NDEBELE FORCED REMOVALS, MIGRATION, AND HUMAN-NATURE 

RELATIONS IN COLONIAL BUHERA, ZIMBABWE: 1925 - 1980 

 

 

LLOYD HAZVINEYI 

 

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment 

of the Requirements for the Degree of 

Doctor of Philosophy 

Department of History 

School of Social Sciences 

Faculty of Humanities 

University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg 

March 2023 

 

 

Supervisor: Professor Muchaparara Musemwa



ii 
 

Acknowledgements 

I am forever indebted to my PhD advisor, Professor Muchaparara Musemwa, for going beyond 

the call of duty in ensuring that I get adequate supervision throughout my entire studies. In 2019, 

just after I registered for PhD, he facilitated my participation at the Southern Africa Thematic 

Research Workshop hosted by the Humanities Graduate Centre at Wits University where my 

research which was still an idea developed into a full proposal. In the same year, he facilitated my 

participation at the European Forum Alpbach (EFA) summer school in the Alps region of Austria 

where I was part of a cohort of international students focusing on climate change in the 

Anthropocene. The opportunity allowed me to connect and exchange ideas with other scholars 

from around the world studying the environment from different disciplines. In addition, Professor 

Musemwa regularly shared and encouraged me to attend workshops and seminars within and 

outside the university. These platforms enabled me to build worldwide networks of researchers 

some of whom contributed to this work. It was through this kind of supervision that my PhD 

journey was not only pleasant but also adventurous. I am also thankful to Professor Eric Worby 

and Dr Obvious Katsaura who were designated readers for my proposal in 2019. They raised 

important theoretical and empirical questions that challenged my initial assumptions.  

 

In the years 2020 and 2021, I was awarded a scholarship by the Emancipatory Futures Studies 

(EFS) program based at the School of Social Sciences at Wits University. The funding came at the 

right time as it allowed me to conduct the first phase of my fieldwork in Zimbabwe. In addition 

to the funding, EFS provided a vibrant intellectual environment through regular seminars and 

workshops where we interacted closely with established scholars from the Global South working 

on climate futures. These seminars became the theoretical foundation for this study. I am grateful 

to the regular counsel of the EFS principal investigator, Associate Professor Vishwas Satgar and 

the respective researchers comprising Professors Muchaparara Musemwa and Michelle Williams 

for putting together such an enriching intellectual platform.   



iii 
 

 

I am grateful for the support rendered by the History Department at Wits University throughout 

my PhD. When I defended my proposal in April 2019, Dr Prinisha Badassy, Dr George Njung, 

Dr Andrew Macdonald, Professor Sekibakiba Legkhoathi, Professor Maria Suriano, Professor 

Clive Glaser, Dr Sarah Jappie, and Professor Noor Nieftagodien provided me with feedback that 

positively shaped this study. The Department, through Dr Annie Devenish, organised weekly 

postgraduate writing sessions which allowed me to have dedicated writing time at a moment when 

the COVID-19 pandemic had brought teaching and learning to a halt. I am particularly grateful 

for the opportunity to serve as an Academic Intern in the History Department for four consecutive 

years since 2019, a position that provided me with not only much-needed financial stability but 

also the space to hone my teaching and pedagogic capabilities. Colleagues that I worked with, 

especially in coordinating the Global Encounters and Contemporary Realities course, allowed me 

a great deal of flexibility to accommodate my research and writing just as they rendered 

opportunities for further engagement with a course that stretched my imagination of the extent 

and impact of the milieu of environmental history in every history.  

 

I am grateful to several colleagues whom I engaged with for ideas. Thanks to Dr Joseph Jakarasi 

who read the first draft of my proposal and helped identify an important lacuna in the 

environmental history of Zimbabwe. My informal conversations with Dr Joseph Mujere 

throughout my entire PhD journey were always fruitful as he challenged me to approach 

environmental history from an interdisciplinary perspective. I am also grateful to Dr Munyaradzi 

Nyakudya, Dr Eric Njinuwo, Nicholas Nyachega, Abraham Seda, and Neil Maheve for not only 

providing valuable comments but also sharing with me their work as a way of encouragement. In 

Johannesburg, I was surrounded by people who took it upon themselves to ensure that I had a 

vibrant social life even in the midst of pressing academic demands. These include Gerald 



iv 
 

Mandisodza, Dr Vusi Khumalo, Dr Harvey Banda, Kasonde Mukonde, Siya Koto and the late 

Doreen Mazibuko.  

 

The people of Buhera were very welcoming and hospitable. I am particularly thankful to the 

Makumbe and Gwebu family who were more than willing to share with me their stories. Some 

volunteered to leave or postpone their work schedules to entertain my visits. I am particularly 

grateful to the Gwebu family who provided me with a home every time I visited Buhera. Acting 

Chief Gwebu (Richman Gwebu) gave me their blessings to freely conduct my research in his area 

and for that, I am greatly indebted.  

 

The entire Hazvineyi family maintained a keen interest in my research. On one hand, my father 

kept tracking my progress with the same parental firmness he had since I was in high school. On 

the other, my wife, Tapiwa, was especially concerned and took time to proof-read some of the 

chapters and challenged what she termed my sluggish writing pace. I also want to thank my 

daughter, Nylah, who came into this world when the research was nearing completion and brought 

home a contagious positive vibe when we needed it the most. Above all, I thank God for 

everything.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



v 
 

Contents 

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................. ii 

Contents .................................................................................................................................................................... v 

Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................................................ viii 

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 1 

The history of the Gwebu people ......................................................................................................................... 4 

Environment and agriculture ................................................................................................................................. 8 

Eviction from Matabeleland ................................................................................................................................ 10 

Literature review .................................................................................................................................................... 16 

The Ndebele immigrants in Buhera ................................................................................................................... 16 

Colonial evictions and African initiatives in Zimbabwe ................................................................................. 18 

The environment and natural resources in colonial Zimbabwe .................................................................... 25 

Socio-environmental history: regional and global perspectives ..................................................................... 29 

Methodological reflections ................................................................................................................................... 34 

Doing research during the COVID-19 pandemic ........................................................................................... 35 

Oral sources ........................................................................................................................................................... 37 

Written sources ...................................................................................................................................................... 40 

Justifying a socio-environmental history of the Gwebu people .................................................................... 45 

Organisation of the thesis .................................................................................................................................... 47 

CHAPTER TWO: ................................................................................................................................. 49 

SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTIES AND NDEBELE AGENCY IN COLONIAL 

ZIMBABWE: 1925-1945 ....................................................................................................................... 49 

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................... 49 

Forced removals in colonial Zimbabwe ............................................................................................................ 50 

Ndebele forced relocations and socio-environmental uncertainties. ............................................................ 55 

Ndebele relocation and the strategy of waiting ................................................................................................ 66 

The productive power of waiting and Ndebele agency ................................................................................... 74 

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................. 80 

CHAPTER THREE: ............................................................................................................................. 82 

HUMAN-NATURE CONNEXIONS AND NDEBELE CONSTRUCTIONS OF SOIL FERTILITY 

IN BUHERA: 1927 - 1980 ..................................................................................................................... 82 

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................... 82 

The discourse of soil preferences in colonial Zimbabwe: origins and development ................................. 83 

Interconnected ecologies and human-nature relations in colonial Buhera: 1925-1980 ............................. 93 

“Isidhaka siyanikeza”: Ndebele constructions of soil fertility in Buhera ...................................................... 106 

Ecologically grounded solidarity and contesting power through the environment .................................. 111 

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................ 118 



vi 
 

CHAPTER FOUR: .............................................................................................................................. 120 

COLONIAL TRIUMPHALISM AND AFRICAN INITIATIVES IN AGRICULTURE AND 

CONSERVATION IN BUHERA:  1940 - 1980 .................................................................................. 120 

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 120 

Colonial perceptions of Ndebele agriculture and conservation in Buhera ................................................ 121 

African initiatives and multiple actors in agriculture and conservation ...................................................... 131 

Contributions by individuals and families ....................................................................................................... 132 

Town and country interactions ......................................................................................................................... 135 

The role of Fengu and Xhosa minorities in agricultural development ....................................................... 139 

Community-led conservation initiatives .......................................................................................................... 146 

Women and indigenous seed management ..................................................................................................... 150 

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................ 157 

CHAPTER FIVE:................................................................................................................................ 159 

LANDSCAPE, IDEOLOGY AND THE STRUGGLES FOR BELONGING AND LEGITIMACY 

IN COLONIAL BUHERA ................................................................................................................. 159 

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 159 

The place of landscape in everyday socio-political processes in colonial Buhera ..................................... 160 

The ideological role of landscape in Makumbe discourses of legitimacy ................................................... 171 

Ndebele counter-narratives of belonging through landscape ...................................................................... 175 

The Gwebu school and counter-discourses belonging ................................................................................. 180 

The text-like qualities of landscape................................................................................................................... 187 

Landscape as an alternative text ........................................................................................................................ 191 

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................ 195 

CHAPTER SIX: .................................................................................................................................................. 197 

CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 197 

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................... 206 

Published Books .................................................................................................................................................. 206 

Unpublished Secondary Sources ....................................................................................................................... 215 

Archival Records Files ........................................................................................................................................ 217 

Buhera District Office Archive (Unprocessed Files) ..................................................................................... 217 

National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ Files) ................................................................................................ 219 

Online Archives ................................................................................................................................................... 220 

Newspapers .......................................................................................................................................................... 220 

 

 

 

 



vii 
 

List of figures 

 

Figure 1: Map of Zimbabwe showing the location of Buhera...............................................................13 

 

Figure 2: Table showing the number of cattle owned by different Ndebele households evicted from 

Hope Fountain and Douglas Dale areas of Mzingwane District........................................................71 

 

Figure 3: The recreated map showing the route taken by the Gwebu people during their migration 
from Mzingwane District to the Sabi Reserve.........................................................................................72 
 
Figure 4: The map of Buhera District showing the area occupied by the Ndebele surrounded by 

their Shona-speaking neighbours.............................................................................................................93 

