From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier

Part 1: Colonization, Failed and Successful

PART 1 Colonization, Failed and Successful The two chapters that comprise part 1 do not attempt to recount the colonialhistories ofVhimbaand Gogoi. Neitherofthese placeshas experienced a"colonialperiod" ofthesortusuallyimagined: atight three-quarter-century of European control capped by African self-rule of one kind or another. True, the 1884-85 Congress of Berlin did partition the midsection of Southern AfricaamongBritain, Portugal, and Germany. Furthermore, formal independence-even if it did not come in 1960 as in more northerly parts-has come. Vhimba and Gogoi felt the reverberationsoftheseevents. Yet, inthecourseoflong-distancetransmission from theofficialceremonies, the various treaties lost much of their original significance. The AngloPortuguese boundary delineation of 1898, for example,. prompted neither British nor Portuguese actually to settle in the Chimanimani or Sitatonga areas.l Instead, imperial partition prior to the delineation itself facilitated colonization by a third white group, South African whites speaking Dutch and English, whose presence in Africa dated back to 1652. If one includes these actors, then the colonial period started long before the Congress of Berlin (1884-85) and reached the region ofthis study only rather late in the day. The tail end of colonialism is similarly murky. A generation after Mozambique ceased to be a colony of Portugal, Afrikaner-led colonization reachedGogoi. Onlyinthe1990Swere peopleinGogoilearninghow to resist the seizure oftheir landbywhite settlers. Is rural Mozambique, then, somehowstuckin the colonialperiod? Asimplifiedtimeline ofprecolonial, colonial , and postcolonial eras raises exactly these types ofcontradictions. Fortunately, historians have improved upon this three-act play and its 19 PART 1 COLONIZATION, FAILED AND SUCCESSFUL narrative ofstates and treaties. As Southern Africanists have long recognized, stateless whites began to colollize long before European state rule material· ized in the form of colonialism.2 Colonization-or physical settlement for agriculture or silviculture-has often occurred independent ofcolonialism. Occasionally, colonization has left a more profound mark on African soci· ety than has colonialism. Portuguese first settled the Mozambican coast in 1505 and between the earlyseventeenth centuryand the Nguni conquest two hundred years later farmed the prazos (estates granted by the Portuguese crown) along the Zambezi all the way to Zumbo. Cut offentirely from the metropo]e, these "transfrontiersmcn" intermarried with Africans, becoming chiefs until all visible trace of their origin was lost.3 Not so the Dutch. Enough of them maintained a separation from Africans- called apartheid in some times and places-to establish lasting neo-European enclaves. Thus, a more complicated time line links the Cape Colony to the treks to today's Chipinge Club. Such continuities figure prominently in Zimbabwe's historical record. Indeed, not so long ago that record largely consisted of triumphalist settler narratives about Afrikaners and other pioneers.4 Yet, later histories and contemporary accounts of the 1980s and 1990S have tended to minimize the influence ofwhites in favor ofAfrican agency. As elsewhere inAfrica, accounts ofindependence movements and wars ofliberation have emphasized andlor endorsed African nationalism. Even the more skeptical anthropology of African "postcolonies" implies that the colonial period is past. At the veryleast, "postcolonial studies" suggest that the flag ceremonies held in 1957 and thereafter changed the cultural face of Africa.s The time line of states and treaties may be creeping back in. Vhimba and Gogoi do not permit this intrusion of "official history." In neither place was national independence an important turning point. Nor was the state often the most important actor. In 1893, whites seized the Chimanimani plateau in an administrative vacuum. The following year, officials stepped in, but they represented a private company-the British South Africa Company-rather than the British state as such. Even after the expiry ofthat company's concession in 1923, settlers held the balanceofpower in Rhodesian affairs. This unusual degree of self-government resulted in Zimbabwe's double independence: the unilateral separation from Britain in 1965 and the transfer to a black government in 1980. For the distribution of land in Zimbabwe today, the first, much less recognized independence may have had the greater impact. In Gogoi, private agencies also kept European state rule at arms' length. The Mozambique Company governed Manica and Sofala for fifty years (1893-1943). Portugal ruled it directly for 20 PART 1. COLONIZATION, FAILED AND SUCCESSFUL onlythirty-twoyears, until independence in1975. After independence, however , the Mozambican state hardly governed Gogoi. War and rebel occupation kept the region heyond civil servants' reach for more than a decade. In short, Gogoi is and Vhimba was ahinterland, a place where freebooters, adventurers, and land-grabbers often carry...