Alternative Strategies for Managing Livestock on the Land

Abstract

Conflict over interpretations of how land is used and how it should be used has formed a major barrier to understanding between the peasantry and the state since the origin of the colonial state in Zimbabwe. In Chapter 2 I argued that the colonial state’s pursuit of technical development policies was influenced not only by the political ends the government wished to achieve, but also by the purposive rationalisation employed by the state. The white authorities acted collusively and coercively: only in the early 1960s was it briefly acknowledged that the peasantry might hold not only an alternative, but a credible view of the world.

It is land and cattle which the Europeans have taken away from the African, and it is land and cattle which an African Government promises to restore to the people. European politicians have reduced the natural resources of the people and made them, in their own eyes, ‘poor’. Nationalism promises them traditional wealth … Agricultural output in Chilimanzi is low, and this is attributed by the people to Government policies; but the Government attributes it to undue interference of nationalists who persuade people not to comply with the advice given to them by the Agricultural Department. Whatever view is right, one thing is clear: agriculture in Chilimanzi is firmly rooted in politics, and politics are expressed in agricultural terms. (Weinrich, 1964, p. 37)