 

Figure 5: Mr Goli Mgazi demonstrating how he used the Pollard Series mechanised planter which 
was acquired by his father in the 1940s..................................................................................................143  
 
Figure 6: A disused maize shelling machine at the late Kufa Mgazi’s 
homestead..................................................................................................................................................144 
 
Figure 7: The picture shows the frame of a two-furrow plough found at Bambatha Nkomo’s 
homestead...............................................................................................................................................................159 

 

Figure 8: A cattle pen constructed by Kufa Mgazi at his home in 1958...........................................162 
 
Figure 9: A disused underground grain storage silo pictured at the late Kufa Mgazi’s 
home...........................................................................................................................................................168 
 
Figure 10: A two-furrow plough found at Bambatha Nkomo’s 
homestead..................................................................................................................................................145 
 
Figure 11: A broken-down scooping dish used by the Nkomo family to construct a makeshift dam 
close to their home....................................................................................................................................165 
 
Figure 12: The photo shows part of Goli Mgazi’s plot with the distinct black clay 
soils.............................................................................................................................................................178 
 
Figure 13: Chief Richman Gwebu standing in front of Gwebu Primary School constructed in 
1935............................................................................................................................................................183  
 
Figure 14: The Gwebu family Tree.........................................................................................................194 

 

 

 

 

 



viii 
 

Abbreviations 

 

AIDS   Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus 

AMEC   American Methodist Episcopal Church 

ANC   African National Congress 

ANNC   African Natives National Congress 

BSAC   British South Africa Company 

DRC   Dutch Reformed Church 

EFA   European Forum Alpbach 

EFS   Emancipatory Futures Studies 

GMB   Grain Marketing Board 

GNWA  Gwelo Native Welfare Association 

LAA   Land Apportionment Act 

LMS    London Missionary Society 

NAZ   National Archives of Zimbabwe 

NC   Native Commissioner 

PNC   Provincial Native Commissioner 

RSF   Rhodesia Security Forces  

SANC   South African National Congress 

UNIA   Universal Negro Improvement Association 

USA   United States of America 

ZANLA  Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army



1 
 

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 

Introduction 

The world has a long history of migrations as individuals and communities constantly traversed the 

face of the earth. Africa has been equally shaped by such movements and the Bantu migrations 

stand out as one major process that played a huge role in shaping the social, cultural, and political 

order of modern Africa.1 The colonisation of African territories that intensified in the 1870s saw a 

notable change in how people were moving around the continent. Relocations became racialised. In 

colonial southern Africa, the early 1900s came with the mass evictions of African communities from 

their ancestral territories into new settlements. This was part of the social engineering processes 

meant to force Africans to join the wage labour economy. In British colonies, this process of social 

engineering put Africans in hazardous ecological landscapes as well as in spaces where they hardly 

possessed any form of belonging. A few scholars have studied how movements across different 

landscapes shaped people’s thoughts and interactions with nature.2 Stories of how African 

communities particularly in colonial Zimbabwe navigated these environmental and social challenges 

remain largely unknown.3 Yet their resilience in various hostile environments has been Africa’s 

greatest contribution to global history.4 By weaving together social and environmental history, this 

study re-reads histories of colonialism in Africa through the lens of agro-ecological resilience and 

agricultural innovation. 

                                                
1 R. Waller. “Ecology, Expansion and Migration in East Africa”. African Affairs. (1985, 84: 336) 347-380.  
2 These include Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor, and Terence Ranger. Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in 
the "Dark forests" of Matabeleland. (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), JoAnn McGregor Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of 
Landscapes on a Central African Fronteir. (Oxford: James Currey, 2009), Terence Ranger. Voices from the Rocks: Nature, 
Culture and History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe. (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), and Sandra Swart. “It Is As Bad To 
Be a Black Man's Animal As It Is To Be a Black Man’ – The Politics of Species in Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South 
Africa”. Journal of Southern African Studies. (2014 40:4), 689-705. 
3 Following occupation of the Zimbabwean plateau by Cecil John Rhodes, the area was renamed Rhodesia. In 1901, 
it was renamed Southern Rhodesia. Zimbabwe and Southern Rhodesia are used interchangeably in this thesis.  
4 John Iliffe. Africa: The History of a Continent. (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 1.  



2 
 

Writing in 1927, the Native Commissioner (NC) of Charter District in the then Southern Rhodesia 

(now Zimbabwe) reported that a group of Ndebele immigrants, the Gwebu people, had relocated 

from Matabeleland and settled in the Makumbe area in the then Sabi Reserve (now Buhera) in 

Manicaland.5 In his correspondence, the Native Commissioner revealed that the Gwebu people 

were “in distress” because they had not been allocated their lands and were living in uncertainty.6 

He feared that the Gwebu people were going to cause environmental damage and practise wasteful 

agricultural methods in the area where they had settled because they had no sense of responsibility 

for the land in particular and natural resources in general. An earlier 1927 livestock census of cattle 

belonging to Ndebele households evicted from Mzingwane to the Sabi Reserve in Buhera revealed 

that the group that migrated through the Dagamela area of Lower Gwelo had a total of 348 head.7 

This was, according to colonial officials, bound to cause massive soil erosion.8 In addition, the 

Native Commissioner revealed that the area that had been identified for settlement by the Gwebu 

people had settled was prone to droughts and difficult to cultivate. The area had been unoccupied 

for a long time and was infested with wild game, characterised by thickets. Although the area 

presented opportunities such as abundant firewood, timber, and untouched fertile soils, it was 

generally deemed inhabitable by the first-comer Shona-speaking Makumbe.9 

The remarks made by the Native Commissioner of Charter District reveal three challenges. First, 

the Gwebu immigrant group settled in an area where they did not have historical legitimacy and 

were treated as outsiders. This was exacerbated by the fact that the colonial officials did not allocate 

the immigrants a clearly defined territory with its own boundaries. They were left at the mercy of 

                                                
5 CHK5/Gwebu/Volume 1: Report of the District Commissioner, Charter, for the year ending 31st December 1927.  
6 Ibid.  
7 CHK5/Gwebu/Volume 1: The District Veterinary Surgeon to the Superintend of Natives, Bulawayo, 20th July 1927. 
8 Ibid.  
9 Ibid. The term first-comer is used contextually to show that the Njanja/Makumbe arrived before the Ndebele in 
Buhera. It does not necessarily suggest they were the first to arrive in the area. In fact, the Njanja/Makumbe were 
immigrants themselves who displaced the Hera and the Mutekedza Dynasties. See David Beach. A Zimbabwean Past: 
Shona Dynastic Histories and Oral Traditions. (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1994).   



3 
 

the first-comer Shona-speaking Makumbe people. It was not guaranteed if they were going to be 

allocated lands for settlement. Second, the colonial officials expected the Gwebu to leave behind a 

trail of environmental destruction and practise harmful agricultural methods in the area where they 

had settled. These projections by the colonial officials were informed by racial prejudices.10 The 

Gwebu people were therefore treated with suspicion. Third, the Gwebu people settled in an 

ecologically hazardous area that the Shona had even neglected. The area is referred to as hazardous 

due to several reasons. Though the area had fertile uncultivated black clay soils and adequate water 

sources, it had been neglected by the Makumbe because it was infested with wild animals which 

were a threat to both humans and livestock, as well as thick forests which could not be easily 

converted into arable lands.11 The Sabi Reserve in general was also characterised by perennial 

droughts owing to poor rains as well as infertile dry lands which put the residents in danger of 

starvation. The question that arises from these two issues is: how did the evicted Ndebele immigrant 

society make sense and interact with the environment following their settlement in Buhera around 

1927? 

The overarching argument presented in this thesis is that the Ndebele immigrant group was able to 

demonstrate innovative agricultural methods and dynamic conservation practices during the colonial 

period between the mid-1920s and 1980. This was despite being in an area marred by ecological 

hazards and socio-political insecurities such as the lack of belonging. Agricultural innovation took 

different forms throughout the colonial period, but it mainly included appreciating soil material 

qualities, innovations in livestock production and diversification of crops. This, in turn, contributed 

to food security. In terms of dynamic conservation practices, the Ndebele immigrants deployed their 

indigenous knowledge to conserve water resources, forests, and farmlands. I argue that the 

immigrants exhibited what scholars such as Richard Grove and Toyin Falola have termed resilience: 

                                                
10 James McCann. Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800– 1990. (Portsmouth: 
Heinemann, 1999) 216. 
11 Personal Interview with Chafa Chigwende, Garamwera Village, Buhera Ward 3, 9 March 2015.  



4 
 

a form of ingenuity that enabled them to navigate the respective ecological hazards and social 

illegitimacy.12 Scholars such as Anderson and Bollig have used the concept of resilience to study 

long-term adaptation and transformation of communities living in areas with economic, 

environmental, climatic and social shocks.13 The ecological adversity in Buhera did not blur their 

ingenuity. Rather, they saw an opportunity in an area generally viewed as hostile. Iliffe notes that 

Africa’s greatest contribution to global history is the ability of its people to inhabit hostile 

landscapes.14 This study contributes to this important conversation by showing how rural agro-

ecological resilience and innovation by the Ndebele immigrants shaped broader socio-economic 

realities. 

 

The history of the Gwebu people 

What is now called the Gwebu immigrant society or simply the Ndebele people in Buhera, 

Zimbabwe, has a history traceable to the Zulu State in present-day South Africa in the 1820s. The 

Gwebu were originally not a unified group, but a closely knit family belonging to the broader 

Khumalo under the leadership of King Mzilikazi who was in turn a subordinate of King Tshaka of 

the Zulu State. The Gwebu family belonged to the elite Zansi socio-political class which was made 

up of the original Khumalo people most of whom were descendants of King Mzilikazi. Due to the 

family’s proximity to King Mzilikazi, the Gwebu people made up the trusted Amnyama regiment 

in the 1820s. The Amnyama was a proto-military group (amabutho) made up of young men described 

as the “black-haired ones” in Zulu military nomenclature.15 This regiment was formed by Mzilikazi 

just before his breaking away from Tshaka’s control.  

