david hughes 2006 hydrology of hope

8/2/2019 David Hughes 2006 Hydrology of Hope

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DAVID McDERMOTT HUGHES

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Hydrology of hope:Farm dams, conservation, and whiteness in Zimbabwe

A B S T R A C T

In Zimbabwe, many whites have affiliatedthemselves with the land rather than with

surrounding societies. Theories of settler

culturewhich emphasize ethnic conflictoften

overlook this environmentalist form of identity. As

conservationists, white, large-scale farmers sought

to belong to the landscape, and they modified it in

ways that facilitated that sense of belonging. On the

semiarid highlands, they manipulated the most

manipulable of environmental variables: water. In

the 1990s, their new landscape of dams and

reservoirs provided habitat for wildlife and irrigation

for tobacco. Whites justified their land ownership on

grounds of both conservation and developmentaconsiderable rhetorical feat. Engineering, then,

fostered an unstable, ephemeral feeling of

entitlement and belonging. [Africa, colonialism,

identity, land, postcolonialism, settler society, race]

The process of appropriation moves from diffidence to

entitlementand sometimes back again. At first, settlers andcolonizers ask themselves, Do we belong here? Over time, such

malaise maydissipateas it didin theUnited States (Lepore 1998).

That country occupies an extreme position among territories

colonized from overseas. Whites achieved demographic, political, and eco-

nomic dominance, securing the United States as a neo-Europe (Crosby

1986:2). Zimbabwe lies at the other extremeamong what one might call

failed neo-Europes. Having conquered the territory in the 1890s and

alienated the fertile highveld in ensuing decades, whites never approached

demographic superiority vis-a-vis native peoples. Neithergiven that race

is socially constructeddidthey reconstructit in a more multiplex fashion.

Europeans married other Europeans, breeding whites whose population

never exceeded five percent of the national total (Kennedy 1987:23).1 In

agriculture, 4,500 white farm owners controlled 40 percent of Zimbabwessurface area, whereas eight million black peasants occupied 42 percent in

the 1990s. Whites, then, had reason to feel what Kathrin Wagner describes,

in South Africa, as an emotional and moral unease with the fruits of

conquest (1994:171). A few did feel uneasy, like transplanted Europeans.

Doris Lessing, who grew up in Rhodesia, wrote semiautobiographically,

This child could not see a msasa tree, or the thorn, for what they were.

Her books held tales of alien fairies, her rivers ran slow and peaceful,

and she knew the shape of the leaves of an ash or an oak, the names of

littlecreatures that lived in English streams, when the words the veld

meant strangeness, though she could remember nothing else.

[1951:49]

Lessing, a leftist, emigrated in 1949. The vast majority of more loyalwhites refrained from a similar critique, before or after Zimbabwes in-

dependence in 1980. White farmers displayed an almost Euro-American

degree of confidenceone totally unwarranted by political trends. In

the 1990s, whites ignored warnings of a more thorough land reform.

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 269287, ISSN 0094-0496, electronicISSN 1548-1425. C 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content throughthe University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website, www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.


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Hydrology of hope American Ethnologist

thereafter. I interviewed 40 families who managed or owned

farms on the highveld east of Harare. Twenty-six of these

families came from Virginia district, the area of most fo-

cused inquiry. Adult men dominated many of these con-

versations, although women and children spoke more freely

at repeat encounters and social occasionsnotably at a se-ries of monthly districtwide meetings and dinners that I at-

tended. Emotion ran through all of these discussions: The

governmentsongoingdrivetoevictwhiteshadtouchedeach

family personally. Paramilitary squads had killed the first in

a series of white landowners, Dave Stevens, in Virginia. The

samearmedbandshadassaultedseveralofmymalesubjects

and threatened all of themas well as their wives and chil-

dren. Under these pressures, many farmers had fled. Of the

26 Virginia families I met, nine lived in Harare, where I was

also livingin 200203. Two eventually moved, oneto Zambia

and one to Canada, in both cases to farm.Other families de-

parted for nonagricultural work in New Zealand, Australia,

and the United States. In all but one case, I found farmerseager to talk, especially to a white foreigner who reserved

judgment.6 In addition to interviewingfarmers,I carried out

28 farm inventories,including18 in Virginia.Togetherwith

a given farmer, I composed a catalogue of land use, infras-

tructure, andnatural features found on each parcel.7 Ideally,

the farmer and I would have walked the land itself, but the

presence of unsympathetic occupants on many farmsnot

to mention some farmers relocation to Hararemade this

method impractical and possibly dangerous. Therefore, we

relied on maps (at 1:50,000 scale) and aerial photographs

(at 1:25,000 scale) available from the Office of the Surveyor

General. Finally, to corroborate and supplement the farm

inventories, I worked with Les Wood, a Zimbabwean waterengineer. Wood (2003) drew on the builders basin surveys

to compile a complete quantitative database of Virginias

reservoirs.

Geography and whiteness

Euro-Zimbabweans defy spatial categorization. The first

white settlersan amalgam of Anglophones and Dutch-,

French-, and Scottish-descended Afrikaans speakers

crossed the Limpopo River from South Africa in 1890.

They soon welcomed immigrantsdirectly from Britain, from

Britain by way of Asian colonies, and from southern Eu-

rope. In one sense, this plurality of origins made Zimbabwe

a global ethnoscape (Appadurai 1991; cf. Clifford 1997:17

46).8 Yet, unlike the South Asians to whom Arjun Appadurai

applies this term, Zimbabwean whites have refused a global

identity. They have consistently struggled to enracinate

and reterritorialize themselvesfor emplacement rather

than for movement (Orlove 1996). In 1923, settlers voted

overwhelmingly for self-governmentas a colonyrather

than for continued administration from London. Nearly

two generations later, in 1965, the Rhodesian Front gov-

ernment declared independence unilaterally from Britain.

Whites then fought a ten-year war against two guerrilla

armies. The whites lost, but the war drew them together.

Although many left after independence in 1980, those who

stayed considered themselves patriots, rather than expa-

triates (Buckle 2002:63; Godwin and Hancock 1993:287).9

Like the New Zealand sheepherders Michele D. Dominy

(1995) describes, contemporary Zimbabwean whites as-

sert an indigenous status and demand consummate rights.

They must demand the status of a native precisely be-

cause they seem so foreignand they know it. All white

African literature, writes Lessing, is the literature of exile,

not from Europe but from Africa (1958a:700).10 Whites

although undeniably cosmopolitanyearn for a parochial

identity.

In part, they have succeeded in giving local meaning to

even the most global aspects of their history. Virginia, for

instance, lies on arable highveld east of Harare, close to the

town of Marondera (see Figure 1).11 A focal area of this ar-ticle, the farming district bears the same name as a state

of the United States. Surprisingly, Zimbabwean whites did

not name their Virginia after the U.S. oneat least not di-

rectly. They named it after one of Virginias crops: tobacco.

Columbus and Cortes had originallybrought tobacco to Eu-

rope from Cuba and Mexico, respectively. In 1585, Sir Walter

Raleigh named the original, Atlantic Virginia after his vir-

gin queen, Elizabeth I. In 1610, another Englishman, John

Rolfe, sailed westward with his native wife, Pocahontas, and

plantedtobaccoatJamestown,Virginia.12 Thisreturnvoyage

of the cultivar generated the famous U.S. tobacco industry

and its Virginia strain of light, flue-curedleaf. Cultivated by

African slaves,tobacco madewhite men into Virginia gentle-men.RhodesianfarmersturnedtothesamecropandAfrican

labor for a similar upliftment. Yellow, flavored leaves soon

became the marker of colonial successnot least, in Vir-

ginia,Marondera,and the tobacco belteast of Harare. Over

tens of thousands of then desolate acres, recalled Edward

Harben, a vegetable El Dorado was . . . brought into being

(Clements and Harben 1962:27).13 His veiled references to

empty land and Cortes complete the circle of tobaccos his-

tory: An Amerindian croptransplanted to Europe, trans-

planted back to America, grown by an EnglishAlgonquian

couple, and transplanted to Africamiraculously justifies

whitesposition in Zimbabwe. With such aptitude for mean-

ings and materials, surely whites could make their home in

both Virginias or anywhere in Africa.

Whites actual movements in Zimbabwe, however, be-

tray a distinct caution. Alert to the lands environmental un-

predictability, whites have advanced with trepidation and

backward glances to Britain. Nineteenth-century noncos-

mopolitan theories of climate suggested that whites could

not survive the heat of the tropical torrid zone (Redfield

2000:192199; cf. Price 1939:194204). By 1890, newly doc-

umented plateaus gave reason for hope (Bell 1993:331;

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American Ethnologist Volume 33 Number 2 May 2006

Figure 1. Commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe.

