Imagining Village Life in Zambian Fiction

The dualism between the urban and the rural space, and between the systems of social relationships obtaining in each sphere, has proved to be an enduring source of inspiration to African fictional writers since the inception of the genre. Many studies of the genre, however, have failed to recognise the extent to which literary representations of the town and the village have changed over time. Using the case of Zambia, this paper argues that African ideas about the city and the country - and their literary expressions - are historically contingent and rooted in specific socio-economic contexts

Historical and Ethnographical Publications in the Vernaculars of Colonial Zambia: Missionary Contribution to the 'Creation of Tribalism'

This essay examines the chronology and attributes of literate ethno-history in Northern Rhodesia. While the earliest published authors were invariably members of missionary societies whose evangelical policies were predisposed towards the christianization of local chieftaincies, the expansion and Africanization of vernacular historiography from the late 1930s owed much to the intervention of the colonial government in the publishing sphere. A survey of their contents shows that vernacular histories and ethnographies mirrored the preconceptions and preoccupations typical of the times of their composition. By placing these texts in the political and economic context of the colony, and by providing new data on their wide circulation among literate Africans, the article contends that published ethno-histories were one of the principal cultural components of the process of crystallization of ethnic identities in the middle and late colonial era

The Origins, Context and Political Significance of the Mushala Rebellion against the Zambian One-Party State

The article focuses on the origins, context, and political significance of Adamson Mushala's rebellion against the Zambian one-party state. While making no substantial military gains, Mushala succeeded in destabilizing the North-Western Province, the site of his insurgency, and creating an atmosphere of fear and paranoia among local and national leaders of the ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP). The Zambian postcolonial state was threatened by the enduring relevance of such allegiances. Mushala capitalized on the strength of local systems of ethnic affiliation, following in the footsteps of chieftain authorities, who had expressed their rejection of UNIP's national project by leading their people across the barely visible colonial borders separating an enduring Lunda polit

Reassessing the Significance of Firearms in Central Africa: The Case of North-Western Zambia to the 1920s

Based on a close examination of European travelogues and the evidence produced in the wake of the formulation of colonial gun policies, this article contends that the significance of firearms in Central Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been unduly played down in the existing literature. The first substantive section of the article charts the movement of the gun frontier in nineteenth-century north-western Zambia. It foregrounds the new technology’s economic and military applications, the means through which north-western Zambians overcame some at least of its limitations, and the plurality of innovative social roles that they attributed to it. Successive sections centre on the pervasiveness of gun-running in the early twentieth century and the implementation and profound social consequences of gun control laws

Review

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A political history of the Kingdom of Kazembe, Zambia.

This is a study of the eastern Lunda kingdom of Kazembe, the political history of which has never received detailed treatment despite its indisputable regional significance between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth century. This work differs from most monographic studies of the history of the eastern savanna of Central Africa in its attempt to examine both the pre-colonial and the colonial experiences of the Kazembe kingdom. This approach reflects awareness of the manipulability of historical consciousness and the extent to which oral sources were moulded by the colonial context. The implementation of a flexible set of symbols and institutions of rule was the principal contribution of the rulers of the Kazembe kingdom to the political transformation of the territory to the east of the upper Lualaba River. It enabled them to wield a measure of influence over peripheral societies in both southern Katanga and the plateau to the east of the lower Luapula valley, the heartland of the kingdom and an ecological niche conducive to the development of political complexity and centralization. The disparity between the articulations of political control in the heartland and the periphery, together with the role of long-distance trade and the growing importance of external influences and threats, are essential to understand the decline of the power of the eastern Lunda in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was a much enervated polity which faced British and Belgian empire-builders in the last decade of the century. The kingdom was easily subdued, but the aspirations of its rulers lived on throughout the colonial period. An examination of the interactions between Lunda leaders, British officials and subjects of both shows that the royal family was better placed than the aristocracy to take advantage of the new political circumstances and answer the challenges of economic change and mission education. The furtherance of a new ethno-history was another manifestation of the fundamental adaptability of the royal family

Guerrilla Warfare in Katanga: The Sanga Rebellion of the 1890s and Its Suppression

This article discusses the origins and development of the Sanga insurgency of the 1890s with a view to demonstrating that, contrary to commonly held stereotypes, pre-colonial warfare was neither simple nor unchanging. Its tactics, it is argued here, repay the sort of close analysis commonly reserved for other typologies and theatres of war. The Yeke, against whose exploitative system of rule the Sanga and their allies rose up in 1891, survived the onslaught by entering into a strategic alliance with Lofoi, a newly established station of the Congo Free State, and its limited contingent of regular Force Publique troops. An in-depth examination of the joint Yeke-Force Publique counterinsurgency campaign leads to the conclusion that the novelty of the ‘small wars’ that accompanied the Scramble for Africa should not be overstated. In southern Katanga and, by implication, elsewhere, these confrontations were shaped by processes of mutual borrowing in which African military practices and even political aims were not necessarily subordinate to European ones

'Debating 'The Rediscovery of Liberalism' in Zambia: Responses to Harri Englund

In Africa 83(4) (November 2013), Harri Englund discussed several recent books on Zambia published preceding the country’s fiftieth independence anniversary. His article explored the ways in which recent publications by Zambian and Zambianist authors have launched a fresh research agenda, and he focused in particular on the scholarly engagement with liberalism. Below, we publish responses from David M.Gordon, Bizeck Jube Phiri and Giacomo Macola, whose work was discussed in this article, and a comment by James Ferguson on more scholarly directions

Engolo and Capoeira. From Ethnic to Diasporic Combat Games in the Southern Atlantic

This article provides a re-examination of the main Afrocentric narrative of capoeira origins, the engolo or ‘Zebra Dance’, in light of historical primary sources and new ethnographic evidence gathered during fieldwork in south-west Angola. By examining engolo’s bodily techniques, its socio-historical context and cultural meanings, the piece emphasises its insertion into a pastoral lifestyle and highlights the relatively narrow ethnic character of the practice in Angola. This analysis and the comparison with capoeira helps us to develop certain hypotheses about the formation, migration, and re-invention of diasporic combat games between southern Angola and coastal Brazil, and more broadly, to increase our understanding of how African cultures spread across the southern Atlantic