the enduring socio-economic and political networks that state
borders have historically sought to undermine since the colonial period. Historians
of borders and borderlands have thus argued that the creation of colonial borders and
the subsequent enforced partitioning of ethnic populations did not entail an end to
fluid migrations and interactions between ethnically related communities residing on
either side of borders (Nugent 2019; Eilenberg and Wadley 2009). Global scholarship
on borderlands also highlights how the interdependent nature of borderlands turns
borderlands into centres of ordinary people’s livelihoods rather than peripheries of
state power (Zartman 2010; Scorgie 2013).
Because borders and border controls exist as an everyday reality, borderland
communities such as the Honde Valley engage with state borders in ways that chal-
lenge fixed ideas of nation-states and technologies of state control. As Herbst (1989)
argues, state borders do not resonate fully with people’s daily lives, expectations and
beliefs, and thus borderlands become contested spaces, places of both constraints
and opportunities (Nugent and Asiwaju 1996). In everyday life, border communi-
ties practice different kinds of “daily cross-border commuter migrations” (Daimon
2016: 4) that enable them to sustain their livelihoods. In Honde Valley, as this study
shows, while borders impose restrictions on people’s livelihood choices and mobil-
ities, creating insecurities especially during wars, they are also corridors of oppor-
tunities. As well, in the Honde Valley, cross-border ethnic relations play a very
important role in structuring borderland populations’ everyday socio-economic and
political strategies. Because the Honde Valley populations have overlapping ethnic
relations that cut across the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, traceable indeed to as
far as Zambia and Malawi, their livelihoods are usually shaped by their cross-border
ethnic relations and kinship ties that state borders tend to disregard.

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 215
In the Honde Valley, people have enduring cross-border networks that help them
forge imaginative livelihood strategies even in the most difficult circumstances of
war. The ways in which cross-border connections and disconnections shape the enter-
prising perspectives of individuals and their communities for purposes of exploiting
the various corridors of opportunities that borders and borderlands offer has been illu-
minated by a number of scholars (Nugent and Asiwaju 1996; Martinez 1994;Daimon
2016; Musoni 2016). However, very little is known about how groups characterised
as ethnic minorities rely on their historical cross-border networks that not only shape
but transform their livelihoods. While cross-border networks can be volatile and
dangerous, narratives from Honde Valley’s minority groups, mostly Ndaus but also
Nyasas and Barwes, reveal how their cross-border networks and their lives as “dual
citizens” provide many livelihood options. At the same time, while many people use
their cross-border networks, and exploit local authorities including chiefs to validate
either or both their “foreignness” and Zimbabweanness, very few officially hold two
national identity cards or passports.
12.3 Methodological Note
Our independent research projects happened at different times and were shaped by
different research questions, but we recently discovered the intellectual interests we
shared. Nyachega (2016) focussed on the experiences of Honde Valley communities
during the Zimbabwe war of liberation, extending the narratives beyond the war,
violence and suffering accounts. Sagonda (2019,2021) has examined the history
of banana farming and African entrepreneurs in Honde Valley. The questions and
methodological approaches we employed in our previous researches inspired us to
combine our research, themes and understandings for this current study.
The current study builds on a mixed-method approach to historical sources, origi-
nally an outgrowth of the “triangulation of methods” argument (Dunning et al. 2008).
One main goal of triangulation is to confirm a study’s results by using both qualita-
tive and quantitative methods. The sources used for this study include primary and
secondary sources, ranging from interviews, archival sources and published literature
mainly on borderland livelihoods.
We examined data gathered from the National Archives of Zimbabwe (hereafter,
NAZ). Most of the archival files record events which happened on tea estates during
the war, mainly terrorist atrocities against minority ethnic groups. Other archival files
provide insights into how colonial officials perceived the experiences of the Honde
Valley people especially during the early years of the establishment of tea estates
in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, they show how the Zimbabwean liberation war
disturbed the livelihoods of the Honde Valley inhabitants. The Rhodesian newspa-
pers consulted also document the livelihoods of the Honde Valley inhabitants in the
Protected Villages (PVs) or keeps which were established during the liberation war
as part of Rhodesia’s counterinsurgency measures.

216 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
Though archival sources were useful in many ways, the co-creation of oral histo-
ries has been an intrinsic part of our methodology. While oral sources have social
content, and hidden and multiple meanings, they offer an obvious although not always
easily accessible opportunity to incorporate people’s voices into our scholarship
(Isaacman 1990). Oral sources have provided us with views of the complexities of
everyday life; how shared border life experiences change over time and how border-
landers re-imagine their social, economic and political sovereignties in response to
state projects, wars and economic crises. As Maynes et al. (2008) argue, oral sources
like personal narratives vary greatly, yet they can provide unique insights into the
connections between individual life trajectories and collective experiences beyond
the individual when carefully read. Although oral sources can be very subjective and
are also affected by memory loss, they enabled us to understand aspects of everyday
life experiences that state archives and other historiographies have overlooked.