Ravenstein 1891:35). Altitude could mitigate the law of lat-

itudes. In that same year, the British South Africa Com-

panys pioneer column of settlers crossed the Limpopo

from South Africa and settled the central highlands of what

is now Zimbabwe. White-ownedestates soon tracedthe ma-

jor watersheds, including the line between the Save and

Mazoe catchments, where Marondera and Virginia lie.14

By 1901, in its Information for Intending Settlers, the com-

pany described Rhodesias upland climate confidently as

as healthy and bracing as can be found anywhere and

promised that, children maygrow up thereas strongas they

would at home [i.e., in Britain](Kennedy1987:121).At 1,500

meters, malaria presented only minimal danger. Against

the sunthe one remaining threatwhites armored them-

selves with pith helmets and umbrellas (Kennedy 1987:110

114). Still, doubts persisted. Over lunch outside Marondera,

a farmer confessed, We [whites] shouldnt be in Africa be-

cause we are made differently. The plateaus air was too

thin for her: We havent got the noses that they [blacks]

have (interview, Marondera, October 1, 2002). Most whites

in Marondera inhaled without complaint. Yet the lowveld

parts of which were once denoted on maps as not fit for

whitemanshabitationmademanywhitesuncomfortable

(Fuller 2001:161; Wolmer 2001:33). The Zambezi Valley was

too raw, recounted Cathy Buckle, who moved from there

and eventually to Marondera. White writers still describe

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the valleys hottest period, October, as suicide month.15

If only indirectly, Zimbabwes environment could still strike

a European dead. Precipitation also has given whites, par-

ticularly farmers, ample cause for discomfort. Zimbabwes

rainfall is as intemperate as its heat, differing from that of

Britain in both seasonality and intensity. On the highveld,rain falls only from late October to early April. Almost from

their arrival, whites have reveled in the long dry season.

In 1928, two ex-missionaries founded the Anglican Ruzawi

School for whites outside Marondera because, as they later

wrote, the area boasted a climate as nearly perfect as could

be found (Carver and Grinham n.d.:25). Farmers, how-

ever, found the climate far from perfect. H. K. Scorror, who

trained Maronderas early settlers in agriculture, had diffi-

culty raising drought-resistant livestock. If we dont go too

fast with European blood [in breeding cattle], Scorror pre-

dicted in 1908, we will get a beast that will stand the cli-

mate of this country (1964:2).16 If aridity hindered animal

husbandry, downpours destroyed crops and eroded topsoil.Zimbabwes rainfall spikedviolently and unpredictably. One

hundred-millimeter events were not uncommon. In 2001,

a 150-millimeter storm breeched the smaller of two dams

on Airlie: Literallythe cloud up above just drops everything

that it has, recountedthe farmer, still with an airof disbelief

(interview, Virginia, November 14, 2002). Such conditions

implicitly compared with English mildnessmade agricul-

ture an extreme sport. Referring to Zimbabwes vindictive

climate, Clements and Harbin praised tobacco farmers for

aruthlessness,an independence, a physical endurance and

courage, a coming to terms with harsh forces with which

their fellows in more sophisticated societies have long lost

contact (1962:188).If the environment challenged rural whites, it also filled

them with awe. In the midst of losing their farms, they felt

and remembered a sense of wonderment. When I met Steve

Pratt, he spoke first of his fears. As the provincial represen-

tative of the Commercial Farmers Union, he was dashing to

occupied farms to negotiate for the release of white fami-

lies and their movable property. Whites, he said, had been

hugely confident but were now feeling a kind of angst

about their identity. He was feeling it too. Still, he loved

Africa, he said, and felt an exhilaration when in the bush.

I asked him to be more precise. When the rain comes, he

began, that smell! When you can hear a storm sort of ap-

proaching. As a child on a Marondera farm, he knew the

river would rise outside his window in an hour. He recalled

listening expectantly. Failing to describe the sensation in his

own words, he cited a line from Shakespeares The Tempest:

Show me the magic! (interview, Marondera, January 16,

2002). The literary reference was even more apt than Pratt

suspected. News of Americas Virginia inspired The Tempest,

a workthataccording to Leo Marx(1964:3436)presaged

the U.S. pastoral ideal of wilderness and agrarianism (quite

similar,infact,toSouthAfricaspastoralcanon).Prattsimag-

inationandprofessioncombinedthesameopposites:empty

land and efficient farms. Buckle, who wrote fiction and po-

litical literature, described Zimbabwe as so wild just on

your doorstep. . . modern but yet not (interview, Maron-

dera, January 17, 2002). In whites belief, the landscape de-

fied categorization. For farmersespecially those as imagi-native as Buckle and Prattthe highveld was home without

being normal, reliable, or safe. To belong there remained a

work in progress and a work of conviction. I can kind of

define myself by the landscape, Pratt later told me (inter-

view, Totnes,UK, March 1, 2005). He had moved to England,

bringing his identity with him.

Intensive conservation

For farmers less artistic than Pratt and Buckle, collective ef-

forts gave expression to the quest for belonging on the high-

veld. Chief among these was soil conservation, which had

concernedthe colonial government formost of itstenure.Inthe 1930s, the state had encouraged farmers to combat ero-

sion. Edward Alvord, the U.S.-born chief agricultural officer,

wished,atallcosts,toavoidanAfricanversionofOklahomas

DustBowl.Initially,heandhiscolleaguesfacedanuphillbat-

tle: Both farmers economic survival and the imperative to

settle the highveld with Europeans overrodeconcerns about

long-termfertility. Simply put,Rhodesianfarmers minedthe

soil without check for at least four decades. In 1941, how-

ever, the colony created a Natural Resources Board, which,

in turn, fostered ICAs at roughly district level (Phimister

1989). Organized by farmers themselves, ICAs encouraged

farmers to construct and maintain broad-base terraces.17

The resources board delegated to them authority over con-servation in communal lands and eventually in so-called

African Purchase Areas (where blackscouldown land before

independence) and in the resettlement areas resulting from

land reform in the 1980s. The ICAs erosion-control efforts

in these areas never succeeded, and, by the 1990s, they had

turnedexclusivelyinward.They inspectedthe memberster-

races and dams, keeping records, issuing warnings, and, if

all else failed, levying fines. As deeply committed to private

property as it was, white society permitted these intrusions.

Only land seemed to trigger such acquiescence and coop-

eration. Laborwhich was as scarce as soildid not gener-

ate a single local-level organization in white Zimbabwe. Of

course, whites did complain individually about the labor

problem to and through the national-level Agricultural La-

bor Bureau.18Yet districts whitesocial clubs, where the ICAs

met monthly, largely ignored blacks. Concerns of class came

in a distant second to those of soil; Virginias teamwork was

environmental.

The imperative to protect soilfollowedfrom whites ini-

tial decision to occupy the watersheds. With increasing al-

titude came lower temperature, making the plateau a more

comfortable and salubrious home than the lowlands. The

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lower temperatures, in turn,allowedmoistureto precipitate,

bestowing roughly 8001,100 millimeters of rainfall on the

highveld, as opposed to the lowvelds mere 500 millimeters.

The wetter climate, of course, benefited agriculture, but it

cameatthecostofamorearabletopography.Whereas,along

the Zambezi, Save, and Limpopo rivers, Zimbabwes low-lands lie flat, at altitude, the country breaks up into granite

outcrops,streams, and uplands.Virginia,for instance,strad-

dles the Macheke, Shavanhohwe, Munyuki, and Nyadora

rivers, the last one falling 400 meters in 35.5 kilometers (see

Figure 2).19 Offamily-owned farms ranging from 500to 1,500

hectares, farmers considered only 100 to 500 hectares flat

enough to plant crops.20 Even on these arable patches, gra-

dients generated ferocious runoff that could destroy the soil

profile. To save their soil, whitesdevised means of mechan-

ical conservation, specifically, agricultural terraces. Farm-

ers built terraces slightly off the natural contour, at a 12

percent slope andseparated byone meter of elevation. They

planted grass on the tops and along the drainage waterwayslocated at the downstream end of each ridge. When the ter-

races worked, water would run down the slope for no more

than a vertical meter, then take an abrupt, 90-degree turn

and move slowly along the terrace, infiltrating the soil to

the desired degree. Some farmers elaborated stillmore intri-

cate systems of holding earth and harvesting water. Perpen-

dicular to the contours, Doug Dunford built tie ridges and,

perpendicular to them, little dams every 1.5 meters. Each

dam created a very large, bath-sized sort of thing to hold

water . . . so it can takeprobablyfourinchesof rain in a night

and not spilla drop (interview, Harare, November 22, 2002).

