Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe, 1890-1980 By Vimbai Kwashirai

forestry to be a major obstacle to achieving a balance between exploitation and conservation. Grove suggests that state intervention by the Cape government was inadequate in the nineteenth century because the state allocated insignificant funding for conserving resources and regarded ecological regulation as a low priority.³⁸ Cape legislation initially sought to restrict natural resource exploitation rather than conserve resources for their renewal.³⁹ Up to the mid-1930s, governments in colonial Zimbabwe followed suit. They generally perceived commercial mining and settler agriculture as more important than forestry or as a separate issue. This attitude explains the conflict and lack of cooperation between forestry and agriculture departments.

Phimister shares this view; he notes that the Huggins' government in colonial Zimbabwe reluctantly acceded to persistent demands for natural resource conservation in 1938 when the Natural Resources Commission (NRC) was appointed.⁴⁰ Food deficiencies in maize and beef during and after the Second World War also prompted this government to take action in respect to forest, soil, and water conservation.⁴¹ Even then, the scope of regulation was limited, and the vital importance of tobacco (called the leaf of gold), which accounted for over one-third of export earnings, to the national economy made conservation difficult.⁴² In respect to forestry, however, my argument differs: there were major developments in the postwar period. This book argues that as foresters increased in influence and farmers dwindled in electoral significance, the state gave more attention to secondary industry, and it was possible to constitute and enact the first Forest Bill and Forest Act in 1948 and 1949, respectively. Consequently, accumulated conservationist thought could be implemented beginning in the late 1950s.

Anderson and Grove bemoan the absence of coordinated linkages between conservation and rural development, links they feel are vital for the survival of African agrarian society.⁴³ They are wary of Western conservation aid packages, especially those seeking to preserve an Eden or wilderness in Africa; they note that such notions of conservation based on metropolitan development plans have sometimes failed.⁴⁴