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Interactions between people and wild animals often result in negative impacts, and different views on the management of such interactions can lead to conflicts. Both intentional and unintentional negative human–wildlife interactions are increasing problems in many places where people share space with wild animals. Here we focus on negative interactions between people and Nile crocodiles Crocodylus niloticus in and around Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe. In the study area, crocodile attacks on people occur frequently, leading to people being injured or killed, which in turn prompts retaliatory actions against crocodiles. However, despite the negative impact of such interactions on both people and crocodiles, little is known about the spatio-temporal patterns of crocodile attacks or environmental conditions under which attacks occur. We collected information about crocodile attacks on people that occurred during 2000–2020, including the date, time, season and location of attacks, the age of victims and the activities they were carrying out when attacks occurred, and water conditions during attacks. We analysed these data to discern patterns and trends of crocodile attacks on people. Attacks occurred in clear as well as turbid water, and nearly half of all reported attacks were at night or in the early morning. The locations with the highest number of recorded attacks were Nyanyana and Charara lakeside, and the fewest attacks occurred at Andora harbour. Most victims were 26–40 years old, and most were attacked in the dry-hot season, while they were fishing. Our findings can be used to design area-specific mitigation strategies to reduce negative human–crocodile interactions.

Water spirits are an integral part of African traditional religious beliefs and ritual practices. Like many other African traditional religious practices and beliefs, water spirit beliefs are characterized by complex ‘myths’ surrounding their origins. In that regard, this paper explores the origins and expansion of the Nyaminyami (water spirit,) beliefs prevalent among some BaTonga people of northwestern Zimbabwe. It argues that these beliefs were exotic to the BaTonga people. In so doing, it substantiates the assumption by Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder that Nyaminyami was a foreign idea to the BaTonga people. This study brings in new contemporary evidence to substantiate and extend this diffusionist perspective. It provides evidence from ethnographic research conducted among the BaTonga and Shangwe-speaking peoples living in the immediate vicinity of the Kariba Gorge area from April to November 2017. This study also rests on the wider scholarship on water divinities in Africa that explains the emergence of water divinities in different societies through diffusion of ideas. The study further examines the ways by which the cultural borrowing may have occurred, as well as the period and the extent to which the diffusion of ideas occurred, based on the ethnographic evidence.

This article examines the forms of knowledge that existed between Africans and Europeans regarding local indigenous religious beliefs, focusing particularly on the case of Nyaminyami, a water spirit that is part of the belief systems prevalent among some BaTonga people of northwestern Zimbabwe. The article briefly outlines the “traditional” BaTonga beliefs and practices relating to Nyaminyami, which were diametrically opposed to those of the Europeans. It then scrutinizes the ways the beliefs have been exploited and appropriated by different interest groups and races from the 1860s to the 1960s. The BaTonga people, who held strong beliefs in Nyaminyami, and European colonists used the idea of Nyaminyami for different social, political, and environmental agendas prior to, during, and after resettlement. Nyaminyami played changing sociocultural and economic functions for the BaTonga people over time. They revered Nyaminyami as their river god in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they also appropriated the beliefs by rallying behind the river god for protection from their displacement in 1958 following the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. Nyaminyami was also appropriated by European interest groups who used the idea of Nyaminyami to cast Africa as the “dark continent” and to stereotype the BaTonga people as primitive. This article relies on data obtained through a reading of European explorers' texts and by gathering oral traditions among the BaTonga and Shangwe.

This article considers how the colonial British government’s appropriation of the Kariba Dam historically excluded the BaTonga people from accessing the dam’s resources. Dispossession and appropria...

This article examines the impact of the ‘cash crisis’ bedeviling Zimbabwe since mid-2016 on the enactment of the Masabe ceremony within the BaTonga community, (Sinakatenge village, Eastern Binga, N...

Research has shown that there is an inextricable relationship between landscape, belonging and identity. Landscapes possess marked capacities of triggering acts of self-reflection, inspiring though...

On the advice of an internationally recognised scholar on the Gwembe Tonga, Thayer ‘Ted’ Scudder, I conducted ethnographic research on the Nyaminyami – water spirit – belief systems among the Tonga...

Large Dams is a detailed intellectual autobiographical account of a leading authority on large dams and resettlement, Thayer ‘Ted’ Scudder. In this book, Scudder explains how his interests in large...

The tourism industry sustains the economies of many nations across the globe through contributing to the Gross Domestic Products (GDP); creation of employment and infrastructure development. However, its sustainability is vulnerable to various temporal and spatial environmental, socio-economic and political events. In the Zimbabwe case, the politico-economic crises of the 2000s and the COVID-19 pandemic have variedly impacted on the prevalence of tourism with the actors (such as employees, tourists and recreational facility owners) involved in this industry having been seriously impacted. Using the precarity conceptual framework, this article critically analyses the impact of the politico-economic crises induced by the Fast Track Land Reform Programme of the early 2000s and the COVID-19 pandemic on the actors involved in tourism. Information regarding the impact of the political crises and COVID-19 pandemic on tourism in Kariba town is missing in the literature, yet Kariba is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa. The article discusses the precarity of these tourism actors in the context of the politico-economic crises as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. We define ‘precarity’ as a condition of vulnerability and uncertainty. Our results indicate that for employees, these factors have resulted in uncertainty in the tourism business with some shutting down and others scaling down their operations resulting in redundancy and vulnerability of the workers. For tourists, the successive lockdowns and surge in COVID-19 cases in Zimbabwe resulted in (re)booking and (re)cancellation of bookings; the politico-economic crises resulted in fear among the potential clients and a drop in the number of international tourists. The recreational and accommodation service operators have had the challenge of making food (and other resources) orders for trips that are eventually cancelled due to the surge in the COVID-19 cases. The article draws from data gathered in 2021 through face-to-face interviews with different stakeholders in the tourism industry including employees, hotel and boat owners, Zimbabwe Tourism Authority officials and local politicians in Kariba resort town.

Man-made reservoirs are constructed to meet certain purposes and Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, was designed for hydroelectric power generation. However, it has developed other multiple uses, and the growth of fisheries on the lake has had a significant impact on the livelihoods of local communities. The declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic in Zimbabwe in March 2020 was quickly followed by the imposition of national lockdowns with varying levels of severity up to the present day. This was done to curtail the spread of the disease, meanwhile enhancing the nation’s capacity in terms of acquiring testing kits, constructing more admission and quarantine centres as well as educating the people about ways to keep safe. In response to the calls by the government to monitor the movement of people and compliance of the lockdown rules, the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZNPWMA), the governing body of the Lake Kariba fisheries, imposed rules that have significantly impacted the fishing communities at Lake Kariba. Both gillnet fishers and rod and line fishers have been impacted, but our focus here is on women rod and line fishers. Using the precarious livelihoods conceptual frameworks, we show how the changes in water management during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns has generated high levels of precariousness on the livelihoods of women at Kariba. We define precariousness as the condition of uncertainties brought to the women fishers by changes in water restrictions. The precarity of women was induced by several factors. For instance, the women fishers reported that restrictions to accessing fish in areas with high catches impacted them. They are also now obliged to pay exorbitant fishing fees in a way to discourage them to fish; they were frequently chased away from the Lake by ZNPWMA officers; they had limited amount of time to fish due to curfews; and failure to comply results in heavy fines imposed on them among other challenges. We show how these challenges interact with the current Zimbabwe socio-economic crisis to worsen the precariousness and vulnerability of women fishers at Lake Kariba. Data presented in this manuscript are based on participant observation and interviews with women fishers at Lake Kariba.