Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Whites and Water: How Euro-Africans Made Nature at Kariba Dam

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 32; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070600996846

1465-3893

David McDermott Hughes,

Anthropological Studies and Insights

Abstract At Lake Kariba, conservation policies protect cultural heritage. In 1958, engineers created the lake by damming the Zambezi River. Over the next five years, the reservoir flooded 5,580 square km, displacing 57,000 Tonga farmers and destroying more habitat than any single human action ever had before. In response to this devastation, whites – particularly conservation-minded writers and photographers – expressed their shock and alarm. Gradually, however, they grew to accept the artificial lake, for the lake answered a deep European longing for water in inland, semi-arid Africa. Kariba Dam did the work of glaciers, carving intricate 'fjords' and 'lochs' in a country that previously lacked any shoreline at all. With Kariba, whites imported their hydrological heritage, and they found the lake to be beautiful. Writers soon called it 'nature' and advocated for its protection. Kariba thus exemplifies what has been until recently a hidden tension in ecological conservation: the tolerance – indeed, celebration – of history and cultural heritage. Until now, Euro-Zimbabwean heritage has benefited disproportionately from that tolerance. Notes * I am grateful to the University of Zimbabwe's Department of Economic History for hosting me while I conducted the research for this article in 2002 and 2003. They and the Programme on Land and Agrarian Studies (University of the Western Cape), the British Institute in Eastern Africa (at the 'Heritage' conference in Livingstone, Zambia) and St. Antony's College (Oxford University) also furnished me with opportunities to present versions of the article to critical audiences. The Zambezi River Authority granted me access to their archives in Kariba. In Harare, Eira and Kezia Kramer assisted with further library and archival research and, at Rutgers, Mike Siegel, Bill Landesman and Mona Bhan helped with figures and formats. For the conclusions, I alone bear responsibility. 1 Ranked behind the Nile, Congo and Niger, the Zambezi is 2,660 km long and drains 1,330,000 km2. 2 In surface area, Kariba was the largest reservoir until Egypt's Aswan High Dam. In capacity, Kariba has always been the third-largest reservoir in the world. 3 The Corporation is now known as the Zambezi River Authority. 4 R. White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York, Hill and Wang, 1995). 5 R. Smithers, 'The Kariba Lake', Oryx, 5, 1 (1959), p. 21. 6 The quotation derives from a tourist brochure of the late 1990s. See I. Murphy, Kariba, Africa's Best Kept Secret (Kariba, Kariba Publicity Association, No date). 7 A related paper discusses, in greater detail, the rich post-independence writing on Lake Kariba. D. Hughes, 'In Whitest Africa: Environmental Racism on the Zambezi River' (paper presented to the Conference on 'Environmental Justice Abroad', Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA, 16 October 2004). 11 J.M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1988), p. 62. 8 P. Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 42. 9 Federal Information Department, Rhodesia and Nyasaland: A Travel Guide in Pictures (Salisbury, Federal Information Department, no date). 10 A. Moravia, Which Tribe do you Belong to? (New York, Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1974), p. 8; M. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, Routledge, 1992), p. 219. 12 J.M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1988), p. 38. 16 D. Lessing, Landlocked (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1958), p. 199. Regarding the dam itself, Lessing condemned both the exploitation of African labourers in the construction and the forced relocation of Tonga people. See D. Lessing, 'The Kariba Project', New Statesman, 51 (9 June 1956), p. 647. 