The messy nexus of land, property rights and race in Southern Africa

by Chido Makunike

Eddie Cross is an MDC MP with strong, frequently publicly articulated views on many issues, including the hot one of land. He has sometimes been referred to as the MDC’s ‘policy advisor,’ so his views on this subject are interesting as a window into the ‘advice’ he gives to his party on this deeply contentious issue. He argues that traditional, communal ownership of land; without individual title deeds, works against ‘development’ and against freedom and democracy. How do his arguments tie into Zimbabwe’s past and present?

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Tradition and the syndrome of the African ‘big man’

Chido Makunike

The details of the recent traditional marriages of two prominent men of power in Zimbabwe may provide some interesting clues to why so much of Africa has failed to rid itself of the ‘big man syndrome.’ Even if a leader is initially elected, all too often he has become powerful beyond what is constitutionally allowed, and has stayed on long after his people are tired of him. While the character of many who have become leaders in modern Africa may be questionable, there are also considerable cultural and social pressures that encourage the emergence of the ‘big man’ mentality once a person gets into a position of power.   

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Land and race in Zimbabwe: A new review, itself worthy of review, of the book ‘Mugabe and the White African’

Mugabe and the White African is a film about a white protagonist’s attempts to resist being moved off his farm by the government of President Robert Mugabe. It played to limited but sympathetic audiences in the West, but made no traction at all in Zimbabwe or anywhere else in the black world, which admittedly was not the target audience anyway. There were very few black reviews of it, and none that were positive. A book of the same name as the film, authored by the film lead’s son in law, has received an interesting scorching review by Percy Zvomuya in the Mail and Guardian.

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Comments on a summary of the new book, Catastrophe: What went wrong in Zimbabwe?

As the fiercest international heat over Zimbabwe's expropriations of land from white farmers dies down, there are now coming increasingly more measured, more fully contexed analyses of how the land imbalance that gave rise to them came about.    

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On Edgar Tekere being officially declared a hero

Would Mugabe & Co dare to try to argue that the late Edgar Tekere did not 'deserve' to be officially declared a 'national hero?' For about 48 hours after his death, that was the question many Zimbabweans pondered as Mugabe and ZANU-PF pondered how best to play a delicate situation.

The suspense is over and indeed, Tekere has officially been declared a national hero and will be buried with all the pomp that goes with that status.

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The two-toed people of Zimbabwe

I stumbled across this account about a group of two-toed people in the Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe. Their condition is said to result from a known genetic condition called ‘ectrodactyly,’ in which the middle three toes on each foot are missing.

I will not reproduce the whole article here and hope that the link to it will remain active, but here are the material highlights:

... known as the ostrich people because of their V-shaped feet. They are the Vadoma, or two-toed tribe, and they provide an unmatched example of genetic effects in a small population, for they have the condition known as ectrodactyly in which the middle three toes are absent.


The Vadoma speak Chikunda (Portuguese) and KoreKore, the language of the Mkorekore tribe. Their features are distinct from other African tribes, and their preoccupations are hunting, trapping wild animals, fishing and gathering wild fruits, roots and honey. I could see one of them with only two toes on each foot, in a V-shape similar to an ostrich’s foot – others had web-like feet.”The condition in the Vadoma is caused by a mutation of chromosome number seven. What they tell us is that a dominantly inherited genetic mutation survives when it has beneficial effects – the tribe’s deformed feet may help with tree climbing.


If they had ventured forth – and expanded their gene pool – it is unlikely the Vadoma would have maintained ectrodactyly.

It’s a fascinating story written by what I guess is a British writer. It is written with sensitivity, and generally avoids the cliches so beloved of western writers on Africa, although he cannot avoid some.

For instance, I have always wondered how exactly a “tribesman” differs from a “regular” man. Westerners love the idea of ‘tribal’ Africa, even though the Tarzan-esque meaning of the word ‘tribe’ for them is completely divorced from its African context.

There are a couple of references to “wild beer,” which is the first time I have heard the term and by implication, that there is “tame beer,” which I guess the writer would consider something like Guinness to be. He appears to be startled at the finding that “their features are distinct from other African tribes,” as if phenotypic variations are unknown or unusual amongst European tribes. Some may also not take kindly to these people being referred to as “the ostrich people.”

Apart from these somewhat tiresome, crudely implied references to the “exoticism” of the “native,” the writer plays it fairly straight and writes an interesting account of a fascinating phenomenon among the Vadoma. I must confess I had never heard of this before.

I wish a Zimbabwean scholar would take this up as a subject of study from the many possible angles. Also, if this trait persists because of inbreeding, I wonder if they might not be entrenching other more harmful genetic traits amongst themselves by the practice. And as suggested by the name “Ostrich people,” as the rest of Zimbabwe crowds in on them or as the youngsters increasingly want to venture beyond the community, they are surely going to face much ridicule, prejudice and discrimination which it will require positive action against.

*Originally posted by CM on April 2, 2007 at zimreview.wordpress.com

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The great cave of Inanke in southern Zimbabwe

What a pleasant shock: an article about Zimbabwe in a leading journal of the 'international media' that has nothing to do with 'The Zimbabwe Crisis!'



