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New evidence reveals that some African soldiers in Britain's Central African Federation—today's Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe—developed African nationalist sympathies in the 1950s and early 1960s because of nationalist infiltration and the increasing unpopularity of colonialism. Discontent was also linked to participation in British counter-insurgency in Malaya, and news of Kenya's Mau Mau Uprising and the Congo Crisis. African soldiers questioned European officers, demanded commissions, wrote complaint letters, met secretly, circulated nationalist propaganda, joined nationalist organizations, made abortive plots and engaged in "subversive talk." With independence for Zambia and Malawi, white officers in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) doubted black soldiers' dependability in future operations against nationalist insurgents but had to rely on them because of limited white manpower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article invites historians to think more critically about the language, narratives, and tropes historians use to identify, describe, and explain processes of change. By doing so, we raise questions about the possibility of historicizing ideas and experiences of change. The suitability of historians' descriptive and explanatory tools and frameworks for understanding one of the most important aims of historical scholarship is often very limited. We ponder the extent to which historians' identification of historical change correlates with how historical actors imagined, experienced, and identified change. Starting from the perspective of the latter enables us to examine how far "change" exists prior to its embedding in the (sometimes conflicting) narratives, discourses, and practices of contemporaries. This article seeks to develop the concepts of "critical junctures" and "discursive thresholds." While both concepts are used in social science research and literary studies, they have rarely been paired together. We combine them because they help relate the importance of events to change and the discourses surrounding them. As a case study, this article looks at a magazine titled Property and Finance, which was published in Southern Rhodesia (1956–77) and edited by Wilfred Brooks. Brooks's editorials and political commentary offer an opportunity to consider broad questions of change, imagined futures, and discursive engagements with the political and social developments underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of urban protest in Salisbury (Harare), Zimbabwe from 1908 to 1930 in relation to residential segregation in colonial Rhodesia. Topics include the social nature of an African township known as a Location in Salisbury, the living conditions of African people in urban areas of colonial Zimbabwe, and the built environment of the township.

This paper uses miner-farmer relations in post-1923 Southern Rhodesia as a lens to delineate the protean nature of state policy in dealing with sectorial interests of the two foremost primary sectors of the country's economy, highlighting how agriculture eventually toppled mining from the apex position by 1945 – both economically and politically. It discusses how government policies inclined towards supporting farmers and implications thereof to the mining sector, especially changes implemented to cushion settler farmers from the impact of the Great Depression and the levying of a Gold Premium Tax (GPT) on gold producers. The paper will demonstrate how this tax system was detested by gold miners and how it ultimately led to a marked decline in gold mining by 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the implications of the border on the control of East Coast Fever in colonial Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The outbreak of the disease in Rhodesia in 1901 caused much anxiety among Portuguese veterinary officials, who were concerned that the disease could cross the border into their territory and destroy their livestock industry. Resultant efforts to control this and other livestock diseases in these colonies were often accompanied by racial application of veterinary policies which benefited Europeans at the expense of Africans. East Coast Fever, together with the 1896–97 Rinderpest epidemic, thus contributed immensely to the development of veterinary science, the burgeoning functions of the colonial state, and the relations between state and subject in rural areas. Hence, through an examination of English and Portuguese colonial documents, this paper argues that the existence of East Coast Fever in Zimbabwe, and the impossibility of sealing the border to prevent cattle mobility, raised alarm, and contributed to the expansion of veterinary services in central Mozambique. This article contributes to debates on the significance of borders in shaping historical processes, but complicates border studies by demonstrating that the border was powerful not because it was restrictive but because it was porous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores Basotho struggles for land and belonging in colonial Zimbabwe from the 1930s to the 1950s. It argues that as non-indigenous Africans in colonial Zimbabwe with no claim to land in reserves the Basotho saw ownership of freehold land as a key strategy in their construction of a sense of belonging. The centrality of land among the Basotho had a great impact on inheritance disputes within the members of the community. Drawing on archival files and court cases dealing with inheritance (including disputes involving land) in the Basotho community, the article argues that, through seeking further legal recourse in colonial courts, individual members of the community were able to challenge accepted customary laws and contest gender inequalities as well as to negotiate space within the community and the colonial state at large. This impacted on other inheritance disputes involving land as some of the Basotho inheritance cases set legal precedencies – thus illuminating the complex struggles among Purchase Areas farmers. The article feeds into the growing literature on land and inheritance during the colonial period. It also uses court cases as a prism through which women's struggles against patriarchy and the colonial state can be unravelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilises dipping tanks as a lens to understanding the relationship between African livestock owners and the colonial state. More specifically, it discusses how East Coast Fever influenced the introduction of the systematic dipping of livestock, and reshaped the nature of veterinary interactions in Southern Rhodesia in general, and the African reserves in particular. It draws on but challenges Colin Bundy's argument that from the late nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century developments in Eastern Griqualand, a similar colonial context to that in Southern Rhodesia, were closely shaped by the disease environment, and that change in rural communities was increasingly forced upon Africans through veterinary interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

