i ‘Operating under the Radar’: Forestry Plantation Workers’ Everyday Resistance in Chimanimani District, Zimbabwe. WELLINGTON MVUNDURA (578074) A thesis presented to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Supervisor: Professor Devan Pillay 2024 ii Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is submitted to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for a Doctor of Philosophy Degree. At no other university or institution has it been submitted as a requirement for a degree or any other qualification. Wellington Mvundura 14th day of March 2024 iii Dedication I dedicate this thesis to my beloved late father David Mvundura, my beloved mother (and academic mentor), my lovely daughters Kelly and Kim, and all the Zimbabwean plantation workers. iv Acknowledgements I am indebted to my supervisor Professor Devan Pillay whose academic and financial support saw this thesis to fruition. Prof, thank you for also being loco-parentis. I also extend my gratitude to Professor David Dickinson for the critical brainstorming moment that unlocked what culminated into the final research object of this study! Dr Simbarashe Nyuke, Dr Florence Ncube, Dr Thatshisiwe Ndlovu, and Learnmore Mvundura, thank you for the honest and critical scholarly engagements that made me constantly reflect on and improve this thesis. Importantly, you four together with Sostina Matina and Bothwell Vumai were ‘all-weather’ social safety nets throughout this occasionally daunting enterprise. Those parties, the dances, the camaraderie, the sense of family -always amazing! Kudos to Sostina Matina my selfless sister who did invaluable work with the tiring reference list. Special mention also goes to Dr Edmore Chitukutuku one ‘Founding Brother’ who inspired my academic sojourn ‘down South’. I have no regrets for taking your wise counsel. Mwazvita Nyahanana - my ‘all-weather’ Cde and brother since 1997- your wholesome genuine support at all levels incrementally rubbed off the completion of this thesis! My fellow brothers and PhD colleagues at Wits, Dr Johannes Machinya, Dr Tackson Makandwa, Edmond Madhuha – I value your camaraderie. I am eternally grateful for the academic and financial support from the International Centre for Development and Decent work (ICDD); the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Wits Merit Award, and COSEDRIA. A special thank you to all my participants who dedicated their time to this cause. My late father David Mvundura, and my mother Violet Mvundura, I am forever grateful for your wholesome parenting, which certainly mediated the successful completion of this PhD report. My siblings - Fortune, David, and Learnmore thanks in every way! I also express my eternal gratitude to my patient and loving sweetheart Dr Florence Ncube. I salute you for your selflessness and rock- steady support ‘Soko’. Kelly and Kim, sweet daughters, you gave me every reason to complete this journey. Last, thank you the Almighty for the gift of life and peace to complete this phase. v Contents Declaration......................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ......................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. xi List of Acronyms ............................................................................................................................. xii CHAPTER 1 .......................................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 Research Gap, Scope, and Argument ................................................................................. 1 1.2 Scholarly Context: Research Gap, Rationale, & Problem Statement .................................... 2 1.2.1 Main Research Question ..................................................................................................... 9 1.2.1.1 Sub-Questions ................................................................................................... 9 1.2.2 Research Objectives ............................................................................................................. 9 1.3 Socio-Spatial Context: Zimbabwe, The Plantation Economy, & Barura Estate .................. 9 1.4 Chapter Outline ........................................................................................................................ 17 CHAPTER 2 ........................................................................................................................................ 19 SITUATING (EVERYDAY) RESISTANCE IN THE POST-COLONIAL COMMERCIAL FORESTRY PLANTATION LABOUR PROCESS ........................................................................ 19 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Early Foundations for Specialised and Systematic Resistance Studies ................................ 20 2.3 Critical Appraisal of Everyday Resistance Research and Theoretical Positions ................ 21 2.3. 1 Everyday Labour Resistance in Africa - van Onselen and Others ............................... 21 2.3.2 Contextualising and Thinking Everyday Resistance with and beyond James Scott (and Others) ................................................................................................................................. 28 2.3.3 Contextualising Quotidian Resistance with and beyond de Certeau ............................ 44 2.3.3.1 Critique of de Certeau ................................................................................... 48 2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 49 CHAPTER 3 ........................................................................................................................................ 52 THEORISING AND CONCEPTUALISING (EVERYDAY) LABOUR RESISTANCE IN POST-COLONIAL COMMERCIAL FORESTRY PLANTATION PRODUCTION ................ 52 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 52 3.2 A Reworked Framework: What Everyday Resistance is and what it is Not ....................... 54 3.2.1 Everyday Resistance is a Practice not an Intention, Recognition, nor Outcome ......... 54 3.2.1.1 Practice............................................................................................................ 54 3.2.1.2 Everyday Resistance is a Practice not a Conscious Intent ......................... 55 3.2.1.3 The ‘Everyday’ in Everyday Resistance and the Irrelevance of Recognition by Agents ............................................................................................... 57 vi 3.2.1.4 Everyday Resistance is a Dynamic Oppositional (to Power) Practice ...... 59 3.2.2 Everyday Resistance is in a Mutual Dynamic Relation with Multifarious Forms of Power ............................................................................................................................................ 62 3.2.2.1 Labour Domination and Exploitation as Class Relations .......................... 65 3.2.2.2 Labour Domination and Exploitation as Social Relations of Production . 66 3.2.2.3 Labour Domination and Exploitation as Class Relations .......................... 67 3.2.2.4 From Colonial Capitalist to Post-colonial Capitalist Class relations: Labour Domination and Exploitation ...................................................................... 67 3.2.2.5 Repositioning Labour Domination and Exploitation as Complex Capitalist Relations .................................................................................................... 69 3.2.2.6 Class Locations in Post-colonial Capitalist Forestry Production .............. 71 3.2.2.7 Exploitation, In-built Capacity for Resistance, and Cultural Forms and Elements of Power...................................................................................................... 72 3.3 A Power Analysis that Incorporates forms and Aspects of Cultural Domination .............. 73 3.3.1 Marxian Ideology and Bourdieu’s Subjective Truth of Labour .................................... 74 3.3.1.1 Orthodox Marxist Ideology ........................................................................... 74 3.3.1.2 Foregrounding the Subjective Truth of Capitalist Labour ........................ 76 3.3.2 Cultural/Ideological Hegemony, Civil Society, and the Forestry Plantation Labour Process .......................................................................................................................................... 77 3.3.3 Manipulative Hegemony: The micro-Politico-cultural Power dynamics at the Plantation Worksite .................................................................................................................... 79 3.3.4 Symbolic Violence (Legislated Ethno-nationality) vis a vis the Plantation Labour Process .......................................................................................................................................... 82 3.3.4.1 The State and Symbolic Violence .................................................................. 85 3.3.5 Imagining Panoptic Discipline/Disciplinary Power in Forestry Estate Production ..... 85 3.4 Everyday Resistance is a Socio-Spatial Practice and Relation .............................................. 89 3.4.1 The Physical Body as a Social Space of Resistance and Power ...................................... 90 3.4.2 Liminal Space ..................................................................................................................... 91 3.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 92 CHAPTER 4 ........................................................................................................................................ 95 MY FIELDWORK EXPERIENCES OF RESEARCHING HIDDEN PRACTICES OF LABOUR RESISTANCE ON BARURA FORESTRY ESTATE .................................................. 95 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 95 4.2 My Sampling Experiences: Places, Institutions, People, Relations… .................................. 96 4.2.1 Why Barura Forestry Estate Plantation and Chimanimani District? .......................... 96 4.2.1.1 Higher Intensity and Frequency in Wage Labour in the aftermath of the FTLRP ........................................................................................................................ 96 vii 4.2.1.2 Near-Regular Intensity and Frequency and Higher Concentration in Production Activities .................................................................................................. 98 4.2.1.3 State Ownership under a Capitalist Production System ............................ 98 4.2.1.4 Physical, Social, and Cultural Accessibility ................................................. 99 4.2.2 Selecting Research Socio-spatial Sites and Participants at and around Barura .......... 99 4.2.2.1 Purposive Sampling: (sub) Socio-spatial sites at and around Barura Estate ......................................................................................................................... 100 4.2.2.2 Purposive and Snowball Sampling: My Research Participants .............. 101 4.2.3 Gaining Access to Barura Estate as a Physical and Socio-cultural Space .................. 102 4.3 My Fieldwork Experiences: Collecting Data on and around Barura Estate ..................... 105 4.3.1 Ethnography on and around Barura Estate- How and Why? ..................................... 106 4.3.1.1 Participant Observation – When, How, and Why..................................... 108 4.3.1.1 (i) Participant-as-Observer Role on and around Barura Estate ............. 109 4.3.1.1 (ii) Observer-as-Participant Role on and around Barura Estate ............ 113 4.3.1.1 (iii) Complete Observer Role on and around Barura Estate ................... 118 4.3.1.2 In-depth Unstructured Interviews – When, How, Why?.......................... 118 4.3.1.3 Impromptu Natural Conversations ............................................................ 