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Page 1: Zambia, then and now

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

Journal of Contemporary AfricanStudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjca20

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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Page 2: Zambia, then and now

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

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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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