Introduction to African History - I: Southern and Eastern Africa - Professor T.C. McCaskie - CWAS

SRN: 513355     Word Count:  1505

What were the leading features of Zimbabwean (Southern Rhodesian) history in the 20th Century?

	The history of Zimbabwe in the twentieth century cannot be written simply. However superficial the overview, it is simply not possible to accurately survey the processes of change, forces of continuity and conflicts of ideology that characterise the nation with any degree of brevity. Nor is it possible to write about Zimbabwe in a neutral, impartial way; any analysis will ultimately betray the author’s perspective. The history of Zimbabwe in the 20th century is not just about Zimbabwe and Southern Rhodesia, but also the regional and global contexts which have affected events within the nation, but also lent frameworks of understanding; paradigms that we can use to interpret these events. 20th Century Zimbabwean history did not begin in 1900, and it did not end in 2000, as the processes and events described by history are ones that continue before and beyond and boundaries imposed externally. If one is able to use these arbitrary boundaries to show how events and actions are part of broader processes, one can identify and understand the leading historical features of the area and its people with a much greater degree of precision. 

	One could say that 20th Century Zimbabwean history really began in 1893. That is to say, when a brief period of uneasy co-existence between the Rhodes' Pioneer Column and the Ndebele military kingdom broke down into war (Iliffe: 1995, 194), a pattern was set for many decades to come. White hopes of mineral wealth, coupled with the hope of outflanking and encircling Transvaal (Fage, 387: 2002) gave the British their imperial motivations, and administrative responsibilities were awarded to Rhodes' British South African Company. Hopes of gold and diamond reserves on the scale of those in South Africa were not fulfilled, and "by about 1990 [the British South Africa Company] had come to the conclusion that settler farms were more productive" (Fage: 2002, 394) way of using the land. As European agriculture moved in, so did European and American Christianities, with both developments altering the lives of Africans in varying ways (Ranger: 1999).

	To say that colonialism is a leading feature in Southern Rhodesian, and later, Zimbabwean history, is to state the obvious, but the term, or its partial substitute 'imperialism', is often vaguely defined (Potter et al: 2003, 50). To understand how colonialism affected the peoples of Zimbabwe, one needs to examine more closely the realities of colonialism, and the way these realities are interpreted by people in the course of their everyday lives. It is possible to interpret colonialism as purely a process of economic subjugation, as most neo-Marxist writers do (Webster: 1990, 73-74). This definition can be useful in so far as explaining the motivations of Western actors, but this focus on external intervention reveals an ethno-centric approach; studying the White settlers' greed for mineral wealth, or their perceived obligations to 'redeem' Africans by spreading the word of the Lord (Ranger: 1999, 14) is a valid and insightful path of analysis, but at the same time it places Africans' experiences of colonialism as secondary. We should not be studying Africans' views of colonialism as secondary, an analytical afterthought, but instead place our emphasis on how Africans' construct their reality of colonialism.

	A judgement of colonialism with a focus on its meaning for Africans can lead us to try and draw a balance sheet of the gains and loses of colonialism. Although often demonised in contemporary political analysis, imperialism both gave and stole. Cooper draws our attention to how colonialism brought both "constraints and possibilities" (2000: 196), and we can see how imperialism offered education opportunities and healthcare for some Rhodesians, but also precluded the possibility of establishing external trading a fair and non-exploitative way, for example. The bottom line for colonialism's balance sheet will reflect the perspective and views of the individual or group making the judgement. For example, Robert Mugabe's socialist tendencies, at least in the 1980s, might lead him to disregard the narrow capitalist developments as worthless to the native people. Seeing the colonial period, with some justification, as violent and repression, he would scorn those who give a positive view of British rule

	Seemingly a clear theme of South Rhodesian history is resistance to White minority rule. The origins, motivations and methods of this movement for independence are less clear, and can barely be described as a cohesive movement; more a fragmented, multi-faceted process of defiance, which gathered momentum throughout the century. The considerable ideological and practical disagreements between the ZAPU and ZANU guerrilla movements in the 1970s are one example of this. Without doubt a mitigating factor is the fractured, oppositional nature of Zimbabwe's two major ethnic groupings, the Shona and the Ndebele, and the origins of these splits can be found long before the messy conflicts of the 1970s. 