In co-creating oral histories, we interviewed people who identified as indigenous
Manyika, Mozambican, Ndau and Malawian im/migrants. We co-created these oral
histories through interviewing people from Sagambe, Chavhanga, Aberfoyle, Katiyo
Muparutsa, Murara and Hauna (see list at end of chapter). The stories of people
like Mr. Dafren and Manyanga (above), both retired migrant workers who once
worked at the Aberfoyle tea estates, but now seriously engaged banana farmers, have
helped us shape our arguments. Their stories facilitate a critical examination of ethnic
minorities’ transnational and transborder connections, exploring their changing goals
and desires, predicaments and triumphs in the context of changing livelihoods.
12.4 The Historical Contexts and Honde Valley Populations
Different historical contexts have shaped Honde Valley people’s livelihoods as well
as how individuals have responded to challenges and exploited opportunities that the
borderlands offer. In precolonial times, particularly before the coming of the white
settlers and the establishment of the Anglo-Portuguese (Zimbabwe-Mozambique)
colonial boundary in 1891, the Honde Valley people, of both Manyika and Barwe
(Makombe) descent, had a diversified economic, social and political life that was
not confined to a single location. Their livelihoods were always mobile, spanning
across different territories, hunting grounds, trading centres and homelands. While
agriculture was important to the Honde Valley people, hunting, mining and long-
distance trading formed the backbone of their everyday livelihoods.
Historians have long studied the economic activities of the Manyika people, with
Machiwenyika (NAZ, MA 14/1/1), Beach (1997) and Bhila (1982) likely the most
cited works. Bhila (1982), however, specifically covers Honde Valley, showing how
Manyika hunters and gold miners in the Honde Valley participated in the flourishing
Portuguese trade that was connected to the extensive networks of Indian Ocean trade.
Beach (1997) also notes that, before the predominance of agriculture, the Manyika
people were hunters, using various techniques. Farming in the Manyika region was
made possible by the abundance of rich loamy soils and of water from the perennial

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 217
rivers of Odzi, Nyamukwarara, Rwera, Pungwe and others. As Nyachega (2016)
notes, Honde Valley communities grew (rukweza) finger millet, (mhunga)bulrush
millet, (mapfunde) sorghum, (magwere) maize and (nyemba) cowpeas among other
crops during the rainy season in the fertile valleys of the Honde, Rwera and Pungwe
rivers. While remaining diverse, their livelihoods increasingly became dominated by
agriculture during the twentieth century (Nyachega 2016).
The majority of the Honde Valley populations are Manyikas whose ancestors
are the original inhabitants of the area as suggested by Manyika oral traditions (see
Machiwenyika, NAZ, MA 14/1/1). The minority groups are mostly of Ndau, Barwe
and Nyasa origin who themselves or their forefathers came to settle in the area
for different reasons including labour migration. The long history of socio-economic
and political mobilities, including long-distance trade and labour migration as well as
other kinds of everyday travels in the region, historically enabled people of Mozam-
bican, Malawian and Zimbabwean origin to move back and forth across borders in
search of new livelihood practices and to escape forced labour, enslavement and other
evils since the precolonial period. Trans-frontier wars between the Manyika under
Mutasa, the Barwe under Makombe and the Nguni under Gungunyana facilitated the
movements of people across boundaries. As Manyika traditions suggest, Makombe
and Gungunyana raided the Honde Valley, and some of their warriors settled in Zindi
and Ngorima areas of Honde (see Machiwenyika, NAZ, MA 14/1/1). During the
Zimbabwe liberation war in the 1970s, people living on the Zimbabwean side of
the border escaped Rhodesian atrocities and forced villagisation programmes (i.e.
keeps) by skipping the border to seek refuge in Mozambique. During the Mozambican
civil war (1975–1992), a large number of Mozambicans also crossed the unpoliced
border and moved into Honde Valley. In more recent times, with renewed RENAMO
attacks in Mozambique, individuals of either Mozambican or Zimbabwean origin
have continued to cross to Zimbabwe where they sought refuge and “new” ways to
earn a living.