13 On land distribution, see M. Rukuni, 'The Evolution of Agricultural Policy, 1890–1990', in M. Rukuni and C. Eicher (eds), Zimbabawe's Agricultural Revolution (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Press, 1994), p. 16 ; on population, see A. Davies, 'From Rhodesian to Zimbabwean and Back: White Identity in an African Context' (PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2001), p. 207; and P. Godwin and I. Hancock, 'Rhodesians Never Die': The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c. 1979–1980 (Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 287. 14 D. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1987), pp. 2–3. 15 C. Magadza, 'The Distribution, Ecology, and Economic Importance of Lakes in Southern Africa', in M. Tumbare (ed.), Management of River Basins and Dams: The Zambezi River Basin (Rotterdam, Balkema, 2000), pp. 283–95. 17 The quotation derives from a tourist magazine. Anonymous, 'Africa's Do-it-yourself Seaside Resort', Africa Calls from Zimbabwe, 168 (1998), pp. 20–21. 18 I use the phrase 'Euro-Africans' for whites resident in Africa. Rhodesian officials sometimes employed the same term to denote 'coloured' or mixed-race individuals. I thank Brian Raftopoulos for alerting me to this possible confusion. 19 Matusadona is sometimes spelled 'Matusadonha'. 20 Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Act (1975), sections 12(1)(a), 26(1) and 31(1). The citations refer to national parks, safari areas and recreational parks, respectively. 21 Because of its interest in the impact of writing on policy via public opinion, this article examines only published, popular works and excludes correspondence, unpublished reports and scientific papers. 22 N. Langston, Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2003); J. McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid (New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1971). For Africa see J. Adams and T. McShane, The Myth of Wild Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992); J. Carruthers, The Kruger National Park: A Social and Political History (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1995); T. Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture, and History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe (Bloomington, University of Indiana Press and Oxford, UK, James Curry, 1999). 23 M. Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (New York, Dell, 1991). 24 J. McPhee, Basin and Range (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), p. 20. 25 M. Main, Zambezi: Journey of a River (Halfway House, South Africa, Southern Book Publishers, 1990), p. 5. 26 D. and C. Livingstone, Narratives of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries (London, John Murray, 1865), pp. 324–5. 27 The name 'Kariba' probably arose at this point as a corruption of 'Kariwa'. See J. McGregor, '"The Great River": European and African Images of the Zambezi' (paper presented to the 'A View of the Land' conference, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 2000) and J. Moore, 'A Dam on Zambezi', National Archives of Rhodesia Occasional Papers, 1 (1965), pp. 41–59. 28 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay. 29 H. de Lassoe, 'The Zambezi River (Victoria Falls-Chinde): A Boat Journey of Exploration, 1903', Proceedings of the Rhodesia Scientific Association, 8, 1 (1908), pp. 19–50. 30 A. St. Hill Gibbons, 'The Nile and Zambezi systems as Waterways', Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, 32 (1900–1901), p. 81. 33 Earl, Crocodile Fever, p. 141. 31 L. Earl, Crocodile Fever: A True Story of Adventure (London, Collins, 1954). Dempster did apparently exist and was remembered by Ian Nyschens, who hunted in the Zambezi Valley beginning in the 1940s. See I. Nyschens, Months of the Sun (Long Beach, CA, Safari Press, 1997). Interview, Harare, 16 July 2003. 32 Earl, Crocodile Fever, p. 97. 34 On pastoral nostalgia, see R. Williams, The Country and the City (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973). 