Dunford effectively harnessed the 100-millimeter storm and

turned Virginias topography to his advantage. Although whites took credit for such ecologically

minded farming, it derived as much from preexisting so-

cial and ecologicalcircumstances. Virginias small, homoge-

neous community of 72 landowning households presented

idealsocialconditionsfor the ICAs formof self-organization

and self-policing (Ostrom 1990:9192).21 Every farm auto-

matically belonged to the ICA, and any owner or man-

ager could attend the meetings. In Virginia in the 1990s,

roughly five farmers came monthly to such gatherings, in-

variably held at the country club.22 A respected, conserva-

tionist farmer chaired the meetings, and another member

(almost always a woman) minuted them and sent the min-

utestotheentirecommunity.23Withsuchinstitutionaltrans-

parency, the mere threat of labeling and stigma motivated

many a lazy conservationist. Also, the behavior of the soil

and terraces themselves virtually demanded cooperation

between farms. Onceconstructed, terraces couldrapidly ex-

acerbate the erosionproblem they were meant to solve. The

raised part of a terrace would develop breaks, allowingwater

to pour through and run down to the next terrace, possibly

breaking that one as well. Especially in the prevalent sandy

soil, fields became gullies, known among the farmers by the

Shonaword donga.With an affect borderingon horror,Mark

Robinson, ex-chair of the Virginia ICA, reported seeing on at

least onecommercial farm, a donga that will drop a London

businto it(interview, Harare, March 14, 2003).24 Large-scale

erosion of this nature could diminish the productivity of an

entire watershed.Loosed soilwould enterstreamsand even-tually silt up reservoirs used for irrigation. Especially during

thedam-building boom of the1990s, erosion threatened the

entire hydrological basisof whitewealth.The combined mo-

tives of environmentalism and self-preservation gave Vir-

ginias ICA an unparalleled moral authority.

In this context, blacks lack of cooperation with the

ICAs confirmed whites low opinion of them (and whites

high opinion of themselves). The ICAs continuously com-

bated black recalcitrance. Although they excluded peasants

from meetings, the ICAs invited them to district agricul-

tural fields daysfor competition and instruction.25 Black

commercial farmers who bought land in Virginia after 1980

could attend meetings. Yet, they chose neither to join norto obey the ICA. References to their problem farms ap-

pear with disproportionate frequency in the minutes of Vir-

ginias association. In 200203, whites dwelled on this dis-

crepancy, describing blacks, in general, as deficient conser-

vationists. The communal land boundaries, complained

one farmer in 2003, were like [bare] highways (interview,

Harare, July 18, 2003). Indeed, residents of the communal

lands had famously ignored decades of advice from agri-

cultural extensionists. In part, the construction and mainte-

nance of terraces demanded more labor and land than they

had available.26 Even when acknowledging these extenuat-

ing circumstances,whites stillfelt they carried the conserva-

tion burden alone. Said Robinson, Weare the keepersor were the keepersof the countryside (interview, Harare,

March 14, 2003). He was probably thinking of Stevens, his

successor as ICA chair, who was murdered by a govern-

ment death squad in 2000. For whites, this killing framed

the moral opposition perfectly: a great conservationist

Mr. Green himselfpolitical activist, and fluent speaker

of Shona against an amoral, destructive state.27 As locals re-

called in 200203, Stevens and the Virginia ICA stood at the

pinnacle of collective stewardship. They are such conser-

vationists, these men, a former member said, Their life is

in the land (interview, Harare, May 26, 2003; cf. Fortmann

1995:10581059). Conservation had become a discourse of

hagiography and nostalgia.

In less politically charged conversations, Virginia farm-

ers often reminisced about a quite different benefit offered

bytheVirginiaICAavisualexperience.Landownershadal-

readyseentheirestatesfromthe air. Inthe 1960s,thegovern-

ment Department of Conservation and Extension (Conex)

had used aerial photos to make detailed farm plansphoto

mosaics that farmers in 200203 still displayed with pride in

their livingroomsor offices. TheICA gave firsthandaccess to

theaerialperspective.Twiceperyear,thegrouprentedalight

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Figure 2. Dams in Virginia/Macheke, 2000.

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aircraftoften owned by a memberand flew the district.28

The aerial view revealed all secrets. A broken contour, said

one ICA member, sticks out like sore thumbs (interview,

Harare, June 10, 2003). Fly over it, explained one farmer

with reference to the maize crop, and you can see immedi-

ately that its not as great as you thought it was (interview,Harare, November 22, 2002). The ICA also detected defor-

estation, eroding dam spillways, and all manner of changes

tothesoilandvegetation.Farmersreveledinthispanopticon

effectwhat Robinson called the eyeball inspectionand

even considered using satellite and aerial photos (Virginia

ICA, minutes of meeting held on June 6, 1996, p. 2). Yet, for

all this attention to infractionsand their dutiful recording

in the ICA minutesfarmers recalled good behavior much

more readily than bad. It [the flyover] made a huge im-

pression, said one farmer, all this potential production

(interview, Harare, May 26, 2003). Robinson himself spoke

of production with greater specificity: Fly over, and there

weredamseverywhere. . . . [Virginia was] sparklingwithfarmdams allover the place (interview, Harare, March 14, 2003).

In short, the ICAs gave farmers the ability to see commercial

agriculture from above, and they liked what they saw.

More broadly, the ICA and its aerial tours helped pro-

mote an aesthetic sensibilityone that drew attention to

certain aspects of the land and rendered others invisible.

Farmers were used to reducing a landscape to lines. The

Conex air photos traced the boundaries of fields and water-

works in clear lines. Contour maps, which the farmers also

used and displayed, similarly represented the relationship

between slope and water in linear fashion. Contour ridges

constituted another set of curves, the less interrupted the

better. Farmers took a keen interest in this geometrical,perspectival aspect. On the veranda of his estate, I asked

a Marondera farmer what it meant to be a good farmer.

I expected an answer related to technique and yields, but

my informant dwelled on forms of cleanliness: You can

see good crops when you drive past. . . [On] a farm that

looks well looked after, . . . the fencing is there. The roads

are graded. . . . You had other farms that looked very un-

tidy. . . . [They] didnt give a good impression (interview,

Marondera, July 30, 2002). Improvements, in other words,

caused a farm to shineeven when they were not ecolog-

ically recommended. Removing stumps, for example, de-

stroyed indigenous woodland permanentlybut left an unin-

terruptedfield.Asonefarmeropined,coppicing,orregrowth

from the stumps, was not only so ugly but also typical

of blacks improper land management (interview, Virginia,

November 14, 2002). Needless to say (among whites), the

erosion-battered communal lands were ugly almost beyond

redemption. Black Africans do not appreciate beauty and

nature, asserted one white farmer, but wemust live with

it (interview, Virginia, November 7, 2002). He neglected

to mention that the sweat of black Africans had made his

farm as beautiful as it was. Indeed, the entire aesthetic

sensibility of white farmers tended to render black labor

invisible. Virginia farms employed up to 300 workers and

housedmostof them on thefarm.Yet,likeCaliforniagrowers

and British gentry, owners saw the landscape as a product

of whites culture rather than of blacks exertion (Mitchell1996:26; Williams 1973:46). Whites, they implied, had en-

countered the land and, single-handedly, made it a sight to

see.

This tacit manland story conjoined production and

beauty. Without the effort one might expect, whites recon-

ciled two seemingly distinct principles of land use: land-

scapes of leisure and working landscapes, or spaces of con-

sumption and spaces of production (Lefebvre 1990; Wilson

1991). In Virginia, what was pretty was also frequently use-

ful. Terraces, for instance, beautified the topography while

saving topsoiland improving yields. Although economic ar-

gumentsinitiallydrovewhitestoinstallterraces,anaesthetic

disgust with erosion added to this motivation. Once ter-races graced the hillsides, whites enthused about them in

unabashedly aesthetic terms. Economically beneficial prac-

ticesappearedalmostby definitionto be ecologically ad-

vantageous and beautiful. There were exceptions, of course.

In 1991, Robinson tried to abolish a practice that was of ob-

vious economic merit: using free, indigenous timber, rather

than purchased coal, for curing tobacco. Deforestation, he

argued at the ICAs annual general meeting, destroyed both

ecology and pleasing prospects. As long as the trees re-

main, he foretold, rural appearance and character remain

for the benefit of present and future generations (Virginia

ICA, minutes of the annual meeting, September 26, 1991).

What hadhe meant byrural character, I asked Robinson atmy home in Harare in 2002? The person like yourself who

drives in a motorcar out of town, he explained, should be

ableto share inthat view. . . [so]that you are happy togo out

there (interview, Harare, October 29, 2002). Despite some

cutting of trees, Virginia stillheld enough characterto attract

a tourist gaze (Urry 1990). Despite armed conflictwhich

had forced Robinson off his own farm mere months before

our meetingVirginia still grew top-grade tobacco. Inge-

niously, whites made a landscape that rewarded the eye and

the bank account simultaneously.