The Honde Valley borderlanders’ lives and livelihoods have undergone several
changes, adaptations and innovations over time. Difficult conditions have forced
people to adopt new forms of livelihoods. For example, the drought years of
1991/1992 across Zimbabwe, known in Honde Valley as gore rendongwe (the year of
red locusts), compelled many people to adopt and pursue new alternative livelihoods
such as cross-border trading, (including selling rapoko in Mozambique), kusunza
(begging for food from relatives) and digging nyamutata (a huge tuber turned into
flour). As Sekuru Sauranda, a Honde Valley resident who experienced the drought
noted,
People also learned to fry bananas or pound them into powder for cooking some food closer
to sadza [the staple food]. Others searched for nyamutata in Tangwena Mountains across the
border with Mozambique. But many of the im/migrant labourers remained tea workers, and
they could get food portions from the Aberfoyle, Katiyo, and Rumbizi tea estates as part of
a food-for-work programme. (Interview)
The Zimbabwe economic meltdown, especially between 2000 and 2008, “pushed”
members of different ethnic groups into Mozambique and other destinations such as

218 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
South Africa in search of greener pastures. Those who had remained home diversified
their livelihoods, engaging in banana farming and cross-border trading in areas such
as Nyandiro, Tepera, Musinzi and Honde in Mozambique. While our study highlights
that banana farming changed people’s lives in the Honde Valley, it also shows how the
centrality of banana farming to people’s livelihoods opened new challenges around
land conflicts. In telling the story about the ways in which Honde Valley people
earned their living, we emphasise how various contexts of historical change shaped
people’s lived experiences, as well as the varying coping strategies they have used
overtime.
12.5 The Tea Industry and Honde Valley Livelihoods
The establishment of the Aberfoyle company by W. A. K. Igoe in 1952, and Katiyo
Estates under the Tribal Trust Land Development Corporation Limited (TILCOR)
in 1969, created many job opportunities for the locals, and for migrant labourers
who had come to the Valley area as individual job seekers or had been recruited
by the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau (RNLB). Labour migrants, mostly Ndau,
Nyasa and Barwe people, found employment in Aberfoyle (later named Eastern
Highlands Plantation Limited (EHPL) in Honde Valley. Since the establishment of
the tea estates, tea-picking work became a central form of livelihood for both ethnic
minority and majority groups in the Honde Valley. Tea production in the area did
not only provide incomes to the migrant labourers but livelihoods for the indigenous
populations as well. By the end of 1969, Katiyo Estates employed approximately
170 Africans on a 300-hectare tea farm.
Most of the employees at Katiyo were of Ndau, Nyasa and Barwe origins who had
come mostly from nearby Chipinge (in Zimbabwe) and Catandica (in Mozambique)
and Malawi. However, considering that a large number of young local Manyika men
had left for urban areas in search of better jobs, the estates used different strate-
gies to encourage the participation of locals in the tea industry’s cash economy.
Katiyo aimed “to convert the local Tribesman from subsistence to cash economy
level by generating employment opportunities brought about by the establishment
of tea factories, processing plants and ancillary installations” (NAZ, 21,437, Katiyo
Tea Estates-Tribal Trust Land Development Corporation Limited: Katiyo Tea Estates
Information Pamphlet 1972).
Tea growing in both Katiyo and Aberfoyle was done on land privately owned
by multinational companies and the colonial state. The lands were acquired through
systematic removals of Africans enabled by colonial capital and Rhodesia’s Land
Apportionment Act of 1930 which set the legal boundaries between “European Land”
and African Land. However, outside of the private lands, tea companies such as
Eastern Highlands Plantations Limited (EHPL, formerly Aberfoyle) and Katiyo Tea
Estate (under TILCOR) promoted the development of a number of small-scale tea
growers, locally known as out-growers, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s. To boost tea
production in their estate factories, both EHPL and Katiyo supported the out-growers

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 219
scheme under which they promoted the local Honde Valley people to engage in tea
farming across the Holdenby and adjoining Mutasa communal areas. The estates
offered loans, farming implements and inputs (mainly fertilizers), and they bought
the tea from local farmers plus providing transportation to the factories.
While the development of out-growers schemes would seem to affect the local
Manyika population’s labour supplies to the estates, some Manyikas continued to
work in the tea estates. However, it was the migrant labourers who stayed at the
estate compounds who continued to supply labour consistently to the estates even
during the Zimbabwe liberation war. Thus, as the following section shows, during
the Zimbabwe liberation war, guerrilla war strategies also targeted tea workers in the
compounds to destabilise the operations of the tea estates.
