The Social and Cultural Impact of Post-War Measures on the Zimunya and Bvumba Communities, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1940s–1970s

Abstract

This study investigates the social and cultural effects of post-war measures on Zimunya and Bvumba communities of colonial Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia). Guided by a combination of primary and secondary sources, the article argues that dispossession and forced relocations of Africans who had continued staying on the so-called European land after the passing of the Land Apportionment Act (LAA) of 1930 became acute in the immediate years after the Second World War. The granting of vast tracts of land in the Zimunya community to veterans of World War II by the colonial government under the Ex-Servicemen Land Resettlement Scheme and the purchasing of land for a timber estate in Bvumba by the Rhodesian Wattle Company (RWC) in the immediate post-Second World War period dispossessed rural residents of their land and curtailed the growth and development of peasant agriculture. People affected were forcibly displaced to “native” reserves where they responded to challenges they faced by resorting to various coping mechanisms such as hunting, foraging, and, attending to riverine gardens.