crossing the zambezi - the politics of landscape on a central african frontier
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Crossing the Zambezi: The Politicsof Landscape on a Central AfricanFrontierSabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni aa Ferguson Centre for African & Asian Studies, The OpenUniversityPublished online: 16 Feb 2010.
To cite this article: Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2010) Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics ofLandscape on a Central African Frontier, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38:1,164-166, DOI: 10.1080/03086530903538343
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Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier
JOANN MCGREGOR
London and Harare, James Currey and Weaver Press, 2009
v237 pp., ISBN: 978-1-84701-402-3 (James Currey cloth 50.00); ISBN: 978-1-77922-077-6 (Weaver Press paper)
164 Book Reviews
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Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier is a well
written and informative historical-geographical study of one of the relatively grey
areas in Zimbabwean historical studies. The book deals with a frontier region with
multi-layered histories mediated by pre-colonial experiences of violence, right
across the colonial period with its imperial-inspired ideologies of civilising mission
and developmentalism premised on taming the environment as well as those people
considered primitive and up to post-colonial politics with its violent power struggles
interlaced with attempts to win the hearts and minds of various peoples of the
Zambezian frontier region. There is no doubt that McGregor is a daring and versatile
historical geographer capable of handling and understanding a complex tapestry of
human relations, landscape, politics, development, as well as identity and memory.
The book succeeds to a large extent in showing the complex ways in which the
course and flow of the Great Zambezi River produced a particular human history,
fashioned and influenced particular ways of economic and political survival as well
as particular cultural practices. McGregor persuasively demonstrates how a particular
landscape produced a riverine people with a unique riverine culture. This is a point
that she clearly states in the introduction of the book as contributing to long-standing
debates over the relationship between geography and history, landscape and power.
While the book is focused on the stretch of the river, extending from Victoria Falls
downstream into Lake Kariba, that forms the present-day border between Zambia and
Zimbabwe, McGregor reveals that this small stretch has a rich history that deepens our
understand of present-day identities and particular forms of politics. In the book we
learn about the predatory activities of the centralised political formations of the
Ndebele, Lozi and Kololo and how they related to the river people comprising the
Leya, Nambya, Dombe, Goba, Tonga and even Korekore. These were decentralised
communities. We also learn about the complex unfolding of colonial encounters,
beginning with the arrival of David Livingstone and the explorers and on up to the
concession-seeking period and the eventual colonisation of the frontier region along-
side the interior. What is distinctive about McGregors book is its superb blending and
engagement with historical chronology and minute details without loosing the
thematic as well as the complex imbrications of the cultural and political into the
landscape and geography.
The book is based on a rich and creative use of archival, oral and secondary litera-
ture. In ten chapters, one learns of the river peoples deployment of memory to make
claims and back up politics of recognition, of the violence of the early colonial state as
it tried to bring colonial order in the frontier, how the building of the Victoria Bridge
and the Kariba Dam formed a basis of communal grievance that fed into nationalist
mobilisations of the 1960s and 1970s, how evictions formed the greatest travesty of
justice in the memory of the people acting as the prime memorial site and how the
knowledge of the river made the local people useful in facilitating the crossing of
the Zambezi River by ZIPRA (Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army) forces. One
also learns about how the Victoria Falls grew into a resort town and popular tourist
destination, and how the rise of a black-educated elite played a central role in the
revival of Tonga and Nambya identities upon which the seeds of nationalism sprouted.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 165
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The book further explores the roots of a politics of recognition and entitlement that
became louder after the achievement of independence and benefited from neo-
liberal discourses of rights and the flourishing of NGOs that sponsored local develop-
ment projects in Binga. In short, the book makes a solid contribution to a deeper
understanding of the various viewpoints of different actors in the Zambezi frontier
region at different historical junctures up to the present when Binga became a
fertile support-base for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Overall, McGregor must be commended for producing a lucidly written and easy to
read study that creatively deals with and brings together various themes of geography,
colonisation, displacement, evictions, landscape, culture, politics, economy, tourism
and identity to inform people-lived experiences in a frontier region. The book is rec-
ommended for all those interested in history, geography, development and ecological
studies.
SABELO J. NDLOVU-GATSHENI
Ferguson Centre for African & Asian Studies, The Open University
# 2010, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
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