12.5.1 Caught-in-Between: Changing Wartime Livelihoods
In December 1976, 27 people were massacred in Honde Valley in what became
known as the Aberfoyle Massacre. Describing the event in the The Rhodesian Herald
of December 1976, Brian Thomas said that the incident was nothing more than the
massacre of innocent civilians, mostly migrant workers who were targeted by the
“insurgents” for providing labour to the Aberfoyle Company (NAZ, The Rhodesian
Herald, 21 December 1976). Thomas reported that:
A Malawian man with a wife and five children said that “the terrorists have been here before,
telling us not to work for the white man and when they came last night, they told us that we
had disobeyed their instruction as they told us…. so they were going to shoot us”. (NAZ,
The Rhodesian Herald, 21 December 1976)
The Aberfoyle Massacre incident highlights that the late 1970s proved to be a
challenging time not only for im/migrants or ethnic minority groups but for civilians
broadly in various parts of Rhodesia and across the border as well. In other parts
of the eastern border regions, such as Nyanga and Vumba, reports were made of
“terrorist massacres”. The most widely reported was the Elim Mission massacre of
23 June 1978 in Vumba.
Both the Aberfoyle and Elim Mission massacres indeed tell a story of brutal war
strategies and the violence that affected the livelihoods of civilians living especially
in border zones. In this respect, the shifting patterns of war strategies and coun-
terinsurgency measures in the Zimbabwean war of liberation significantly impacted
people’s livelihoods regardless of ethnicity and race. Civilians were always caught
in the middle, as the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) report title
“the man in the middle” suggested (CCJP 1977). In the case of the Honde Valley, the
tea estate massacre of December 1976 and other related attacks such as the Pimayi
massacre of 10 May 1976 (where Rumbizi tea workers travelling in an African
Development Fund (ADF) lorry were killed in a landmine explosion) highlight the
uncertainties and dangers of war for civilian populations regardless of their ethnic
statuses. The war violence disrupted various forms of livelihoods among the Honde

220 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
Valley people who were working on the tea estates, as well as those who did not
work on the estates. Increased attacks that targeted civilians and colonial institutions
like schools, clinics and tea estate premises led the then Mutasa district commis-
sioner, Mr. Hamish Peters, to describe the Honde Valley as a “Death Valley” (Umtali
Post , 13 April 1977). Rhodesian reporter Chris Ashton also named Honde Valley the
“Ambush Valley” (Ashton, NAZ, S/Il53).
These attacks not only affected civilians’ day-to-day livelihoods but worried the
Rhodesian government whose officials feared that the tea estate would lose its
workers due to “terrorist attacks” (Nyachega 2016). The tea estate officials also
worried about the shortage in the migrant labour supply and reduction in sales. For
example, on 13 February 1976, Katiyo Estate’s Financial Coordinator, A.S. Davies,
wrote in his budget review, for the year 1975/76, to the Secretary for Internal Affairs,
Mr. Fleming, that “a reduction in sales was anticipated because of the security situa-
tion and particularly, because labour from Mozambique is likely to be stopped from
crossing into Rhodesia” (NAZ, S3700/104/3/6 Internal Affairs, Correspondence and
Other Papers, Katiyo Tea Estate: Inyanga District: 1970 Jan-1976 Dec).
While the majority of reports on the Aberfoyle massacre seem to suggest that
the massacre was nothing more than a callous massacre of innocent civilians by
“terrorists” who wanted to sabotage Rhodesian industries, there is an ethnic dimen-
sion concealed by this narrative. Although it is not clear who the terrorists were,
Rhodesia Defence Reporter, Chris Reynolds, suggested that the killings were targeted
at migrant workers living in the Aberfoyle Compounds, and was carried out by
“Shona speaking terrorists” (NAZ, The Rhodesian Herald, 21 December 1976:1).
He reported that,
Terrorists massacred 27 unarmed African workers as their wives and children watched on
[at] a tea estate here on Sunday night…the terrorists, numbering between 20 and 30, entered
a compound at 8.38 pm and rounded up all men, women, and children they could find…The
men were forced to lie on the ground. For three or four minutes, the terrorists fired at the
helpless bodies. Nine Mozambique nationals died. Eight Malawians nationals died. So did