124 4.4 Thematic Analysis of Fieldwork Evidence from Barura Estate and its Hinterland ......... 125 4.5 Situating Myself within the Barura Fieldwork Process- Positionality and Reflexivity .... 129 4.5.1 ‘Insider’ and Participant Observer Roles vis-a-vis Emotional Attachment ............... 130 4.5.2 Participants’ Foregrounding of the ‘Insider-cum-Witness’ Identity thus ‘Thin’ Narratives .................................................................................................................................. 130 4.5.3 Direct Witnessing vis-a-vis (Un)Witting ‘Correction’ of the Respondents’ Narratives .................................................................................................................................................... 131 4.5.4 ‘Indigenous’ ChiShona Language and Translation to English: Ethical and Epistemic Dilemmas ................................................................................................................................... 132 4.5.5 Scientific Practice and Moral Ethics of Social Engagement ........................................ 134 4.6 Ethical Implications and Considerations in Studying ‘Vulnerable’ Barura Estate Workers ........................................................................................................................................................ 135 4.7 Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................................. 139 CHAPTER 5 ...................................................................................................................................... 141 (RE)PRODUCING AND SECURING LABOUR DOMINATION AND EXPLOITATION IN AND THROUGH THE COMMERCIAL FORESTRY PLANTATION LABOUR PROCESS ............................................................................................................................................................ 141 5.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 141 5.2. The Double-Pronged Truth of the Barura Commercial Plantation Labour Process ...... 142 5.2.1. The workers’ exigencies of material necessity: The Subjective Truth ....................... 142 viii 5.2.2 Juxtaposing Mai Matibhiri and Co-workers’ Lived Truth with the Objective Truth of Labour ........................................................................................................................................ 145 5.3 The ‘Wolf’ of Exploitation in the ‘Sheep Skin’ of Barura Wage Labour Employment ... 149 5.3.1 The subjective truth of the ‘inevitable and self-multiplying investment’ ................... 149 5.3.2 The Mystical-Fetishist Political Economy of Barura Forestry Plantation Wage Labour .................................................................................................................................................... 152 5.3.2.1 Commodity Fetishism, and Ideological Mystification on Barura Estate 152 5.3.2.2 The Social logic of Exploitation disguised as the Economic logic of Labour Power and Wage Labour. ........................................................................................ 155 5.4 Securing and Reproducing Super-Exploitation in and through a Highly Insecure Plantation Labour Process – Manipulative Hegemony .............................................................. 160 5.4.1 Producing Manipulative ‘Consent’ to Super-Exploitation – The Vicious Circle of Heightened Labour Insecurities .............................................................................................. 162 5.4.2 The ‘Waiting On’ Game: (Re) producing Compulsive Hegemony .............................. 168 5.4.2.1 The Material dynamics of ‘Waiting On’. ................................................... 168 5.4.2.2 The Ideational dynamics of the ‘Waiting On’ Game ................................ 173 5.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 175 CHAPTER 6…………………………………………………………………………………177 ‘FARMZENSHIP’: HIDDEN RESISTANCE TO LABOUR SUBORDINATION AND EXPLOITATION (AND THEIR JUSTIFICATION) IN THE COMMERCIAL FORESTRY LABOUR PROCESS 177 6.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 177 6.2 ‘Magical Constraint’: The Idea and Practice of Witchcraft on Barura Plantation .......... 178 6.2.1 The Art of Targeted Magical Resistance: Spells, Fortification, Magical Misfortunes and Nocturnal Invasions ........................................................................................................... 179 6.2.1.1 Spells that Bind Management and Talismans that Fortify the Farm Workers ..................................................................................................................... 180 6.2.1.1(i) Spells that Bind Management ............................................................... 180 6.2.1.1(ii)Talismans that Fortify the Farm Workers ............................................ 183 6.2.1.2 Witches -Targeted Nocturnal Spiritual Harassment of and Magical Harm to Health and Wealth of Barura Farm Management ........................................... 186 6.2.1.2(i)Nocturnal Spiritual Harassment ........................................................... 186 6.2.1.2(ii)Magical Harm to the Mental Health and Wealth of ‘Problematic’ Managerial Staff ................................................................................................... 188 6.2.2 Ideological Antinomies: Witchcraft’s ‘Symbolic Fetishism’ versus Exploitation’s Commodity Fetishism ............................................................................................................... 192 6.3 ‘Burning Away’ Exclusion, Labour Subordination, and Exploitation .............................. 195 6.4 ‘Poaching’: “reclaiming and redistributing our stolen ancestral resources” (Worker M) ........................................................................................................................................................ 200 ix 6.5 ‘Paradoxical Constraint’: ‘Waiting On’, Labour-Time ‘Theft’ and/or Task Bargaining on Barura estate ................................................................................................................................. 205 6.5.1 Labour-Time ‘Theft’ and/or Task Bargaining: Absenteeism and Goldbricking ....... 206 6.5.1.1 Widespread and Disguised Absenteeism with(out) Official Certification .................................................................................................................................... 206 6.5.1.2 Time ‘Theft’ and/or Task Bargaining: Goldbricking to and at Worksites .................................................................................................................................... 212 6.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 216 CHAPTER 7 ..................................................................................................................................... 220 THE BARURA ESTATE UNHOLY TRINITY: ‘INVITATIONAL CITIZENSHIP’, VIOLENT-CUM-DISCIPLINARY POLITICAL SUBJUGATION AND WAGE LABOUR EXPLOITATION ............................................................................................................................. 220 7.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 220 7.2 ‘Invitational Citizenship’: Production of an ‘Alien’ Plantation Workforce ...................... 221 7.2.1 The ‘Host’ and ‘Invitees’ at Barura Estate: Primordial Ethnonational Ancestry and ‘Indigeneity’ ............................................................................................................................... 223 7.2.2 Codification of ‘Ethno-national Ancestry’ and Officialisation of Farm Worker ‘Alien’ Identities..................................................................................................................................... 226 7.2.2.1 The Colonial State and Codification of Farm Workers’ National Citizenship ................................................................................................................ 226 7.2.2.2 The Intersection of Codified Ethno-nationhood with Codified Industrial Servanthood .............................................................................................................. 227 7.2.2.3 The Post-Colonial State and Codification of Farm Workers’ National Citizenship ................................................................................................................ 229 7.2.3 Codified Ethno-national Citizenship as a Modality of Legitimate Symbolic Violence at Barura Estate and Elsewhere ................................................................................................... 232 7.2.3.1 Setting the Scene for Symbolic Violence: Specialists, Symbolic Capital, and Alienness ............................................................................................................ 233 7.2.3.2 Ethno-national Citizenship and its Codification into an Official Mode of Separative Power ..................................................................................................... 235 7.2.3.3 Codified Ethno-nationality as Legitimate and Constitutive Violence on Barura Farm............................................................................................................. 236 7.3 ‘Invitational Citizenship’, Land rights, and Wage Labour Exploitation........................... 240 7.3.1 ‘Vabvakure’ (‘Aliens’), Land Access, and Proletarianisation: A Colonial Lens........ 240 7.3.2 ‘Vabvakure’(‘Aliens’), Land Access, and Proletarianisation: A Post-Colonial Lens 241 7.4 Plantation-based Partisan Politics: Overt Violence and/or Panoptic Paramilitary Discipline ........................................................................................................................................ 246 7.4.1 Workers’ Portraits of Partisan Politics mediated by Spectacular Violence (2000-2008) .................................................................................................................................................... 246 x 7.4.2 Spying by the Faceless Paramilitary Gaze: The Art of Plantation Surveillance Post- 2008............................................................................................................................................. 249 7.4.2.1 Producing a pro-ZANU (PF) Political Standard (Norm) on the Plantation .................................................................................................................................... 250 7.4.2.2 The Invisible Gaze of the ZANU (PF) Militia and Political Subjection on the Plantation ........................................................................................................... 251 7.4.2.3 The Social Fiction of the ‘Permanent’ Gaze and the Reality of its Indelibility for Barura Workers ............................................................................. 254 7.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 257 CHAPTER 8 ...................................................................................................................................... 260 ‘FARMZENSHIP’: QUOTIDIAN RESISTANCE TO ETHNO-NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP AND VIOLENT-CUM-DISCIPLINARY POLITICAL SUBJUGATION IN THE FORESTRY LABOUR PROCESS ........................................................................................................................ 260 8.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 260 8.2 Farmzenship: Reimagining and (Re)inventing the Plantation Politics of Belonging ........ 261 8.3 Barura Workers and the Invention of Alternative ‘National’ Citizenship from Below ... 262 8.3.1 From Original de jure ‘Alien’ to ‘Invented’, but de jure ‘Native’ Identities ............. 262 8.3.2 Polylithic Belonging at Barura: A Worker-Crafted, Worker-Centric Civil Society . 