	In the 1890s, the British viewed the Ndebele as militant, handing the Shona a more collaborative role in British rule. But the British did more than simple assign characteristics to pre-existing ethnicities; they helped to create them, or at very least galvanise them as discrete groupings. As Ranger (1999) discusses at length, the British simplified the myriad of overlapping ethnic identities in the areas around the Matopos Hills into one single group; that is to say that many of those designated 'Ndebele' by the British had no previous lineal or geographical affiliation with the Ndebele warrior kingdom. This composite self-view allowed the people of Zimbabwe to act with greater unity against the White rulers, he argues, but this process of ethnic simplification runs parallel with one of "social differentiation" (p.100). This helped determine the nature of the resistance, as a move from a non-monetized society of market and subsistence agriculture to one of developing capitalism changed fundamental altered the daily patterns of Africans lives. Perhaps of particular significance is the process of urbanization. Requiring concentrations of labour for industrial production, the Rhodesian leaders helped manufacture an enemy. As Cooper (2002) describes, cities are "crucibles of social, cultural and political change"; an "intrinsically dynamic" counter-weight to "passively culture-bound" rural villages. Another significant feature was the development of a small, but influential African middle class. These dismantlement and reconstruction of identity lent Africans new frameworks with which to interpret and, ultimately, oppose, what was happening to them.

	The years between 1965 are 1980 are a period which require one to look outside of Zimbabwe to identify themes and understand events. Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 meant the cutting of ties with the rest of the world; colonialism without imperialism. The British, as with other colonial superpowers, were facing increasing pressure to legitimise or withdraw from their colonial activities. Rather than concede to this broader trend, the White minority sought to "defend racial privilege in national rather than imperial terms" (Cooper:  2002, p.136). Participation in the IMF, and acceptance of World Bank loans, in more recent times, provides further examples of leading features in Zimbabweans' lives being imposed from global sources. The more immediate regional context of Zimbabwe in the 1965-80 period is also a significant example of external influence, as the guerrilla forces were largely held to a stalemate until the independence of Mozambique, and co-operation of Zambia and Malawi permitted ZANU and ZAPU fighters greater security to train and rest.

Again, one must look to the experiences of the African people to assess the features of these times. The resistance movement was supported by the people, but not in anything like a uniform, unanimous way. As Kriger (1992) discuss, the various movements struggled to appeal to peasants, and depended on coercion as much as cooperative during the struggle, especially as the peasants, by assisting “exposed [themselves] to revenge by the Rhodesian army”.

	As the leader of Zimbabwe for the last two decades of the twentieth century, Mugabe has had a unique opportunity to affect the lives of peoples of his country. Initially adopting an approach of that can be described as 'pluralist', that is straddling Marxist-Leninism with democratic principles (Sklar 1985: 26); he achieved "credibility for tearing down race-specific obstacles to education and development" (Cooper 2002: 138). However, hopes that Zimbabwe's relatively balanced, self-sufficient economy and confident leadership would generate rapid prosperity and improvements for the population proved overly optimistic, as Mugabe launched repressive campaigns against the Ndebele people that he accused of plotting against him. White peoples in Zimbabwe also became victims, often in horrifically violent ways as described by Buckles (2001), as the ZANU-PF party sought to expropriate large areas of land they felt should belong to those ‘native’ to Zimbabwe.

	 As I have referred to in this essay, Zimbabwe's history is one of many trends, themes and conflicts, often interwoven or interdependent. Which combination of these features we chose to refer to as 'leading features' depends on our own perspective, our own views; the voices we choose to hear, and those we choose to ignore. In this essay, I have favoured a 'bottom-up' approach to understanding Zimbabwe; one which places the experiences of Africans at its centre, but that is not to say other approaches are invalid. 

Bibliography

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