Hydrological revolutionIf terraces maintained white Virginias rural character in

1991, then, farm dams vastly improved it in the ensu-

ing years. Whites, of course, had blocked waterways in

Zimbabwe long before that. In the lowlands, the colonial

governments of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland dammed the

Zambezi River in 1959, creating Lake Kariba, the largest

reservoir in the world at that time. Whites recognized such

accomplishments as epochal and took full credit for them

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Figure 3. Total volume of impounded water in Virginia/Macheke, 1980

2000.

(Hughes 2004). To the air traveler, began a 1969 tourist ar-

ticle (invoking the birds-eye view),

Rhodesias countrysideis a panorama spangledwith theflashing mirrors of a thousand lakes and dams. Fromthe vast reaches of Lake Kariba to the humblest farmpond, everyone of these is a legacyof the ingenuity andenterprise of generations of Rhodesians. Nature formedRhodesia withoutlakes:each oneof them hasbeenbuiltby the hand of man. [Anonymous 1969:4]

The man, needless to say, was white, and after indepen-

dence,whites began to construct dams andfarm ponds that

were not so humble. Everywhere you could catch water,

they caught the water, recounted a Virginia man who came

to thedistrict in 1989, just in time for thehydrological revo-

lution of the 1990s(interview, Virginia, November 14, 2002).

At the beginning of 1989, only seven impoundments in Vir-

ginia held enough water for irrigation. Between then and

the end of 1997, Virginia farmers built or raised another 38

dams, enhancing the districts storage capacity bya factor of

seven (see Figures 2 and 3).29 Building halted only when, in

November1997,thestatedesignated1,471farmsnationwide

for compulsoryacquisition; not a singledam went up in Vir-

ginia in 1998. Nonetheless, tobacco continued to boom un-

der irrigation, and growers produced two or three crops per

year. Virginiaunderwent a farming transformation, wrotea

displacedwhitein 2003, froma ratherdrabfarming address

into an up-market place to be (anonymous posting to the

Justice for Agriculture [Harare] Open Letter Forum email

list, entitled A return to Macheke/Virginia farming area,

May 19, 2003). These landowners grew rich, andjust as

importantthey grew entitled. Dams restoredwhites sense

of ownership and gave them a sense of purpose.

Many whitesbuiltdamsprecisely to securetheirowner-

ship of the land. In the 1990s, commercial farmers faced the

serious prospect of losing the highveld. In 1990, provisions

of the Lancaster House constitutiondesigned to protectwhites politically and economicallyexpired automatically.

Whites lost their guaranteed parliamentary seats. More im-

portantly, they lost their veto power over land redistribu-

tion, the practical consequence of a willing buyerwilling

seller format in effect between 1980 and 1990.30 Suddenly

in a shift of far more legal significance than Zimbabwes

independencethe state arrogated to itself the power to

confiscate land withoutrecourse and redistribute it to black

farmers. At the same time, a strategy to retain their land pre-

sented itself to whites. The 1992 Land Acquisition Act (Act

3/1992), which eventually enabled the designations of 1997,

permitted the state to take land without compensationit

having been in theory stolen by the pioneers. Fortunatelyfor whites, the state would reimburse landholders for im-

provements they had made (cf. Moyo 2000:75). This loop-

hole revised all economic priorities. Dams, tobacco barns,

even workers housing, which whites had previously con-

sidered desirable under the right conditions, now appeared

absolutely vital under any conditions. Guys spent . . . bags

of moneyon improvements, marveled one farmer, referring

to an apparently oversized reservoir on the White Gombola

River, just outside Virginia (interview, Ruzawi, July 23, 2002).

The more youve invested in your property and more in-

frastructure youvegot, confided a Marondera farmer, then

they might go and look for a less developed property (in-

terview, Marondera, October 10, 2002).Farmers modernizedtheir estates beyond governments price range. The strategy

seemedto work:High costsand, especiallyafter 1997,legal

challengesfrom the farmersstalled landreform during the

1990s.

Recalling that ten years grace, most whites tended

to downplay such political calculation and to highlight

economic national service. In 1980, they recalled, Mu-

gabe promised whites that they could stay as long as

they produced for Zimbabwe. Whites already possessed

the requisite personal ambition and entrepreneurial spirit.

Explained a Virginia farmer relocated on the outskirts of

Harare, We were a generation or a nation of developers

(interview, Harare, May 26, 2003). True capitalists, whites

reinvested profit in their farms, rather than stashing all of it

in overseas bank accountsa pattern they identified with

Zambian white farmers. You stagnate; you die, warned

Johann Swanepoel, an Afrikaner and one of the few farmers

still cultivating in Virginia in 2003 (interview, Marondera,

May 1, 2003).31 Having so invested in the landin a fash-

ion that recalled the colonial beneficial occupation clause

commercial farmers felt that they had earned a place on the

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postindependence highveld. And the beneficence of their

occupation was patent. Under irrigation, secondary and ter-

tiary crops of tobacco doubled andtrebledforeign exchange

(forex) earningsrevenue that the statetaxed ever morerig-

orously. Forex proved the farmers indispensability. So did

the brute, material infrastructure. Dams, claimed a farmerresponsible for one of Virginias largest impoundments, were

the turnaround of this country (interview, Virginia, July

23, 2003). Trusting that they could build and harvest their

way to security, farmers seized on any hopeful evidence

they could find. In 1995, for instance, Mugabe visited the

VirginiaClubby helicopter andin thecompany of ICAmem-

ber Tom Sweeney. According to Sweeney, the president

gazing downwardremarked to an aide, Isnt it wonderful

the way we built all these dams? (interview, Harare, June

10,2003).32Apparently, Mugabethoughthis government had

constructedthe embankments, but thatmistake hardly mat-

tered. Virginia farmerseven if they did not hear or believe

Sweeneys storyexpected the state to appreciate the dams.Surely, they reasoned, those who impounded water to such

good effect deserved a reprieve from land reform.

But reservoirs were not natural. To rejoice wholeheart-

edlyinthenewhydrology,farmersfirsthadtoreconciledams

withtheirself-imageasecologicalstewards.Surely,eacharti-

ficial impoundment had caused ecological harm, drowning

the valley upstream and desiccating it downstream. In 2002

03, Virginians did not deny this damage butthrough vari-

ous improbable theoriesasserted that dams had enriched

habitat and hydrology in other ways. An impoundment is

an improvement, insisted one farmer, who had memorial-

ized his dam on video. When youve got hundreds of dams

in the country . . . you increase your rainfall (interview, Vir-ginia, May 22, 2003). He was referring to the effect of added

evaporation on highveld microclimatesan effect that has

never been measured and probably does not exist.33 More

plausibly, Virginia growers claimed to have improved the

flow of theNyadoraand other rivers. In 1988, another farmer

blocked the Chikumbakwe, a tributary of the Nyadora that

ran only in the rainy season. Because of seepage through

this and other earth structures, he told me, rivers run all

year round (interview, Harare, July 18, 2003). Even if only a

trickle ran through and dried up, the next dam downstream

would revive the stream. The moredamson a river the bet-

ter, concluded Henk Jelsma, adding saltily that when his

preimpoundmentriver randry,I couldnthardly havea crap

myself without flushing it [by hand]. It was desperate! (in-

terview, Virginia,July 23, 2003).34 Clearly, Jelsma andhis river

benefited from the dam in multiple ways. Indeed, because

seepage varies directly with the square of the height of a

porous dam, the higher dam walls of the 1990s raised dry-

season flows exponentially.35 Of course, the newly perennial

stream may drown plants and animals adapted to annual

desiccation. My informants did not appear to be aware of

this complication, a consequence of the artificial nature of

Virginias new lakes. The aquatic mania seemed to blind

them to all negative effects of waterexcept, of course,

erosion.

Actually, dams could easily cause erosion, and this risk

brought them to the attention of the Virginia ICA. As with

terraces, the ICA used its monitoring role to pronounce ongood and bad stewardship. In this case, it directed criti-

cism not against blacksfor they did not have damsbut

against mostly white engineers and builders. The problem

centered on spillways and return channels. Engineers de-

signedimpoundmentstopasswaterintherainyseason.Don

Lanclosa former Conex officer who had planned many

of Virginias damslooked for rock close to the surface so

that spilling water would carve a hard return channel to the

riverbed (interview, Marondera, June 12, 2003).36 Itwas pre-

cisely this practice to which the ICA objected. Soil removed

from return channels, as they eroded to rock, eventually

clogged pools and killed aquatic life farther downstream.