267 8.3.3 When de jure ‘Alien’ Identities become de facto ‘Citizen’ Relations: Conviviality and Informal Land Access ............................................................................................................... 272 8.3.3.1 Background: Traditional Elites, Rural Land Access, and the Zimbabwean State ........................................................................................................................... 273 8.3.3.2 Underhand Land Deals with Communal Traditional Elites and Land Rentals from ‘Native’ Villagers ............................................................................... 274 8.4 Workers’ Opposition to Physically Violent and/or Disciplinary Partisan Political Subjugation .................................................................................................................................... 280 8.4.1. Everyday Resistance to Physically Violent Partisan Politics on Barura Estate ........ 281 8.4.1.1 Counterfeit ZANU (PF) Political Loyalties and Symbols ........................ 281 8.4.1.1 (i) ‘Alien’ and ‘Alien Native’ Workers and Counterfeit Political ‘Repentances’ and Testimonies ............................................................................. 282 8.4.1.1 (ii) Staged Public Denigration, Surrender, and Destruction of MDC Political Symbols ................................................................................................... 286 8.4.1.1 (iii) Counterfeit ZANU (PF) Loyalty: Tacit Dissent to the Ethno-national and pro-ZANU (PF) Criteria for Resource Access and to Labour Exploitation at Barura.................................................................................................................... 288 8.4.1.1 (iv) From Spectacular to Enduring Counterfeit Loyalty – “The same old MDC wine in ‘new’ ZANU (PF) wineskins.” ...................................................... 291 8.4.2. Quotidian Dissent to ZANU (PF)-mediated Disciplinary Partisan Politics at Barura .................................................................................................................................................... 293 xi 8.4.2.1 ‘Surface-opticon’ Discipline and Barura Workers’ Political Subjectivity .................................................................................................................................... 293 8.4.2.2 The Workers’ Discursive Reversal of ‘Surface-opticon’- mediated Partisan Political Discipline .................................................................................... 298 8.4.2.2 (i) Reversed Discourses of and Counter-Memory to Disciplinary Partisan Politics ................................................................................................................... 298 8.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 300 CHAPTER 9 ...................................................................................................................................... 304 CONCLUDING REMARKS TO AN EVERYDAY APPROACH TO & ANALYSIS OF PLANTATION LABOUR RESISTANCE PRACTICES ............................................................. 304 10 ........................................................................................................................................................ 312 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................. 312 11 ........................................................................................................................................................ 334 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................... 334 Appendix I: Class-cum-Status Locations of the Barura Post-colonial Commercial Forestry Production System ........................................................................................................................ 334 Appendix II: Participant Information Sheet (Workers) ........................................................... 337 Appendix III: Participant Information Sheet (Key Informants) .............................................. 340 Appendix IV: Consent Form for Workers ................................................................................. 342 Appendix V: Consent Form for Key Informants ....................................................................... 344 Abstract This thesis explores and analyses the everyday forms and practices of labour resistance that rural commercial forestry plantation labour crafts to navigate a highly insecure post-colonial capitalist plantation labour process. It attends to the scholarly puzzle that in Zimbabwe, Africa, and elsewhere quotidian forms and practices of resistance are in a much less or barely empirically demonstrated and theoretically elaborated state in both resistance and labour resistance studies. This is even more pronounced in agrarian labour politics studies, yet agriculture labour constitutes a significant proportion of the overall industrial labour-force in xii Africa and elsewhere and is arguably the most easily exploitable form of wage labour. This motivated my empirical focus on commercial plantation labour. In light of evidence from Barura plantation estate, I argue that the workers may have to accept the fact of post-colonial capitalist plantation wage employment, the plantation-specific modalities of statist ethno-national citizenship, and state-sanctioned partisan national politics while contesting the terms and conditions under which these mutual systems of domination and exploitation occur. The practices do not seek to radically decompose the historical material- cum-symbolic bases of these systems of power. The everyday practices of defiance mediate the workers’ realisation of piecemeal de facto material and status gains more than the de jure recognition of those gains. My major empirical contribution is the discovery and foregrounding of the quotidian practices of subaltern groups as an integral part of politics. In a specialised and methodical manner, I re- centre the mundane everyday acts of plantation labour as workplace politics namely labour resistance. Theoretically I deploy and test the conceptual-cum-theoretical positions of seminal scholars on (everyday) resistance and modify some of these positions in light of empirical evidence. Methodologically, I break from the intention-oriented and foreground the practice- oriented approach to everyday resistance. This study is based on a continuous fourteen-month long on-site ethnography at a state-owned commercial forestry plantation. Ethnography was instrumental for the contextualised in-depth discovery and thick description of the workers’ forms, practices, and dynamics of subterranean labour resistance. It also enabled the cultivation of high levels of trust and rapport required to discover a sensitive, incriminating, and largely backstage (hidden) social phenomenon like quotidian labour resistance. For data collection I used three levels of participant observation, unstructured in-depth interviews, casual conversations, and deep hangouts. List of Acronyms ATZ: Allied Timbers Zimbabwe (Pvt) Limited BIPPAS: Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements BTL: Border Timbers (Pvt) Limited CAA: Citizenship Amendment Act CZAA: Citizenship of Zimbabwe Amendment Act FCZ: Forestry Company of Zimbabwe FTLRP: Fast Track Land Reform Program xiii GAPWUZ: General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe GoZ: Government of Zimbabwe ID: Identity Document MDC: Movement for Democratic Change ZANU (PF): Zimbabwe Africa National Union Patriotic Front ZCTU: Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Research Gap, Scope, and Argument This chapter sets the scene for this study. First, it highlights the research gap, scope, and overarching argument. It then concisely situates the work in key classical and contemporary scholarly debates in the field of resistance studies and in the specific sub-field of everyday (labour) resistance thereby illuminating the study’s rationale and problem statement. Thereafter, it introduces the main research question, its sub-questions, and the research objectives. It also gives a concise historical politico-economic and concrete background to the research object and the specific research site to alert the reader to the historical and prevalent circumstances underlying the study. It then ends with a chapter outline of the thesis. Immediately below, I begin by showcasing an excerpt from my fourteen month-long ethnographic research on a Zimbabwean state-owned commercial forestry plantation estate, which I gave the pseudonym Barura estate. The excerpt is an emblematic case of Barura plantation workers’ responses to labour domination and exploitation. It is a workers’ description of how fellow workers set sections of Barura estate plantation alight. “… separately, they sneak into the night … strategically timed so that each duo or trio secretly reaches its assigned plantation site almost at the same time… At each site, camouflaged by the night, and the pine, A watches B’s back while B gathers into a thick, big conical pile, highly flammable dry pine leaves and fruits, which are always available on every plantation floor…then, B burrows a hole midway into the base of the pile… via that hole, inserts a glowing cigarette stub or twig deep into the pile’s centre… as a reliable time bomb, the glowing stub slowly but surely ignites the pile from the centre of its base…this gives them ample time to sneak back to unsuspicious spaces…Moments later, bonfires engulf the targeted pine sections… Overall result; unknown culprits, simultaneous forest fires at separate locations … net effect…overstretched fire-fighting resources… Fires normally seasonal, but because of workers like A and B, they become perennial…you get it?” (Informal Chat, Farmworker H, June 2016) The fieldwork excerpt above epitomises a striking exemplar case of an under-researched and under-theorised form of labour resistance in labour politics scholarship. Little is known of 2 specialised and systematic empirical research and theory on commercial plantation labour’s everyday forms, practices, and dynamics of resistance in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. The overall field of resistance is relatively recent and still developing as a distinct discipline, while inordinate scholarly attention has been accorded to the more spectacular, organised, and collective form of labour struggle. Interestingly, practical instances of the latter form of (labour) struggle are risky, few, and far between (see Scott, 1985, Guha, 1987), more so, in repressive workplace settings like the one in the current study. Given the overall dearth in specialised scholarship on the quotidian form of labour resistance especially in Africa’s fast-evolving agricultural sector, the current study explores the practices and dynamics of everyday resistance crafted by forestry plantation wage workers vis a vis the various forms of power inherent in and articulated to a highly insecure and super-exploitative forestry labour process. Based on ethnographic fieldwork evidence from Barura estate and its surrounding rural village communities, I make the following overarching argument. I submit that the workers’ resistance practices and dynamics engage more the terms and conditions of plantation-specific dynamics of wage employment, statist ethno-national citizenship, and state-sanctioned polarised national politics than the material-cum-symbolic bases of these systems of domination. The workers’ forms, practices, and dynamics of defiance are increasingly shaped by and occur within the material-cum-symbolic logic and dictates of these mutually-reinforcing (post)-colonial matrices of domination and exploitation. The commercial plantation workers make concessionary and sometimes repressive compromises within these interwoven systems of power to cope with, survive, and counteract domination and exploitation. 