Resistance Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands

By Author: Anthony W Bills
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Resistance Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands
“Today, everyone is talking about globalization. The concept of globalization actually tends to obliterate the idea of “place”, thereby leaving us living in a virtual location. Over the years, destructive practices in the manufacturing industry, in agriculture and in many other fields have undermined the environment in many regions of the world. These activities include nanotechnology, production of non-biodegradable substances, growing genetically engineered crops, contamination and pollution by extractive industries like mining and many others. As people take steps to protect their land from these malpractices, conflict and subaltern struggles result. Subaltern struggles always involve the poor and politically weak against the rich and politically strong. In fact, many subaltern struggles are led by women in marginalized communities. An example of this is the Chika movement which defended the Himalayas in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. From our earlier lectures, we have seen that many communities in the developing world practically worship their land and naturally, they ...
... have in many instances come together to protect their land against degradation. This has led to conflict and struggle in what I’m calling the politics of a place.
“What are subaltern struggles and what do they entail? Subaltern struggles can be looked at from three different perspectives. These are economic, ecological and cultural dimensions. In these conflicts, the rich and “modern” tend to overemphasize the economic need of the land or “place” and consequently ignore the ecological effects like pollution, contamination and depletion of natural resources. They also fail to appreciate the cultural and sometimes religious values attributed to the place by the indigenous people. As you may well remember from our previous lectures, the Eastern highlands in Zimbabwe’s have been a clear illustration of subaltern struggles and politics of place. In this presentation, I would like us to look at this case more closely.
“A vital question which I would like us to ask ourselves is whether the resettlement of the Kaerezians was good for the economy of Zimbabwe and what the long term implications of the exercise were one fact that interests me in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe is the root of the problem. As we saw earlier, many generations have lived on the same pieced of land for a long time making the land practically unproductive. The land has completely lost its fertility and the farmers have had to dig very deep using pick axes in order to try and reach the unexhausted soil which may support their crops. As we now know, the root of the problem in Zimbabwe was the racially biased land allocation in the country. The result was that populous communities of ethnic Zimbabweans were evicted from their ancestry land and crowded together on very small pieces of land. Generation after generation of these people tilled the same soil with little income to supplement the soil nutrients in their land. As a result, the land lost its productivity and this led to the conflict. The communities wanted to be allocated better arable land. After many empty promises, the farmers decided to revolt against the government (Moore, 1998).
“We ought to remember that it was during the colonial era in Zimbabwe that the government forcibly evicted the residents of Kaereza in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe and allocated their land to the white farmers. After independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, the Kaerezians returned from exile and took part in the post-independence reclamation of their land. The post-independence government of Robert Mugabe “bought back” the land from the white settlers and reallocated it to the indigenous owners in what it termed as a settlement scheme project. During the struggle for repossession of the land, the Kaereza community had their chief. This chief and the six headmen whom he worked with led the people in the settlement after their resettlement. The people preferred to be under the chief in chiefdom rather than to be ruled in a settlement scheme government structure” (Moyana, 1984).
References
Moore, Donald. (1998). Subaltern Struggles and the Politics of Place: Remapping resistance in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands. Cultural Anthropology.
Moyana, M.V. (1984). The Political Economy of Land in Zimbabwe. Gweru: Mambo Press.

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