                                                
12 Richard Grove and Toyin Falola. “Chiefs, Boundaries, and Sacred Woodlands: Early Nationalism and the Defeat 
of Colonial Conservationism in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, 1870-1916.” African Economic History. (1996, 24) 1–23. 
13 David M. Anderson and Michael Bollig. “Resilience and collapse: histories, ecologies, conflicts and identities in the 
Baringo-Bogoria basin, Kenya”. Journal of Eastern African Studies. (2016, 10:1) 1-20. 
14  John Iliffe. Africa: The History of a Continent. 1.  
15 Julian Cobbing. “The Evolution of Ndebele Amabutho”. The Journal of African History. (1977, 15: 4)  622. 



5 
 

In 1837 after the Khumalo group broke away from the Zulu state at the instigation of Tshaka, the 

Gwebu family were part of the Amnyama regiment that fought against the Boers at the battle of 

Egabeni in the Great Marcio region of South Africa.16 Majijili Gwebu was one of the members of 

the Gwebu family responsible for leading the regiment.17 According to Khumalo customs and 

traditions, each regiment was led by a chief (induna) who was appointed by King Mzilikazi.18 The 

Gwebu family as a social group and as a regiment were, therefore, represented by a chief. 

Ndhlavana was the Gwebu chief who ruled under both Tshaka and Mzilikazi in Zululand.19 His 

son, Ntabeni, gave birth to Tshuwe who was then appointed head of the family by Mzilikazi after 

settlement in the Zimbabwean plateau.20 Daniel Fish Gwebu who was appointed as chief of the 

Gwebu people in 1925 emerged from this lineage.21 

The Gwebu family was one of the several clans who fled the Zulu State under Mzilikazi of the 

Khumalo during the Mfecane and crossed the Limpopo River into the then Zimbabwean plateau 

around 1840.22 Due to their important place within the Khumalo (hereafter referred to as the 

Ndebele) regimental system, the Gwebu family were allocated their regimental town in Mzingwane, 

southwest of the then Zimbabwean plateau. According to historian Julian Cobbing, these 

regimental towns which had populations of more than a thousand each were colossal strongholds 

that provided security to the royal capital located at Matopos.23  

The processes of migration from Zululand to Matabeleland between 1820 and 1840 contributed 

to the evolution of the Gwebu from a mere family into a larger community. Several Nguni groups 

which were conquered and incorporated into the Ndebele group found their way into the Gwebu 

                                                
16 Julian Cobbing. “The Evolution of Ndebele Amabutho”. The Journal of African History. (1977, 15: 4)  622. 
17 Ibid.  
18 Ibid.  
19 CHK5/Gwebu/Volume 1: Burial of Gwebu “Eulogy” Isaiah Fish Gwebu 16 January 2001. 
20 Ibid.  
21 Ibid.  
22 Julian Cobbing. The evolution of Ndebele Amabutho.  607-631.  
23 Ibid.  



6 
 

clan through marriage and social relations. For example, the Pedi were incorporated into the 

Ndebele in 1820 and found their way into the Enhla class.24 However, due to the porosity of these 

classes, some Pedi found themselves in the Gwebu Zansi clan through marriage.25 Upon settlement 

in the Zimbabwean plateau, groups such as the BaTonga were incorporated into Ndebele society 

through both consent and coercion as part of Mzilikazi’s nation-building project.26  

Another important moment in history that led to the further evolution of the Gwebu from a mere 

extended clan into a diverse group was the process of colonisation and early colonial rule between 

1890 and 1900. The Cecil John Rhodes-led British South African Company (BSAC) which 

colonised Mashonaland and Matabeleland in the early 1890s brought with it Fengu and Xhosa 

communities from the Cape Colony in South Africa.27 Some of these were cattle herders, wagon 

drivers and general workers who were part of the Pioneer Column - a quasi-mercenary group that 

took part in the colonisation of Mashonaland and Matabeleland. In the mid-1890s, an additional 

group of Sotho immigrants came to the newly colonised territory, Rhodesia, as missionaries under 

many different ecumenical organisations. Most of these missionaries belonged to the Dutch 

Reformed Church (DRC) and the London Missionary Society (LMS).28 The two organisations had 

realised the merits of employing African evangelists in spreading Christianity.29 From the 1890s, 

the Sotho established communities in areas such as Manama in Gwanda south, Chief Nhlamba’s 

area in Gwanda north, Kezi District, as well as in the Dewure Purchase areas in Gutu district.30 

                                                
24 Julian Cobbing. The evolution of Ndebele Amabutho.  607-631.  
25 Ibid.  
26 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. “Dynamics of Democracy and Human Rights Among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, 1818-
1934.” https://ir.uz.ac.zw/bitstream/handle/10646/893/ndlovu%20g.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Accessed 17 
June 2022. 2. 

27  Robin Palmer. Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia. (California: University of California Press, 1977). 62.  
28 Joseph Mujere. “Autochthons, Strangers, Modernising Educationists, And Progressive Farmers: Basotho Struggles 
for Belonging in Zimbabwe 1930s-2008”. (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh: 2012) 46. 
29 Ibid.  
30 Joseph Mujere. “Autochthons, Strangers, Modernising Educationists, And Progressive Farmers: Basotho Struggles 
for Belonging in Zimbabwe 1930s-2008”. 40.  

https://ir.uz.ac.zw/bitstream/handle/10646/893/ndlovu%20g.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y


7 
 

Though small in size, Mzingwane hosted a few Fengu households, some of whom immersed 

themselves among the Gwebu people.  

In 1925, the Gwebu people were evicted from their lands in Mzingwane by the colonial 

government. Some of the Gwebu family members evicted from Esigodini in Mzingwane District 

migrated to the Shangani Reserve where many other Ndebele-speaking groups had already settled. 

Others migrated north of the Zambezi River into present-day Zambia.31 Around 1927, the Gwebu 

group led by Daniel Fish Gwebu decided to take a completely different route. They migrated to 

Buhera where they had found alternative lands for settlement. At the same time, neighbouring 

Ndebele-speaking areas from Fort Rixon, Douglas Dale, Hope Fountain, and Essexvale areas in 

Matabeleland South were also served with eviction orders after their lands were bought by 

Willoughby Consolidated.32 A then young Chief Fish Daniel Gwebu (hereafter referred to as Chief 

Gwebu) who had just been appointed as an induna following the death of his father convinced 

fellow evicted Ndebele families, most of whom were not of the Gwebu clan, to join him on the 

migration to Buhera where he had found an alternative place of settlement. One of the reasons 

why Gwebu mobilised Ndebele-speaking communities outside of his clan was that the group had 

become too small to warrant an autonomous chieftainship after the other group had migrated to 

Shangani. This further diversified the once purely Zansi family into a diverse group of Ndebele-

speaking society.  

The migration from Zululand, eviction from Mzingwane and subsequent relocation to Buhera 

between 1820 and the 1920s make it clear that what is now called the Gwebu immigrant society 

or the Ndebele of Buhera is a by-product of different socio-political processes. What is now called 

the Gwebu society evolved from the different historical processes discussed above. These include 

the migration from Zululand and accompanying conquests of smaller communities, settlement in 

                                                
31 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”. African Studies Review. (2014, 57:3) 84.  
32 Ibid.  



8 
 

Mzingwane and incorporation of other groups to beef up the regiment, and the eviction and 

migration from Mzingwane to Buhera which encompassed many other diverse ethnic groups.  

Environment and agriculture 

Throughout the early colonial period (1890-1925) in Southern Rhodesia, the Gwebu managed to 

establish themselves as successful farmers.33 Not only were the Gwebu successful tillers of the 

land, but they were also big livestock owners. Afrikander cattle breeds were fused with the local 

Mashona type to produce agile disease and drought-resistant crossbreeds which thrived in the 

Matabeleland region.34 Their success was even noticed by a white broker working for Willoughby 

Consolidated who wrote: 

The area is thickly populated by natives who grow all the natural products of the country 
– mealies, millets, groundnuts, pumpkins, melons, etc- and the mealies grown in this area 
are second to none in the country.35 

These claims corroborate Ndebele oral histories which reminisce of stories of agricultural success 

enjoyed by the Gwebu people before the violent evictions which started around 1926. The success 

of the Gwebu in Mzingwane was attributed to the availability of the heavy clay black soils (locally 

referred to by the Gwebu people as isidhaka). The soils were not only fertile but would also 

withhold moisture for prolonged periods. This enabled farmers to attain good harvests even during 

drought years.36 Sufficient water sources allowed all year-round crop cultivation. The black clay 

soils enabled the Gwebu to grow a diverse range of agricultural products such as vegetables, sweet 

potatoes and wheat.37 While describing the land and water sources, J. Downie added: 

                                                
33 The British South Africa Company to Colonial Office. 21st April 1914. 
34 Personal interview with Nicodemus Gwebu (Headman Gwebu), Gwebu Homestead, Buhera, 7 July 2019.   
35 NAZ Files: S1180/2/2(11) Willoughby Consolidated CO. Ltd, Land Settlement Scheme: Correspondence Between 
Sir Melville Heyman and Honourable J.W Downie 1925.  
36 Chronicle. “How the Ndebele Settled in Buhera” 9 July 2022. https://www.chronicle.co.zw/how-ndebele-
community-settled-in-buhera/ Accessed 9 July 2022. 
37 Personal interview with Albert Masaile, Masaile Homestead, Buhera, 8 July 2019.  

https://www.chronicle.co.zw/how-ndebele-community-settled-in-buhera/
https://www.chronicle.co.zw/how-ndebele-community-settled-in-buhera/


9 
 

The ground is undoubtedly suitable also for tobacco and cotton besides which, cattle, pigs, 
and poultry, do excellently. Although this area cannot be classed as well-timbered, there is 
an abundance for fuel purposes and for cattle shelter and the grazing throughout is good. 
There is good surface water, and well water can be obtained at no great depth throughout 
the plots if a little discretion is used when sinking.38  