JANUARY 23, 2010
Magnificence on Cave Walls
Inanke's prehistoric paintings are a celebration of life
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD

Matobo Hills, Zimbabwe

The trail to the great cave of Inanke in southern Zimbabwe begins confidently with arrows painted on bare patches of granite and soon vanishes into four miles of often pathless wandering through fields of shoulder-high grass, dense scrub forests and formidable thorn bushes. Without the direction of our guide, the archaeologist Paul Hubbard, our group would never have found this cave containing some of the most magnificent prehistoric paintings in the world. But reach the approximately 30-foot-long frieze of intricately varied paintings and you will find it free of the man-made barriers, tourist hype and even substitution by reproductions that prevent modern visitors from directly experiencing most of the ancient sites in Europe.

Inside the Great Inanke Cave

The cave holds a frieze of paintings that are from 5,000 to 10,000 years old.


View Slideshow



David Coulson


Herds of giraffe, eland, kudu, ostrich duiker and more fill a broad painted band running the length of the back wall.

The cave is one of hundreds painted by the San people (commonly called Bushmen) about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and located in what is now Matobo National Park, an area best-known in recent years as a successful sanctuary for white and black rhinoceros. A sign at the entrance cautions visitors that "anyone seen or suspected of poaching activities may be shot on sight," and a ramble to the caves can entail an encounter with these solitary beasts or machine-gun-toting rangers, not to mention ubiquitous packs of baboons raging at trespassers crossing their territories. The park also contains a large population of leopards.

Unlike the dark, underground caves of Lascaux or Altamira in Europe, those in Matobo are located high up granite slopes in shelves scooped from the sides of the hills. They are shelters filled with light and open to surrounding vistas. Beneath Inanke's encompassing dome, herds of giraffe, eland, kudu, ostrich and duiker, among others, fill a broad painted band running the length of the back wall just above eye level. They offer a celebration of life equal to any of the mural cycles of the Renaissance. Generally rendered in silhouettes of ochre ranging from tan to mulberry in tone, this dense profusion of wildlife includes a giraffe so subtly modeled in yellow and white that one of the leading experts on African rock art, Peter Garlake, has called it the finest animal painting in the country. Next to this vivid creature, seven stick-figure men march in file with weapons on their shoulders, and many other human figures are scattered among the animals. But these are far from simple hunting scenes.

A succession of highly unrealistic forms dominate the middle of the frieze and several peripheral areas. One figure towers over the menagerie, an extremely attenuated personage with the body of a man whose head is shrunk to a tiny knob and whose shoulders sprout branchlike stems. His upper torso leans forward as if struggling to stand, and lines of reddish pigment cascade to the ground from his armpits. He stands on two expansive ovals, both filled with dots, a design that is repeated in at least 16 similarly rounded and dotted shapes at the center of the wall. These ciphers define the meaning of the paintings for the San.

Unlike the images in European caves, whose cultures are lost, these can be interpreted with considerable clarity because of the pioneering work of 19th-century linguists who learned the "click" language of the San and recorded beliefs that seem to have endured for millennia. This evidence has enabled archaeologists to unlock the significance of the many fantastic images in the San paintings.

The hunched giant of Inanke almost certainly represents a San shaman deep in the state of "trancing," a ritual still practiced by the San as a means of gathering the forces of nature and healing suffering. Trancing is so grueling that shamans often collapse and bleed from the mouth, nose or armpits, as their imaginative connection to the natural world causes a sensation of enlargement and, sometimes, transformation into an animal or tree (apparently shown at Inanke).


David Coulson,TARA


This giraffe has been called the finest animal painting in Zimbabwe. It's just one of the many treasures found in the Inanke cave.

Fundamental to San beliefs is the concept of "potency," a measure of spiritual essence that is represented in the paintings by the stippled ovals from which the giant rises. While possibly related to beehives prized by the San, these intricately crafted shapes are largely abstract evocations of spiritual forces unifying all of nature. Scattered across the frieze and clustered at the center of Inanke, they suggest a huge reservoir representing an entire community's potency and its integration with the bounteous wildlife thronging around and over it. The dense, overlapping paintings of Inanke probably accumulated over centuries, if not millennia, and do not constitute a continuous narrative in the sense of Western art; yet their very longevity and diversity make them especially compelling expressions of San cosmology. As Mr. Garlake wrote: "For visitors able to reach Inanke, the reward is unsurpassed."

The case of the San is worth particular attention. In 2009, the largest study so far undertaken of genetic diversity among Africans found the San, who once ranged across most of southern Africa, the most diverse of all peoples on the continent. This genetic abundance makes the San the most likely origin of modern humans, the population from which others spread out of Africa and across the world. Inanke and the other San paintings scattered throughout Zimbabwe and the region offer an extraordinary chance to look far back into a past we may all have shared and appreciate the early richness of the human imagination.

Centuries ago, the San were driven from this verdant area into the Kalahari desert to the west, where some live in what is now Botswana and Namibia. Nonetheless, the caves have remained important. They served as hideouts during the war that brought majority rule to Zimbabwe in 1980, and they continue to be shrines revered by many.

In 2003, Unesco's World Heritage Program named Matobo Hills one of two "cultural landscapes" in southern Africa, although this recognition now includes no financial support for conservation. Despite the professionalism of Matobo's rangers, the political and economic instability in Zimbabwe places the paintings in peril. The unrestricted access that is so desirable for admirers leaves the works exposed to defacement by vandals unaware or dismissive of their place in our collective history.

—Mr. FitzGerald teaches the history of modern art at Trinity College.

Wall Street Journal

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