38 F. Clements, Kariba: The Struggle with the River God (London, Methuen, 1959), p. 13. For a similar interpretation of Clements and related authors, see L. Jarosz, 'Constructing the Dark Continent: Metaphor as Geographic Representation of Africa', Geografiska Annaler, 74B, 2 (1992), pp. 110–11. 35 In 1959, South African News Agencies compiled a book without author: Lake Kariba: The Story of the World's Biggest Man-Made Lake (Bloemfontein, South Africa, the Friend Newspapers, Ltd, and the Central News Agency, Ltd., 1959). This volume, however, sold few copies and was only revived from complete obscurity when Colin Gillies reprinted it in C. Gillies, Kariba at the Millennium, 1950–2000 (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Colin Gillies, 1999). 36 D. Howarth, The Shadow of the Dam (New York, Macmillan, 1961), p. 1. 37 D. Howarth, The Shadow of the Dam (New York, Macmillan, 1961), p. 29. 39 E. Colson, The Social Consequences of Resettlement (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1971) and T. Scudder, The Ecology of the Gwembe Tonga (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1962). 40 E. Balneaves, Elephant Valley: The Adventures of J. McGregor Brooks, Game and Tsetse Officer, Kariba (New York, Rand McNally, 1963), opposite p. 64. 41 Howarth, The Shadow of the Dam, pp. vi–vii, 21. 42 The 3-km restriction has not been widely enforced. The Department of National Parks has, however, actively prevented smallholders from cultivating or grazing cattle within the soak zone (the band between high- and low-water marks, which can extend to a width of more than 1 km) (Michael Murphree, personal communication, 3 March 2005). 43 Regarding restrictions on agriculture, see I. Malasha, 'Fisheries Co-management: Comparative Analysis of Zambian and Zimbabwean Inshore Fisheries of Lake Kariba' (PhD thesis, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, 2002), pp. 178–9; M. Bourdillon, A.P. Cheater and M. Murphree, Studies of Fishing on Lake Kariba (Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 1985), pp. 15–25. References on contemporary economic conditions among Valley Tonga resettled in Zimbabwe include: V. Dzingirai, 'The New Scramble for the African Countryside', Development and Change, 34, 2 (2003), pp. 248–9; C. Mavhunga, 'Sold Down the River? Forced Resettlement and Landscape Transformation: Lessons from the Kariba Dam, 1950–63' (unpublished paper, 2001), pp. 16–18; P. Reynolds, Dance Civet Cat: Child Labor in the Zambezi Valley (Harare, Baobab and Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 1991), pp. 19–20, 27–31; World Commission on Dams, 'Kariba Dam, Zambia and Zimbabwe' (Cape Town, World Commission on Dams, 2000), pp. 37ff. 44 Clements, Kariba, p. 199. 45 C. Lagus, Operation Noah (New York, Coward-McCann, 1960), p. 103. 46 E. Robins and R. Legge, Animal Dunkirk: The Story of Kariba Dam (New York, Taplinger, 1959), pp. 153–4. 47 The figure usually given, 5,000 animals, excludes those rescued on the Northern Rhodesian side of the Lake. See D. Kenmuir, A Wilderness Called Kariba: The Wildlife and Natural History of Lake Kariba, Pungwe, Sabi, Lundi, and Limpopo Rivers (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Stuart Manning, 1978), p. 25. 48 Robins and Legge, Animal Dunkirk, opposite p. 48; the cover of Lagus, Operation Noah; and a later biography of Fothergill: K. Meadows, Rupert Fothergill: Bridging a Conservation Era (Bulawayo, Thorntree Press, 1981). 49 During the rescue, game officers also developed techniques of tranquilising – notably with the drug M99 – and translocating large mammals. In the 1990s, those methods enabled the stocking of private conservancies and protected areas in Zimbabwe, South Africa and elsewhere. 50 E. Balneaves writes, '[N]ot all of man's vast and complex schemes for his own advancement can cancel out the trail of suffering left behind' (Balneaves, Elephant Valley, p. 159). 51 Genesis IX: 13–15; quoted in Robins and Legge, Animal Dunkirk, p. 175. 52 Genesis IX: 13–15; quoted in Robins and Legge, Animal Dunkirk, p. 182. 