10 Rhodesians. Eleven other men were injured, some of them Zambians.
Most guerrilla activities in the Honde Valley were directed against the plantations
(Katiyo, Aberfoyle and Eastern Highlands tea estates) as well as the Rumbizi tea
scheme. As Schmidt (2013) reveals, guerrillas attacked the workers and damaged
the estates’ equipment to curb production on the plantations. According to Schmidt
(2013), the Pimayi massacre of 10 May 1976, was part of these sabotage tactics used
by the guerrillas. The incident disturbed people’s lives as workers were afraid to go
to work. Mrs. Mapirwe of Barwe origin (in an interview) said that “they were afraid
to go to work and sometimes they didn’t go because they were afraid to lose their
lives”. On the same note, Mr. Dafren also revealed that
It was difficult for the tea workers who lived in areas far away from the estates to come to
work because they were targeted for not obeying the ZANLA [guerrilla] forces’ command
to stop working for the whites. (interview)
Following the Aberfoyle Massacre and several other raids on tea estates in Honde
Valley, the Rhodesian government introduced the protected village (PV) scheme,

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 221
forcibly removing people from their ancestral homes to “win back the Honde Valley
from the terrorists” (Ashton, NAZ, S/Il53). To this end, as Msindo and Nyachega
(2019) argue, while guerrillas ardently believed that peasants would help them win
the war, the Rhodesian security forces thought that depriving their opponents’ access
to civilians was akin to removing the fish (guerrillas) from the waters (peasantry).
Dafren noted that
Because of the need for labour mostly and to protect the indigenous and the im/migrants
from the guerrilla atrocities, the Rhodesian government forcibly moved the Honde Valley
inhabitants into the Protected Villages from where they could pick up tea workers to work at
6 am and return them before 6 pm in accordance with the six-to-six curfew laws. (interview)
There were several livelihood difficulties that people encountered in the fifteen PVs
that were created (Schmidt 2013). The difficulties included “being denied access
to their fields and hunting grounds as the Rhodesians were determined to stop the
guerrilla-civilians’ interactions” (interview). Yet, although Zimbabwe’s liberation
war transformed the Honde Valley into a new and bitterly contested frontier, charac-
terised by hardships in PVs, civilians were innovative and realigned their lifestyles in
response to—or in opposition to—the state’s routine controls and guerrilla incursions
at PVs (Msindo and Nyachega 2019).
12.6 Post-Liberation War Livelihoods
The year 1980 was a turning point in the history of Zimbabwe, following the attain-
ment of political independence from white minority rule. For the Honde Valley
borderland communities, independence not only marked the end of the brutal war
but a return home, a moment of recovering a deep sense of belonging (Schmidt 2013).
Considering that the war displaced people from their homes, disrupting livelihoods
in the process, the early years of independence were also times of difficulties in
terms of making choices for both ethnic minorities and the Manyikas. Many people
who had been forcibly moved into PVs and those who had crossed the border into
Mozambique, living in areas such as Gonakudzingwa in Tangwena and Tangwena
mountains, took more than two years to even return. As noted by Mr. Chazanewako
Dzinduwa, a Manyika (interview), who during the war had crossed the border into
Mozambique, “a lot of people continued living across the border. They would return
to the Zimbabwean side to check the situation, considering security issues, and start
building homes too [in Mozambique]”. Dzinduwa’s narrative also reveals that some
families of Mozambican origin, particularly those who had come from the Villa
Catandica area during the Mozambican civil war (1975–1992), decided to stay on the
Mozambican side of the border. But others, considering their Mozambican civil war
experiences, decided to quickly move to the Zimbabwean side fearing that they would
be targeted by RENAMO units. Njonda, a Honde Valley resident of Barwe origin,
who had immigrated from Mozambique’s Catandica region to escape RENAMO’s
forced recruitment, shared the following view:

222 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
It was safer for me to cross the border back to independent Zimbabwe than to stay in Mozam-
bique where anything could happen. In the forests where [RENAMO] bandits were known
for brutally murdering innocent civilians, we didn’t feel safe. I had left Catandica to escape
RENAMO’s forced recruitment, and because of REMANO’s networks and intelligence, they
probably knew I had moved to Rhodesia. I didn’t want to take any risks, I crossed back and
settled here in Kumadzi area. (interview)
For people like Njonda, there were many opportunities that came with indepen-
dence and crossing the border into Zimbabwe. For members of both the majority and
minority ethnic groups, returning home meant a possible return to their pre-war jobs
in the Tea Estates. While some seized the opportunity to work in tea estates again,
others left Honde Valley for towns in search of new jobs. However, others, as argued
by Schmidt (1997), utilised the post-independence socio-economic opportunities to
“heal their wounds” and to establish or adapt to the new forms of livelihoods available
to themselves.
While ethnic identities heavily influenced post-war livelihoods, there was a
gendered dimension to the choices people made and the livelihood opportunities
they had. Men and women did not have the same choices and livelihood means in
the post-independent era. The majority of local Honde Valley men left their villages
looking for better jobs in towns. Dzinduwa (interview) noted that most Manyika men
preferred working in hotels like Troutbeck, Sheraton and others. Others worked at the
local Aberfoyle Country Club in Honde Valley as golf-carriers after independence,
as did Mr. Sauranda, a Manyika (interview). However, the majority of women were
left with no option than to work in the tea plantation as mostly tea-pickers. Mrs.
