The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers� Voices from Zimbabwe

Foreword

xi One of the most difficult challenges confronting post-colonial societies in southern Africa which had a resident white population is how to redress the inequalities of inherited land ownership and distribution. Consequently, the governments of Zimbabwe, Namibia and post-apartheid South Africa have to confront challenges of how to resolve the land question in a situation where the black majority demands redress of colonial inequalities and a more equitable racial distribution of land. With respect to Zimbabwe, in particular, much has been written on the land question by a wide range of scholars including Robin Palmer, Henry Moyana, Sam Moyo, Jocelyn Alexander and Ian Phimister. Such studies have focused, inter alia, on the history of colonial land alienation , the racialisation of land under various colonial laws, including the Land Apportionment Act of 1931 and the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA) of 1951, the role of African land grievances in fuelling the armed liberation struggle of the 1960s and 1970s, the Lancaster House Constitution’s role in the immediate post-colonial land reform process and the general inability of the post-colonial government to fully address the land question by the end of the twentieth century. The farm invasions from 2000 onwards and the political, social and economic impact of the chaotic fast-track land redistribution exercise have also been subjected to scholarly analysis. Until now, therefore, analyses have focused mainly on how colonial land policies have impacted on the African population, and the African people’s responses. What has been conspicuously absent is the voice of white farmers themselves, presenting their perceptions of the history of the country and the land question and their views on either the necessity, desirability or the modalities of land redistribution. In fact, until now, there has been no serious study of how white farmers articulated their perceptions of their role in and attitudes to these and other national matters. This is rather surprising given the fact that white Foreword xii The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe farmers have always been at the centre of the controversies surrounding the land question in Zimbabwe. As a keen student of Zimbabwean history and an occasional contributor to scholarly debates on the country’s recent past, I am particularly excited by the publication of Rory Pilossof’s book. It breaks new ground and makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship on Zimbabwe in general and studies of Zimbabwe’s agrarian history in particular. It provides the important missing piece to the puzzle of the history of the land question by examining how white farmers’ perceptions and representations reflect their attitudes to land, land reforms and the country ’s history, while also providing insights into the ‘role white farmers themselves have had in the events that have unfolded’. It is vital for this voice to be heard, for as the author rightly observes, there can be no full understanding of or solution to the country’s land problem without an appreciation of the role white farmers have played and what their perceptions have been. Pilossof captures the ‘voices’ of this critical segment of the community extremely well. Always grounded in the social, economic and political realities of the group under study and the country at large, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being traces and analyses the ‘ebb and flow of white farming discourses’ from the 1970s to 2004 and demonstrates that, while there were many and sometimes competing views on these and other issues and while white farmers did not always speak with one voice, there was, nevertheless, ‘a coherent language employed to talk about events and experiences in Zimbabwe and Rhodesia’; a language that suggests a distinct sense of identity and view of the country and makes for a more sophisticated understanding of the white farmer’s role in its unfolding history. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding not only the complexity of the Zimbabwean land question but also how identities and notions of citizenship are shaped, contested and deployed in a post-colonial setting. Although Pilossof focuses on Zimbabwe, he speaks to a much wider readership than those interested in this country alone. His findings and insights are relevant to southern Africa as a whole, particularly to those countries where the racialisation of land in the colonial or apartheid period has raised similar challenges after the political transition. There too, an understanding of the white discourses on land and related issues may be crucial in appreciating the dynamics [18...