The issue must be pursued, record the minutes of a 1996ICAmeeting,becauseofthemessbeingmadeonourrivers

(Virginia ICA, minutes of meeting held on August 1, 1996,

p. 1). The following year, a dam under construction wrought

much worse havoc. The ICA chair reported somberly to his

association,Some 20 km of complex riverine ecosystembe-

low the [Royal Visit] damwas scoured away andthe riverbed

now resembles a lifeless moonscape of rocks and sand

(Virginia ICA, minutes of the 44th annual general meeting,

September 17, 1997, p. 1). Contractors, it seemed, had fallen

fatally behindschedule. When,on rare occasions,the farmer

himself bore responsibility, the ICA put matters delicately:

WET!!! Robinson alerted a meeting at the height of the

199899 rains, Whaley dam in serious troublespillwayproblem. Erosion has been huge. . . . Problem seem sot [sic:

seemsnot] to be the engineer[]s faultwrong site (Virginia

ICA, minutes ofmeetingheldon February4,1999,p.2).At an-

other level, Whaley and all farmers were obviously liable for

dam-induced erosion. They had decided to block Virginias

rivers. In 200203, none accepted this ultimate responsibil-

ity. Packingfor NewZealand, the owner of RoyalVisit blamed

the contractors and then showed me hisphoto album of the

dams construction, collapse, and reconstruction (interview

Harare, October 18, 2002). Water, even when it caused an

erosive disaster, could still fill whites with pride.

Having built dams, farmers were obliged to reorganize

their terraces. Typically, fields lay on the slopes surround-

ing a low-set reservoir. Therefore, Zimbabwean commercial

farmers had to pump water uphill.37 Fighting gravity in this

way required elaborate technology and imposed material

constraints. First, farmers had to install electric or diesel-

powered pumps. Then, because canals would not hold wa-

ter moving uphill, they also had to lay elaborate networks

of underground and aboveground, movable pipes. Zimbab-

wean manufacturers made such aluminum pipes only in

nine-meter segments and only in straight or right-angle

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pieces. Suddenly, the curvilinearpatternof contour-hugging

terraces made no sense. To use the equipment of irrigation,

farmers would have to redo their terraces in a rectilinear

fashion. This squaring up of fields occurred in Virginia

over the 1990s, transforming arable land into strips nine

meters wide and multiples of nine meters long. In waysthat farmers might not have anticipated, the new paral-

lel layouts simplified relations between the farmer and his

labor force. Farmers and foremen allocated piecework ac-

cording to field areas, but no one had measured the ar-

eas between terraces with precision. Hence, farmers judged

them bysight. The resultant ambiguityled to delaysand dis-

putes with employees. Farmers usually had to guess at ar-

eas between terraces and then deal with unforeseen delays

anddisputes(cf.Rubert1998:178;Rutherford2001:110111).

Layouts, however, brought Taylorist, Fordist techniques to

rural Zimbabwe. It was a work efficiency scenario, ex-

plained Wood, theformerwatercoordinatorfor Virginia (in-

terview, Marondera, March 20, 2003).38 With layouts, itseasyto calibrate piecework,enthusedSwanepoel, now you

dont always have to stand at his [the workers] back (inter-

view, Macheke, July 31, 2002). In other words, Swanepoels

topographical designsshown to me on vellum sheets

replaced face-to-face contact. Layouts gave the clearest ma-

terial form to that unmediated (white) manland relation-

ship so valued in highveld culture.

Layouts also problematized that relationship by rais-

ing the specter of erosion. The curvilinear form of terraces

had allowed them to hold to a shallow 1/250 slope, keep-

ing water flow at a low, safe velocity. Once straightened and

made parallel, however, waterways inevitably cross grained

the landscape (Elwell n.d.:7). If farmers wished to main-tain the 1/250 gradient, they would have to close off layout

segments where the land dipped. Understandably, farmers

were loath to take precious arable soil out of production,

and many were tempted to extend layouts until they cre-

ated dangerously steep gradients. Such a practice courted

erosive disaster, and the ICA issued warning after warning.

In the gentlest tone, Stevens informed the 1993 annual gen-

eral meeting, Becauseof thenature of ourfarms, we cannot

all have parallel contour systems (Virginia ICA, minutes of

the 40th annual general meeting, September 23, 1993, p. 1).

Three years later, Stevens spoke more explicitlyand with cli-

matological detail: Members are urged to review their land

layouts very carefully and to provide a sufficient area of wa-

terway beside and within lands to cope, not just with mod-

erate rainfall, but also with those 4 inch storms (Virginia

ICA, minutes of the43rd annualgeneral meeting, 1996, p.1).

Yet, the problem persisted. In 200203, Virginia farmers re-

called layouts tilted recklessly at 1/60 gradients. Those who

used such layouts, many of whom were then abandoning

their estates, were criticized in absentia. Your priority is to

look after the land, not to make your life easier, chided one

farmer (interview, Marondera, July 30, 2002). Another cas-

tigated his neighbor, who acted as if conservation is only

put in a contour and maybe looking after trees (interview,

Harare, October 28, 2002). Layouts, recommended a farmer

whose ridges ran at 1/300, worked only if the lie of the land

is suitable (interview, Harare, August 5, 2002). Faulty, lazy

land management threatened the basis of farmers identityand belonging. Thewhite man, as David Maughan-Brown

writes, considered himself to be Gods gift to Kenyan soil

(1985:83).Zimbabweanwhitesdidalso,andtheycomplied

evenifreluctantlywiththeICA.Obsessedwithtopography,

irrigating farmers relearnedand recommitted themselvesto

the broken landscape of the highveld.

Atthesametime,andin a somewhatcontradictory fash-

ion, conservationists grappledwith the new aesthetic possi-

bilities of layouts.Squaring up straightened the curvilinear

format characteristic of broad-base terracesto the delight

of many farmers. Indeed, the grid almost became a goal, in

andofitself,relatedtobutdistinctfromtheeconomicadvan-

tages of irrigation. Robinson, although ever vigilant againstbadly made layouts, thrilled at the sight of well-made ones.

We could pick that up from theair, he reminisced,a beau-

tiful grid. Indeed, Robinson had converted some fields to

parallel layouts even before the installation of his irrigation

dam in 1991. I did it for easier layout, he confessed, it all

seemed tidy to me. Robinson seemed to recognize where

this fastidiousness could lead. Symmetry threatened to su-

percede conservation. Rather thanround off a cornertoal-

low for some topographical or ecological obstaclefarmers

would run pipes and ridges straight through it. Dont bull-

doze out trees where you dont need them, he advised me

in the same conversation, just because you want a straight

edgetoyourland(interview,Harare,March14,2003).Wood,also an upstanding conservationist, seemed entranced with

such geometry: Something that looks squared and laid out

and done properly has a certain appeal. Doesnt it? . . . [Its]

aesthetically pleasing. . . . As a people, the whites, generally

speaking, like straight lines. Given his and his coethnics

preference for grids, Wood advised farmers on a minimal

formof layouts.Rather than extendinga rectangle into dubi-

ous areas, Wood suggested simply foreshortening it dramat-

ically. Pull back, take it out, he exhorted. Farmers who fol-

lowed his advice sacrificed sizable chunks of perfectly arable

land. Wood suggested that such marginal land did not pro-

duce high-grade tobacco in any case (interview, Marondera,

March 20, 2003). Many farmers would surely have seen his

solution as economically suboptimalbut implemented it

anyway.Conservationistaesthetics,drawnonvellum,setthe

course for many a tractor in the 1990s.

Virginias hydrological revolution, in fact, conjoined

beauty, production, and belonging even more thoroughly

than had the earlier terraces. Swanepoel, who in our first

conversation had explained the efficiency of labor, later

summed up his entire enterprise in loftier terms. The ob-

vious thing, he declared, is to develop and to beautify

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(interview, Marondera, May 1, 2003). This combination of

seemingly opposed valuesalso found by David S. Trigger

(1997:167) among Australian minersdid not initially ring

true to me. A month later, I asked Sweeney which was re-

ally more important, economic development or beauty? Of

course, dams brought economic benefits, he admitted: Be-fore them, southern Marondera had been a bum-farming

area . . . almost a peasant area. Im talking on a white scale.

At root, though, economics and aesthetics were equivalent.

If you have farmed in a series of droughts, he explained

to me (an obvious urbanite), then water becomes a very

. . . beautiful thing to see. . . like jewels when viewed from

the air (interview, Harare, June 10, 2003). From their planes,

farmers gazed down on the landscape they had made and

thatmade upso much ofvalue tothem. Dam buildersfound

a way to transform the highveld, love its landscape, and be-

longinZimbabweallatthesametime.Andalmostassoonas

they grasped it, they lost it. Moving into a gated community

outside Harare, an ex-Virginian predicted that whites mightoneday regain farms somewhere,but wewillneverdevelop

them, beautify them as we did. [Rather than invest in them]

we willget US bucksoutside the country (interview, Harare,

May 26, 2003).

A room with a view

Dams helped solve a deeper aesthetic problem for whites.

In common with the Australian bushas described by Paul

Carter (1988:4445)the interior plateau of eastern and

southern Africa lacked features recognizable to Europeans.

The monotony disoriented explorers andvisitors more used

to regular alternations of valley, mountains, lakes, and so on.