53 Some academics embraced these utopian dreams as well. See M. Cole, 'The Kariba Project', Geography, 45, 1–2 (1960), pp. 98–105; M. Cole, 'The Rhodesian Economy in Transition and the Role of Kariba', Geography, 47, 1 (1962), pp. 15–40; W. Reeve, 'Progress and Geographical Significance of the Kariba Dam', Geographic Journal, 126, 2 (1960), pp. 140–6. 54 Robins and Legge, Animal Dunkirk, p. 175, emphasis added. 55 Robins and Legge, Animal Dunkirk, p. 183. 56 Clements, Kariba, p. 213. 58 Robins and Legge, Animal Dunkirk, p. 152. 57 In this sense, the myth is a falsehood that plays the same rhetorical role as the true story of a glacial lake on the Columbia River, roughly where the Grand Coulee Dam now sits. See White, The Organic Machine, p. 57. The true geological history of the mid-Zambezi valley goes as follows: the proto-upper Zambezi flowed into the Limpopo valley until roughly 5 million years ago. Uplifting trapped the water in what is now northern Botswana, it formed an enormous lake. Between 3 and 5 million years ago, the lake overflowed into the proto-lower Zambezi valley. See Main, Zambezi, pp. 5–8. 59 Interview, Bristol, UK, 24 February 2003. 60 Kariba became doubly important for vacationers when Mozambique closed the border in 1976, cutting off Rhodesians' access to the popular seaside resort of Beira. 61 J. Davis, Hold my Hand I'm Dying (London, Michael Joseph, 1967). 62 Davis's 1984 novel is Seize the Reckless Wind (Glasgow, Collins, 1984). 63 J. Davis, Operation Rhino (London, Michael Joseph, 1972). 64 Cloete's remark appears on the frontispiece of Davis, Hold my Hand. 67 This concept – an alternative to African nationalism – underlay the 1953–1963 Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, pp. 30–32. 68 This concept – an alternative to African nationalism – underlay the 1953–1963 Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, p. 94. 65 Cloete's remark appears on the frontispiece of Davis, Hold my Hand, p. 1. 66 This concept – an alternative to African nationalism – underlay the 1953–1963 Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. 74 Davis, Hold my Hand, pp. 504–5. 69 This concept – an alternative to African nationalism – underlay the 1953–1963 Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, p. 111. 70 This concept – an alternative to African nationalism – underlay the 1953–1963 Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, p. 127. 71 Interview, Coin, Spain, 13 January 2004. 72 Throughout anglophone Southern Africa, whites adopted this term for Hitler's 1934 murder of SA leaders. For a South Africa reference, see R. Malan, My Traitor's Heart (London, Vintage, 1991), p. 185. 73 For a similar interpretation, see A. Chennells, 'Rhodesian Discourse, Rhodesian Novels and the Zimbabwe Liberation War', in N. Bhebhe and T. Ranger (eds), Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War, Volume 2 (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Press, 1995), p. 111. 75 U. de Woronin, Zambezi Trails (Salisbury, Regal Publishers, 1976), p. 22. 76 U. de Woronin, Zambezi Trails (Salisbury, Regal Publishers, 1976), p. 11. 77 U. de Woronin, Zambezi Trails (Salisbury, Regal Publishers, 1976), p. 17. 78 U. de Woronin, Zambezi Trails (Salisbury, Regal Publishers, 1976), p. 2. 79 D. Kenmuir, A Wilderness Called Kariba: The Wildlife and Natural History of Lake Kariba (Salisbury, Wilderness Publications, 1978). Still widely read, this book sold 6,000 copies in three printings. Less widely-circulated scientific works include E. Balon and A. Coche (eds), Lake Kariba: A Man-Made Ecosystem in Central Africa (The Hague, Junk, 1974) and J. Moreau (ed.), Advances in the Ecology of Lake Kariba (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Press, 1997). 80 Kenmuir, A Wilderness Called Kariba, p. 107. 81 Kenmuir, A Wilderness Called Kariba, pp. 94–95. 82 Kenmuir, A Wilderness Called Kariba, p. 139. 83 D. Kenmuir, Sing of Black Gold (Pretoria, De Jager-HAUM publishers, 1991). 84 Interview, by telephone, 7 June 2004. 85 Interview, Fishhoek, South Africa, 17 May 2004. 