This admiration of the environment, soils and landscape by a representative of Willoughby 

Consolidated in 1925 is the answer to why the lands were eventually acquired by the company in 

that same year. The forced removal of the Ndebele communities was, however, not an isolated 

process. They were part of a countrywide scheme of social engineering to create enclaves of white 

settlement while simultaneously depriving Africans of economic opportunities, thereby forcing 

them to seek employment in the colonial wage labour economy. Their lands were acquired in 1925 

by Willoughby Consolidated, a multi-national company with interests in land throughout Southern 

Africa.39 In turn, the company would create sub-divisions of the land and sell to white immigrant 

communities who were interested in farming.40 The reason the lands were acquired was that they 

suited very well the interests of the white settlers. The settler community wanted to venture into 

both crop production and animal husbandry due to the availability of a ready market both locally 

and in neighbouring South Africa.41 Mzingwane was strategically located a few days away from 

Johannesburg where there was a ready market for all sorts of agricultural products due to a thriving 

mining community.42 According to Willoughby Consolidated Company’s land advertisements 

dated 1925, Mzingwane was capable of supplying milk to Johannesburg and Cape Town due to its 

suitable conditions for dairy farming.43 

                                                
38 NAZ Files: S1180/2/2(11) Willoughby Consolidated CO. Ltd, Land Settlement Scheme: Correspondence Between 
Sir Melville Heyman and Honourable J.W Downie 1925.  
39 Ibid.  
40Ibid.  
41 Ibid.  
42 NAZ Files: S1180/2/2(11) Willoughby Consolidated CO. Ltd, Land Settlement Scheme: Correspondence Between 
Sir Melville Heyman and Honourable J.W Downie 1925. 
43 NAZ Files: S1180/2/2(11) Willoughby Consolidated CO. Ltd, Land Settlement Scheme: Correspondence Between 
Sir Melville Heyman and Honourable J.W Downie 1925.  



10 
 

Eviction from Matabeleland 

Several Ndebele-speaking families were evicted from Matabeleland’s Fort Rixon, Hope Fountain 

and Douglasdale areas in Mzingwane in 1925.44 Different Ndebele-speaking groups were affected 

by these evictions at different levels. Most Ndebele-speaking Africans evicted from these areas 

migrated to the Shangani Reserve where different communities had already settled. Being the first 

‘Native Reserves’ to be created following the colonisation of the Zimbabwean Plateau, the area was 

diverse in its population, but the Ndebele were the dominant group. Due to this reason, some 

members of the Gwebu people chose to settle in the Shangani Reserve because some of their 

descendants had already settled there. While some members of the Gwebu clan relocated to 

Shangani Reserve in Matabeleland, another group led by Chief Gwebu chose a completely different 

route.45  

There are traceable reasons why the group led by Chief Gwebu eventually settled in Buhera located 

400 miles (250 kilometres) from their ancestral lands. One account given by historian Musoni argues 

that Chief Gwebu was advised by his friend named John William Posselt (nick-named Mbizvo) who 

worked as a Native Commissioner for the colonial government to settle in Buhera.46 Described by 

Musoni as Chief Gwebu’s “friend”, Posselt was the Native Commissioner for Charter District 

(which included Buhera) between 1911 and 1941.47 Heavily relying on colonial stereotypes of soil 

preferences, Posselt convinced Chief Gwebu that there was an unoccupied area with black soils that 

the Ndebele preferred.48  

                                                
44  Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to 
the late 1960s”. 14.  
45 In Alexander et al’s Hundred Years in the Dark Forests, there is evidence that some members of the Gwebu clan settled 
in the Shangani Reserve in the 1930s. Oral histories of the Gwebu in Buhera affirm this and even state that some of 
them went to live in Bulawayo after evictions. There are still strong ties between the Gwebu families in Buhera and 
those in Bulawayo.  
46 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”. 89.  
47 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”. 89. 100.  
48 48 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to 
the late 1960s”. 89. 100.  



11 
 

A competing account given by the Gwebu and Nkomo families nevertheless projects a different 

view of how the Ndebele finally migrated to Buhera. According to accounts given by Nicodemus 

Gwebu and Bambatha Nkomo, the Ndebele migrated to Buhera because they had found out on 

their own that the area had the soil qualities they desired.49 According to this account, Chief Gwebu 

sent emissaries on several occasions to different parts of Midlands, Manicaland and Mashonaland 

to survey the lands and identify an area for possible settlement. After several searches, the party 

eventually agreed on Buhera.50 According to this narrative, Posselt only came in to facilitate the 

subsequent movement of the Ndebele immigrant from Matabeleland to Buhera but the actual 

searching and identification of the lands was an entirely Ndebele initiative. This account downplays 

the role of Posselt highlighted by Musoni.  

These two narratives are not necessarily contradictory but put emphasis on two different groups. 

Musoni’s narrative emphasises the role of NC Posselt in advising the Ndebele evictees. The narrative 

given by Gwebu and Nkomo places emphasis on the migration as an entirely Ndebele initiative that 

emanated from within the group. The role of the colonial government and officials such as Posselt 

in aiding the migration in both accounts is undeniable. However, it remains evident from the two 

accounts that the Ndebele were conscious of the kind of environments they desired and made 

informed rational decisions even at a time when they were confronted by violent evictions. 

However, unlike other wholesale evictions in colonial Zimbabwe such as the Madheruka who were 

evicted to Gokwe, the relocation of the Ndebele to Buhera did not take place at once. Different 

groups migrated at different times using different routes. The first group arrived in Buhera in 1926 

and included the Doba, S’gaxa, Ndinga, Makhutshwa, and Msiza clans.51 They settled in an area 

                                                
49 Personal Interviews with Nicodemus Gwebu and Bambatha Nkomo, Personal interview with Bambatha Nkomo, 
Nkomo Homestead, 6 April 2021.  
50 Ibid. 
51 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”.  83.  



12 
 

under Chief Makumbe. Due to the numerical superiority of the Doba people, the area was later 

named after the clan.52 The second group arrived in 1927 and included Chief Gwebu and the Nkomo 

families.53 This group came via the Midlands town of Mvuma and some of the families were 

transported by trains from Bulawayo.54 Other Ndebele families such as the Mgazi and Masaile 

arrived in Buhera as late as 1945.55 Outside these known groups, smaller communities and families 

of Ndebele immigrants trickled into Buhera unnoticed at different times and escaped the attention 

of local colonial administrators.  

Following their arrival in Buhera, colonial officials such as Posselt who had facilitated the Ndebele 

immigrants to settle in the area left the immigrants to negotiate with the Shona communities on 

their own. The Gwebu immigrants were thus not allocated their lands by the colonial government 

as was the practice during this era in other parts of Southern Rhodesia where similar removals had 

been engineered. Although the colonial officials, relying on ethnic prejudices, anticipated conflict to 

erupt between the immigrants and the Shona first-comer society, the immigrants were 

accommodated and given lands for temporary settlement.56  

When the Ndebele immigrants arrived in Buhera, they were not allocated a place of their own with 

clearly defined boundaries. Instead, the colonial authorities left them to liaise with the Makumbe 

people at the local level. As historian Musoni argues, this put the Ndebele immigrants and the Shona-

speaking Makumbe at crossroads because boundaries were not clearly defined.57  

                                                
52 Telephone interview with Headman Makabeni, 27 June 2020.  
53 Personal interview with Ellen Nkomo, Nkomo Homestead, 6 April 2021. 
54 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”. 83.  
55 Personal Interviews with Victor Mgazi and Masaile.  
56 Personal Interview with Chief Makumbe, 28 August 2020, Harare.  
57 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”. 84.  



13 
 

Courtesy of Chief Makumbe’s hospitality, the Ndebele were given land for settlement under 

Headman Garamwera around 1928.58 Gwebu had asked for permission to settle in an uninhabited 

land characterised by black heavy soils. The Ndebele immigrants settled in Buherain south-eastern 

Zimbabwe. This area was dominated by Shona-speaking groups. Although their immediate 

neighbours were the Makumbe, there were many other Shona-speaking groups within their 

immediate and farther environs. These included Shona-speaking communities in Charter in the 

north, Rusape in the east, Gutu district in the west on the Nyazvidzi River, and the Nyashanu area 

in the south.59 

 

Figure 1: Map of Zimbabwe showing the location of Buhera. Map by David Chikodzi (2016).  

Throughout the colonial period in Buhera, the immigrants constantly faced challenges because their 

legitimacy was contested by the Shona. In addition, unlike other Ndebele immigrants who migrated 

to Gwai and Shangane, the Gwebu people in Buhera did not have belonging and the Shona used 

this as a basis to exclude them from natural resource ownership.60 Considering these challenges, the 

                                                
58 NAZ Files: S2929/1/1 Delineation of Communities: General Report on the Buhera District, 1965. “Boundaries of 
Makumbe chieftainship”. 
59 Ibid.  
60 J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger. Violence and memory: one hundred years in the "dark forests" of Matabeleland. 47.  



14 
 

immigrants resorted to their own initiatives, environmental creativeness by making use of, for 

example, black clay soils which had been shunned by the Shona-speaking communities in the area. 

I use the trajectory of natural resources, particularly agricultural lands and water sources, as an entry 

point to examine how the displaced Ndebele immigrants used their indigenous knowledge of nature 

to identify favourable soils that best suited their interests. They were agriculturalists who valued the 

importance of not only tilling the lands but also conserving the environment around them. They 

learned how to maximise their use of land others shunned and even thrived. In doing this, the study 

deploys the African initiatives approach to make sense of how the Ndebele immigrants in Buhera 

drew upon their indigenous knowledge of environments to make informed choices, for example, 

between heavy black soils over the sandy light soils. The study defines African initiatives as internally 

driven initiatives used by Africans to overcome environmental and social challenges.  