Zimbabwe, in particular, suffered from a hydrological deficit

with respect to Europe: It contained no natural lakes what-

soever. Zimbabwes most noted landscape artist succeeded

in spite of the terrain around him. As a later critic recalled,

Robert Paul can set up an easel in front of a featureless ex-

panse of nondescript grass and scrubby bushes and, with

a brushstroke make something one can look at endlessly.

He found cohesion, variety, vitality in that seeming noth-

ingness (Roux 1996:60). For others, emigration solved the

aesthetic problem. The main character of Lessings semiau-

tobiographical novelappropriately entitled Landlocked

obsesses about aridity as she prepares to leave:[Martha Quest] was becoming obsessed with the sea,which she had not seen, did not remember. . . . An enor-mous longing joy took possession of her. She no longerthought Im going to England. She thought . . . Im goingtoget off this high, dry place where myskin burns and Ican never lose the feeling of tension and I shall sit by along, grey sea andlisten to the waves break. [1958b:199]

Dams provided an alternative. Whites who lacked Pauls

imagination and Quests wanderlust could simply engineer

Figure 4. Aggregate shoreline of reservoirs in Virginia/Macheke, 1980

2000.

smaller-scale long, grey seas. In the hydrological revolu-

tion of the 1990s, bulldozers did the work of glaciers. Dams

inundated highveld valleys and,along upland contours, cre-

atednumerousvantagepointsfromwhichtoviewtheresult-

ing reservoirs. In Virginia alone, dam construction between

1990 and 1997 increased the districts shoreline from 38 to

203 kilometers (see Figure 4).39 Martha Quest could come

home.

Some shorelines excelled in providing sheer, non-productive beauty. I asked Wood which of Virginias 203

kilometers of littoral gave the greatest aesthetic pleasure.

He pointed me toward Chingezi Dam, lying across the

Nyadoramuchena River and one of the districts largest by

capacity.40 The ownerof Chingezi,Jelsma,had built thedam

in 1993 and raised it in 1996. He did not choose, accord-

ing to Wood, the best site for irrigation. The impounded

water filled a bowl, requiring Jelsma to pump it up steep

slopes to his flatter, arable lands (interview, Marondera, July

23, 2003). Yet, in aesthetic terms, Jelsma made an inspired

choice. The very same slopes pinched the reservoir basin,

forcing water up the Nyadoramuchena and into three trib-

utary streams. The resulting shoreline extended over 9.9

kilometers, the fourth longest in the district.41 More impor-

tantly, the topography above the waterlinecreased by four

watercoursescreated a sense of privacy along the shore-

line. People could watch the water without, themselves, be-

ing watched. This seclusion, combined with ones distance

from cultivated fields, gave Chingezi an air of wilderness.

Jelsma himself showed me the littoral. Youve got trees all

the way round, he narrated as we walked, Its very quiet in

the bushvirgin, scenic. Virginmeant scenic, and scenery

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depended on water and on the lines of sight around it. The

impoundment of the riverupsettingto another kind of na-

tureloveronly enhanced the valleys pristine quality. Idyl-

lic, Jelsma pronounced (interview, Virginia, July 23, 2003).

Heandotherwhiteshad,onceagain,masteredthehighvelds

broken topography. What terraces achieved for cultivation,reservoirs accomplished for contemplation.

Still, not every shoreline possessed Chingezis baroque

curves. Fortunately, farmers with bland littorals could

retrofit them for complexity. For Robinson, it was important

to end with something that wasnt . . . offensive when you

walked through there. He and the ICA advised farmers on

various ways of creating a pleasing appearance (interview,

Harare, March 14, 2003). Farmers added peninsulas and is-

lands. No one east of Harare knew more about the efficacy

of such measures than John Tessmer.42 A teacher of ecol-

ogy and manager of his schools private woodland, Tessmer

manufactured birdhabitats. Although he advised farmers in

Virginiaand had even spoken formally at an ICA annualgeneral meeting ( Virginia ICA, minutes of the 44th annual

general meeting heldSeptember17, 1997)Tessmers great-

estwork layjust outside thedistrict.On IgavaFarm, Tessmer

and the owner had added 260 percent to the length of the

mainreservoirs shoreline. A duckwill onlyoccupy one bay,

Tessmer informed me, and so he designed 12 small bays on

Igava. Better to display the birds, Tessmerconstructed walk-

ways into the reservoir. He used anthills to make islands. Fi-

nally and most ingeniously, Tessmer scooped out a set of six

depressions in the reservoirs bottom that would hold water

as it receded. A large draw down for irrigation would actu-

ally enhance ornithological diversity. It workedor at least

observers thought it did. We pulled the migratory route ofducks over this area, Lanclos boasted. While flying from the

Mediterranean to South Africa, he elaborated, the Egyptian

goose and knobnose duck actually veer slightly eastward

to visit Virginias reservoirs (interview, Marondera, June 12,

2003). Bird counts didnot confirm this globalornithological

effect, butthe symbolismof theassertion matteredfar more:

Birdsvotedwiththeirwings.43Afterviewingallofblack-ruled

Africa fromthe air, theyfavoredZimbabwes whitehighlands.

Proavian enhancements to the shoreline benefited un-

derwater species as well. A long shoreline and intricate

topography provided habitatknown as structurefor

aquatic plants, fish, and, ultimately, their predators. Occu-

pying the top of the food chain, sportfishermen strove to

enhance the biological productivity of their dams. The or-

ganization Zimbabwe Bassmasters, especially, its Virginia-

Headlands chapter, stepped forward to help them. As the

head of that chapter, Graham Murdock, explained, I am a

bassfishermanwholookstocreatemoreplacestogofishing.

. . . It doesnt come naturally. Youve actually got to create that

environment (interview, Harare, July 3, 2003).44 In fact, one

had to create everything about it: The bassfierce, fighting

fishwereimported from the United States and introduced,

byBassmasters,tonewreservoirsthroughoutVirginia.Inthe

reservoirs, Bassmasters encouraged farmers to dump tires,

logs, and other bits of artificial structure. Finally, and most

heroically, Murdock actually rescued fish from reservoirs as

they evaporated in the 1992 drought and transferred them

to safe storage. Why did he and other Bassmasters and sucha large portion of Virginias farmers go to such extremes?

They enjoyed fishing, of course, but it also animated their

community. A lot of these guys like their fishing, explained

Swanepoel, Its social. They go out on a boat and sit there

and have their braai [barbecue]. Its different from having a

braaiinthegarden(interview,Marondera,May1,2003).The

difference layin the water. Engineered hydrology fit hand in

glove with rural white society.

That hydrology could appeal to urban whites as well.

In 2000, Virginia farmers began to market the beauty of

their water to tourists.45 In that year, Frank Richards con-

structed three chalets along his reservoir.46 Blocking the

Nyadora River since 1995, his impoundment boasted Vir-ginias second-longest shoreline (15.15 kilometers; Wood

2003). As a further aesthetic virtue, wildlife abounded on

Richardss farm.He saw kudu,sable,duiker, andklipspringer

regularly and hyena, leopard, reedbuck, greysbok, steen-

buck,wild pig,and jackal lessfrequently. Of course, the same

animals roamed widely in Virginia. They used the areas of

farms too steep or rocky for farmers to cultivate as a patchy,

discontinuoushabitat. In effect, Richards found yetanother

way to use the highvelds broken topography. Among his

neighbors, the idea caught on. In 200203, I found another

five Virginia farmers who had considered chalets. Two of

themplannedtojointheirpropertiesasaconservancyand

not satisfied with the existing biodiversityto stock theirland with impala, nyala, and zebra. Still, shoreline was the

main attraction, and the conservancys chalets would have

abutted it. If youre looking at water, explained one of the

owners, andits pleasant,its quiet.What a wayto relax(in-

terview, Harare, March 17, 2003). More intricate shorelines

heightenedthissenseofcalm.Jelsmaplannedtoinstalllodg-

ingin theestuariesof thestreamsfeeding hisunusually den-

dritic reservoir. Guests would enjoyan unobstructedview of

the water as ridges obstructed views of fellow guests. This

typeofopticalgeometryLanclosexplainedoverlunchwith

Jelsma and meallowed chalets to give [guests] the feeling

of being completely by themselves (interview, Marondera,

June 12, 2003). Tourists and their hosts craved human iso-

lation and faunal companya combination that they called

virgin bush. An ironic, anthropogenic nature was starting

to flourish on the highveld.47

Almost immediately, however, it was cut short and re-

duced to a mere rhetorical device. By 200203, paramil-

itary violence had, at least, deferred the dream of eco-

tourism (Hughes 2001). Whites cited, not extant chalets,

but the idea of chalets as evidence of their ecological stew-

ardship. Black farmers, they implied, never would have

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aspired to ecotourism: They did not work hard enough, and

they did not appreciate nature enough (cf. Taylor 2002:20).