1.2 Scholarly Context: Research Gap, Rationale, & Problem Statement We situate the current research in the broader field of resistance studies, which as a distinct academic discipline is relatively recent and still developing (see Webster, 1981; Hollander and Einwohner, 2004; Johansson and Vinthagen 2016). The concept and topic of resistance is interdisciplinary and thus ubiquitous across scholarly fields, yet by contrast, there is a dearth in specialised and systematic empirical research and theorisation on the topic (e.g., Vinthagen & Johansson, 2013). 3 However, for early specialised and methodical scholarship on resistance, we, like Gills (2000), laud and build on the seminal works of Polanyi (1944, 1957), Gramsci (1971), and Scott (1976, 1985, 1989, 1990). Their respective notions and analyses of counter-movements, counter- hegemony, rebellions, and counter-discourse established resistance as a specialised and methodical research and intellectual object. We are, of course aware that the pioneering analyses of these luminaries cannot fit neatly in our current rural African research context, but our major takeaway is the methodical analysis of how globalisation transforms the conditions, forms, modes, targets, sites, and strategies of resistance as societies change (also see Chin and Mittelman,1997). Relatedly, we also value how Polanyi, Gramsci, and Scott were partly influenced by earlier luminaries like Karl Marx and Marx Weber, whose germinal works on capitalist power relations did not explicitly focus on resistance as a systematic area of enquiry but set the scene for later specialised scholarship on resistance. Following the tradition of Polanyi (1944, 1957), Gramsci (1971), and partly Scott (1976), most resistance studies in and on Zimbabwe, Africa, and elsewhere have a bias towards spectacular collective resistance. Exemplar cases are the works of Sandbrook and Cohen ([1973] 2023), Adler and Webster (1990), Raftopoulos and Sachikonye (2001), Moodie (2002), Von Holdt (2003, 2010), Moyo and Yeros (2005), Rutherford (2016). However, overall, despite this bias, these studies also largely remain less specialised as they mostly portray open resistance as an epiphenomenon to topics primarily focusing on power relations (see Webster, 1981; Gills, 2000). This is all the truer and more prevalent in the sub-field of everyday resistance, which is also under-studied. Thus, following Scott’s (1985, 1989, 1990) seminal scholarship our current research deliberately focuses on the specialised and methodical study of everyday (labour) resistance. Scott (Ibid) is our main protagonist among a corpus of scholars (e.g., Adas, 1987; Guha, 1987; Guha and Spivak, 1988; Chatterjee, 1993, 2004; Chakrabarty, 1991, 1992) who form part of a 1980s scholarly project namely Subaltern Studies in and on Southeast Asia. Strikingly, we draw the following parallels between this subaltern project and the current study. In resonance with the subaltern tradition, our current research foregrounds and uncovers the voices, experiences, and agency of subalterns (i.e., marginalised groups like peasants, workers, etc.), illuminating their acts of defiance and everyday resistance against (post)colonial matrices of 4 power. Our study is a critical scholarly intervention that offers fresh insights into the complexities of power, resistance, and identity formation vis a vis plantation wage workers- cum-peasants (i.e., subalterns) in a post-colonial commercial plantation production system. Below, we return to our main proponent Scott (1985, 1989, 1990). The current research is inspired by Scott’s (1985) Weapons of the Weak - a landmark methodical ethnographic study of everyday resistance by peasants in Malaysia. His argument for this under-studied form of subaltern resistance flows from a premise we share that conditions that favour organised, collective, and open protests are risky, few, and far between in repressive situations (also see Adas, 1987; Guha, 1987). We thus mainly draw from Scott (1985) and similar works (e.g. Scott and Kerkvliet, 1986; Kerkvliet, 1986, 2009, 2013) in foregrounding the ordinary day-to day practices of subalterns as an integral part of politics (i.e., resistance) - what Scott (1990) calls infra-politics. Hence, the current research focuses on the infra-politics of rural commercial plantation workers in a highly insecure capitalist forestry labour process. We also build on Scott’s (1985) definitive coining of the notion ‘everyday resistance’ and its specialised and systematic mapping as an empirical object and analytical category. However, we question and transcend Scott’s (1985, 1989, 1990) over-privileging of the class dimension of and an actor-oriented (i.e., intentions) approach to everyday resistance. By taking scholarly cues from the likes of Chin and Mittelman (1997), Vinthagen and Johansson (2013), and Johansson and Vinthagen (2016), we underscore how subalterns, and their domination- resistance dynamics are also embedded in other non-class or status hierarchies and show that class is but one form or component of identity in power relations. Also, following de Certeau’s (1984) novel everyday practice schema, we think beyond Scott (1985) and foreground the practice-oriented approach to the ethnographic discovery and analysis of everyday resistance by rural plantation labour. We also interrogate and improve de Certeau (1984) in his being less definitive about that which qualifies an everyday practice as ‘resistance’. This study also thinks with and beyond classical studies that deliberately streamline the topic of resistance to labour politics at the micro-level of the industrial worksite. In this regard, our main influences outside Africa are E.P. Thompson (1963), Braverman (1974), and Burawoy (1979), who shift the focus of labour politics research and analyses overall, and resistance in 5 particular, from the orthodox Marxian societal macro-level to the micro-dynamics of the agency, everyday life, cultural practices, and lived experiences of workers. Importantly for us, Burawoy (1979), and partly E.P. Thompson (1963), at least recognise and explore everyday forms of labour resistance, and they foreground the semi-autonomous role of culture, politics, and community in shaping capitalist workplace domination-resistance dynamics and identities. We assume a similar scholarly focus but in a more nuanced and methodical manner. However, little is known from E.P. Thompson (1963) and Burawoy (1979) of the broader structural constraints, and the ‘external’ (to worksite dynamics) community-based solidarities shaping capitalist workplace power-resistance dynamics (see Rogers, 1990; Piven, 2008; Piven and Cloward, 2012). Also, they both overlook inter-sectional analysis by solely focusing on mainly white male industrial workers at the expense of other social identities like ethnicity, political affiliation, and gender that are also significant in shaping workers’ experiences of domination, exploitation, and resistance (Ibid). This study partly attends to these empirical and analytical blind-spots. In (southern) Africa, everyday forms of resistance are rarely systematically considered in literature on worker (and other subalterns) protest (see Cohen, 1980; Webster 1981; Ploeg, 2010). Consequently, in terms of wage labour struggles, there has been over-reliance on data relating to strikes, demonstrations, unionisation, social movements, and hence a failure to discover the subtle, informal, individualistic, everyday forms of labour resistance (Ibid). We also concur with van Onselen (1973, 1980), Cohen (1981), and Scott (1985) that open official protests are risky, few and far between and tell us little about the most lasting field of class conflict and (labour) resistance. However, our current focus on everyday labour resistance in workplace settings in the southern African context is not new. Scholarly ancestry to what is similar to Scott’s (1985) everyday resistance in labour politics is evident in the germinal works of Alverson (1971), van Onselen (1973, 1980), van Onselen and Phimister (1978), Webster (1978), Cohen (1980), and Morice (1981). These studies do not explicitly deploy the concept everyday resistance like we do, but importantly, they centre the daily, silent, covert, unorganised responses of African workers to a labour coercive and super- exploitative mining complex in the southern African region as an integral part of labour protest. For us, van Onselen (1973, 1980) stands out by his research focus on colonial Zimbabwe and 6 his ethnographic evidence-based discovery of a variety of quotidian practices by mine workers as the most feasible form of protest in repressive workplace settings. So, our major takeaway from van Onselen (Ibid) and his contemporaries is inspiring our own casting of the ordinary daily acts of commercial plantation workers as an integral part of what after Scott’s (1985) influence we coin ‘everyday labour resistance’. However, this study objects to van Onselen (1973, 1980) and his counterparts’ failure to systematically theorise the workers’ quotidian responses in ways that delineate them as ‘resistance’, and not quiescence. These works also over-privilege the class dimension and dynamics of these worker responses at the expense of their inherent or articulated non-class or status elements in the context of a highly controlled capitalist labour process. The current work attends to these lacunae. Now, specifically in Zimbabwe, subaltern resistance scholarship also largely overlooks the sub- field of covert everyday subaltern resistance. Hidden forms of resistance are in a much less or barely demonstrated and theoretically elaborated state. Dominant literature (e.g., Sachikonye, 1995; Moore, 1998; Raftopoulos and Sachikonye, 2001; Rutherford, 2008, 2016; Sachikonye and Raftopoulos, 2018) emphasises the overt, collective, and militant forms of subaltern struggles. This is compounded further by related extant literature on agricultural labour (e.g., Moyo et al, 2000; Raftopoulos, 2003; Sachikonye, 2003; Rutherford, 2004, 2008, 2016; Scoones et al., 2019) that also barely considers covert, quotidian forms of protest. Also, while this literature quite rightly considers strikes, demonstrations, unionisation, and social movements as evidence of resistance, its main drawback is a uni-linear focus on key moments of struggles, which are however few and infrequent (see Scott, 1976, 1985). If anything, in Zimbabwe, since 1980 the last known major countrywide strike by commercial agricultural labour was in 1997 (see Muzondidya, 2007; Mpondi, 2012; Rutherford, 2016). Interestingly, even despite the inordinate scholarly attention to spectacular collective resistance, it still remains barely researched and theorised especially in Zimbabwe’s commercial agriculture sector. In the few and rare cases that it is, it is mainly an epiphenomenon to primary topics on agricultural workers’ multiple experiences of socio- economic exclusion and marginalisation. If anything, literature (for e.g. Rutherford 2001a, 2001b, 2004, 2008, 2016; Moyo et al., 2000; Sachikonye, 2003a, 2003b, 2012; Moyo and 7 Yeros, 2005a, 2005b; Scoones et al., 2019) on the latter is well-researched. More so, it is well- argued in the context of milestone national events like: the chaotic and violent 2000-2003 Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP); the targeting and turning of commercial farm spaces into active sites of polarised and violent daily and electoral party politics since 2000; the Zimbabwean state’s adoption of a radical exclusive nationalist stance since 2000 henceforth; and the downturn of Zimbabwe’s agro-based economy from the proverbial ‘bread basket’ to the ‘basket curse’ of the region (Ibid). Given this scholarship’s extensive