BOOK REVIEWS151on these issues. For example, in considering problems of 'dual marriage'(statutory and customary marriages existing simultaneously for a married pair),there is no reference in this book to the extensive work of anthropologists inidentifying and defining the marriage process in the 'traditional' societies inquestion. Nor is the anthropological literature on bridewealth apparently known,with its hard-won distinctions between payments in patrilineal and matrilinealsocieties, and the precise rights that are transacted by bridewealth in each. Greaterclarity in legal understanding might emerge from using this literature.That said, however Š and with no intention of delving into the manyspecifics of the individual arguments Š I found this a serious and usefulcollection, less uneven in the quality of its individual papers than is commonly thecase (though not without some contradictions between individual authors on the'correct' interpretation of specific aspects of Zimbabwean colonial law). It willundoubtedly and deservedly find a place beyond its primary orientation as asource for students reading law.University of ZimbabweANGELA P. CHEATERGuns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe By D. Lan.Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1983, xix, 244 pp., ISBN 0-85255-200-9,Z$ 12.50.It is a performance. The book Guns and Rain is a theatrical event, bothentertaining and absorbing. The author, David Lan, had the wit and courage toenter a remote corner of Zimbabwe, Dande, at Independence to study therelationship between the spirit mediums and the guerrillas. After spending overeighteen months in Dande, Lan wrote his thesis for which he was awarded hisdoctorate by the London School of Economics. This book is based on the thesis. Itis about one aspect of the straggle for Zimbabwe (1966-80) as reported in anoperational zone in the Zambezi valley. It sets out to describe the active supportgiven to the resistance by Shona religious leaders, and to detail the collaborationbetween ancestors and their descendants, the past and the present, the living andthe dead. Using structural analysis, Lan examines the politics of resistance, givesan account of an important historical event, and traces Shona social theory andpractice. His study has been widely praised as a model which shows howanthropology can contribute to politics and history.Lan has a writer's eye for a catchy phrase Š The Lions of Rain' and 'TheSons of the Soil5 are two of his section headings Š and a craftsman's ability tothread themes using carefully chosen words like coloured beads so that the wholeis an intricately worked and pleasing ornament. Yet my copy of Guns and Rain islittered with question marks. How does he know this? I want to ask. Where is hisevidence? How many people told him that? Where is the counter evidence? Forexample, let us see what Lan says about work. In the second chapter, on ThePeople and Land', he describes the Korekore of Dande as living in villages inwhich,Each household has its own fields where the men work in the early morning while152BOOK REVIEWStheir wives care for their children and prepare the morning meal. Women and men returnto work till midday, eat and rest until mid-afternoon then return to the fields until the sungoes down.There are very few families in Dande which rely entirely on the land for theirsubsistence. Most have a father or a son, a brother or a male cousin in work, or seekingwork, somewhere 'on the mountain'. Without these wages it would be hard to make iteven through the better years, almost impossible to survive the worst. But all these wageearners return to work their own fields when they can. Work in the towns, on the farms, inthe mines has of course a powerful influence on shaping their view of their world.Nonetheless work in the fields is somehow a more basic form of work, 'real' work,providing a crucial framework of identity Š as a member of a household, a lineage, achieftancy [sic] and ultimately of a clan as well. . . .In the chapters that follow we will advance deep into the undergrowth of mythologyand ritual, of symbolism and belief- As we pick our way between these constructs andimaginings, it will be useful to keep in mind this central image: the villages, their fields nearthe banks of the rivers, the women and men of Dande working them, following the samepaths over the fields, first to hoe out furrows, then back to the start and across againdribbling fertilizer (mushonga, or medicine) into the earth's new wounds, then back andacross to sow the seeds, then back and across to weed and again to weed, day after day,with one eye on the sky, the birds, the soil, insects, winds, the mountain top seeking thesigns of rain and then back and across one final time to harvest the heads of sorghum, thetufts of cotton, the pale green cobs of maize. The final time, that is, until next year (pp.11-12).Given the density of the undergrowth and the emphasis that Lan later placeson agricultural work his description of labour and reproduction is inadequate. Hissketch of field work applies to only some months of the year. I doubt that womenstay home to prepare breakfast while men go early to the fields to work; surelypeople in the hot, dry valley conditions hoe and plant in stations, not in furrows;the people of Dande surely grow sorghum varieties that ripen after the maize, andhe gives no figures on remittances from migrant labourers. He claims that inDande a family needs 3.25 hectares of maize to provide a subsistence and cash forbasic needs, yet he does not provide evidence for so finely-wrought a figure nortell us how large 'a family' is. Lan's description reads easily but what authority dohis words bear? I have just completed a study of labour in the Zambezi Valley so itis perhaps mean of me to pick on these points. However, Lan later placesenormous importance on his construction of work and it underpins his analysis ofthe role of mediums. He says of the sexual division of labour that men clear thebush for new fields and some hunt; that women do all household activities andmaintain river gardens; and that 'All other agricultural tasks may be carried out bywomen or by men separately or together' (p. 12). We have been told, thus far,that, apart from clearing virgin land and gardening, men and women do allagricultural tasks; that agricultural work is 'real' work; and that the identity of aperson in Dande is framed by agricultural labour.In Chapter Five, 'The Valley of Affines', Lan gives an elegant analysis of therituals performed by mhondoro (literally lions', in this context the most importantspirits of the land). He explicates the symbolism of blood and the moon and linksthese to weekly rest days (zvisi, sing, chisi) and monthly