| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction |
|
|
Among Africans, both customary and government constraints sought to regulate the people's access to forest resources.
Government officials did not display a monolithic view of exploitation and conservation of the Zambezi teak woodland. The state was composed of capitalists and conservationists. My book examines in greater detail the ways in which particular interest groups worked around, dodged, or cooperated with regulators; given the heterogeneous nature of ideas held by officials, a situation existed that could be capitalised on by interested stakeholders. These issues have so far barely been touched upon by scholarly investigation of Zimbabwe; therefore, this study is not only a significant contribution to but also a marked departure from the existing literature on conservation. Thus, a theoretical framework of conflict and accommodation that traces and analyses the interactive relationship between political economy and conservationist ideas best approximates the Zambezi teak woodland. Miners, concessionaires, and foresters wrestled each other in these forests from 1890 to 1980 and beyond. The convergence of economic interests with conservationist ideas was a process that fluctuated. Its overall impact on environmental change was equally fluid.
Chapter 2 argues that precolonial communities of northwestern Matabeleland managed to maintain large portions of natural forest to sustain both humans and livestock. Food was the main forest product. People generally abided by established rules of utilisation and conservation, which were enmeshed in the primacy of spiritual ideas, beliefs, and practices. As discussed in chapter 3, the BSAC officials resettled Africans in northwestern Matabeleland to accommodate colonial commercial interests in land and forests, particularly the latter. In chapter 4, I maintain that methods of forest exploitation by miners, concessionaires, and other capitalists were unsustainable, especially given the relaxed nature of state supervision and control. I show how wasteful practises led to the genesis of passionate conservationist thought in private and official segments of colonial society.
In chapter 5, the focus moves to the RNTC and its attempts to monopolise commercial trees of northwestern Matabeleland by exerting relentless