Doctoral Degrees (History)

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Environmental policing in the Tribal Trust Lands and African peasant responses in Zimbabwe, c.1960 – 2005
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Uledi, Peter; Swart, Sandra Scott; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examines African peasant responses to environmental policing in the Tribal Trust Lands in Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) from c.1960, when rural administration and policy were changed, to 2005, when the government nationalised farms acquired through the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. It demonstrates how the colonial state, white settler state and post-colonial state used environmental policies to control, win over and ultimately marginalise peasants. This thesis shows how environmental policies were restrictive to the growth of peasant agriculture and how it impacted on their access to and use of water, forests, and fecund land. It analyses some of the key policies implemented under white-minority rule by Ian Smith and thereafter by the Robert Mugabe government. It demonstrates the varying ways in which these policies impacted in social, economic, environmental, and political mindsets of the African peasant and accounts for their subsequent and shifting attitudes towards the state and its policies. At times implemented to win the hearts and minds of peasants and their chiefs, often these policies were implemented in a coercive and authoritarian way, causing hostility between the state and peasants. This hostility led to a growing peasant consciousness and rural nationalism. Peasant resistance shaped environmental policy from below as the government responded by revising or abandoning certain policies. The study demonstrates that peasants were central in environmental policy changes and that conservation policies were not static but changed over time. These were influenced by key socio-economic and political events. The policies showed the colonial, settler, and post-colonial state’s unwillingness to lose rural control feeding off a state of undeveloped rural areas. Joining the enduring historiographical conversation on environmental and peasant studies, this study demonstrates how peasants navigated various environmental policies instituted (and sometimes forcefully imposed) by the two regimes for survival. Drawing on a global, regional, and Zimbabwean historiography on environmental policies the study explores rural development in relation to state intervention programs through conservation and agriculture. The study localises peasant resistance to conservation policies in Zimbabwe showing that peasants though different from one country to the other, all face similar challenges. Relying on archival, oral interviews and secondary sources, the thesis demonstrates how African peasants were over time able to influence the nature of policymaking as the governments reacted in response to African discontent and pushback.
Women in mining worlds : a socio-environmental history of women in artisanal gold mining in Zimbabwe, with specific reference to Mazowe District, c. 1932 to 2021
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Shaba, Jabulani; Swart, Sandra; Swart, Sandra Scott; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines the socio-environmental history of women in Artisanal Gold Mining (AGM) in Zimbabwe with specific reference to Mazowe, between 1932 and 2021. Using Carlo Ginzburg’s micro-history approach and drawing from the Feminist Political Economy theory, this study joins the growing yet still nascent, scholarship on resource extraction, women, and labour in southern Africa. By examining changes and continuities in the gold mining sector, relying on new evidence from oral interviews, archival data, newspapers, mining reports, international policy reports and secondary literature, the thesis explores the changing roles of women in mining and across ancillary activities such as vending and sex work. Shifting from scholarship that emphasizes the dominant role of politics and patronage, the political economy, and illegality in AGM, this thesis makes a historiographical turn by relating stories of women in mining settlements within the broader context of survival and livelihoods. It demonstrates that women are central to the matrix of capital accumulation, shape artisanal mining life worlds and deftly navigate patriarchy and masculinity. Starting in 1932 with the rise of the white women miners of Rhodesia, the thesis shows how women contributed to gold outputs. The study expands Zimbabwean scholarship on women and the colonial economy by adding women’s participation and voices in the historiography of resource extraction. The period between 1932 and the late 1970s provides a critical historical context to understand dynamics that shaped women’s participation in AGM in the postcolonial period. It demonstrates that white women mine owners benefitted from class, connections, and capital – fundamental aspects that were critical in navigating Zimbabwe’s postcolonial AGM sector. The thesis demonstrates how women shifted from being labourers to gold pit sponsors and entrepreneurs in the post-2000 period. It analyses how they benefitted from local technologies, their networks, how they learnt new skills, tapped into the ritual world in expanding their business enterprises. The thesis engages with how women deployed local knowledges in negotiating toxic mining landscapes. The study explores critical periods in Zimbabwean history such as the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, (FTLRP), the period of Operation Chikorokoza Chapera, (No more illegal gold mining), dollarization and the Covid-19 era to understand women’s lived experiences in localities of resource extraction. Overall, the thesis offers an analysis on rethinking mining labour and livelihoods in Zimbabwe, Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.
