Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe, 1890-1980 By Vimbai Kwashirai

felling, in Africa are key factors in the destruction of tropical forests, and they leave only remnants of the major tropical forests.⁵³ According to Gomez-Pompa, Whitemore, and Hadley, the future of African forests is in serious danger because millions of hectares of woodland are being converted into agricultural and pasture lands.⁵⁴ Glastra calculates that 50 percent of deforestation in the tropics is due to agriculture.⁵⁵ Munslow, Katerere, and Mtisi assert that the cultivation of cash crops, especially tobacco, in southern Africa has consumed large quantities of forest land for plantations and fuel.⁵⁶ Colonial capitalist agriculture turned African woodland to the production of cash and food crops for Western markets. British settlers usurped Kikuyu lands for tea estates in Kenya. In French West Africa, German Togo, and Portuguese Brazil the process was replicated. Railways and other transport systems quickened this process. Often powerless, colonial foresters concurred with local and imperial governments that lands suitable for increased agricultural production could be turned into croplands.

The main traditional forms of land use in Africa were the cultivation of fields of grain and pastoralism. The causes of deforestation in western and southern Africa were diverse, but many authors argue that shifting cultivation was the most important factor once forests had been opened for farming, logging, mining, or infrastructure development. The situation in the Zambezi teak woodland does not conform to the general model of African farm encroachment on forests. The evidence suggests that early colonial African agriculture in the gusu was not intensive but was generally compatible with environmental protection, as argued in chapter 2. Moreover, in some areas, the opposite process took place. Extensions of the demarcated teak forests impinged upon African and European farmland. The exception was the small amount of land reserved for forest tenants. With respect to settler agriculture, teak forest reserves became permanent once demarcated by law and, as in South Africa, land from such reserved areas could not be sold to farmers without Parliament amending the forest legislation.

From time to time, croplands of both white and black landowners were repossessed by the state and added to forest reserves. African