These people referred to in this study as the Ndebele (or the Gwebu) were not homogenous. The 

phrase Ndebele society is only used reservedly to appreciate some shared historical experiences that 

bound the group together. The study uses the term Ndebele immigrants while being conscious of 

the fact that the group was made up of many other minority groups who were not truly Ndebele. 

The term Ndebele community is used interchangeably with Ndebele immigrant group, Ndebele 

speakers, and Gwebu community for the basic reason to appreciate the numerical superiority of the 

original Khumalo group which also doubled as the ruling class. The community included ethnic 

minorities such as the Xhosa, Fengu and Swati. The Fengu were, however, numerically superior 

among all these minorities.  

Cecil John Rhodes struck a deal with Fengu chiefs in South Africa in which he promised Fengu 

immigrants agricultural lands in colonial Zimbabwe for their services in working for the BSAC.61 

The Fengu had immigrated to colonial Zimbabwe in the early 1890s just after colonisation by Cecil 

                                                
 
61 Pius S. Nyambara. “That Place Was Wonderful!’ African Tenants on Rhodesdale Estate, Colonial Zimbabwe, c. 
1900-1952.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies. (2005, 38:2) 278.  



15 
 

John Rhodes’ BSAC.62 They came as wagon drivers, butlers, and baggage carriers assisting soldiers 

and mercenaries in the invasion of Mashonaland and Matabeleland.63 Other Fengu families came as 

Christian missionaries under different ecumenical organisations. From 1895, Fengu groups who 

came to Southern Rhodesia were mainly brought in to suppress some pockets of resistance by the 

few remaining Ndebele armies after the initial 1890 invasion.64 This particular group can therefore 

be described as mercenary colonial sidekicks. By 1900, the number of Fengu immigrants in Southern 

Rhodesia had reached 7,000.65 Due to their important role in the establishment of the colony, Fengus 

were concentrated in Fingo Location in present-day Ntabazinduna near Bulawayo.66 Besides the 

Fingo Location, there were smaller Fengu groups scattered in different parts of the country. In 

addition to the Fengu minority group, there were also Xhosa and Swati families who had also 

migrated to Southern Rhodesia with the earliest white settlers in the early 1900s.67 Following 

settlement in Buhera, these minority groups, though they claimed to be Ndebele, maintained subtle 

forms of particularism. For example, though they paid allegiance to Chief Gwebu, the Xhosa and 

Fengu households lived in a village of their own (Charlton Village) located on the north of the main 

Gwebu territory.68 The village was named after its Xhosa founder.69 The broader Ndebele immigrant 

community in Buhera also included different BaSotho families such as Dobha, S’gaxa, Ndinga, 

Makhutshwa, and Msiza who belonged to the Enhla caste.70 The agricultural and conservation 

practices of the Ndebele immigrant community throughout the colonial period in Buhera mirror 

this ethnic diversity.  

                                                
62 Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Domination. 62.  
63 Pius S. Nyambara “That Place Was Wonderful!’. 278.  
64  Robin Palmer. Land and Racial Domination. 63.  
65 Pius S. Nyambara. “That Place Was Wonderful!’”. 278.  
66 Elioth P. Makambe. “Africans Protest Movements in Southern Rhodesia Before 1930: An Ideological Appreciation 
of the Socio-Political Roots of the Protests Movements”, https://authors.library.caltech.edu/25709/1/MALN_65-
66.pdf  accessed 6 June 2023.  
67 Personal Interview with Nicodemus Gwebu.  
68 Personal Interview with Paul Mbulelo Tshabalala, Charlton Village, Buhera, 8 July 2019.  
69 Ibid.  
70 Francis Musoni. “Forced Resettlement, Ethnicity, and the (Un)Making of the Ndebele Identity in Buhera District, 
Zimbabwe”. 83.  

https://authors.library.caltech.edu/25709/1/MALN_65-66.pdf
https://authors.library.caltech.edu/25709/1/MALN_65-66.pdf


16 
 

Literature review  

The Ndebele immigrants in Buhera 

Ndebele immigrants in Buhera are surrounded by different Shona-speaking neighbours. Different 

scholars have historically devoted attention to these neighbouring communities. During the 

colonial period, Johan F. Holleman conducted an ethnographic study of the VaHera dynasty in 

1949. Holleman was preoccupied with understanding patterns of kinship through a collection of 

essays on various topics such as marriage, power, and inheritance.71 Although this study was 

framed in the narrow context of understanding Africans for governance purposes, it reveals the 

dominance of the VaHera dynasty even beyond the borders of Buhera District. With their centre 

of power located at Nyashanu south of Buhera, the VaHera dynasty had their Chieftaincy called 

the Nyashanu, the VaHera people are depicted as the dominant and most autochthonous group 

in Buhera. Among other things, Holleman argued that the name Buhera was itself a derivation 

from the Hera clan. It is this kind of scholarship that set the tone for treating Buhera as the land 

of the VaHera. By doing so, many other minority groups are treated as perpetual outsiders. 

Starting in the early 2000s, scholars focusing on Buhera began to produce works that were more 

grounded in the activities of ordinary people and marginalised groups, thus marking an intellectual 

departure from the earlier dynastic approaches. In 2001, social anthropologist Jens A. Andersson 

conducted a study showing ordinary people’s dynamism in creating nods of transactional 

relationships through rural-urban migration.72 This study marked an intellectual departure from 

the previous works focusing on Buhera by showing how ordinary people were involved in 

processes of transmitting and producing knowledge that shaped broader processes of life.  

                                                
71  See Johan F. Holleman. Pattern of Hera Kinship. (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). 
72 See Jens A. Andersson works, “Re-interpreting the rural-urban connection: migration practices and socio-cultural 
dispositions of Buhera workers in Buhera” and “Mobile workers, urban employment and ‘rural’ identities: Rural-urban 
networks of Buhera migrants, Zimbabwe”. 2001. 



17 
 

Historians such as Chitotombe and Musoni have also touched on the historical significance of 

Buhera: often viewing land as a window to understand localised politics of exclusion and inclusion 

in which local actors played a key role.73 Historian Terence Mashingaidze used the case study of 

Buhera to explore the dynamics of Zimbabwe’s liberation war between the 1960s and 1980 by 

showing the contributions of civilians in the armed struggle for independence.74 In all these studies, 

the Ndebele immigrant community is barely mentioned and attention has largely been given to 

well-known first-comer societies such as the Nyashanu and the Makumbe.75 

Two separate studies by historian Francis Musoni have however gone a long way in reconstructing 

the history of the Ndebele immigrant community in Buhera. In his unpublished master’s 

dissertation, Musoni traces the history of Ndebele immigrants from 1927 to the 1960s.76 In 2014, 

Musoni published an article focusing on the dynamics around the Ndebele ethnic identity in 

Buhera.77 Empirically speaking, Musoni’s works make an important historical contribution by 

arguing that the Ndebele immigrant community was not homogenous. Using the Ndebele caste 

system, Musoni argues that the immigrant group included ruling families such as the Gwebu as 

well as members of the Enhla caste. Musoni identifies families such as the Gwibila, Sigudhumezi, 

Malombo, Sikwabayile, Mahodho, Nkamanda, Makhwakhwa, Ndonjelana, Mathonganyana, and 

Nkomo as belonging to the Enhla caste.78 

                                                
73 J.W Chitotombe. “Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Governance of Natural Resources: The Case of Buhera 
Communal areas, Zimbabwe”. International Journal of Politics and Good Governance. 2012, 3:4). See also J. A. Andersson, 
Going places, staying home: rural-urban connections and the significance of land in Buhera district, Zimbabwe. (Wageningen: 
Wageningen University, 2002). 
74 Terence M. Mashingaidze. “Dynamics of Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Liberation: The Case of Buhera District from 
1950-1990”. (Unpublished M.A Dissertation, University of Zimbabwe, 2001). 
75 Tavonga Zhanje. “Chiefs and Contestations Over Power and Territory: The Case of Njanja of Buhera District, 
1950s - 2016”. (Unpublished Hons Dissertation, Midlands State University, 2017) 16.  
76 Francis Musoni. “Forced Removals in Colonial Zimbabwe: The case of the Ndebele in Buhera District: 1927 to the 
late 1960s”. 2001. 
77 Francis Musoni. “Forced Resettlement, Ethnicity, and the (Un)Making of the Ndebele Identity in Buhera District, 
Zimbabwe”. 84.  
78 Francis Musoni. “Forced Resettlement, Ethnicity, and the (Un)Making of the Ndebele Identity in Buhera District, 
Zimbabwe”. 84.  



18 
 

Musoni’s works concentrated on the historical causes of enmity and tensions between the Shona-

speaking Njanja and the Ndebele-speaking Gwebu.  He singles out competition for productive 

lands, and not ethnicity, as one major cause of historical conflicts between the Gwebu and their 

neighbours, the Njanja.79 One of the most important contributions of Musoni’s works to the 

historiography of Zimbabwe is the use of an underutilised archive made up of a collection of 

colonial and post-colonial records preserved at the Buhera District Administration offices. This 

study relies on these same sources and empirical findings but takes a different direction by focusing 

on human-nature relations - an area that is clearly not covered in Musoni’s works. Despite the lack 

of attention on human-nature relations which is the core of this study, these works on Buhera 

offer an important starting point to understand the histories of different societies in Buhera.  

Colonial evictions and African initiatives in Zimbabwe 

Starting in the 1990s, there was an important turn in the historiography of Zimbabwe as scholars 

began to express an interest in the experiences of African communities forcibly evicted from their 

ancestral lands as part of land expropriation programs that started in the 1920s. This was part of a 

budding revisionist scholarship that sought to re-read the histories of Africans under colonial rule. 

Evicted African communities that received considerable coverage since 1995 include communities 

of Mazvihwa in Zvishavane District, the Rengwe of Hurungwe, the Madheruka of Gokwe, the 

Basotho of Gutu, the Ndebele of Shangani Reserve, the Shangane of Gonarezhou area, and the 

Tonga of Kariba.80 

The literature gives a fair geographical coverage of colonial Zimbabwe and highlights the varying 

degrees of violence that accompanied colonial evictions. It was, however, the Ndebele of Shangani 

                                                
79 Francis Musoni. “Forced Resettlement, Ethnicity, and the (Un)Making of the Ndebele Identity in Buhera District, 
Zimbabwe”. 84.  
80 See Thembani Dube. “Shifting Identities and the Transformation of the Kalanga People of Bulilimamangwe District, 
Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe C. 1946-2005”. (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand 
Johannesburg, 2015).  