Dirwayi (interview) recalled that, by 1980, she had four children and she needed
money to take care of her family. As a widow, the only option she had was to work
in the Aberfoyle plantation together with her first-born child.
12.6.1 The “Banana Boom” and Changing Livelihoods
During the Economic Meltdown, 2005–2018
This section shows how borderland economic activities such as banana farming and
vending transformed people’s lives during an era of deteriorating economic standards
and living conditions in the country. From 2005, the Honde Valley communities
started to seriously engage in banana farming. There are several factors that explain
the increase in banana production in Honde Valley, and why families turned to this
even to the extent of replacing their tea and coffee crops with banana plants. Most
of the Valley inhabitants, such as Mr. Sauranda, Mr. Dafren and Mr. Nheredzo (of
Barwe origin) (interviews) removed tea and coffee trees to pave way for bananas.
With the favourable local conditions of banana growing, including availability of
water and rich soils, there was a sudden increase in banana farming, leading to the
Honde Valley being called the “Banana Valley”.
Many Honde Valley people testified how banana farming transformed their lives
amidst serious economic challenges in the country. Many farmers testified that despite

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 223
practicing other forms of livelihoods (such as cross-border trading, small businesses
and grocery shops), banana farming is one of the leading income sources for the
Honde Valley inhabitants. For example, Mr. Chitungo (Manyika) (interview) pointed
out that for close to two decades now, his family has benefited from banana farming.
His wife, a professional teacher at the time of our research, highlighted that they
ventured into mixed farming, bananas have given them a lot of profits since the
time her husband retired from his job to work permanently on the farm (The Sunday
Mail, 28 October 2018). Employing more than 20 permanent workers on his 9-
hectare banana farm, Mr. Chitungo has won an award as the leading banana farmer,
hosting a workshop at his farm in 2015 attended by one of the researchers (Nicholas
Nyachega), then working as a history teacher at Muparutsa Secondary School.
Another Honde Valley farmer, Mrs. Mate (interview), a widow of Ndau origin
living in the Murara area, testified that she managed to send her children to school
because of the profits generated from banana farming. Another informant, Mr.
Nheredzo, a Headmaster at Sagambe Primary School, said that due to an increase
in banana farming locally, “more pupils are being enrolled in school and mostly
their school fees are being paid in time” (interview). Nheredzo also stated that
many schools are engaging in banana farming, with St. Peters Mandeya Primary,
and Muterere and Gatsi Secondary, schools being most significant in this respect.
This is without doubt an indication that banana farming in Honde Valley has changed
for the good many aspects of Honde people’s livelihoods, from individual and house-
hold level to community level, including schools. However, these shifting patterns of
livelihoods, particularly tea farming and the banana boom, are not without conflicts.
12.7 “Munyasarandi Haana Pake”2: Othering, Minority
Groups, Land Conflicts and Market Access
The Honde Valley people’s livelihoods are deeply entrenched in the politics of “other-
ing” with regards to land access and market opportunities. The framework of “other-
ing” has been used often to examine the basis in human behaviour for “disliking the
unlike”, which can take the form of ethnocentrism, racism and xenophobia towards
minority groups (Kagedan 2020). In Honde Valley, the othering of ethnic identities
significantly plays out in how both Manyika groups and ethnic minorities access land
and market opportunities. In addition to this, political views and associations with
political parties have come to shape how individuals access or do not access oppor-
tunities. For the Honde Valley, the emergence of the Guri, Pungwe and Mapokana
Tea Growers Associations reveals these dynamics of land and market access as well
as the conflicts between locals and ethnic minority groups.
The Honde Valley tea out-growers produced a significant amount of tea that was
being exported to other countries (Mtisi 2002). The EHPL and ARDA Katiyo Tea
Estate (formerly under TILCOR), as the only two tea buyers in the Honde Valley, thus
monopolised the tea market, leaving out-growers without wide choices for selling

224 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
their tea. Despite the lack of market choices, Honde Valley tea growers earned a
reasonable living by selling their tea to the estate buyers. Several disagreements
arose though between out-grower farmers, which were caused by market competition
deeply rooted in ethnic conflicts. For example, local Manyika members of the main
Honde Valley Tea Growers Association accused members of Malawian origin in the
association of conspiring with the tea estate officials to cut (or lower) out-grower tea
prices to get job promotions. Discussing the splits in 1988 and 1999, Mtisi (2002)
notes that the leadership of the Honde Valley Tea Growers’ Association (as the mother
body) considered the new co-operatives (namely, Guri, Pungwe and Mapokana) as
simply rebels who wanted to oust the leaders of the Honde Valley Association. Mtisi
(2002) also stresses the lack of financial transparency and unpopular constitutional
amendments as the main reasons for splits in this association in the late 1990s.
