Whiteness in Zimbabwe

“One thinks, for example, of Gqola’s (2010) analysis of memories of slavery – at times nostalgic, at times effaced – in contemporary cultures of memory in South Africa; or of nostalgic narratives that frequently structure conservation discourse (Hughes 2010).”

“Without necessarily calling it ‘historical EIDs’, the literature abounds with examples of ‘environmental colonialism’ (Nelson 2003): from coercive conservation in Indonesia (Peluso 1993) via resource displacements in Namibia (Bridge 2001) to colonisers romancing the land and so writing themselves outside of local soci…”

“…opposing, social groups and authorities (e.g. Moore 2005; Fontein 2015); those few white farmers who maintained access to (a portion of ) their land (Hughes 2010); (former) farm workers trying to adjust to new farming arrangements with white farmers (Hartnack 2016; Rutherford 2017) or, more…”

“The desire to become local, he explains, entailed a manipulation of space evident, for example, in irrigated waterscapes meant to transform African land into European hearth (McDermott Hughes 2010:29–69).”

“…PDF | (2015:07:5856:2:0:NEW 1 Dec 2015) 92 In 2000, Zimbabwe entered the fast-track phase of its land reform programme, whereby private 93 land was redistributed to African settlers, often taken by force and without payment of 94 compensation for the land (Cliffe et al., 2011; Hughes, 2010).”

“…such as game and water, from varied portions of the Zambezi where they were forcibly removed from in the 1950s to pave way for the Kariba dam construction (see Colson, 1971; Hughes, 2010; Mashingaidze, 2013; Matanzima, 2018; McGregor, 2003a, 2003b; McGregor, 2008; McGregor, 2009; Saidi, 2016).”

“…and South Africa, settlers who chose to stay following independence had to hone and perfect their arguments for belonging once the political tides turned against them (see Rutherford 2001; Steyn 2001; Uusihakala 2008; Hughes 2010; Pilosoff 2012; Schroeder 2012; Gressier 2015; McIntosh 2016).”

“More specific here, was how representation enabled the reversal of whites’ minority position, and how the Biosphere process enabled them to find ways of engaging society and being players in the statist project of deracialisation and rural transformation (see also Hughes 2010).”

“The BaTonga, who had borne the social cost of its creation, lost their place in its history (Hughes, 2010).”

“Much of the economic activities along the Zambezi valley, as Hughes (2010) notes, is owned and controlled by Western business people as well as powerful government officials leaving manual jobs in the lodges and hotels as well as Safaris being manned by hired BaTonga.”

“Finally, this article also engages with the debate set off by the work of Hughes (2010) on whiteness in Zimbabwe (Hammar 2012; Hartnack 2014; Hughes 2010), in a bid to ethnographically illustrate some of the nuances of White Zimbabweans’ interactions with the state and with their Black neighbours…”

“One of these innovations, we show, is through environmental conservation, which in turn in southern Africa depends on deep cultural and social attachments that whites have built with land and nature in order to belong in and to Africa (Büscher, 2016; Hughes, 2010; Koot, 2015).”

“…‘titillated’ readers with the prospect of an African uprising but almost never saw any rational or reasonable motivations behind that uprising, even as it was taking place (see Chennells 1995, 102–129 for a history of titillations; Primorac 2006, 66–67; McDermott Hughes 2010, 7–13; Withers 2015).”

“…the bush, show strong conservation values, feel emotionally and sometimes spiritually attached to their surroundings, have lots of detailed knowledge about the environment and tend to gain from it economically, just as in some places in Botswana and Zimbabwe (Gressier 2008, 163–164; Hughes 2010).”

“As shown by Hughes (2005, 2010), white settlers in Rhodesia identified with nature and landscapes rather than with people to create a sense of belonging and identity for themselves.”

“Whites found a sense of belonging in the intersection of white identity and the project of nature conservation landscapes (Carruthers 1989; McDermott Hughes 2010).”

“Since his Zimbabwe section is based entirely, and uncritically, on Hughes (2010), it will not be discussed here.”

“…is a process that started from around the year 2000 and involved the massive transfer of land from a minority 4500 commercial farmers of European white descent to indigenous black Zimbabweans, the majority of whom were rural peasants (Hanlon et al., 2013; Hughes, 2010; Moyo & Yeros, 2011).”

“This space was reserved for whites-only recreational use and designated as a nature reserve from which blacks were excluded (McDermott Hughes 2010, 33–45).”

“These city residents, when present in scholarship on infrastructure or city life, are often there as “ people against infrastructure ” — as displaced by the construction of dams or roads (Hughes 2010), as skeptical of 29.”

“…roaming around through ‘the wide open spaces’, by learning to know the contours and characters of the landscape and their own ways in it, the children formed an affective relationship with the land, which was considered constitutive in the making of settler citizens (Uusihakala 2008; Hughes 2010).”

“President Mugabe is quoted saying: “We want whites to learn that the land belongs to Zimbabweans”.5 During this period the farm occupations and the government “recast Zimbabwean whites as European settlers — minus colonial power” (Hughes, 2010: 109).”

“The events of this period are well documented in Alexander (2004), Hughes (2010), Fisher (2010) and Pilossof (2012).”

“However, any African context calls forth double attention since the colonialism reconfigured the landscape through its systems and forces; “deleting” and even renaming the environment in some cases (Hughes 2010).”

“In a sense, Robert Mugabe, the poster face of the reform and his native acolytes were depicted as bestial tyrants, “munts,” monkeys, environmental pagans or “. . . fucking baboons who fell out a tree [sic] . . .” (Hughes, 2010, p. xvi).”

“The nostalgia here seems to be explicitly connected to the land itself, an idea which has been thoroughly explored in David McDermott Hughes’s (2010) work on whiteness in Zimbabwe.”

“According to Hughes (2010), this was because white hegemony over land amounted to a form of white-Zimbabwean sovereignty incompatible with the sovereignty of a nationalist government.”

“Encountering societies drastically foreign to Europe, domestic spaces have served as “neo-Europes” (Hughes 2010, 132) where traditions, rituals and powers structures of various kinds can be practised and proselytised (Pels 1997, 173).”

“3 Such a position has been argued by David McDermott Hughes in his book Whiteness in Zimbabwe, for example (Hughes 2010).”

“Forcing categories on participants might have been perceived as unpleasant or unethical and could have potentially undermined engagement, given the colonial and Apartheid histories (Funada-Classen 2013; Ginsburgh 2022; Hughes 2010; Limb et al. 2010; Mgadla 2014).”

“Unlike in North America and Australia where whites “used violence to empty their land, [in Zimbabwe] Euro-Africans had to imagine the natives away” (Hughes, 2010: xii; emphasis in original).”

“Author: Mark Nyandoro1,2 Affiliations: 1Department of Economic History, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe 2School of Social Sciences, History Group, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa Corresponding author: Mark Nyandoro, nyandoromark@gmail.com Dates: Received: 03 Mar. 2019 Accepted: 02 Aug. 201…”

“…of narratives (Bakhtin 1986), the settler narrative underwent a process of ecdysis, from an overtly racially tinged worldview to a post-independence covert narrative shrouded in uncertainty, suspicion, fear, and ephemeral ownership in which whites’ status was reduced (Dube 2020b; Hughes 2010).”

“However, couched in the political discourses were questions of belonging, of who was Zimbabwean and who was not as well as what it meant to be Zimbabwean (Seirlis 2004; Hughes 2010).”

“Thus, as David McDermott-Hughes (2010) has argued, whites such as the Fullers find an awkward sense of belonging in postcolonial Africa.”