19 
 

Reserve who suffered the worst violence leading McGregor, Alexander, and Ranger to describe 

the forced removal of the Ndebele from their ancestral homes to the Shangani Reserve as 

"extremely harsh" – an act which resulted in the reserve becoming a "zone of violence".81 Using 

vivid words such as Gusu (dark forests), sandy wastes, jungles, and lands of baboons, Alexander et 

al demonstrate that Africans were evicted to areas that were hazardous for both humans and 

animals.82 The title of the book, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the Dark Forests, re-affirms 

the eminence of the ferocious nature of colonial rule in general and colonial evictions in particular. 

This book relates empirically with this study by capturing the colonial perceptions of the 1920s 

that evicted Africans were going to inflict harm both to the environment and people in the 

Reserves. Evicted Africans were described as witches, thieves, and disease-carrying.83 The empirical 

connection between this book and this study is that the local colonial administrators used alarming 

caricatures to depict evicted Africans as potentially harmful to both humans and the environment.  

One of the key contributions to the historiography of colonial evictions and African environmental 

initiatives is a 1995 article by environmental historian K.B. Wilson on the environmental history 

of the Mazvihwa community in Zvishavane, south-central Zimbabwe.84 The article delves into the 

realm of African knowledge systems by giving primacy to indigenous explanations of soil erosion 

and degradation in Zvishavane. Following their evictions in the 1920s to pave the way for white 

settler ranchers, the Mazvihwa community settled in an area with red and dry soils which were 

difficult to manage.85 An important contribution of this study is that it brings into the conversation 

African initiatives that were deployed by locals in dealing with soil degradation at the local level. 

Wilson’s work shares a conceptual similarity with this study in that there is a mutual appreciation 

                                                
81 J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger. Violence and memory: one hundred years in the 
"dark forests" of Matabeleland. 47.  
82 Ibid.  
83 Ibid 55.  
84 K.B Wilson. “Water Used to be Scattered in the Landscape': Local Understandings of Soil Erosion and Land Use 
Planning in Southern Zimbabwe”. Environment and History. (1995, 1:3) 282. 
85 K.B Wilson. “Water Used to be Scattered in the Landscape': Local Understandings of Soil Erosion and Land Use 
Planning in Southern Zimbabwe”. 282.    



20 
 

of African initiatives among evicted communities and their ingenuity. The connection is also 

temporal as Wilson’s study focuses on the same timeframe as this study. There is however a 

divergence in terms of how the agency of African women in local conservation projects is 

conceptualised in this study. Wilson's study is patronised by predominantly male informants such 

as Magwidi who project a patriarchal conservation scheme that simply viewed women as wives 

and outsiders.86 It, therefore, offers an important opportunity to draw comparisons on the nature 

of African environmental initiatives in Buhera and Zvishavane during the colonial period.   

The experiences of African communities evicted from Rhodesdale Crown Lands in the 1950s and 

settled in Gokwe, northwestern Zimbabwe have also .been used to understand the nature of 

colonial migrations.87 Historian Pius Nyambara makes an important contribution by capturing how 

the processes of naming and counter-naming between the immigrants and the first-comer 

community, the Shangwe, revolved around the concept of modernity.88 Equally important is that 

Nyambara captures the importance of the interactions between the immigrant Madheruka and 

first-comer Shangwe in the making of ethnic identities. Just like the immigrant Ndebele in the 

Shangani Reserve in the 1920s and the Basotho in the 1930s Gutu, the Madheruka viewed 

themselves as “modernised” immigrants because they had encountered forces of “civilisation” 

such as centralised farming earlier in the 1920s whilst they were still at Rhodesdale Estate.89 Among 

other things, the Madheruka immigrants had brought with them “modern” farming technology 

and some of them were Master Farmers donned with badges and certificates as symbols of their 

“modernisation”.90 They grew cash crops such as cotton and this resulted in them being viewed as 

modernised. The most important contribution made by Nyambara is how colonial evictions 

                                                
86 K.B Wilson. “Water Used to be Scattered in the Landscape': Local Understandings of Soil Erosion and Land Use 
Planning in Southern Zimbabwe”. 282. 283.  
87 Pius S. Nyambara. “Madheruka and Shangwe: Ethnic Identities and the Culture of Modernity in Gokwe, 
Northwestern Zimbabwe, 1963-79”. 287.  
88 Ibid.  
89 Ibid. 287.  
90 Pius S. Nyambara. “Colonial Policy and Peasant Cotton Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia, 1904-1953”. The 
International Journal of African Historical Studies. (2000, 33:1). 96-97.  



21 
 

resulted in new forms of social relations that emerged in the Reserves.91 This research relates to 

Nyambara’s work in the sense that the Ndebele immigrants in Buhera were also viewed by both 

the colonial officials and their neighbours in high regard as “modernised”. Colonial stereotyping 

magnified these perceptions by viewing Chief Gwebu, for example, as the most modernised chief 

in the entire Buhera District.92  

Historian Terence M. Mashingaidze discusses coerced evictions in the context of the indigenous 

Tonga community who were evicted from the Zambezi Valley area in 1953 to pave the way for 

the construction of the Kariba Dam.93 It is argued here that following their eviction, the Tonga 

were excluded from the emergent hydro-livelihood activities such as game hunting and fishing that 

accompanied the construction of the dam.94 Mashingaidze argues that the suffering of the Tonga 

was caused by the colonial government’s failure to conduct environmental assessments to evaluate 

the habitability of the areas where the evicted families were resettled.95 Like many other Africans 

who were evicted by the colonial government during the 1920s, the Tonga were re-settled in 

marginal, tsetse-fly infested, waterless and infertile areas.96 Even colonial officials were unsure if 

Africans would survive the hazards.97 This explains why some colonial officials equated eviction 

to the Shangani Reserve to “depopulation”.98 Mashingaidze’s works share an important empirical 

                                                
91  Pius S. Nyambara. “Madheruka and Shangwe: Ethnic Identities and the Culture of Modernity in Gokwe, 
Northwestern Zimbabwe, 1963-79”. 287.  
92 NAZ Files: 4/32//48/3 NC Buhera to PNC Gwelo 29 Dec 1948. 
93 NAZ Files: 4/32/48/5 Office of the Native Commissioner Buhera District, 28 June 1950. 
94 Terence M. Mashingaidze “The Kariba Dam: Discursive Displacements and the Politics of Appropriating a 
Waterscape in Zimbabwe, 1950s-2017”. Limina. (2019, 25:1). 9. 
95 Terence M. Mashingaidze. “Beyond the Kariba Dam Induced Displacements: The Zimbabwean Tonga’s Struggles 
for Restitution, 1990s–2000s”. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights. (2013, 20). 382.  
96 Ibid.  
97 In Shangani, colonial officials used terms such as ‘depopulation’ to refer to the removal of Africans into the Reserves. 
The colonial officials had found out at a later stage that the place where Africans had been settled was not conducive 
for human settlement. Missionaries even pleaded against the government’s eviction of Africans to Shangani on 
humanitarian grounds. See Alexander et al Violence and Memory. 45-57.  
98 Ibid 46.  



22 
 

relationship with this study in that both the Tonga of Kariba and the Ndebele of Buhera were 

resettled to areas that can be described as inhabitable.99 

Socio-environmental historian Ivan Marowa brought to our attention the experiences of the 

Rengwe community evicted from the Zambezi Valley region to the Rengwe Communal Lands in 

north-western Zimbabwe between 1957 and 1958.100 Marowa’s important contribution to 

historiography is his articulation of the nexus between landscape, memory and the processes of 

migration. Collective and individual memories of the ancestral homes and migration are depicted 

as embedded in the landscapes such as rivers. By weaving together social memories, landscape, 

ethnic identities, and environment, Marowa reconstructs the histories of the group not only during 

the evictions and migrations but also before these processes. Marowa demonstrates “that stories 

and memories of forced removal tell us not only about relocation itself but also about events 

before and after it.”101  

This study relates to Marowa’s work in two ways. First, there is conceptual relation in the 

deployment of the “history from below” approach that Marowa derives from cleric and 

anthropologist Michael Tremmel.102 This study, therefore, joins Tremmel and Marowa in giving 

agency to the marginalised groups such as women and ethnic minorities in navigating uncertainties 

and insecurities brought about by forced evictions. The second connection is methodological. This 

study relates very well to Marowa’s work in its use of landscape to make sense of people’s 

memories. This study however goes beyond Marowa’s conceptualisation of memory by viewing 

landscape as text that embodies consciously created discourses. 

                                                
99 The two areas had different climatic features, however. What makes them similar is that they were both Native 
Reserves- areas set aside for Africans. 
100 Ivan Marowa. “Forced Removal and Social Memories in North-Western Zimbabwe c. 1900-2000”. 
(Unpublished PhD Thesis, BIGSAS and the University of Bayreuth, 2015) 1.  
101 Ibid. 
102 Ibid. 8.  



23 
 

Baxter Tavuyanago’s PhD thesis contributes to the scholarship on forced evictions from the 

perspective of African responses. In his study, Tavuyanago propounds that the eviction of the 

indigenous Shangane community from the Gonarezhou National Park to the fringes of the newly 

established game sanctuary in 1934 resulted in Africans engaging in “defiant poaching” while some 

crossed the border into South Africa to join nationalist politics.103 Tavuyanago’s work joins the 

likes of Nyambara and Alexander et al in finding connections between colonial evictions of the 

1920s-30s and the nationalist consciousness of the 1960s. Such scholarship maintains the argument 

that colonial evictions had a boomerang effect as forcibly evicted Africans later came back to revolt 

against the government in the 1960s. Tavuyanago’s study is important in showing that evicted 

Africans were brutalised but responded through defiant poaching and nationalism. The 

experiences of the Shangani communities are important for comparative purposes. However, 

Tavuyango only limits the agency of evicted Africans to the social and political acts of defiant 

poaching and nationalism. This study goes beyond these to interrogate African initiatives in 

environmental conservation and agriculture in hostile areas. Tavuyanago’s work is therefore 

important in comparing and contrasting lived experiences of Africans in the economic and political 

fringes of the colonial state.   