However, from our research, three former Honde Valley Tea Growers’ Association
members (Mr. Paza, Mr. Mlambo and Mr. Marikopo), of Ndau and Manyika origins,
emphasised ethnic conflicts and selling out to get promotions in the Estates as the
main reasons leading to the splits.
The emergence of a banana regime in Honde Valley has also witnessed serious
land conflicts as well as land grabs inspired by Zimbabwe’s fast track land reform
programme. In an interview, Mrs. Mapirwe said that, in 2000, the Aberfoyle Tea
Estate was under threat by war veterans led by a man identified as Mareya, who
began to claim land for agricultural activities, to which bananas were at the centre.
Mareya and other war veterans like Madzitire decided to name a fertile section of
the Aberfoyle in Chipote, kuma War-Vet (“the war veterans’ area”). While it has
been generally said that the Aberfoyle company lost land to the war veterans through
violent means, others suggest that there was a peaceful takeover of land facilitated
by the company itself in support of Zimbabwean land reform. Whether this is true
or not, our research discovered that land occupiers of “the War-Vet area” excluded
people of Ndau, Barwe and Nyasa origin. Only Manyika locals, led by Mareya,
acquired land. One of the reasons cited by informants for the exclusion of minority
ethnic groups in the land acquisition programme was that “munyasarandi haana
pake” meaning “those of foreign roots cannot be trusted”. The word Nyasarandi
derives from Malawi’s colonial name Nyasaland. In Honde Valley, the word is used
for all people of foreign roots (including Mozambicans), and it is generally used for
labelling anyone who stays in tea estate compounds. In this way, the “othering” of
people of minority groups influence their lack of access to land.
Despite the politicisation and othering of minority ethnic groups in land access
projects, some members of minority groups who do not own land in Honde Valley
have resorted to buying land from local village heads and Manyika individuals, “to
move out of compound life”. Those who managed to acquire land through individual
purchases established new homes in local villages outside of the tea estate lands,
without necessarily discontinuing working for the tea estates. Some have started
growing bananas around their homesteads to supplement the income they receive
by working in the tea estates. Mrs. Mudzinganyama a Ndau woman (interview),
who lived in the Aberfoyle tea estates, bought land from a Manyika family in Zindi
village, where she started growing bananas in 2006. She further stated that “banana

12 Changing Livelihoods and Coping Strategies … 225
production brings quick money; for example, one can just send children along the
roads or to go and sell in the schools and get money to buy essentials unlike waiting
for month-end salaries”.
Other known farmers of Mozambican origin (like Manyanga, Belo and Mujangu—
interviews) have also acquired land on the Mozambican side of the border where
they have kinship connections with local authorities, or a village head locally known
as Masabhuku. Manyanga, who is a sabhuku himself, expressed how land access in
Mozambique and market access in Mbare (in Harare) has helped him raise his family,
sending some of his children to Mozambican colleges. However, other people from
other minority groups face hardships in terms of market access as
They cannot travel to urban areas like Harare because they do not have identity cards which
are frequently inspected on roadblocks, especially for farmers who travel at night. They,
thus, rely local buyers [vahodhi or magweja] who come from other villages and districts.
Others sell their bananas locally to companies such as FAVCO Zimbabwe, and Matanuska
Zimbabwe.
12.8 Conclusion
In this chapter, we have examined changing rural livelihoods in the Honde Valley
borderlands, showing how the Honde Valley’s Shona families of Manyika roots and
im/migrant families of Ndau, Malawian and Mozambican origins undertook various
forms of livelihoods from the late 1970s to 2020. Although their livelihoods are
historically diversified, working in the tea plantations, subsistence farming, small
businesses and cross-border trading have always remained key to their means of
living. Different historical circumstances such as war, and people’s cross-border
networks have shaped the livelihoods of Honde Valley communities in significant
ways. Further, the establishment of tea estates such as Aberfoyle provided employ-
ment opportunities for individuals of both local origins as well as ethnic minorities
who worked mostly as migrant labourers in the tea estates. The livelihoods of migrant
labourers (mainly from ethnic minorities) were not limited to the boundaries of the
estates. Even during the liberation war and in the face of Rhodesian state violence
and counterinsurgency operations, these people forged creative livelihood strategies
despite their difficult circumstances. In protected villages, small businesses emerged
and people continued supplying labour to the tea estates.