rest days (chiropa andrusere) when all agricultural work is forbidden and only domestic labour isallowed. He goes on,BOOK REVIEWS153If male work is forbidden when there is no moon in the sky and mhondoro do notpossess their mediums at the same time and for the same reasons, it seems possible thatpossession is in a sense thought of as male work. Let us follow this possibility and see if itleads us anywhere worth getting to (p. 92).Well, one is surprised to learn that agricultural work is male work. But let usfollow Lan further. He shows that rest days areassociated with death on which no male work, including possession, can take place. But onthe anniversaries of these highly significant deaths (the deaths of the mhondoro, the chiefsof the past, the death of the moon) one kind of work, women's work may go ahead asusual. Does this mean that men's work is in some sense opposed to death, on a death-day itmust cease, whereas women's work is somehow associated with death, so closelyassociated in fact that on a death-day this work alone may continue? We need to look alittle more closely at what women's work, in the widest implications of this phrase,actually is (p. 92).Not only is agricultural work male work (a fact that has escaped the attention ofmost anthropologists in sub-Saharan Africa) but women's work ib associated withdeath. We give birth to death? Wait, Lan proves it.Where I worked, in the Omay, on zvisi days men made fishing nets; builthouses, granaries, goat pens, and chicken coops; carved hoe handles, stools ordrums; wove slings; fixed bicycles or sandals; and spent hours nourishing relationsamong kin and neighbours not necessarily over pots of beer. Do the men ofDande not do these tasks? Is none of that male work? My study shows thatwomen spend much more time on agricultural activities than men do even whenmen are at home and not away earning money. (In a recent ILO study, 'LabourProductivity in Zimbabwe', 1984, a large sample of farmers were interviewed ofwhom only one third were men because the rest were migrants, yet the author ofthe report concludes that 'men are farmers and women are their assistants.') Is itdifferent in Dande? Are the women doing male work? What nonsense.Lan continues his analysis, tying together notions of impurity (menstrual blood)and the loss of teeth and burial practice and life as a drying-out process (withwomen reverting periodically to 'utter wetness'), until he concludes that,Women's work is thought of as the reproduction of human life by biological meanswith all the wetness, softness and blood that that entails. Men's work, by contrast, is thereproduction of human life through the agency of the mediums, the recreation of the livesof the senior lineage ancestors by means of the rituals of possession (p. 94).This extraordinary exclusion of women from the reproduction of human lifethrough the ancestors is backed up by comments on women's 'very insignificantpart' in the burials of adults and their role as 'de-individualised women' atpossession rituals. Finally, Lan says,To string all this imagery together: on chiropa [chiropa is the day after the non-appearanceof themoon in the sky Š a rest day] the moon is dead. It is the day of blood when the earthmay not be cut into with a hoe nor may any other men's work such as hunting be done.Only women's work in the house or the gathering of wild plants is allowed. On chiropathere are no mhondoro, no spirits, none of the life after death, the re-emergence of theancestors of the lineage made possible by the mediums and the men. There is onlybiological life, the life of the menstrual blood of wives, that is to say the life made possible154BOOK REVIEWSby affines. On chiropa the ancestors of one's own lineage do no work. They are dead andthe mediums cannot restore them to life, for chiropa is a day polluted by affinal blood ...For the Korekore, then, there are two kinds of life. There is the biological blood-drenched life associated with women as affines, and there is the social and intellectuallife-in-death of the mhondoro controlled by men . ..It is as if the symbolism of biological reproduction, in reality the most significantsource of fertility and creativity, has been stolen by men to lend lustre to their owncheap-jack construction of cloth, beads, sticks and beer (pp. 95-8).Who, I wonder, is employing cheap-jack constructions? Lan grants womenonly biological reproductive powers and identifies them with death (see p. 95)and as affines, which is the same, in his overall analysis, as strangers. Heempowers men with control over the social and intellectual life of the shades. Mendo the 'real work' and have 'ancestral fertility'. His analysis of Korekore myths issimilarly extraordinary in the smooth manner in which he turns the central role ofwomen into one of insignificance and subservience. Despite the handicaps thatwomen carry Š they are blood-drenched, insignificant and de-individualized Šfour mhondoro are, Lan admits, regarded as women or as having a female aspect(p. 88) (four, I presume, of the fifteen mhondoro Lan interviewed, p. 232). Ofthese four, only two are 'unequivocably women': Nehanda is the daughter ofMutota, Chiqua is the daughter of Nyamapfeka, and the mediums who arepossessed by them are always female. Besides, there are other female mediums inDande but they are possessed by male mhondoro. The author then comments,'Despite this I do not deal with Nehanda and Chigua in what follows becausetheir 'femaleness' is purely functional' (p. 88). 'Maleness' is dysfunctional andtherefore worthy of attention?He eventually places the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in debt to the spirit of awoman, Ambuya Nehanda, 'the mhondoro whose mediums had participatedboth in the first liberation struggle, the rebellion of 1896, and in the second'(pp. 217-18). During the second War of Liberation, Nehanda's medium wasKunzaruwa, a woman, and it is with her power and influence in Dande that Lanopens his book. Perhaps Nehanda and Kunzaruwa are honorary males, likefemale anthropologists.Guns and Rain is a fine performance. But Lan has done a great disservice toShona women. It is my understanding that Shona women can take hold ofpositions of enormous power, that their myths grant them places of honour andsignificance, that their rituals offer scope for the control and direction of events,and that their part in reproduction (both as mothers and as agriculturalists) is ofprime, not secondary, importance to the welfare of the nation. Women are notfree: the burden of male domination is great but an analysis such as the one Langives undermines the opportunities Shona culture provides Š opportunities onlybeing won back now by women in the West.University of ZimbabwePAMELA REYNOLDS