As much as the literature reviewed above has made significant strides in the historiography of 

colonial evictions in Zimbabwe, this study exposes two important gaps that need scholarly 

attention. The first knowledge gap comes in the form of what I conceptualise as a temporal silence. 

Not much has been written about the experiences of Africans during the period between eviction 

and settlement. What we know is that Africans were evicted and then migrated to different Native 

Reserves where they started new lives. Very little is known about how Africans acted during the 

episode between eviction and relocation. These temporalities are worth exploring because they 

                                                
103 Baxter Tavuyanago. “Living on the Fringes of a Protected Area: Gonarezhou National Park (GNP) and the 
Indigenous Communities of South-East Zimbabwe, 1934-2008”. (PhD Thesis, University of Pretoria, 2016). 162-163.  



24 
 

were not devoid of agency. For some Ndebele immigrant families, the temporal phase between 

eviction and subsequent settlement in Buhera lasted more than a decade as they deployed different 

delaying strategies while negotiating and resisting eviction. Yet these specific moments in the 

historiography of colonial evictions are missing. This temporal silence is an evident lacuna that 

should be explored to understand the fears, actions, experiences and resilience of Africans in 

precarious colonial times. 

Second, the reviewed literature on the historiography of colonial evictions in Zimbabwe shows an 

important intellectual gap. Historians such as Tavuyanago confined African post-eviction agency 

to political and economic actions such as joining nationalist politics and economic endeavours, for 

example, “poaching” wild game for meat.104 In some instances, there is no mention at all of how 

Africans made sense of the environments around them following settlement in new areas. For a 

socio-environmental historian, this approach is problematic because it gives the assumption that 

Africans were only involved in harmful activities such as clearing lands for agriculture and killing 

wildlife for food. Yet there is evidence from areas such as the Sabi Reserve where Ndebele 

immigrants were engaged in innovative agriculture and sustainable conservation activities that saw 

them attain food security and preserve their agricultural lands, soils, and water resources.  

These gaps feed into one broad historiographical lacuna: that of the silence on how Africans 

interacted with the environment in areas that were characterised by different hazards following 

violent evictions. This gap is worth filling because it helps us to re-read histories of colonialism at 

the national level through the lens of the environment while in global history it helps to appreciate 

how Africans thrived in hostile environments.105  

                                                
104 104 Baxter Tavuyanago. “Living on the Fringes of a Protected Area: Gonarezhou National Park (GNP) and the 
Indigenous Communities of South-East Zimbabwe, 1934-2008”162-63. 
105 J. Iliffe. Africans, the History of a Continent. 1. See also William Beinart. “African History and Environmental History”. 
African Affairs. (2000, 99: 395) 285.  



25 
 

The environment and natural resources in colonial Zimbabwe 

There currently exists a significant number of writings on Zimbabwe’s environmental history. This 

section is not exhaustive but only engages with literature that directly relates to this study. 

Anthropologist Donald Moore’s 1998 publication introduces aspects of material and symbolic 

struggles over natural resources in Zimbabwean historiography.106 Using a case study of the 

Kaerezi River Protected Area in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, Moore engages with notions of 

memory, chieftainship, tradition, political boundaries, resource rights and landscape: and how 

these became contours of conflict between the state and the local communities.107 Again in 2005, 

Moore revisited his earlier argument using the same case study of the Kaerezi. He reveals the 

ambiguities of a tripartite relationship between the state, community, and household and how these 

three maintain divergent views of the environment. He argues that the post-colonial resource 

conflicts in Zimbabwe are a product of how people labour upon and suffer for a territory.108 

Moore’s contribution to the historiography of natural resource governance is his nuanced analysis 

of subaltern resilience in fighting state and institutional forces which were engaged in wholesale 

dispossessions and evictions of African communities. His work is important in providing the 

different aspects of localised conflicts over land between the state, traditional leadership, and rural 

households. Actions of rural communities in areas such as the Kaerezi can be interpreted as 

versions of rural resilience against a land-expropriating government and imposition of natural 

resource management by the state.  

In the same vein, the works of Kwashirai on woodland exploitation in Matabeleland from 1890 to 

1980 offer one of the most extensive studies on the dialectical relations between the 

conservationist interests and exploitative approaches of the private timber extraction companies 

                                                
106 See Donald S. Moore. “Clear Waters and Muddied Histories: Environmental History and The Politics of 
Community in Zimbabwe's Eastern highlands”. Journal of Southern Africa Studies. (1998, 24: 2) 377-403.  
107 Ibid.  
108 Ibid.  



26 
 

in Southern Rhodesia. Kwashirai pays special attention to conflicts, collusions, and compromises 

between the colonial state’s conservationist advocates and exploitationist capitalist companies.109 

His study resonates with many others that focus on the centrality of the colonial state in natural 

resource distribution and conservation. It follows Richard Grove’s ‘green imperialism’ discourse 

which fits into the high modern state trajectory. This trajectory often views the state as 

omnipresent.110 The discussion is closely related to the seminal Beinart and Phimister debate in 

which the former argues that conservationism was first implemented in relation to settler farming 

while the latter suggests that it was concerning peasant farming.111 This approach is important in 

revealing the activities and thinking of the colonial institutions about African environmental and 

agricultural issues. The methodological weakness of such state-centric narratives is that they cannot 

be useful in cases such as Buhera where the colonial state was weak. Though sharing a common 

interest with these studies in terms of the period of focus, they do not allow social history and 

environmental history “to meet each other” as Jacobs puts it.112 This puts a clear theoretical 

distinction between this form of environmental history and the socio-environmental history 

approach that this study pursues.  

Zimbabwean historiography on the environment has focussed on the conflicts and struggles over 

the natural environment and resources from different perspectives. Environmental historian 

Muchaparara Musemwa explores the real and imagined fears over water scarcity in Colonial 

Zimbabwe in the 1960s. Africans in urban areas such as Bulawayo lobbied the government to 

establish a national water administration authority: a “hydraulic bureaucracy”.113 This study intends 

                                                
109 Vimbayi C. Kwashirai. Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe: 1890-1980. 1-29.  
110 R. Grove. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. 
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 560. 
111 W Beinart, “Soil erosion, conservationism and ideas about development: a Southern African exploration, 1900-
1960”. Journal of Southern African Studies. (1984, 11: 82),  Ian Phimister “Discourse and the Discipline of Historical 
Context: Conservationism and Ideas about Development in Southern Rhodesia 1930-1950”. Journal of Southern African 
Studies. (1986. 12:2) 263-270.  
112 Nancy Jacobs. Environment, Power and Justice. 16. 
113 Muchaparara Musemwa. “Narratives of Scarcity: Colonial State Responses to Water Scarcity in Southern Rhodesia, 
1890-1965”. in C. J de Melo, E. Vaz, L.M.C Pinto (eds.) Environmental History in the Making. Springer. (2017) 263-265. 



27 
 

to establish a link between these narratives of scarcity at the national level and the localised land 

scarcity experiences in Buhera during the same period. A study by historian Thembani Dube 

illustrates how the settler government used the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951 to marginalise 

the Kalanga community in Bulilimamangwe.114 In the same vein, Mujere uses the case study of the 

Basotho community in the Dewure Purchase Areas to show how the colonial government, through 

the Christian missionaries, allowed this group to acquire land on more relaxed terms than other 

communities.115 These studies clearly situate the colonial state at the centre of the distribution of 

natural resources (water and agricultural lands). These debates are important in the historiography 

of Zimbabwe because they show the lengths and depths that the colonial government was 

prepared to reach to control Africans’ use of natural resources such as agricultural lands and water.  

Although this is true for different case studies, the Ndebele immigrant community had a different 

historical experience in which the colonial state was not a key agent in the distribution of peoples’ 

use of natural resources. By intersecting two types of histories from below (social history and 

environmental history), this study takes the debate further by revealing how, in the absence of state 

interventionism, African environmental initiatives became the centrepiece of people’s use of 

natural resources. Conflicts over the distribution and use of natural resources such as agricultural 

lands and water can therefore be understood from a localised perspective. Often marginalised 

groups such as ethnic minorities, women and peasants were at the centre of these processes. By 

virtue of these historical realities, this study is foregrounded in subaltern agency- the thinking and 

actions of ordinary and often marginalised rural communities.  

                                                
See also Muchaparara Musemwa. “Politics of Water in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1980-2007”. Seminar paper presented at 
the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, 19th June 2008. 4. 
114 Thembani. Dube. “Shifting Identities and the Transformation of the Kalanga People of Bulilimamangwe District, 
Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe C. 1946-2005”. 78. 
115 Joseph Mujere. “Autochthons, Strangers, Modernising Educationists, and Progressive Farmers: Basotho Struggles 
for Belonging in Zimbabwe 1930s-2008”. (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2012) 77-79. 