In the post-independence era, and though experiencing numerous constraints such
as limited access to land and markets as well as marginalisation in tea growers’
associations, minority ethnic groups have exploited many opportunities. While some
have bought their own land, engaging in banana farming, others have utilised their
cross-border networks to trade especially during the Zimbabwe economic meltdown
from the early 2000s. While the Honde Valley communities have overtime shown
enterprising attitudes in different economic situations, decisions by political elites in
post-colonial Zimbabwe continue to affect their livelihoods and futures. While most
banana farmers currently face transport challenges due to poor road networks, as well

226 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
as unstable markets, they have managed to deal with these challenges by employing
various strategies. Also, the Honde Valley residents who include both indigenous
and minority groups living in the Katiyo area currently confront new predicaments
and uncertain futures because of a possible forced removal from their ancestral lands
by ARDA Katiyo. Not only does this affect the indigenous populations but also
individuals of foreign roots who were born in the tea estates and had, as one migrant
of Nyasa origin put it, “secured their futures by buying land in the villages from
village heads and individuals”.
Notes
1. https://twitter.com/ZLHRLawyers/status/1351534229440647169.
2. The translation for this is: “those from Nyasaland cannot be trusted”.
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Archival Files
NAZ, S/Il53 Illustrated Life in Rhodesia, 1978, Protected Villages: Chris Ashton Visits the Honde
Valley, Vol 11, No. 4
NAZ, ‘One man died- my father’, The Rhodesian Herald, 22 December 1976a.
NAZ, ‘Terrorists massacre workers, wives and children watch 27 die’, 21 December 1976b.
NAZ, 21437, Katiyo Tea Estates-Tribal Trust Land Development Corporation Limited: Katiyo Tea
Estates Information Pamphlet, 1972.
NAZ, Katiyo Tea Estates in Rhodesia Calls No. 96 (March 1976).

228 N. Nyachega and V. O. Sagonda
NAZ, S3700/104/3/6 Internal Affairs,Correspondence and Other Papers, Katiyo Tea Estate: Inyanga
District: 1970 Jan-1976 Dec).
NAZ, MA 14/1/1 Jason Machiwenyika, ‘A history and customs of the Manyika’.
Interviews of the authors with:
Mrs. Mapirwe, Sagambe, Honde Valley, 5 December, 2018.
Mr. Boterere, Sagambe, Honde Valley, 16 December, 2018.
Mr. Dafren, Mapureti, 17 December, 2018.
Sekuru Sauranda, Sagambe, Honde Valley, 17 December, 2018.
Mbuya Dirwayi, 82 years, Sagambe, Honde Valley, 17 December, 2018.
Mr. Nheredzo, Sagambe. Honde Valley, 16 December, 2018.
Mr. Chitungo, Muparutsa, Honde Valley, 19 December, 2018.
Mrs. Mukupe, Murara, 19 December, 2018.
Mrs. Mate, Murara, Honde Valley, 19 December, 2018.
Mrs. Mudzinganyama, Eastern highlands, Honde Valley, 21 December, 2018.
Mr. John Mlambo, Aberfoyle, Honde Valley, 14 December, 2018.
Mr. Philemon Paza Aberfoyle, Honde Valley, 14 December, 2018.
Mr. Belo, Mbare Musika (market) Harare, 5 August, 2019.
Mr. George Manyanga, Mbare Musika (market) Harare, 5 August 2019.
Mr. Beneditto Njonda, Rwera, Mozambique, 2 October, 2019.
Mr. Manyanga George, Mbare Musika, Harare, 20 September , 2019.
Mr. Charles Muyambo, Mbare Musika, Harare, 20 September , 2019.
Mr. Chazanewako Dzinduwa, Chimuswe Village, Honde Valley, 06 February, 2020.
Nicholas Nyachega is a doctoral candidate in African History at the University of Minnesota. His
research examines the local quotidian experiences of borderlanders living along the Zimbabwe-
Mozambique border. In particular, he is interested in how borderlanders’ everyday life goals and
desires have changed over time and across space, working sometimes in harmony with, or in
defiance of, nation-state apparatuses of control.
Vongai Olivia Sagonda is a student of African History at the University of Zimbabwe. Her MA
thesis focuses on African entrepreneurship (small and medium) as a form of livelihood in Honde
Valley. She examines in particular the history of entrepreneurship from 1980 to 2020, emphasising
the social dimensions of African businesses.