Some large-scale blackfarmers operatedto quote a phrase

in general circulation after 2000as cell-phone farmers,

hiring on-site managers rather than farming themselves.

Other, less wealthy black settlers did work the land person-ally, but in ways that violated whites conservation ethic.

The world consists of two types of people, Sweeney ex-

plained to me, creators and users. Clearly, most blacks fell

in the latter category. Sweeney explained their instrumen-

talist approach to reservoirs and fish. In impounded water,

they sought only food, as opposed to whites bottom-line

of generating something good and beautiful and valuable

(interview, Harare, June 10, 2003). Bassmasters, who prac-

ticed catch-and-release,expressed outrage at what they saw

as a pervasive black tendency to overfish and even to vac-

uumreservoirswithnets.Whenblacksettlersmovedontohis

farm, Richards initially established a reasonably amicable

relationship. What killed it [however] was . . . the total de-struction of animals. Signaling the importance of kudu and

other wild species, he continued, I mean you just cant sit

and watchyour farm destroyed. What was beingdestroyed?

Even if tourists had come in droves in 2002, Richards would

nothaveearnedmuch revenue:The chalets only chargedthe

equivalent of $1 perperson pernight. Tobacco, of course, did

put money in the bank in peaceful times.But Richards, hav-

ing moved to Harare, did not dwell on the tobacco or on

any crop. Its my biggest sorrow, he lamented, losing that

dam (interview, Harare, October 28, 2002). He and other

Virginia farmers regretted ecological more than economic

loss. Fuming in Harare, Robinson denounced Mugabe: He

is anenvironmentalpagan, this man. Hedoesnt give a damnabout any aspect of the environment (interview, Harare,

October 29,2002).Some black settlers were even cutting im-

poundments, practicing gravity-fed irrigation on the down-

stream side and raising the specter of widespread dam fail-

ure.In the midst of shortages of seed, fuel, and other inputs,

few of the new settlers had planted commercial crops, let

alone high-grade tobacco. The environment whites had en-

gineered threatened to implode around them.

Conclusion: Zimbabwes middle landscape

Before they were dispossessed, Virginias whites bridged the

distance between Coetzees dream topographies of empty

landand plantation. They created what Marx(1964:23) calls,

in the literature of the United States, a middle landscape.

Like Thomas Jefferson of the American Virginia, they imag-

ined a garden, compromising between civilization and na-

ture, between the primeval and the technological. Commer-

cial farmers made their Arcadian gardensa success that

is all the more striking given the initial conditions. Under

a climate of intense storms, Virginias hydrology and soils

behavedtouseMikeDavisstermforsouthernCalifornia

like Walden Pond on LSD (1998:14). Primitive, wild nature

raged just outside thekitchen door. Whitescouldnot change

the rain, but they changed the texture of the land. Terraces

slowed runoff to a stately pace and held soil to soil. If man-

aged properly, Virginias gardens did not erode. In the 1990s,

whites forged another compromise between the highveldsuntamed topography and modern technology: the irriga-

tiondam. Theybulldozed earth,blockedrivers,and pumped

water to agroindustrial fields over which tractors and com-

bine harvesters rolled. Yet amid the whirring of machines

lay a recessed, still space: the reservoir itself, flanked with

trees and wildlife. Walden-like, these bodies of water invited

transcendence. They also invited political discourse; for the

middle landscape is as attractive for what it excludes as

for what it contains (Marx 1964:138). Most tobacco planta-

tions assigned one role and one role alone for blacks: man-

ual labor.48 Other categories of blacks, such as peasants and

newlymintedcommercialfarmers,couldnotstraddlethedi-

videbetweenprimitivismandmodernity.After2000,thenewsettlers violated nearly all preexisting codes. They killed wild

animals, felled trees, oras Buckle wrote after her farm was

occupiedrape[d] the land (2001:10). Portrayed as nearly

atavistic in their proclivity toward erosion, blacks did not

qualify for admission to the middle landscape. For as long

as they could, whites policed the boundaries of their neo-

European reserve.

In so doing, whites solidified the manland relation-

ship vital to their sense of belonging in Africaandupdated

that trope for the era of black rule. Those who remained

in Zimbabwe into the 1990s identified themselves as lib-

eral in their dealings with workers and other blacks. They

would have concurred with Lessings forward-thinking cri-tique of the fictional farmer Charlie Slatter, who believed

that one should buy a sjambok before a plough or a har-

row(1950:13).Yet,havingrelinquishedtheinfamoushippo-

hide whip, most white farmers did not replace it with an-

other instrument or technique that reached across the color

bar. Very few of the Virginia farmers I met had ever shared

a meal with a black, and few intended to do so.49 Inter-

marriage was unthinkable. In short, rural whites adapted

to postcolonialism by withdrawing from, rather than inte-

grating with, the broader nation.50 Their liberalism engaged

with the environment almost as an alternative to society.

In place of Charlie Slatter, many Virginians would identify

with AlexandraFullers white Zimbabwean recluse: Like the

African earth itself, he seemed organic and supernatural at

the same time. . . . Seeing him on his farm, I couldnt decide

if the man had shaped the land or the other way around

(2004:56). Perhaps the land-shaping hydrological revolution

substituted for a sociological one. In The Conservationist,

SouthAfrican writerNadine Gordimer describes a Transvaal

farmer faced with exactly these two options: Mehring loves

his land. Perhaps youll really believe its love, scolds his

liberal girlfriend, A new kind. A superior kind, without

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people (Gordimer1978:178).Tothe Mehringsof Zimbabwe,

no one indicated publicly this fork in the roadbetween a

humanistic and a misanthropic, naturalistic love. It was an

opportunity missed.

In this unconscious sense, the hydrological revolu-

tion was supremely conservative. Virginias farmers sorelywanted, first, to keep their individual estates and, second, to

legitimate their collective status as a landholding minority.

Investinginthehighveldadvancedwhitestowardtheformer

goal in a straightforward, Lockean fashion. Each impound-

ment deepened their sense of entitlement to theestates they

owned. This infrastructure also added to the potential ex-

pense of nationalization and compensation, making such

an event that much less likely. At one level, then, farmers

carried out a revolution in hydrology implicitly to forestall

one in property. At anothereven less consciouslevel, hy-

drological enhancements could help farmers regain some

of the political footing they had lost at independence. Black

rule cast the highveld in quite an unfavorable light: an un-justanachronism, where European-derivedpeople stillpos-

sessed large swathes of extra-European territory. Could the

ecology and beauty of shorelinesnaturalize such an exotic

even retrogradesociology? Yes, whites felt in their bones.

Dams not only legitimated their discredited minority but

also admitted it into the moral centerof Zimbabwe. Mugabe

himselfappreciatedtheimpoundmentsorsoSweeneyhad

overheard. Amid dams and reservoirs, he, Robinson, and

Stevens fit in. A white African, said one farmer, Dave

Stevens was it. Surely, black Africans would come to rec-

ognize this identity. Yet, my informant undercut this praise

with a crucial qualifier: if ever there was a white African

(interview, Virginia, May 21, 2003).

Notes

Acknowledgments. IamgratefultoUSAID;theLandTenureCen-ter at the University of WisconsinMadison; theDepartment of Eco-nomic History at the University of Zimbabwe; and Rutgers Univer-

sity for, in various ways, sponsoring the research for this article.A New Directions fellowship from the Andew W. Mellon Founda-

tion gave me time to write. Eira Kramer and Kezia Kramer assistedwith archival research. I am especially grateful to Les Wood, whocollected and compiled all the statistics presented here. For help-

fulcomments on draftversionsof this article,I thank Nancy Jacobs,RudoSanyanga,Virginia Dominguez, andthreeanonymous review-

ers. All interpretations, however, are mine alone.1. The white population crested in roughly 1975 at 278,000, as

againstnearlysevenmillionblacks(GodwinandHancock1993:287).2. Fordescriptions of the various approaches takenby other colo-

nial classes, see Bell 1993:330; Comaroff 1989; Cooper and Stoler

1989, 1997; and Stoler 1989.3. Regarding South Africa, Vincent Crapanzano describes apar-

theid as the product of an essentialist racism in which people ofcolor areconsideredto be quintessentiallydifferent fromwhitesandcannot, as such, enter in any meaningful way into the formation

of white identity (1986:39). Coetzee (1988:8) suggests that, in the1960s, overtly political questions of apartheid displaced land as a

literary themeor, rather, authors used landscape and nature assymbolic vehicles for ideological messages (cf. Nuttall 1996).

4. A recent letter to the editor in a Harare newspaper, for exam-ple, argues that there were no black landowners to steal it [land]

from then [before1900]. Local blacks . . . preferred to live a nomadiclife. The anonymous author described him- or herself as 3rd gen-

eration white Zimbabwean, 9th generation white African, hence Afrikaner (Daily News 2002: 7). For a discussion of the ways in

which white pioneers deliberately settled in the proximity of res-ident blackswhom they needed for laborsee Hughes 2006:55.