28 
 

These works form the theoretical and empirical basis which continues to inform and invigorate 

contemporary debates on Zimbabwean environmental and social histories. The literature review 

has purposefully revealed that scholarship on Zimbabwean environmental history has 

predominantly touched mainly on state-centric narratives. Focus has largely been projected 

towards the role of the colonial government in land expropriation and eventual allocation of 

agricultural lands to the evicted communities. The literature also focuses on how the colonial 

government’s role enabled evicted communities to use agricultural land to ascertain their belonging 

in the reserves, thereby attaining some form of security and certainty. Another layer of state-centric 

scholarship pays attention to post-eviction social relationships in different parts of Zimbabwe. It 

has also emerged that debates on ethnic relations and identity have been central to producing 

knowledge about the histories of evicted communities in Zimbabwe. Not much is known about 

how, after eviction from different zones, the local communities initially contended with, but 

eventually mastered, different hostile landscapes. Questions on how communities such as Gwebu 

used their indigenous ways of knowing to choose soils and conserve water resources and forests 

have hardly been posed in Zimbabwean historiography. Little is known about the power relations 

that governed gender and water resources.116 This study intends to fill this knowledge gap by using 

a combination of “two histories from below”: socio-environmental history - an approach that 

critically appraises Africans’ environmental initiatives.117 The emphasis on resilience and the agency 

of indigenous environmental creativity ultimately reconstructs a story of how the Gwebu 

community inhabited and made sense of hostile landscapes. By exploring African communities’ 

agency, the study finds some resonance with Iliffe’s idea that Africans have contributed to global 

history through their ability to inhabit hostile landscapes.118 

                                                
116 F. Cleaver. “Water as a Weapon: The History of Water Supply Development in Nkayi District of Zimbabwe”. 
Environment and History 1. (1995, 3:1) 313-33. 
117 Nancy J. Jacobs Environment and Justice. 16. 
118  John Iliffe. Africans, the History of a Continent. 1. 



29 
 

Socio-environmental history: regional and global perspectives 

Socio-environmental history emerged following the realisation that there was a need for what 

historian Ted Steinberg described as “ecologically minded and socially sensitive approaches”.119 

Socially sensitive approaches included concepts that included other aspects of the biosphere in 

historical accounts. Features such as trees, soils, and waterscapes have recently been regarded by 

anthropologists such as Daniel Miller as carrying some agency and thus qualify them as social 

actors.120 As opposed to the traditional environmental history approach where the human is at the 

centre, this study is ecologically and socially sensitive in embracing the agency of soils in shaping 

social processes in the Ndebele immigrant community in the Sabi Reserve.  

Debates in global environmental history from the 2000s were more theoretical than empirical. 

Researchers sought to find common ground between environmental history and social history and 

the debate intensified in 1999 when environmental historians James McCann,121 and later in 2002, 

Stephen Mosley argued for the need for cross-field communication between environmental history 

and social history.122 Since the late 2000s, there has been growing collaboration in ways which 

demonstrate that social and environmental history are compatible, complementary, and 

intertwined in reconstructing different histories. Socio-environmental history thus emerges as a 

discipline that appreciates both social relationships (fissured by race, class and gender), and the 

natural environment, which is the basis of all human life.  

This literature review, however, only engages with the most relevant works related to this study. 

Environmental history was first deployed by historians from the Annales School, Anna 

                                                
119 Ted Steinberg. "Down to Earth: Nature, Agency, and Power in History". American Historical Review. (2002, 107) 798-
820.  
120 Daniel Miller. Stuff. (London: Wiley, 2009) 2. 
121 James McCann. Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800– 1990. (Portsmouth: 
Heinemann, 1999) 216.  
122 Stephen Mosley. “Common Ground: Integrating Social and Environmental History”. Journal of Social History. (2006, 
39:3) 916. 



30 
 

Bramwell,123 Donald Worster,124  and Peter Burke125 to explain how long-term developments alter 

human history. These scholars’ principal objective was to show how human civilisations altered 

the environment. By so doing, the crop of historians challenged the environmental determinism 

approach that had thrived from the 19th century through the works of geographer Ellsworth 

Huntington.126 The environmental determinism approach subscribed to the belief that the 

environment and its physical factors determined the patterns of life for human communities.127 

With the emergence of world histories in the 1960s, scholars began to write about environmental 

histories at global and continental levels using interdisciplinary approaches. Although 

environmental history had earlier been founded in the 1960s, it was not until 1972 when 

environmental historian Rodrick Nash coined the term “environmental history” in his study of 

human societies and the natural environment.128 

Having been influenced by the Annales School, Phillip Curtin became the first Africanist historian 

to describe the dialectical relationship between human actions and Africa’s natural environments 

in 1968.129 His work was one of the first in African environmental historiographies to counter 

colonial depictions of African landscapes and environments as static and rigid. Colonial historians 

of the environment pushed the narrative of “saving Africa from Africans”130 while others 

landscaped Africa by Europeanising local environments.131 In recent years, historians have re-

                                                
123 See Anna Bramwell. Ecology in the 20th Century, a History. (New Haven: Yale University, 1989) 1-34.  
124 D. Worster. The Ends of the Earth, Perspectives on Modern Environmental History. (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1988). 
125 Peter Burke. The French Historical Revolution, the Annales School. 1929-89. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). 
126Amanda Briney, “What is Environmental Determinism”  
https://www.thoughtco.com/environmental-determinism-and-
geography1434499#:~:text=Environmental%20Determinism%20and%20Modern%20Geography,central%20theory
%20in%20the%20discipline, Accessed 18 June 2022.  
127 Ibid.  
128 See K. J. Oosthoek. “What is Environmental History?” https://www.eh-resources.org/what-is-environmental-history/, 
accessed 13 February 2017. See R. Nash Wilderness and the American Mind. See also R. Nush. “American Environmental 
History: A New Teaching Frontier”. Pacific Historical Review. (1972, 41:3) 362-372.  
129 See Phillip D. Curtin. Epidemiology of the Slave Trade. (Academy of Political Science. 1968). See also William Beinart 
and JoAnn McGregor (eds.). Social History and African Environments. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003). 
130 Robert H. Nelson. “Environmental Colonialism: ‘Saving’ Africa from Africans.” The Independent Review 8. (2003, 8: 
1) 65.  
131 Jevgeniy Bluwstein. “Colonising landscapes/landscaping colonies: from a global history of landscapism to the 
contemporary landscape approach in nature conservation”. Journal of Political Ecology. July 2021. No page numbers.  

https://www.thoughtco.com/environmental-determinism-and-geography1434499#:~:text=Environmental%20Determinism%20and%20Modern%20Geography,central%20theory%20in%20the%20discipline
https://www.thoughtco.com/environmental-determinism-and-geography1434499#:~:text=Environmental%20Determinism%20and%20Modern%20Geography,central%20theory%20in%20the%20discipline
https://www.thoughtco.com/environmental-determinism-and-geography1434499#:~:text=Environmental%20Determinism%20and%20Modern%20Geography,central%20theory%20in%20the%20discipline
https://www.eh-resources.org/what-is-environmental-history/
https://www.eh-resources.org/what-is-environmental-history/
https://www.eh-resources.org/what-is-environmental-history/


31 
 

considered environmental histories from social and cultural perspectives.  This is aptly captured in 

a volume co-edited by historians William Beinart and JoAnn McGregor titled Social History and 

African Environments.132 An important contribution from Beinart and McGregor’s book is the 

argument that environmental history is a new way of rethinking the larger social history project 

instead of merely being a separate sub-field.133  Because of this, Beinart and McGregor, reconcile 

social history and environmental history by showing how the two seek to achieve similar ends in 

reconstructing histories from below. They contribute to the conversation by arguing that 

environmental history opens a new window in reading the impact of colonialism on Africa.134 This 

study empirically relates with Beinart and McGregor’s argument in that this study concludes that 

an environmental approach to the colonial history of Zimbabwe allows us to appreciate creative 

African environmental initiatives as opposed to seeing them as entirely helpless victims at the 

mercy of harsh colonial legislative regimes.  

Several scholars focus on indigenous methods of environmental control. These include Anderson 

and Grove,135 John Clarke (who uses Zimbabwe as a case study)136 and James McCann who 

discusses the uniqueness of African environments and dismisses modern scientific 

interpretations.137 It is important to note that the greatest criticism levelled against these Africanist 

works has been the fascination with Africa’s pre-colonial past as well as an inherent anti-science 

bias.138 These scholars in African environmental historiography were followed by revisionist 

writers in the making of historians Jan Vansina, David Schoenbrun, James Fairhead and Melissa 

                                                
132 William Beinart and JoAnn McGregor (eds). Social History and African Environments. (Oxford: James Currey, 2003).  
133 Ibid.  
134 Ibid. 
135 David Anderson and Richard Grove. ‘The Scramble for Eden: Past, Present and Future in African Conservation’, 
D. Anderson and R. Grove (eds.). Conservation in Africa People, Policies and Practice. (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1987) 388.  
136 John Clarke. Building on Indigenous Natural Resource Management, Forestry Practices in Zimbabwe’s communal Land. (Harare: 
Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1999) 189.  
137 James McCann. Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800– 1990. (Portsmouth: 
Heinemann, 1999) 216.  
138  See Vimbayi C. Kwashirai. “World Environmental History”.  Environmental History of Africa, Encyclopaedia of Life 
Support Systems. (EOLSS). 



32 
 

Leach.139 These scholars, while admitting that there was environmental degradation even in pre-

colonial Africa, advocated for indigenous environmental management policies linked to the 

appreciation of the landscape.140 The above-cited scholars highlighted the dichotomies between 

science and indigenous perceptions of the environment in Africa.  

In 2006, environmental history Gregory Maddox demonstrated that Africa’s environmental 

histories can be useful in understanding contemporary challenges that the continent is facing, such 

as HIV/AIDS, overpopulation, Sahelian droughts, desertification, and climate change.141 This shift 

was important in African environmental historiography because it demonstrated the relationships 

between environments and other processes of life such as migration. Literature on comparative 

environments is used to inform the study on how communities elsewhere have interacted with 

their environments over time. Such studies include Sutter’s comparative study of the USA and 

South Africa’s environmental conservation strategies.142 Environmental historian Donald Worster 

deploys the same comparative approach to compare the environmental histories of Canada and 

the US.143 One important argument that emerges from these works is that of diversity in cultural 

interpretations attached to nature in different communities. This thinking is further expounded by 

William Beinart and Peter Coates who suggest that “concepts of nature are always cultural 

statements”.144 

                                                
139 James Fairhead and Melissa Leach.  Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest- Savanna Mosaic. 
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 348. J. Vansina. Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition 
in E