specialised focus on the negative ramifications of all these historical milestones on waged agricultural labour, one would anticipate some corresponding specialised and systematic exploration and growth of agricultural labour resistance literature. Surprisingly, apart from treating resistance as an epiphenomenon, there is a general dearth in methodical research and theory on agricultural worker resistance in Zimbabwe. This is all the more prevalent in the sub-field of everyday resistance where it is in a much less or barely researched and theoretically nuanced state. Furthermore, since strong opposition politics emerged in 2000 mainly as an offshoot of the trade union movement and other civil society groups, the ZANU (PF)-led Zimbabwean state has forever been super-vigilant and intensified its brutal intolerance to any threat of or actual performance of any forms of open collective civil society or labour protest (see Raftopoulos, 2000; Raftopoulos and Sachikonye, 2001; Saunders, 2001; Dansereau, 2003; Rutherford, 2008, 2016; Sachikonye and Raftopoulos, 2018; Mutekwe, 2019). This also stems from the state’s paranoia of associating any such protests with the regime change agenda of ‘illegally’ unseating the ZANU (PF)-led government (Ibid). This has at its worst seen the arbitrary and atypical deployment of armed state security forces to thwart peaceful civilian demonstrations (Ibid). It is now common to see armed soldiers and policemen fire live ammunition at and brutally assault protesters at the behest of the state (Ibid). The overall forbidding effect of such repression is specifically demonstrated in the agricultural sector, where the last known nationwide strike by commercial agricultural workers, despite their typically servile and precarious work, occurred in 1997 (Muzondidya 2007; Rutherford, 2016; Mutekwe, 2019). Since then, and especially after 2000, such open protests have become largely infeasible. Any isolated cases of open protest on commercial farms or elsewhere are instantly brutally thwarted with the aid of armed state security forces at the behest of the ‘new’ ZANU (PF)-aligned farm owners (Ibid). 8 Hence, to follow Scott (1976, 1985), under the foregoing repressive contexts, open forms of resistance increasingly become risky and infeasible. Thus, departing from the premise that subaltern struggles do not necessarily oscillate between the bipolar plane of outbursts of open protest and prolonged periods of quiescence, we would anticipate more specialised scholarly research on non-conventional forms of labour protest - and everyday forms of labour resistance is one such. Yet, in Zimbabwe, save for Mutekwe’s (2019) scholarly article on everyday forms of labour resistance by platinum miners, little or barely anything is known of specialised and systematic research and analysis on this form of resistance. Notably so, in the commercial agricultural sector – a sector which constitutes the greater proportion of Zimbabwe’s labour- force and of most African agro-based economies. We thus appreciate Mutekwe (2019) for giving systematic prominence to everyday forms of (labour) resistance in a contemporary Zimbabwean and African industrial worksite setting. However, we improve his scholarship by giving a more detailed and balanced power analysis, systematically theorising (everyday) resistance, and being categorical in foregrounding a practice-oriented approach to everyday (labour)resistance. In all, we notice that empirical research and theory on Zimbabwean labour (and civil society) resistance in general, and (rural) agricultural labour protest in particular, has generally been confined to worker dissent that is overt, organised, and collective such as union activism, strikes, demonstrations. As a result, there is an increasing failure to discover and analyse the subtle covert individualised acts and dynamics of quotidian dissent by workers. This has resulted in a general misrepresentation of labour politics and resistance among waged agricultural workers in Zimbabwe, Africa, and elsewhere. In light of such lacunae, the current study questions and extends fieldwork and literature on rural labour protest, to include more exploratory data and analysis on the everyday subtle forms of resistance (or quiescence) that commercial plantation wage labour crafts to navigate various forms of power in a post-colonial capitalist forestry plantation labour process. In order to attend to the scholarly gap(s) and research problem above, this research is under- girded by the following research questions and research objectives. 9 1.2.1 Main Research Question What forms and practices of everyday resistance (or quiescence) do rural commercial forestry plantation wage workers craft to navigate various forms of power in a post-colonial capitalist labour process? 1.2.1.1 Sub-Questions In order to answer the main question, the research attends to the following sub-questions. i) What meanings do the rural commercial plantation workers make of their labour and life experiences? ii) What power modalities and dynamics inform these experiences? iii) What practices and dynamics of everyday labour resistance (or quiescence) engage these power modalities? iv) What solidarities and identities inform this power-resistance synergy? In light of these question(s), the research is guided by the following objectives: 1.2.2 Research Objectives i) To examine the plantation workers’ interpretation of their work lifeworlds. ii) To investigate the forms and dynamics of power in the plantation labour process. iii) To discover the workers’ practices and dynamics of quotidian labour resistance. v) To discover the social networks that shape the power-resistance synergy. 1.3 Socio-Spatial Context: Zimbabwe, The Plantation Economy, & Barura Estate This study occurs in a socio-economic context wherein the broader Zimbabwean agro-based economy, and its agriculture sector in particular, have been in socio-economic decline especially since the early to mid-90s (for e.g., see Raftopoulos, 2004, 2013; Bauer, 2013; Eppel, 2013; Rutherford, 2016). This economic down-turn is especially attributed to the country’s adoption of the largely socio-economically disruptive 1990s Economic Structural Adjustment Programs (Ibid). However, from the late 1990s onwards, the exacerbation of this downturn has largely been explained in terms of historic milestone political events that occurred in the country. 10 In 1999 the country’s labour movement engaged other civil society groups to form arguably the first ever strongest opposition political party since 1980 to pose the first ever serious threat to ZANU (PF)’s twenty-year political hegemony (see Rutherford, 2008, 2016; Raftopoulos, 2004, 2013; Bauer, 2013; Mvundura, 2014; Mutekwe, 2019). The party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), in a shock near-defeat of the ruling ZANU (PF) won almost half (57) of the seats in the June 2000 parliamentary elections. Earlier, in February 2000, civilians had in an unprecedented way, casted a ‘no vote’ to a constitution referendum that was presided over by the ZANU (PF)-led state. Also, earlier in 1999 disgruntled liberation war veterans led violent sporadic illegal invasions and occupation of white-owned commercial farms (Ibid). In an unprecedented retaliatory move to the latter direct threat to their own and their workers’ land-based livelihoods, the white commercial farm owners joined party politics by actively participating in the formation and funding of the MDC, mobilising farm workers for the ‘no’ referendum vote and to vote for the MDC in the 2000 parliamentary elections (Rutherford, 2008, 2016; Daimon, 2016). In a move to retaliate and to retain some waning political clout and legitimacy in light of these political twists, the ZANU (PF)-led state ‘hijacked’ and officialised the sporadic land invasions into a nationwide Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) (Ibid). The FTLRP stands out as one of the main political stimuli to a chain reaction that contributed to the ongoing downturn of Zimbabwe’s economy and its agriculture sector in particular. Between 2000 and 2003 the state partly used the FTLRP as reprisal to the ‘unpatriotic’ (i.e., anti- ZANU (PF)-led state) behaviour of known or perceived MDC-aligned citizens, commercial farm owners, and commercial farm workers. The FTLRP epitomised a massive statist ‘land grab’ conditioned by and marred in countrywide polarised, divisive, and violent electoral and party politics that were deployed by pro-ZANU (PF) politicians, policymakers, and supporters (Moyo, 2011; Scoones et al., 2012; Moyo and Chambati, 2013 Raftopoulos, 2013; Daimon, 2016). This ‘land grab’ involved violent illegal occupations of white-owned commercial farms led by ZANU (PF)-aligned liberation war veterans and civilians (Rutherford, 2008; 2016; Sachikonye, 2003, 2012; Raftopoulos, 2013; Daimon, 2016). This resulted in the violent eviction and displacement of ‘unpatriotic’ commercial farm workers and their white employers from their commercial farmlands. Due their state-constituted ‘alien’ (either in the legal or ‘unpatriotic sense) status the evicted workers either became squatters or had to stay 11 under the ZANU (PF)-dictated conditions under new black ZANU (PF)- aligned farmers (Ibid). Overall, over the official four-year period of the FTLRP, local and export agricultural revenues nosedived, there was low investor confidence, agricultural supply chains were disrupted, some agriculture linked industries scaled down operations or closed shop (Ibid). The latter trend has continued in light of state-sanctioned contested and tumultuous electoral politics and the state’s adoption of a radical exclusive ultra-nationalist stance since 2000 (Ibid). Interestingly, the FTLRP is also an important lens that can help us situate the vital importance of the large-scale plantation economy to the Zimbabwean state. Overall, the Zimbabwean large-scale commercial plantation economy was legally protected from the afore-mentioned illegal violent invasions. The 2000 FTLRP policy exempted large-scale agro-industrial estates owned by foreign and white domestic capital, indigenous public trusts, and the state from sub- division, acquisition, and redistribution (Tupy in Moyo, 2011a; Moyo, 2011a, 2011b). As of 2003 the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) was discouraging popular ‘illegal settlements’ around agricultural estates (Utete in Moyo, 2011a; Moyo, 2011a). Also, the Forest-Based Land Reform Policy of 2004 by the GoZ brought a moratorium to ‘illegal’ timber estate occupations (Ibid). Barura estate was and still is also among the 250 large-scale farms and estates, which by 1999, were supported by Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements (BIPPAS) whereby the economic logic used by policymakers to justify the retention of such agricultural estates was their alleged superior micro-economic efficiency and productivity over other farms (Tupy in Moyo, 2011a). These dynamics explain why even seventeen years after (i.e., during 2016/17) the FTLRP, my study site, Barura forestry estate, was among the few fully operational companies both in the non-agricultural and agricultural sectors, nationwide. However, immunity from the FTLRP did not exempt large-scale agro-industrial estates (and other commercial farms) from the novel development of being turned into active sites of ruling ZANU (PF) politics nationwide (see Rutherford, 2008; 2016; Raftopoulos, 2013; Southall, 2013; Daimon, 2016). The aforementioned 1999 to 2003 novel political events in which commercial farm workers (and other citizens) were an integral part fomented lasting suspicion by the state, of the national and political loyalty of the farm workers and their white employers (Ibid). To quote Rutherford (2008: 