Power and hunger : the state, farmers, and the Grain Marketing Board in Zimbabwe, c. 1980-2017
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Mashingauta, Aisha Hatina; Swart, Sandra Scott; Hove, Godfrey; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The thesis uses the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) as lens to explore the anthropogenic nature of hunger in Zimbabwe, from independence in 1980 until 2017, when Robert Mugabe’s regime ended. It explores how key political events and changing economic policies impacted on the GMB. It argues that the GMB, as a parastatal, was used by the government to achieve certain political, personal, and economic goals. Using archival data, newspapers, oral interviews, among other sources, this thesis examines the complex and shifting interface between the ZANU-PF ruling party, the GMB, and farmers and the manner in which these relations induced or worsened food security in the country. It also examines how the changing relationship between the GMB, and farmers impacted on food availability and affordability. In the main, the thesis contends that the GMB was captured by the ruling party and individual politicians for political expediency. It demonstrates that this capture severely altered the trajectory of the GMB and, ultimately, food security in the country. The thesis also examines how the politicization of food, especially grain has resulted in targeted and punitive famines. Given the important role millers play in the agricultural value chain, the thesis also examines how their relations with the GMB and the government also shaped food (in)security. Besides filling a historiographical gap in the existing studies of food and hunger in Zimbabwe, the thesis engages broader historiographical conversations about agricultural marketing boards and the role they play in the food security histories in southern Africa. Finally, it argues that the use of political power to capture the GMB by the state diverted the GMB from its original mandate, thereby inducing or worsening food shortages over time.
A history of border control and trade relations between Zimbabwe and Zambia, c. 1963-2017
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Muguti, Teverayi; Swart, Sandra Scott; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: thesis historicises how different government administrations have implemented border control measures in Zimbabwe, from the dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1963 up to the end of Robert Mugabe’s rule in 2017. Focussing particularly on Zimbabwe, the thesis analyses the different ways in which the state controlled the movement of people, goods, and services across its northern border. This helps in understanding the state and its citizens’ survival against different setbacks including isolation, war, and economic shortages. Through a careful longitudinal historical reconstruction of the Zimbabwe-Zambia relations, the study demonstrates the significance of the border (in all its forms) in shaping the state-to-state interaction between the two neighbouring countries. In addition, the thesis then examines how ordinary people in a typical borderland area (Binga district in Zimbabwe) have negotiated state border security policy in their lives over time, in both quotidian and extraordinary circumstances. I utilise archival documents, the Rhodesia Cory Library (Unprocessed Ian Smith Papers), newspapers, oral data, ethnography, and assorted secondary literature to delineate how the various Zimbabwe border control mechanisms have evolved since 1963. The thesis deploys thematic, narrative, and interpretive phenomenological analyses to examine Zimbabwe state border security policy over time. Quantitative methods are also utilised to analyse the various statistical trends in border occurrences along the Zimbabwe – Zambia border. Adopting the borderlands theoretical framework in delineating the Binga community responses to border security policy, the thesis, adds a new concept of ‘spiritual borders’ to border studies. The beliefs in spiritual borders have influenced some Tonga borderland citizens to have a religious justification for disregarding state border control mechanisms. The thesis argues that state border security policy has not only prioritised macro - interests of the state, but also those of elites and the politically connected while neglecting the (micro) aspirations of ordinary communities from below. However, as further argued, the citizens have not been passive recipients of state policy as they have redefined the border in many ways, utilising it to pursue their own respective personal survival. Understanding of the dynamic contestations over the complex utilisation of state borders helps in syncing modern day state border security policy with the interests of the ordinary people in the borderlands, the rest of Zimbabwe, Africa, and the world at large.
The complexities of heritage production in a South African community from the 1900s to the present : Graaff-Reinet, a case study
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Kayster, Anziske Florenza; Grundlingh, Albert; Grundlingh, A. M., 1948-; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The primary argument behind this investigation is the observation that heritage has become ubiquitous in contemporary societies. The need for heritage is contagious and is observed globally, albeit that this need is subject to fluctuations which include the influence of geographical place. This study, therefore, engages with heritage theory in Graaff-Reinet as a geographical microcosmos of South Africa, and evaluates if heritage is the contemporary usage of the past in current societies. The primary argument behind this investigation is the observation that heritage has become ubiquitous in contemporary societies. The need for heritage is contagious and is observed globally, albeit that this need is subject to fluctuations which include the influence of geographical place. This study, therefore, engages with heritage theory in Graaff-Reinet as a geographical microcosmos of South Africa, and evaluates if heritage is the contemporary usage of the past in current societies. This study draws on examples extracted from the historical record. The researcher aspires to address and rectify the lacunae that exist regarding heritage in Graaff-Reinet. She casts the heritage net wider to also include an investigation of the heritage of the Black and Coloured population of Graaff-Reinet, and to narrate their role in the production process as opposed to previous histographies, who omitted or moderated their role in scholarship. In addition, the study offers insights into the heritage consumption process during certain important time periods in the history of South Africa and thus, Graaff-Reinet. During this investigation of the uses of heritage, the researcher utilises various examples of heritage to determine what the primary use of heritage is and how it was employed to achieve cultural, political, and economic objectives. Lastly, this exploration aims to shed light on the inherent dissonant nature of heritage and particularly the stimuli that provokes dissonance in heritage in a post-colonial society such as Graaff-Reinet. For this purpose, the researcher once again extracted examples from the historical record which were subjected to critical analysis. For this study, a qualitative research approach was adopted. This approach allows the examination of a community within a particular geographical area and encouraged a detailed enquiry into people’s experiences, utilising research methods which included in-depth interviews and the interpretation of information collected through oral history interviews. In addition, this information was augmented by the theoretical interpretation of the archival material obtained from repositories such as the local municipality, museums, churches, a local school and from the private collections of the residents of Graaff-Reinet.

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