African migrants played a crucial role in the early history of Southern Rhodesia. A number of them were already literate and had converted to Christianity before they came to Southern Rhodesia. For example, a number of the members of the Basotho1 community in Victoria and Ndanga District had worked with missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church, Berlin Missionary Society and the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS) and had acquired a level of education before they settled in the country. They had also adopted the plough, and were among the first Africans to own land on a freehold basis. As a result of this, colonial administrators often viewed them as progressive or ‘more advanced natives’ as compared to the indigenous Africans. This article seeks to show how, after helping Rev. A.A. Louw in establishing Morgenster Mission in Victoria District and spreading Christianity in the surrounding areas, Basotho evangelists settled and established themselves in the area. It analyses how these Basotho were incorporated into the colonial capitalist system and also why colonial administrators viewed them as ‘progressive Africans’. It also analyses the centrality of land, Christianity and the ideology of being ‘progressive Africans’ in the community's strategies for entitlement and prosperity in Southern Rhodesia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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On the surface, Southern Rhodesia was a melting pot into which people of European origin were absorbed, mixed with one another and forged new identities. In reality, Rhodesia failed to permit non-British Europeans such as Poles, their fair share of the Rhodesian dream. Behind this lay not only British Rhodesians’ self-perception of their superiority to other Europeans but also the fear that other European immigrants might have communist connections. The British placed different white ethnic groups on a scale based on their perceived distance from white British cultural and political values. Polish people found themselves near the bottom of the scale because British whites suspected them of being communists or Jews and of holding different cultural values, such as greater liberality about race relations. British Rhodesian discrimination against the Poles was revealed especially in the reception Polish refugees received upon arriving in Rhodesia during the Second World War, evidenced in the placement of refugee settlements and the provision of social services, as well as discrimination in the employment sector. Although ethnic prejudice lay at the centre of Rhodesian discrimination, the immigration policy and treatment of the Poles also reflected conflicting concerns. On the one hand the Rhodesian government had an obligation to accommodate war refugees on behalf of the Imperial government, while, on the other hand, they did not want a deluge of non-British whites which might dilute British ethnic purity and spread communist ideas. We examine the nature, application and impact of this discriminatory policy on Polish refugees during and immediately after the Second World War, arguing that ambivalence towards Polish refugees constituted a larger feature of Rhodesian society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses one of the intriguing paradoxes of colonial Zimbabwe's early twentieth-century medical history, that despite the unusually early interest in rural healthcare showed by the colony's political leadership and senior, non-medical bureaucrats, until the 1930s the colony's rural healthcare infrastructure remained tentative, sporadic and makeshift. The article endeavours to solve this puzzle by seeking for answers in the divergent visions held by the medical and non-medical policymakers and the intractable debates about African healthcare. By tracing these protracted debates to the turn of the century, the article revises the popular depiction of colonial rural healthcare reform as an essentially post-World War I phenomenon. Moreover, it also argues that the collage of reasons, including the colonists’ enlightened self-interest, which have been proffered by historians to explain healthcare reform in other colonies were, in colonial Zimbabwe, neither self-evident nor uncontested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1960, amidst the most violent period of protest since conquest, the Southern Rhodesian government implemented a new Vagrancy Act alongside a range of repressive legislation. The Act's origins lay in a particular analysis of the social origins of unrest. It was unprecedented in promising not to exclude and criminalise ‘vagrants’ but to rehabilitate them as productive urban citizens. By presenting the Act as reformist and progressive, the government sought legitimacy for its actions. In fact, the Vagrancy Act was deeply punitive, underlining the tensions between reform and repression in settler social engineering. African leaders and Africans targeted by the Act saw it as a means of humiliating and criminalising those denied a livelihood by the settler political economy. In rejecting the Act, they invoked different models of citizenship to those on offer from the state. The Vagrancy Act ultimately met its demise at the hands of the Rhodesian Front, whose analysis of African protest made no space for the possibilities of reformist social engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Non-indigenous migrants dominated the African population of Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia's capital city, until the mid-1950s. ‘Nyasa’ labour migrants (from British colonial Nyasaland, now Malawi) enriched urban popular culture and played a major role in the development of the country's industrial and rural economies. Despite this, people of Malawian origin have been marginalised from political life during both the colonial and postcolonial periods, and neglected in Zimbabwe's urban historiography. This article foregrounds ‘Nyasa’ migrants in the city, highlighting three of their religious expressions that emerged in Salisbury and became a prominent feature of the city's urban culture and religious landscape. The ‘Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian’ (CCAP), Yao or ‘Chawa’ Muslim associations and the ‘Nyau’ society became well established in colonial Salisbury and continue to be associated with people of Malawian ancestry in contemporary Harare. These religious groups played a role in the construction of new urban identities and helped migrants to create a sense of belonging in the city particularly during periods of rapid urbanisation and political change. By exploring life histories and archival sources, this study furthers our understanding of Zimbabwe's urban past while informing current debates on identity politics, citizenship and belonging in the region. It raises two new issues: firstly, ‘Nyasa’ labour migrants were among the first Africans to work and settle in Salisbury during the colonial period, and many used religious networks to establish themselves within new urban communities. Secondly, despite the longevity and depth of their commitment to urban life in Salisbury (and later Harare) these migrants have been targeted by exclusionary state policies at moments of political and economic crisis, during both the colonial period and since 2000. The Zimbabwean government's selective accounts of national identity ignore these histories of migration and marginalise important minority groups because they lack cultural ties to the land, despite their central role in the shaping of Zimbabwe's cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses cricket, warfare, and British imperialism in early Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, focusing on the period 1890 to 1899. It examines the central role of British imperialist and businessman Cecil John Rhodes and the British South Africa Company. The author comments on the Pioneer Column, a force raised by Rhodes to annex the territory of Mashonaland, the Matabele War of 1893, and the Jameson Raid of 1895-1896. Cricket in the areas of Mashonaland and Manicaland is discussed, and aspects of masculinity and civilization are explored.