90), the state viewed farm workers as ‘sell-outs’ and “as foreigners under the control of white farmers” and the MDC. Consequently, since 2000 to date, 12 Zimbabwean commercial farm economies have typically become highly politicised as active sites of state-sanctioned polarised, partisan, and occasionally violent daily party and electoral politics, which are largely a monopoly of the governing ZANU (PF) party. The target is commercial farm workers suspected or known to constitute a strong support or voter base for any major opposition political party that threatens ZANU (PF)’s political hegemony and legitimacy (see for e.g., Rutherford 2008, 2016; Muzondidya, 2007; Sachikonye 2012; Eppel, 2013; Raftopoulos, 2013; Mutekwe, 2019). This active party politics was typically evident at my Barura estate study site, and I directly witnessed it at its peak since I did my fieldwork in a period (2016/17) immediately preceding the country’s 2018 harmonised elections. Furthermore, the ZANU (PF)-led state’s retaliation to the ‘unpatriotic’ commercial plantation labour-force was through affirmation of the legal ‘alien’ status of farm workers with a non- Zimbabwean paternal ancestry. At this point we alert the reader to a unique category of commercial farm workers, which constitutes a significant proportion of the commercial farm labour-force in the country and also at the research site. This group is comprised of what the state legally designates on national IDs as ‘alien’ despite the fact that most of them are Zimbabwean-born and have lived in Zimbabwe for a lifetime (Sachikonye, 2003; Muzondidya, 2007; Mpondi, 2012; Rutherford, 2016). The colonial Zimbabwean state via its landmark racist piece of legislation namely the 1898 Government Notice 223, pioneered this legal constitution of the first generation of labour migrants of southern African origin as ‘aliens’. The first generation of these ‘alien’ migrants was part of the 1890s to 1970s southern Africa labour coercive migration system (see van Onselen, 1973, 1980) in which male migrants from colonial Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia were made to work in the colonial Zimbabwean mines or farms for nascent capitalists. Interestingly, after independence in 1980, the post-colonial Zimbabwean state did not repeal this ‘alien’ or ‘foreigner’ legal status for the male descendants (and their families) of the colonial first-generation labour migrants. Fast-forward to 2000, in another retaliatory move to the 1999 to 2003 political twists and in seeming complicity with its colonial predecessor, the ZANU (PF)-led state through the 2001 Citizenship of Zimbabwe Amendment Act (CZAA), and the 2003 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) re-affirmed the ‘alien’ legal status of any Zimbabwean citizens of non-Zimbabwean paternal ancestry (Magaramombe, 2001; 13 Sachikonye 2003; Muzondidya, 2007; Rutherford, 2008; 2016). The state’s aim was to disenfranchise this so-called ‘nationally and politically disloyal’ group of ‘foreigners’ to avoid a repeat of the 2000 near-defeat of ZANU (PF) in the impending 2005 presidential elections and other future elections (Ibid). A significant proportion of these newly affirmed ‘aliens’ included the present generation of commercial farm workers of Malawian, Mozambican, and Zambian ancestry (see Rutherford, 2008, 2016; Muzondidya, 2007). However, the lasting effect of the 2001 CZAA and the 2003 CAA to date has been the legal exclusion of all generations of agricultural workers (and other Zimbabweans) of non-Zimbabwean paternal origin from full membership and ownership of Zimbabwe as a nation and as a livelihood resource. In light of the 1999 to 2003 political surprises to its political hegemony, the ZANU (PF)-led state has since then ensured that citizenship and land reform statutes and processes barely consider the land rights of ‘alien’ commercial farm workers and other ‘alien’ minority groups (see Moyo et al., 2000; Worby, 2001; Muzondidya, 2007; Sachikonye, 2003, 2012). As a result, “many farm workers do not have a home outside of their employment because of their foreign origins…” (Rutherford, 2004: 146) since their first-generation migrant forefathers were believed to be “living in the country [colonial Zimbabwe] solely to work and not to settle” (Muzondidya, 2007: 329). This is ironic since “by the late 1990s, more than 70% of farm workers were Zimbabwean born” (Sachikonye, 2003: 66). So, to date, successive generations of commercial farm workers and others with a migrant ancestry do not have any legal rights to and cannot legally acquire nor access land, land-based resources, and state projects in the ‘native’ rural communities or elsewhere. So, overall, since the colonial era right through the 2000-2003 era of polarised tumultuous partisan politics to present, the ZANU (PF)-led state has created an enduring legacy of (near) landless ‘alien’ commercial farm workers typical of the Marxian proletariat. That is, the farm workers have become “the proletariat…a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital” (Marx and Engels,1948: 15). Bereft of tillage and residential land, land rights, and legal access to alternative off farm non-wage livelihoods, these ‘alien’ farm workers became almost entirely dependent on agrarian wage labour. Also, “workplaces are life places” (Bolt, 2015: 5) for such workers - the 14 spinoff for commercial farm capital is the guaranteed statist (re)production of a farm-dwelling easily exploitable agrarian proletariat. This implies the latter’s increased pre-disposal to super- exploitation via compulsory participation in servile commercial farm wage-labour. This case of a ‘farm-dwelling’ easily exploitable proletariat is quite typical with almost a third of the Barura estate plantation workers in the current study. Meanwhile, another unique contextual dynamic involving the ZANU (PF)-led state’s constitution of its known or imagined political ‘enemies’ in the country’s commercial plantation economy and elsewhere as ‘aliens’ is noteworthy. From 2000 to date, through partisan public political discourse and action, the state has added a new layer of ‘alienness’ by re-defining ‘being Zimbabwean’ to also mean being pro-ZANU (PF) and pro-state (see Worby, 2001; Mpondi, 2012; Rutherford, 2008, 2016). So, beyond the legal ‘alien’ status, there has emerged what we coin ‘native aliens’ (see Chapter 7). This now means that commercial farm workers and other citizens who are legally and officially ‘native’ Zimbabweans on their national IDs can also become ‘alien’ to the extent ZANU (PF) and/or the ZANU (PF)-led state can alienate them from socio-economic rights and resources on the arbitrary criterion of known or perceived anti-ZANU (PF) or anti-state [i.e., unpatriotic] behaviour. This dynamic partly sustains Rutherford’s (2016) claim that all commercial farm workers in Zimbabwe, whether ‘native’ or otherwise, are considered ‘foreigners’. The socio-economic disadvantages associated with such ‘alienness’ are more or less similar to those experienced by legally constituted ‘alien’ citizens. So, at Barura estate, there are also ‘native alien’ workers. Another important contextual highlight in light of our centring of everyday forms of labour resistance concerns the current state of the general labour union movement in the country and specifically in the agro-industrial plantation sector. The former has been partly described in the problem statement segment. Suffice to add that the ZANU (PF)- led state’s intolerance to trade unions, demonstrations, and any form of civilian unrest heightened especially in the post-2000 period (see Saunders, 2001; Dansereau, 2003; Raftopoulos, 2003; Muzondidya, 2009; Sachikonye, 2012; Rutherford 2016). This largely stems from the paranoia that the state and ZANU (PF) have since developed toward the labour movement since the first major formidable political opposition (the MDC) was formed mainly from the top leadership and the membership of the country’s then genuine main labour union movement namely the Zimbabwe Congress 15 of Trade Unions (ZCTU). Post-2000, we witness the state’s intolerant mortally brutal approach to any civil unrest through the arbitrary use of armed state security forces to assault, torture, or even kill protesting workers, students, political activists, or other civic groups. At the sectoral level, post-2000, the specific union for agricultural workers, the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) has experienced an unsustainably low union density. According to Mpondi (2012) GAPWUZ lost a substantial number of its membership in the wake of the FTLRP. Members who lost jobs and left the commercial farms countrywide could no longer maintain their membership, pay their dues, and participate in union activities. For instance, GAPWUZ membership declined precipitously from about 180 000 at the start of 2000 to about 50 000 at the end of 2002 (Ibid). Overall, GAPWUZ lost its financial capacity and organisational reach. More so, the advocacy and lobbying activity of GAPWUZ has since been difficult in a politically and economically hostile environment. For instance, Mpondi (2012) notes how in 2010 the then GAPWUZ Secretary General, Getrude Hambira was interrogated by state authorities before being forced into exile for her safety. Specifically, at the Barura estate research site, the chairperson of Barura shopfloor chapter of GAPWUZ and former members attested to how since the erratic payment of their wages and the sometimes-unpopular payment in kind since 2015, almost all of them had long lost their membership and could therefore no longer participate in union activities (Field notes, 2016/17). More so, most Barura workers asserted that the shopfloor workers’ committee was as good as non-existent as a vehicle for the collective bargaining process and grievance machinery since it had been captured through imposition by the ZANU (PF) plantation leadership of a pro- ZANU (PF) Chairman and therefore pro-management given that the estate is owned by a ZANU (PF)-led state (Interviews with Barura workers, 2016/17). Below, we give a brief contextual overview that is specific to the Barura plantation estate economy. The specific research site is a pine forestry plantation estate, which I gave the fictitious name Barura. It is located in Manicaland province (one of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces) where over 90% of Zimbabwe’s significant plantation timber industry is located (Moyo 2011a; Bauer, 2013). Barura in the Eastern Highlands (EH) of Manicaland province on the border to Mozambique. The EH is a range of mountains stretching from Nyanga district of Manicaland 16 in the north, to Chimanimani district in the south. It is in Chimanimani district where Zimbabwe’s forestry industry holds roughly 90 000ha of timber plantations. It comprises 60 000ha of pine (68%), 20 000ha of eucalyptus (20%), 10 000ha of wattle (11%), and the remaining 1 % is under other species (Ibid). Overall, the EH region has high altitudes (700- 2 200 metres above sea level), cooler temperatures, and high rainfall (average of 1000mm/annum) making it really ideal for forestry plantation agriculture (Bauer, 2013). Barura estate is in the southern part of the EH in Chimanimani district where the forestry and sawmilling activities of two of Zimbabwe’s largest timber companies are concentrated (Bauer, 2013). These two companies namely Border Timbers Limited (BTL) and Allied Timbers Zimbabwe (Pvt) Limited (ATZ) both specialise in the management of forests and operation of sawmills. Formerly administered under a parastatal board namely the Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe, Barura estate became a subsidiary of a company founded in 2000 and initially named the Forestry Company of Zimbabwe (FCZ). Then in 2007 right through to the time of this study and to present the company changed name to ATZ (Bauer, 2013; Key Informant Interview, Manager K, April 2016). ATZ, the private company under which Barura estate is a subsidiary is wholly owned by the Government of Zimbabwe (Bauer, 2013; Key Informant Interview, Manager K, April 2016). That is, the Zimbabwean state, via its agents (e.g., agriculture ministry officials, board of directors, CEOs, line managers, etc.), retain significant rights and powers of ownership and control of Barura estate’s productive resources, especially “the basic power over allocation of capital” and the “command of profits” (see Wright, 2002: 13). Thus, the labour and production processes at the state-owned Barura estate are mainly capitalist. ATZ has its largest (about 21 600 ha) pine forestry resource base in the same district (i.e., Chimanimani) where it has a total of four forestry plantation estates (Bauer, 2013; Key Informant Interview, Manager K, April 2016). Among these four, Barura estate commands the largest proportion of this resource base (Ibid). Between 2010 and 2014 ATZ was employing an average of 2 700 full-time workers and about 1000 contractors. More specifically, at the time of this research (early 2016 to early 2017), Barura estate had an average staff complement of 250 full -time workers and 150 contractors (Key Informant Interview, Manager K, April 2016). While until 2015 ATZ had enjoyed a good 17 share of regional and international markets especially in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, and the United States from end-2015 onwards it was mainly focusing on the domestic market (Key Informant Interview, Manager W, May 2016). This was mainly attributable to undercapitalisation as the government was facing liquidity problems stemming from poor macro-economic management and there was low investor confidence due a negative political image owing to the state’s ultra-nationalist stance (Moyo, 2011a; Bauer, 2013; Key Informant Interview, Manager W, May 2016). Post-2015 and during the study period, Barura estate was experiencing heightened levels of labour insecurity. In terms of income insecurity, there was a pervasive pattern of wage payment delays by at least three months and the occasional payment of the wages in kind (i.e., a timber quota). Regarding job insecurity, there was a prevalent trend about deliberate ambiguity about the length and nature of labour contracts. Social insecurity was manifest in the form of the company’s arbitrary forfeiture of pension and social security funds for some workers who had retired or were due for retirement. These insecurities were exacerbated by the representation insecurity wherein as alluded to earlier, the national, sectoral, and shop-floor levels of the collective bargaining and grievance machinery via ZCTU, GAPWUZ, or the shopfloor workers’ committee were largely dysfunctional, co-opted by ZANU (PF)- aligned leaders, or incapacitated due to low union density (Key Informant Interviews, 2016/17; Field notes, 2016) In brief, at the time of the research, the Barura workers were in what I call a ‘vicious circle’ of labour insecurities. Finally, as mentioned earlier, other contextual issues are elaborated and addressed as and when the thesis unfolds. What follows immediately below is a chapter outline of the thesis. 1.4 Chapter Outline This thesis has nine (9) chapters. The initial three chapters (including the current one) introduce the research, illuminate the research hiatus, and explore and modify conceptual-cum theoretical debates relating to (everyday) resistance. Chapter 2 situates the current study in the body and state of classical and contemporary (everyday) resistance scholarship. It brings into critical conversation (inter-textual analysis) 18 research and theoretical positions by prominent scholars to discover major empirical and theoretical debates and lacunae in the field. Chapter 3 stems from my discovery of conceptual-cum-theoretical omissions and oversights on (everyday) resistance in Chapter 2. I make some modest conceptual-cum-theoretical modifications both in light of fieldwork evidence and the inter-textual analysis of theorists. In Chapter 4 I tell a detailed story of my fieldwork experience of researching a vulnerable group of plantation wage labour on a sensitive and incriminating topic. I therefore pay curious attention to the practicalities of my ethnographic data collection methods mainly in light of my positionality, reflexivity, and ethical conduct. In Chapter 5 I examine and analyse the plantation workers’ experiences with and interpretations of labour domination and exploitation at various worksites of a post-colonial capitalist forestry labour process that is characterised by heightened labour insecurities and super-exploitation. This chapter connects to Chapter 6. Chapter 6 discovers and illuminates the ensemble of quotidian practices and discourses that the plantation workers craft to counteract, survive, and cope with labour domination and exploitation in a highly insecure post-colonial capitalist workplace setting. Similar to Chapter 5, Chapter 7 examines and illuminates the workers’ experiences of and with plantation-specific versions of semi-autonomous cultural forms of power namely state- legislated ethno-national citizenship and state-sanctioned polarised partisan politics. This leads to Chapter 8. Chapter 8, discovers and analyses the repertoire of ordinary everyday practices and discourses that the plantation labour articulates to counteract and/or cope with the subtle invisible forms of power in Chapter 7. Last, Chapter 9 concludes the thesis and suggests gaps for further research. 19 CHAPTER 2 SITUATING (EVERYDAY) RESISTANCE IN THE POST- COLONIAL COMMERCIAL FORESTRY PLANTATION LABOUR PROCESS 2.1 Introduction The emergency of systematic landmark research and theorising on everyday (hidden) resistance, which is synonymous with luminaries like James C. Scott (1985, 1989, 1990) has marked a major turning point in the field of resistance studies. This is very much so given the inordinate scholarly attention that has often been given (and is still being given) to the more spectacular, organised, and collective, yet infrequent resistance. However, research (and theorisation) on what Scott (Ibid) methodically coined everyday resistance and other scholarship that bears some family resemblance to it is not new. Intellectual ancestry can be traced to the classical works for instance, of E.P. Thompson (1963), de Certeau (1984), and, at least in the African context, to the germinal studies of van Onselen (1973, 1980), van Onselen and Phimister (1978), and Cohen (1980). In light of this, the current chapter serves two related purposes. On one hand, it situates (and thus justifies) the current study in the extant body and state of (everyday) resistance scholarship. On the other hand, since the study also aims at modest theoretical contribution, the critical review of literature also forms the basis for our development of a reworked theoretical-cum-conceptual framework of (everyday) resistance in the ensuing Chapter 3. From the outset, our appraisal of literature throughout this chapter both informs, and is informed by the scholarly puzzle that everyday (hidden) forms of labour resistance are yet to be closely researched and theorised in the post-colonial capitalist industrial setting of the agro- forestry plantation sector in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. Overall, specialised and systematic studies on resistance, more so, the sub-field of everyday resistance are scarce inasmuch as their empirical and analytical scopes vary significantly (see Hollander and Einwohner, 2004; Lilja and Vinthagen, 2009). As a result, for our review we borrow as needed from an inter-disciplinary canon of three main strands of literature. That is, the limited works 20 that explicitly deal with ‘everyday resistance’ (e.g., subaltern studies); general studies and theories of ‘resistance’ that are applicable or have relevance to the everyday (e.g., historical studies); and theories of the ‘everyday’ that use perspectives or concepts that are applicable to or have relevance for resistance, even though they might not use the concept (e.g., sociology of the everyday). Importantly, we juxtapose, analyse, synthesise, and critically evaluate prominent research and theoretical positions by seminal scholars from the above-mentioned strands of scholarship with a view to discovering major debates, tensions, and lacunae in the field. It is these debates and gaps that the current research more or less seeks to address. Prior to appraising everyday resistance literature, below, we briefly outline how three luminaries set the foundation for the more specialised and methodical study of resistance in general. 2.2 Early Foundations for Specialised and Systematic Resistance Studies Overall, we acknowledge and laud three luminaries namely Karl Polanyi, Antonio Gramsci and James, C. Scott for foregrounding resistance as a more systematic and specialised research and intellectual object. Following the works of Gills (2000) we concede that Polanyi (1944, 1957), Gramsci (1971), and Scott (1976, 1985, 1989, 1990) laid the early empirical and theoretical foundations for the ways in which we tend to envision resistance today. However, we are cognisant of the fact that their key ideas are not always neatly applicable to (rural) resistance in the South, in the current context of globalisation. But importantly, their milestone research and analyses provide a credible scholarly base from which we can creatively develop subsequent fieldwork and theories that are specific to particular contexts. A major takeaway from the three theorists concerns their reflections on how globalisation transformed conditions of resistance. Their common thesis is that as societies become more complex, so does the forms, targets, sites, strategies, and modes of resistance (see Chin and Mittelman, 1997; Vinthagen and Johansson, 2013). According to Chin and Mittelman (1997), Polanyi, Gramsci, and Scott identified specific formulations of resistance tied to specific historical contexts. To this effect, they posit that among these three master theories of resistance, Polanyi’s (1944, 1957) notion of counter- movements, the Gramscian (1971) concept of counter-hegemony, and Scott’s (1985, 1989, 1990) idea of infra-politics deal with different targets. That is, Polanyi with “market forces”, 21 Gramsci with “state apparatuses (understood as an instrument of education)”, and Scott with “ideologies (public transcripts)” (Chin and Mittelman, 1997: 34 Table 1). Respectively, they also engage different modes of resistance namely “counter-movements aimed at self- protection”, “wars of movement and position”, and “counter-discourse” (Ibid). We get some specialisation among these master theories where Polanyi and Gramsci focus on visible resistance involving concerted collective actions, while Scott (1985, 1989, 1990) methodically explores the covert everyday forms of resistance. It is this Scottian (Ibid) persuasion of resistance (as well as similar studies and frameworks), which forms the empirical and theoretical basis of this chapter and study. Subsequently, from the field of studies and theories of (everyday) resistance and labour studies, we analyse, synthesise, and critically evaluate what we consider, in the present study, to be the cornerstone empirical-cum-theoretical perspectives developed by Charles van Onselen, James C. Scott, and Michel de Certeau. We of course invite other relevant contemporary scholarly voices insofar as they help us think with, against, and beyond these pioneering works. Meanwhile, of note is that, although we have seemingly separate sections for these seminal works, our literature review below must be read as a continuous and connected inter-textual conversation among or synthesis of the voices of relevant and prominent scholars in the field or related fields. We enact this simultaneous critical engagement of different scholars so that we illuminate significant (dis)agreements and common omissions and oversights with a view to situating and justifying the current research empirically and theoretically. 