89 Wannenburgh, Rhodesian Legacy, p. 27. 86 Wannenburgh spent only four days at Lake Kariba, most of it in the company of the noted tour operator and photographer Jeff Stutchbury, whose work was later published in J. and V. Stutchbury, Spirit of the Zambezi (London, CBC Publishing, 1992). For recent research on lakeshore Panicum, see C. Skarpe, 'Ecology of the Vegetation in the Draw-down Zone of Lake Kariba', in Moreau, Advances in the Ecology of Lake Kariba, pp. 120–38. 87 A. Wannenburgh, Rhodesian Legacy (Cape Town, Struik, 1978), p. 22. 88 Interview, Muizenberg, South Africa, 20 May 2004. 94 Rayner, Tantalika, pp. 164–5. 90 R. Rayner, The Valley of Tantalika: An African Wild Life Story (Bulawayo, Books of Zimbabwe, 1980). Tantalika was republished in 1984 by MacDonald Purnell (Johannesburg) and in 1990 and 1999 by Baobab Books (Harare). 91 Rayner, Tantalika, p. 34. 92 Rayner, Tantalika, p. 74. 93 Rayner, Tantalika, p. 162. 95 D. Pitman, Wild Places of Zimbabwe (Bulawayo, Books of Zimbabwe, 1980), p. 164. 96 Interview, Harare, 30 June 2003. In a tourist magazine, Pitman writes that the apparent nature 'is superficial, of course, because it cloaks a turmoil of ecological change. But, in purely aesthetic terms, Kariba produced an amazing variety of new landscapes'. D. Pitman, 'The Mighty Zambezi: Part Two, the Inland Sea', Africa Calls from Zimbabwe, 140 (1983), p. 11. 97 At its height in the early 1990s, the Zambezi Society had roughly 1,000 members, including around 100 black members (interview, Harare, 20 May 2003). 98 In the magazine of the Wildlife Society – another nearly all-white conservation group –– Pitman excoriated the 'insidious attitude that 'Mana has already been killed by Kariba, so why bother with it any more?'. See D. Pitman, 'The Zambezi Group', Zimbabwe Wildlife, 32, 10 (1983), p. 10; D. Pitman, 'The Mighty Zambezi: Part Three, the Middle Valley, Africa Calls from Zimbabwe, 141 (1983), p. 27. 99 For a critique of the idea of wilderness in American thought, see W. Cronon, 'The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature', in W. Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, Norton, 1995), pp. 69–90. 100 Pitman, Wild Places, p. 190. Certainly, some writers and photographers still found Kariba ugly. Thus, they chose to publish on other more attractive places, allowing the redemption of Kariba to continue unchallenged. John Struthers, who published three books on Mana Pools (including J. Struthers, The Life and Death of a Pool [Shrewsbury, UK, Swan Hill Press, 1993]), photographed buffaloes eating Panicum in Matusadona, but did not publish the photos. The buffaloes looked sick 'because it is an unnatural situation. They all got river fluke' (interview, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 18 May 2004). 101 R. Heath, 'The National Survey of Outdoor Recreation in Zimbabwe', Zambezia, 13, 1 (1986), pp. 30–1. 102 M. Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York, Vintage, 1998), pp. 11–14; M. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 225–6; H. Raffles, In Amazonia: A Natural History (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 101. 103 D. Pitman, Zimbabwe Portrait (Harare, Modus Publications, no date), p. 52. This book sold roughly 10,000 copies, as well. 104 Interview, Harare, 30 June 2003. 105 D. Kenmuir, The Catch (Cape Town, Maskew Miller Longman, 1993), p. 57. 106 Interview, by telephone, 7 June 2004. 107 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 62. 108 For a similar argument, see Raffles, In Amazonia, p. 62. 109 A. Wilson, The Culture of Nature (Toronto, Between the Lines, 1991). The dichotomy is equivalent to Lefebvre's more famous distinction between 'landscapes of production' and 'landscapes of consumption'. See H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Cambridge, UK, Blackwell, 1991). 110 In creating a new category of 'cultural landscape' – supplementing the earlier 'world heritage site' – UNESCO has already embraced this kind of thinking. In Zimbabwe, UNESCO recently designated the Matopos as a cultural landscape.