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- Title
Local Responses to Colonial Evictions, Conservation and Commodity Policies among Shangwe Communities in Gokwe, Northwestern Zimbabwe, 1963-1980.
- Authors
Maravanyika, Simeon
- Abstract
This article examines the eviction of Shangwe people from Mafungautsi State Forest in 1963, and their responses. The eviction followed the State's demarcation and gazetting of the forest as a protected area. This was in line with the Forestry Act, enacted in 1948, which sought to preserve the colony's indigenous timber resources. The eviction coincided with the introduction of cotton in Gokwe in 1962. The state anticipated that the Shangwe, a forest community which subsisted mainly by hunting, gathering and pastoralism, would embrace commercial agriculture. This would facilitate a transition from their forest life to full participation in the market economy as cotton growers. While the introduction of commercial agriculture in colonized regions is generally considered to have reorganized African labour, production and consumption patterns at the expense of local agrarian knowledge systems and economic and social organization, the case of the Shangwe offers another dimension to this narrative. The Shangwe resisted eviction from Mafungautsi forest. Their resistance expressed itself in the form of squatting in demarcated areas, illegal harvesting of forest products, poaching of game and land leases to Madheruka farmers, a group of large-scale agriculturalists who had in 1953 been evicted from Rhodesdale, an area set aside for while farmers. This article argues that Shangwe responses; squatting, illegal harvesting of forest production, poaching and land leases, represented more than just resistance to eviction from their habitat. It was also an anti-commodity response; an anti-cotton expression on one hand and a fight for the preservation of their old ways of life on the other. The article sheds light on the impact of colonial forest conservation and agricultural policies at a micro-level in Mbumbuze, Gokwe.
- Publication
African Nebula, 2012, Issue 5, p1
- ISSN
1837-7963
- Publication type
Academic Journal