140 BOOK REVIEWSto those held by the farmers concerned. This results in difficultiesof implementation and a wholesale disregard of the establishedrules of operation.d) Top-down planning is acceptable in those situations where it isperceived to generate material benefits in the form of funds fordevelopment projects which coincide with the target people'simmediate needs.The importance of this volume cannot be over-emphasized. The needfor strategies that lead to a sustainable use of natural resources is ofcurrent global concern. Given the importance of livestock in the socio-economic fabric of the communal areas of Southern Africa, this book doeswell to highlight attempts to evolve appropriate strategies for a moreeffective manager i?nt of common grazing regimes.University of Zimbabwe P. MAVIMAPeople, Land and Livestock: Proceedings of a Workshop on the Sodo-Economic Dimensions of livestock Production in the Communal Landsof Zimbabwe Edited by B. Cousins. Harare, Univ. of Zimbabwe, Centre forApplied Social Studies, 1989, 461 pp., Z$45,00.Official policy makers consider commercial off-take in Zimbabwe'scommunal areas as unacceptably low, hence their concern to formulate anational policy to improve the situation. Environmental scientists, on theother hand, view current stocking levels as excessive, leading to overgrazingand land degradation. Fenced-off grazing areas (paddocks) have beenestablished in an attempt to solve both problems. However, some of thecontributors to this book cast doubts on the feasibility of both commerciallivestock production and the promotion of conservation through the useof paddocks in the communal areas.The need for a national policy for enhanced commercial livestockproduction in the communal areas is based on an assumption that com-mercial livestock production is desired by the farmers concerned but iscurrently constrained, among other things, by inadequate grazing. Contraryto that assumption, research findings presented in this volume assert thatcommercial livestock production is not a dominant objective among farmersin the communal areas. Livestock, especially cattle, are valued more fortheir role in providing intermediate goods such as draught power andmanure for crop production and, albeit at very low levels, milk and meatfor local consumption or sale. Livestock also has socio-cultural purposes,especially in settling marriage deals, and cattle are very important forreligious purposes. Hence ownership of livestock is of great economic andcultural importance as it confers power, authority and social status.Parenthetically, those households or families that do not own livestockhave to adopt a variety of strategies, such as hiring, exchanging cattle forfield work or arranging work parties (nhimbe ), to ensure access to thedraught power of cattle (p. 267). The motivation among farmers in theBOOK REVIEWS 141communal areas is, therefore, to retain and increase their herds ratherthan to sell them off.The inadequacies of the orthodox grazing scheme in the communalareas are said to arise from the inability of the system to take cognizanceof what Ian Scoones calls 'farmer knowledge' (p. 227), especially in theiradaptive use of 'strategic resources' in dealing with insufficient grazing. Inmost cases such 'strategic resources' are not included in the paddocks sothe paddocks may worsen instead of improve animal health. This view,however, misses the point that current farmer strategies are a desperateattempt to deal with a desperate problem. Current livestock holdings perhousehold in Zimbabwe's communal areas are meagre and very difficult tosustain. In fact, as many as half of the households in the communal areasdo not own cattle. In most cases, the cattle owned by a household do notprovide sufficient manure or draught power for crop production. Thesituation is even worse now after the devastating drought of 1991/2 thanwhen this book was published. The major factor of this scenario is pressurefor land in the communal areas. Nothing short of an effective nationalpolicy for land redistribution will make livestock production, even as asource of intermediate goods for crop farming, a successful venture.Without such a reorganization, romantic views about the use of 'farmerknowledge' and 'strategic resources' will serve to sustain only the current,insufficient stock levels during normal rainy seasons. In situations ofsevere drought the survival of even current stock will be threatened.On the whole this book, another contribution by the University'sCentre for Applied Social Studies in the area of sustainable resourcemanagement, is of use for both practical policy making and academicresearch. It has its limitations, however, most of them being thoseassociated with any collection of conference papers. There is a greatdisparity in the quality of the contributions: some are thoroughly academic,based on rigorous methodologies, presenting substantial research resultsand containing lengthy bibliographies, while others are short, descriptiveaccounts of livestock production policies and programmes. In additionthere are numerous editorial and typographical errors which should havebeen corrected.University of Zimbabwe P. MAVIMARivers of Gold ByH. Ellert. Gweru, Mambo Press, Zambeziana 22,1993, xii,194 pp., illus., ISBN 0-68922-529-4, Z$68,00.Rivers of Gold is a socio-cultural treatise on the role of the Portuguese inthe Zimbabwean plateau from the beginning of the sixteenth century untilabout 1900.The first chapter describes the history of Portuguese settlement inEast Africa from 1498 to the late seventeenth century, dealing with theirarrival in Mozambique and their gradual contact with, and ultimatelysettlement in, the Mutapa state in what is now northern Zimbabwe. This