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History with a Mission: Abraham Kawadza and Narratives of Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Extract
He was the first man who was clever enough to realize he could sell some green maize at the mine in Penhalonga… Even to build the good houses, you had to come and copy from Kawadza. To buy ploughshares, they had to come and copy from Kawadza… Even those who bought cars, they had to copy from Kawadza… Chief Gandanzara used to walk on foot whenever he wanted to meet anyone. But because of seeing Kawadza riding a horse, he himself decided to ride on a horse… We can say in Mani-caland, or we can say in Zimbabwe, most of the good things were started with Kawadza.
Histories of Africa produced during the colonial period generally begin with the premise that indigenous societies existed in a timeless, static condition. The sort of broad social changes that formed the very basis of history had seemingly never occurred within Africa. Therefore history in Africa began with early European contacts and colonial-era accounts proceeded to chronicle the variety of European activities in Africa. Even more than most Europeans in the colonies, missionaries viewed themselves as direct agents of change and therefore creators of history. Their personal accounts, usually written for public consumption back home, inevitably included both struggles and successes inherent to mission work. More specifically, in their accounts of agricultural change among African societies, missionaries frequently attempted to script for themselves the central role as protagonists driving a story of progress and civilization. In order to highlight the problematic nature of missionary accounts and their influence on other interpretations, I examine here a variety of historical sources relating to Abraham Kawadza. His life experiences support a self-peasantization approach to rural history that challenges any mission-centric interpretation of agrarian change in colonial Zimbabwe.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 2006
References
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