The article critically examines the history of the Tonga people’s experiences of civilization and displacement from their life-affirming geographical location as enunciated through their oral forms, particularly, songs and other forms of reminiscence. The experiences of the Tonga people of Zimbabwe are largely overlooked in scholarship because they are considered one of the so-called minority groups, meriting little or no attention at all. Informed by an Afrocentric approach, in which it is “valid to posit Africa as a geographical and cultural starting base in the study of peoples [of Africa and] of African descent,” the article brings out an understanding of African orature as a redoubtable expression of the African classical past and the subsequent subversion and decimation of African human factor agency as a result of the European enslavement of place. In this regard, the authors contend that Africologists would do well to study African people’s orature, as it often reflects their story from their own perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Both missionaries and government policymakers in colonial Zimbabwe consciously identified agriculture as an important avenue in establishing broader paradigms of explanation. Missionary promotion of new farming practices inevitably challenged the existing spiritual landscape by insisting that rationalized individual labor could overcome powerful natural forces. This article examines various facets of the American-based Methodist Episcopal Church's agricultural evangelism in a period of growing state intervention. Despite careful missionary attempts to manage the outcomes, individuals with their own agendas absorbed and transformed these policies. Local farmers utilized imported agricultural knowledge for their own purposes and did not conform to the experiences or expectations of American-trained agricultural missionaries. Within these mission communities, converts successfully blended new forms of worship with existing social priorities and also adapted aspects of imported farming techniques to actively create innovative strategies for negotiating life under colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the papers of Rhodesian liberal Diana Mary Mitchell, known as the Mitchell collection, held at the Manuscripts and Archives Department of The University of Cape Town (UCT). It notes that the archive also contains papers concerning several opposition politicians in Rhodesia in the mid- to late-twentieth century, including Morris Hirsch, Pat Bashford, and Allan Savory. The author suggests that the archive is useful for the study of the historical role of women in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe.

The article discusses the early writings of Gahadzikwa Albert (G.A.) Chaza, a police officer who served in the British South Africa Police (BSAP) force in Southern Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe, from 1936 to 1957. It comments on his writings in the BSAP publication "Mapolisa," which often stressed education, professional development, and progress. The author analyzes Chaza as a moderate and a loyalist, contrasting his early writings with his book "Bhurakuwacha: The Story of a Black Policeman in Colonial Southern Rhodesia."

The article focuses on the history of European settlers in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and 1914. It considers how the British colonial rule in Southern Rhodesia differed from the rule of most British colonial possessions during the period in that it substituted direct rule over the indigenous population as opposed to using an indirect rule approach to governance. Subjects considered include the settler identity of white colonists, the historiography of Southern Africa, Britishness, language and identity, and politician and entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes and his chartered British South Africa Company.

The article explores conflicts between white, colonial settlers working as farmers and miners in Zimbabwe between 1903 and 1939. The importance of natural resources including land, timber, and water to both groups of settlers are examined and the exclusion of native Africans from land holding the most natural resources is discussed. The historical background of the farmer-miner dispute, the legislative support of the mining industry, and the reaction of the colonial administration to ongoing problems are also discussed.

There is currently a major urban crisis in Zimbabwe. This expresses itself in failures of provision of water, electricity, medicines, transport, housing etc. Descriptions of conditions in the high density townships of Harare and Bulawayo today are strikingly reminiscent of the last great urban crisis - in the late 1940s of colonial Rhodesia. Two other features are common to both crises. One is the problem of governance. The other is the relation between the city and the state. In both periods there was a great debate about what consituted urban 'citizenship', with the great majority of African residents in the cities believing themselves to be unrepresented by illegimitate institutions of local government. In both periods, too, there was deep tension between the city and the state. In the Rhodesian as well as in the Zimbabwean period there was debate between the two over who was responsible for the urban crisis and over who should take what steps to resolve it. To many Zimbabweans the present crisis, and the contemporary clashes between the government and the cities, seem unprecedented. This article seeks to explore its colonial antecedents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]