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This article was downloaded by: [Stony Brook University]On: 25 October 2014, At: 14:42Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Zambia, then and nowHugh Macmillan aa African Studies Centre , Oxford University , UKPublished online: 05 Oct 2010.
To cite this article: Hugh Macmillan (2010) Zambia, then and now, Journal of Contemporary AfricanStudies, 28:4, 528-529, DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2010.513579
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2010.513579
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have been the concerns of women’s NGOs in Ghana? The book has much room to
expand. It could be stronger and more substantive if it had taken the above questions
into consideration.
Mi Yung Yoon
Department of International Studies,
Hanover College, USA
Email: [email protected]
# 2010, Mi Yung Yoon
DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2010.513578
Zambia, then and now, by William D. Grant, London, Routledge. 2009, 328 pp.
including index, black and white photographs, ISBN 97807 1031 3430
This book is a contribution to a genre that dates back at least as far as Kenneth
Bradley’s classic Diary of a district officer (1943), which was based on a diary of
administrative tours undertaken by its author in 1938 in the Fort Jameson (now
Chipata) district of the Eastern Province of Northern Rhodesia, and which includes
Robin Short’s African sunset (1973), a slightly regretful account of decolonisation.
They are all memoirs by colonial officials, district officers and district commis-
sioners, who served in the provincial administration of the country that is now
Zambia. Bill Grant, an Edinburgh University history graduate, was a member of one
of the last, though not quite the last, batches of recruits to the colonial service in
Africa. He arrived in Northern Rhodesia in 1958 and served for only one tour of
three years, leaving the country in 1961. He served in two districts in the North
Western Province, Mwinilunga on the borders of Angola and the Congo, the scene of
major social anthropological studies of the Lunda by Victor and Edith Turner �under Robin Short � and Kasempa, a slightly more accessible district, which was
described in some detail by the British South Africa Company official and amateur
social anthropologist, F H. (Frank) Melland in his study, In witchbound Africa
(1923).
The book consists of three unequal parts. The first half deals with Grant’s
experience from 1958 to 1961. Although it covers fairly well-trodden ground, this is
probably the most useful part of the book, dealing with the recruitment, training,
and the varied roles of a district officer as, inter alia, magistrate, tax collector,
mediator, as well as road and sanitation engineer. It is still surprising to read, though
this reviewer can confirm it from his own teenage experience of the Mkushi and
Balovale (Zambezi) districts, that three or four officials could in the last days of
empire administer an area of 10,000 square miles with a population of 30,000 people,
with the support of no more than 15 district messengers, with no resident police force
or special branch, while living at bomas (district headquarters), where houses could
not be locked for the simple reason that the doors had no locks. Grant sees British
power as based on ‘bluff ’. It is surprising how little awareness he displays of the
emergence of African nationalism, or of events in the neighbouring Congo. His
decision to leave after three years does, however, appear to have been based on the
realisation that colonial rule had no great future, though he acknowledges that he
528 Book reviews
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would at the time of his departure have anticipated Zambia’s independence as
coming in 1974 rather than 1964.
The second part of the book is a somewhat superfluous and sketchy account of
the political history of Zambia from independence to 2006, while the last third of thebook describes the author’s return visit to Zambia in 2006 after an absence of 45
years. His description of his return visits to Mwinilunga and Kasempa, which are
well away from the usual tourist track, are engaging. Everywhere he goes he and his
wife are warmly welcomed, though not remembered. The highlights are his
attendance at the installation of a new Chieftainess Ikelenge and his welcome by
the Lunda chief, Kanongesha. A comparison of this book with Bradley’s Diary of a
district officer would shed some light on the vicissitudes of the chieftaincy in Zambia
from its re-invention with the introduction of ‘indirect rule’ in the 1920s and 1930sthrough decolonisation to its later revival by the MMD government in the 1990s. The
admission of a man doing something like Grant’s old job in Mwinilunga’s somewhat
dilapidated boma offices in 2006, and that decisions on local expenditure on road-
building, for example, would be made in Lusaka, suggest that in that respect,
anyway, little has changed. The same source seems to be as sceptical as Grant is
about the possibilities for local democracy in Zambia.
This is a useful book, which is well written, has good illustrations, and sheds
some light on the history of two of Zambia’s most remote and least known districtsin the last 50 years.
Hugh Macmillan
African Studies Centre,
Oxford University, UK
Email: [email protected]
# 2010, Hugh Macmillan
DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2010.513579
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