5. Data on white farmers experience of the occupations them-

selves will appear in a separate work.

6. Relocatedin Canada,the reluctant farmer finallyagreedto meetme in July 2005.

7. AnactivistgroupcalledJustice forAgricultureconducteda sim-

ilar, nationwide exerciseduring the sameperiod, preparingeventu-allyto suethe governmentof Zimbabwe forfinancialcompensation.Given the confidential and overtly political nature of that groups

data, I was not granted access to it.

8. BlairRutherford(2001:8081) describescommercialfarmersinnorthern Zimbabwe in this fashion.

9. My subjects frequently described themselves as patriots,never as nationalists.

10. In this connection, Katya Uusihakala (1999:39) refers toa double diaspora of white Kenyans (cf. Wagner 1994:7; Ward

1989:1).

11. In referring to Virginia, this article follows the boundariesof the ICA bearing that name. Most farmers distinguished between

the eastern, lower-elevation side of this area, Virginia proper, andthe western, higher side, Macheke.

12. Clements and Harben 1962:2833 summarizes this history.

On the cultural meanings of Raleigh, Elizabeth I, and Virginia, seeLim 1998. Perhaps not unrelated to this link between the Virginias,a settler arriving in Marondera shortly after World War II named his

farm Raleigh explicitly after Sir Walter Raleigh (English 1995:81).

13. Harben was vice president of the Rhodesian Tobacco

Association, an industry group of growers, from 1946 to 1954 (cf.Rubert 1998).

14. TheimportanceofthewatershedtowhitesviewoftheeasternMashonaland landscape can hardly be overemphasized. The front

cover of the 1972 agricultural survey of Marondera shows an aerialphotograph with the watershed lines added in (Ivy and Bromley1972). In 1987, a group of whites founded Watershed College in

Wedza, slightly to the south of Marondera (Bissett 2003:45). PatEnglishs (1995) reminiscences of life in Wedza from the 1920s to

the 1940s refer repeatedly to the watershed.15. SeeMeadows 1996and Nyschens 1997for frequentuse of this

phrase.16. Hodder-Williams1983:4568providesafulleraccountofScor-

ror and early settlement.

17. See Hodder-Williams 1983:199 regarding early ICAs. The ter-races work best on slopes of 68 percent and comprise a cut trough

and filled ridge. They are distinguished from the more well-knownbench terraces, which apply to much steeper slopes and resemblea flight of stairs (Schwab et al. 1993:154155). Zimbabwean farmers

refer to the broad-base terraces colloquially as contour ridges (cf.Elwell n.d.).

18. In the same spirit, D. S. McClymonts (1981) 90-page reviewof tobacco advice only mentions labor five times. The Agricultural

Labor Bureau is a committee of the Commercial Farmers Union.19. This drop is measured between the 1,100- and 1,500-meter

contour lines on the 1:50,000-scale Macheke, St. Benedict Mis-

sion,and Munda maps(respectively, numbers 1732C3,1832A1, and1831B2 from the Zimbabwe Office of the Surveyor General). This

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gradient of 1.13 percent actually exceeds the recommended slopefor parallel layouts (see text below).

20. I am using the terms farm and family loosely. Large family

units frequently managed multiple, adjacent farms jointly or as acorporation. The issue of arable land was hotly contested through-

out the 1990s. The state frequently claimed that farmers failed to

use their land fully. Farmers suggested that plowing marginal areaswould ultimately wreck the soil.

21. Cited by Virginia whites, the pre-2000 figure of 72 familiesis probably understated. A family could comprise a father, two

or more adult sons, wives, and children running multiple adjacent,loosely coordinated farms.

22. Roughly ten farmers attended annual general meetings.23. I obtained the minutes for 199299 from a member who had

saved them.

24. Mark Robinson is a pseudonym.25. As representative of communal land residents, the Virginia

ICA invited a staff member of Agritex, the agricultural extensionagency, who (after independence) would have been black.

26. According to a governmental Department of Conservation

andExtension (Conex)publication,conservation works would haveoccupied between 12 percent and17 percent of land area on slopes

(Jones et al. n.d.:21). For criticism of conservation policy and ex-planations of smallholders conservation practices, see Drinkwater

1991 and Wilson 1989.27. Regarding Stevenss career, see Buckle 2002:5354.28. Up to 1991, theVirginiaICA hired a government plane. When

that aircraft became unavailable, Robinson volunteered his own(Virginia ICA, minutes of annual general meeting held on Septem-

ber 26, 1991, p. 2).29. Wood 2003 provides a full analysis of dam construction in

Virginia. Although numerous, these reservoirs occupied only 1,316hectaresan area equivalent to one of the larger-sized farms in

Virginia.Discussed below, the stringy shapeof thesedams accounts

for their small aggregate surface area.30. After nationalizing derelict and abandoned farms between

1980 and 1983, the state, in fact, acquired very little land. Owners

wishing to sell farms had to petition the state for a certificate of nointerest, andthe statealmostalways grantedit. A considerablepor-

tion of Zimbabwes commercial farmland changed handsmostlybetween whites (Rugube et al. 2003:129).

31. Johann Swanepoel is a pseudonym.32. Tom Sweeney is a pseudonym. Sweeney overheard the

remarkmade in Shona apparently on the assumption that he didnot understand that languageand recounted it to me and othersin English.

33. Regarding the vastly larger Lake Kariba, Soils Incorporatedconfirms only a cooling effect inthe immediate vicinity ofthe lake

(2000:73). In any case, windwould carryevaporated watera consid-erable distance before it precipitated.

34. Henk Jelsma is a pseudonym.

35. The relationship is slightly morecomplexbecausedams tend

togrowwider(asmeasuredthroughthedamwallfromtheupstreamto thedownstream side) as they grow taller.Width varieswith seep-age inversely and linearly (Schwab et al. 1993:197201).

36. Don Lanclos is a pseudonym. Because spillway water is freeof sediment (the sediment having fallen in the still water of thereservoir),it hasa high capacityto pick upsedimentas it accelerates

(McCully 1996:33).37. Therefore, this irrigation system differed fundamentallyfrom

thosemore typicallystudiedby anthropologists(Geertz 1963; Lans-ing 1991).

38. From the late 1990s, Wood had served as chairman of the

Nyagui Sub-Catchment Council.

39. Allshorelinelengthsapplyat reservoirsfullsupplylevel. Wood(2003) estimated most of the lengths using original builders basinsurveys.

40. Chingezi is a pseudonym.41. The longest reservoir shorelines were 17.25, 15.15, and 13.13

kilometers. Wood (2003) calculated two others at 10.50 and 10.05

kilometers, but these liewithin themeasurementerror of Chingezisshoreline.

42. John Tessmer is a pseudonym.43. The African Waterfowl Census(carriedout under theauspices

of the InternationalWaterfowland Wetlands Research Bureau)con-ductedbirdcounts on onesite in thevicinity of Virginia:Dons dam

near Rusape. These findings show wild oscillations in the presenceof Egyptian goose (Alopochen aegyptiacus)and knobnose, or combduck (Sarkidiornis melanotos), between 1993 and 1998. If the ag-

gregate bird population were stable, one would expect decreasingbird densities during this period of major reservoir filling (as birds

dispersed to more and more habitats). The absence of a clear de-cline in bird populations at any one site could indicate an increasein aggregate populations visiting eastern Zimbabwe. I thank Peter

Rockingham-Gill for making these raw data available to me.44. Officiallyentitled the Zimbabwe NationalB.A.S.S. Federation,

the Zimbabwe Bassmasters constituted a branch of the global BassAnglers Sportsmens Society (B.A.S.S.), based in the United States.

45. In the late 1990s, various estates began labeling themselvessafari farms or holiday farms (Mark Guizlo, personal commu-nication, June 10, 2002; Irene Staunton, personal communication,

July 7, 2004). I would distinguish this phenomenon fromthe slightlyearlier conversion of large-scale cattle ranches into wildlife conser-

vancies in the lowveld.46. Frank Richards is a pseudonym.

47. Regarding the association of nature and artificial waterparticularly in the western United Statessee Fiege 1999; Hughes2004, 2005; Langston 2003; McPhee 1971; and White 1995.

48. At the national level, however, commercial farmers had takensignificant steps toward supporting an emergent class of black

landowners.The Zimbabwe Tobacco Association,a partof theCom-

mercial Farmers Union, systematically sponsored black tobaccogrowers through an apprenticeship and supervised independent

farming.49. Angela Catherine Davies (2001:227) reports quite a different,

more integrationist attitude among young, urban whites.50. See Davies 2001 for a treatment of this issue with respect to

urban whites.

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