Surviving on the margins

The Tjwa (San) food economies, politics and the environment in Zimbabwe

Bibliographic Data

ID2969205
AuthorsAdmire Phiri (0000-0002-8865-4548, University of the Free State), Innocent Dande (0000-0002-8132-9515, University of the Free State)
Year2021
Volume7
Issue3-4
Pages309-340
Publication date2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHunter Gatherer Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1476-4253 • E-ISSN: 2056-3264
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3828/hgr.2021.3
OpenAlexW4400591995
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

This article examines the history of the Tjwa (San) community of Zimbabwe from the prisms of food, marginality and Zimbabwean politics. It traces the marginal position of the Tjwa people to the Bantu migrations and the coming of the Ndebele state in the 1830s. These two migrations pushed the San people into the marginal and driest south-western parts of Zimbabwe. We examine how this affected the Tjwa people's choice of food as they responded to capricious weather conditions. We also argue that the colonial state furthered the marginalisation of the Tjwa by setting up the Hwange National Park and removing the Tjwa from their traditional foodways and livelihood strategies. Their marginalisation in the colonial economy got worse because the colonial state did not prioritise their education or induction in the colonial economy, as it did for other ethnic groups. Resultantly, the Tjwa found themselves as 'rural serfs' working for their Ndebele and Kalanga neighbours who underpaid them. We show that the Ndebele and Kalanga rural cattle economies were themselves periodically plagued by recurrent droughts and that they responded to these variable weather conditions by underpaying their Tjwa workers. We also show that the government's preference of settled agriculture also worsened the marginalisation of the Tjwa. We conclude by pointing out that the Tjwa's marginal position in the successive epochs affected their eating habits and access to food. The paper is based on published sources produced by European literate observers, as well as data collected during multiple fieldworks between 2013 and 2023. The fieldworks aimed at documenting the language and its speech community through interviews, questionnaires and narratives

Agriculture · Colonialism · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Ethnic group · Foodways · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Livelihood · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Position (finance) · Sociology · State (computer science) · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Law · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

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