2.3 Critical Appraisal of Everyday Resistance Research and Theoretical Positions 2.3. 1 Everyday Labour Resistance in Africa - van Onselen and Others It is axiomatic that James C. Scott’s (1985, 1989, 1990) specialised scholarship on peasant politics in Malaysia provides one systematic seminal perspective in resistance studies. As a major scholarly contribution, Scott (Ibid) rethinks and foregrounds the ordinary day-to-day practices of peasants (and thus other subaltern groups) as an integral part of politics (i.e., resistance). Specifically, he systematically coins the notion of ‘everyday forms of resistance’ to denote “the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups” (Scott, 1985: xvi), which for instance, include the peasants’ quotidian acts like foot-dragging, false compliance, slander, and pilfering. However, one major oversight we spotlight and also address here concerns how, as a 22 pioneering proponent of scholarship on ‘everyday forms of resistance’, Scott fails to directly engage or at least cross-reference similar earlier seminal works of equally prominent scholars like van Onselen (1973, 1980) or other equally relevant works (e.g., van Onselen and Phimister, 1978; Cohen, 1980). We are thus compelled to initially acknowledge and appraise van Onselen’s (Ibid) and other closely related works in the African context, before proceeding to an inter-textual analysis that brings Scott (1985, 1989, 1990) and other prominent voices into the exposition. Arguably, van Onselen’s (1973, 1980) pioneering research on the day-to-day acts of labour dissent by low-skilled Rhodesian mine workers in the southern African regional context can be credited for setting the early empirical and theoretical scope for what, in resistance studies, Scott (1985, 1989, 1990) later develops into a systematic analytical category namely ‘everyday (hidden) forms of resistance’. In congruence with the specific research object of the current study, van Onselen’s (1973, 1980) and similar seminal works build a compelling case for the everyday workplace responses (i.e., resistance-cum-survival practices) of ‘native’ African mine workers in the labour coercive capitalist mining industry in colonial Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) from 1900 to 1920, and elsewhere in southern Africa (see Alverson, 1971; Webster, 1978; Cohen, 1980; Morice, 1981). Importantly, van Onselen himself, largely influenced by the innovative work of E.P. Thompson (1963) on the making of the working class (which privileges workers’ agency, culture, and lived experience), stands out as a chief proponent of a more feasible form of proletariat struggle in the guise of informal, passive, and individualised acts of labour protest especially in repressive workplace contexts in which open protest proves risky. To this end, the last chapter of van Onselen’s (1980) book, Chibaro (i.e., forced labour) encapsulates an anti-thesis to the rather flawed axiomatic argument that, due to a stunted resistance and political consciousness, ‘native’ African miners in Rhodesia, and in the overall southern African mining economy, were slow to demonstrate organised labour protest in the specific workplace situations of super-exploitative mining companies. The latter were part of a ‘labour coercive’ regional (i.e., southern Africa) mining economy and were characterised by racialised super-exploitation and highly repressive and violent labour recruitment and control mechanisms. The book title itself, Chibaro, is a vernacular term for ‘rape’, which is figuratively deployed to refer to a form of forced labour, which armed (with sjamboks and/or guns) 23 Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau agents and escorts forcibly recruited either from the ranks of local poor peasants (‘natives’) or from further afield (i.e., colonial Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique) as African migrant labour (see van Onselen, 1973, 1980). This enforced proletarianisation and coercive labour regime were meant to address the ‘labour shortages’ that were synonymous with the early inception of a colonial capitalist mining (and agriculture) economy since ‘natives’ were resisting recruitment into wage labour. In light of such a highly coercive, violent, and repressive labour process, the common assumption was that African worker consciousness and action had to be assessed through the presence or absence of formal associations and organisations that articulated worker interests through open protest (Ibid; Cohen, 1980). However, van Onselen (1973, 1980), refutes this fallacious assumption through detailed research on the responses of African workers to this ‘forced labour’ regime, which characterised the southern African mining sector. He documents how in addition to being coercively recruited and super-exploited, large numbers of mine workers were also violently controlled, marshaled, and disciplined through the agency of black compound police, suitably armed with leather sjamboks. To this end, van Onselen (1973: 239) concludes: Compound police spies, censorship and the sjambok (whip) do not produce an environment conducive to the development of public ideologies, organisations, meetings, petitions or strikes…the pattern of resistance should be looked for in the nooks and crannies of the day-to-day situation. Be that as it may, our current research alludes to a similar conclusion but in a post-colonial commercial plantation setting. This flows from the fact that this setting is similarly repressive but in its own unique ways. First, broadly, throughout the 1990s and then from 2000 to around 2018, we encounter a Zimbabwean socio-economic context inundated by the widespread perpetration of violent and repressive laws and action against labour, student, party, and national politics by a ZANU (PF)-led state to thwart and arbitrarily deal with grassroot resistance at these four political levels (e.g., Saunders, 2001; Dansereau, 2003; Raftopoulos, 2003; Muzondidya, 2007; Sachikonye, 2012; Rutherford 2016). This literature also attests to the state’s heightened intolerance of trade unions, strikes, demonstrations, and workers’ rights as evidenced by its arbitrary deployment of state security forces to arrest, assault, or even kill striking workers, students, or civilians. 24 Second, and specifically, post-2000, commercial farm spaces have since become active sites of both the ruling ZANU (PF) political mobilisation as well as hotbeds of everyday targeted political violence, which escalates every election period. ZANU (PF) has since 2000 targeted these violent political acts at commercial farm workers mainly because it suspects or knows them to constitute a strong voter or support base for the then MDC, – a then arguably formidable opposition party formed in 1999, which in its different names and formations has since posed some constant threat to ZANU (PF)’s political hegemony and legitimacy (see for e.g., Rutherford, 2004, 2008, 2016; Muzondidya, 2007; Sachikonye 2012; Mutekwe, 2019). Auxiliary to this has been the enduring legacy of the state-sanctioned 2000 to 2003 FTLRP, which took off in 1999 in the form of violent and deadly illegal occupations of mostly white- owned commercial farms led by ZANU (PF)-aligned war veterans and civilians (e.g., Rutherford, 2008; 2016; Sachikonye, 2012). This move, which resulted in most farmers and workers being violently evicted from the farms or staying under new dictatorial conditions set by the ZANU (PF)-led state points to the ruling party’s revenge for the farmers and workers’ support for the MDC and also its political ploy to canvas for electoral support in any post-2000 national elections (Ibid). This all constitutes a synopsis of how the overall political terrain, and the current specific study context (the commercial plantation workspace) have evolved into sites typically besieged by violent, and occasionally deadly state-sanctioned electoral and everyday party politics. We therefore concur that these contexts more or less limit the plausibility of open labour dissent, while also cultivating prospects for everyday forms of labour protest as van Onselen (1973: 227) asserts: In a labour coercive economy…worker ideologies and organisations should be viewed essentially as the high water marks of protest: they should not be allowed to dominate our understanding … of the African miners’ responses to it. At least as important, if not more so, were the less dramatic, silent and often unorganised responses…which occurred on a day-to-day basis that…forward the woof and warp of worker consciousness…Likewise it was the unarticulated, unorganized protest and resistance which the employees and the state found most difficult to detect or supress. Here, while appreciating and positioning open organised protest as the threshold of labour resistance, van Onselen (Ibid) also validates and foregrounds the subterranean, unofficial, undeclared, ordinary practices of workers as a more plausible form of protest that escapes notice and reprisal in repressive labour regimes. Also taking a similar position that refutes the mistaken uni-linear focus on open labour protest, but one that also privileges innovative 25 research on African workers’ ‘hidden forms of consciousness and action’, Cohen (1980: 8) says: There has been too much reliance on data relating to strikes, unionisation and overt political militance and for the most part, the failure to discover and evaluate the silent, unorganised, covert responses of African workers. Overall, both scholars underscore the need to discover and bring to scholarly attention a complementary, and more so, an even more plausible form of resistance especially in repressive contexts. Specifically, van Onselen’s (1973, 1980) extensive field research mostly in colonial Zimbabwe and Cohen’s (1980) in various parts of Africa, build credible empirical (and theoretical) cases for the ‘hidden unorganised forms of consciousness and action’ (by African miners) against repressive and super-exploitative capitalist labour regimes through the discovery and analyses of a catalogue of everyday practices. Overall, these acts include loafing, desertion, feigned illnesses, absenteeism, boycott by bewitchment, withdrawal, target working, self-inflicted injuries, drug abuse, and others. Essentially, non-dramatic ordinary acts of subalterns are re-centred as an integral part of labour politics. However, this germinal body of literature (i.e., van Onselen, 1973, 1980; van Onselen and Phimister, 1978; Cohen, 1980), largely falls short of systematically analysing or delineating these day-to-day worker practices in a way that clearly distinguishes them as resistance. There is little or barely any deliberate framing of their field research in a specific conceptual/theoretical framework of what constitutes (everyday) resistance. This is a gap that the current study partly bridges by turning to James. C. Scott (1985, 1989, 1990), whom it also critiques and modifies (in light of related scholarship and findings) in this and the next chapter. Importantly, for the current research, a major takeaway from the seminal works of van Onselen (1973, 1980) and Cohen (1980) is their validation and deliberate foregrounding of ‘everyday forms of labour protest’ as an empirical and intellectual object of resistance studies. That is,