42
Subtle Agroecologies
decline as identities were politicised beneath the layered struggles taking place between genders and
generations, the new state and its curtailment of traditional authority (Alexander, 2014; Kriger, 1988),
and the competing nationalisms that continue to defne Zimbabwe’s socio-political landscape today.
Despite these historico-political pressures on traditional belief systems, and the dissonance they
created, particularly for Christians, many rural livelihoods today remain largely grounded in the
indivisibility of the tripartite relationship between people, nature and the spirit world inhabited by
the ancestors (Gonese et al., 2003).
For traditionalists like myself, and some Christians, traditional practice and belief continue
to moderate resource-use through rules, relationships and norms, within which peoples’ identity,
cosmology and knowledge are deeply embedded. 2 Today, we may still collect and mix together open
pollinated, drought-tolerant small grains before taking them to the shrine to soak in the waters to
ask the ancestors for protection.
However, many of those dispossessed of their land and landscapes have suffered lost connections to knowledge and tradition, reinvented them around new lineage structures or renounced
them in favour of monotheism and/or capitalism. And, just as agrarian change shaped reciprocal
labour-sharing practices out of necessity, those practices embedded in social relations and place that
enable responsiveness to change or stress (Richards, 1989) have, over time, been further eroded by
social division, corruption and mistrust.
You see, to damage our ecology is to undermine human existence. In this way of knowing, being
and meaning-making for knowledge production, our African religion enhances and generates selfconfdence, provides meaning and direction and is a source of dynamism and creativity.
According to one African proverb, ‘“Our world is like a drum; strike any part and the vibration is felt
all over” … ringing in the ears of the ancestors, the owners of the land’ (Tarusarira, 2017: 408). Despite
the association of traditionalism, for many, with the customary forces of domination, for Tarusarira it
also has the capacity to increase one’s ability to resist exploitation and domination. And so, in rural
communities across Zimbabwe, Chikukwa included, where these rituals and relationships persist – having been recovered or reinvented to varying degrees – they do so syncretically with Christianity.
Many people, sometimes reluctantly, still observe chisi or the Chief’s day, our traditional day of
rest for the soil, as a mark of respect for the ancestors that reside there. They are reluctant because they
are sanctioned and may be fned by traditional leaders, many of whom are also Christian converts.
CULTURE LACED WITH POWER
These contestations and the idiomatic expressions of suffering can be seen in the more recent adoption of climate narratives. For Wilson (1995), this demonstrates the use of discourses to serve different interests, from which one can draw a direct line between coercive state control, conservation
and farming. When laid over Zimbabwe’s agrarian question, these interrelated discourses are just
as likely to be employed for the beneft of one group over another within any given community. Yet,
the complex and artful negotiations that incorporate many competing local interests and narratives
can also be seen in the blending of indigenous knowledge, contemporary permaculture and spiritual
resource governance. This is echoed in Moore’s (1996) exposition of material deprivations and symbolic ancestral claims which, when creatively fused and adapted in defence of livelihood, culture
and environment, produce cultural meaning that can be employed effectively as a form of resistance
to external (state) interference. In this way, ‘the micro-politics of resource struggles are animated by
local history, mediated by cultural idioms, and gendered through the different practices [that] men
and women have pursued in defence of local livelihoods’ (Moore, 1996: 140). And it is the relationship with these livelihood resources that has, over time, become politicised and marred by endemic
corruption, with customary leaders and elected politicians leveraging their position to consolidate
patronage networks in return for loyalty, at others’ expense.
2 See also Bernard (2003).
Subtle Agroecologies
decline as identities were politicised beneath the layered struggles taking place between genders and
generations, the new state and its curtailment of traditional authority (Alexander, 2014; Kriger, 1988),
and the competing nationalisms that continue to defne Zimbabwe’s socio-political landscape today.
Despite these historico-political pressures on traditional belief systems, and the dissonance they
created, particularly for Christians, many rural livelihoods today remain largely grounded in the
indivisibility of the tripartite relationship between people, nature and the spirit world inhabited by
the ancestors (Gonese et al., 2003).
For traditionalists like myself, and some Christians, traditional practice and belief continue
to moderate resource-use through rules, relationships and norms, within which peoples’ identity,
cosmology and knowledge are deeply embedded. 2 Today, we may still collect and mix together open
pollinated, drought-tolerant small grains before taking them to the shrine to soak in the waters to
ask the ancestors for protection.
However, many of those dispossessed of their land and landscapes have suffered lost connections to knowledge and tradition, reinvented them around new lineage structures or renounced
them in favour of monotheism and/or capitalism. And, just as agrarian change shaped reciprocal
labour-sharing practices out of necessity, those practices embedded in social relations and place that
enable responsiveness to change or stress (Richards, 1989) have, over time, been further eroded by
social division, corruption and mistrust.
You see, to damage our ecology is to undermine human existence. In this way of knowing, being
and meaning-making for knowledge production, our African religion enhances and generates selfconfdence, provides meaning and direction and is a source of dynamism and creativity.
According to one African proverb, ‘“Our world is like a drum; strike any part and the vibration is felt
all over” … ringing in the ears of the ancestors, the owners of the land’ (Tarusarira, 2017: 408). Despite
the association of traditionalism, for many, with the customary forces of domination, for Tarusarira it
also has the capacity to increase one’s ability to resist exploitation and domination. And so, in rural
communities across Zimbabwe, Chikukwa included, where these rituals and relationships persist – having been recovered or reinvented to varying degrees – they do so syncretically with Christianity.
Many people, sometimes reluctantly, still observe chisi or the Chief’s day, our traditional day of
rest for the soil, as a mark of respect for the ancestors that reside there. They are reluctant because they
are sanctioned and may be fned by traditional leaders, many of whom are also Christian converts.
CULTURE LACED WITH POWER
These contestations and the idiomatic expressions of suffering can be seen in the more recent adoption of climate narratives. For Wilson (1995), this demonstrates the use of discourses to serve different interests, from which one can draw a direct line between coercive state control, conservation
and farming. When laid over Zimbabwe’s agrarian question, these interrelated discourses are just
as likely to be employed for the beneft of one group over another within any given community. Yet,
the complex and artful negotiations that incorporate many competing local interests and narratives
can also be seen in the blending of indigenous knowledge, contemporary permaculture and spiritual
resource governance. This is echoed in Moore’s (1996) exposition of material deprivations and symbolic ancestral claims which, when creatively fused and adapted in defence of livelihood, culture
and environment, produce cultural meaning that can be employed effectively as a form of resistance
to external (state) interference. In this way, ‘the micro-politics of resource struggles are animated by
local history, mediated by cultural idioms, and gendered through the different practices [that] men
and women have pursued in defence of local livelihoods’ (Moore, 1996: 140). And it is the relationship with these livelihood resources that has, over time, become politicised and marred by endemic
corruption, with customary leaders and elected politicians leveraging their position to consolidate
patronage networks in return for loyalty, at others’ expense.
2 See also Bernard (2003).