Zambezia (1999), XXVI (i).ZIMBABWE: PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHICDISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITY1DAVID BEACHDepartment of History, University of ZimbabweAbstractZimbabwe is on the brink of a major crisis. The university can play a crucialrole in averting or at least rmodifying it. The very long-term perspective ofpre<otonial history offers a view of the situation that involves every facultyand department in the university. Consequently, this lecture will take arather different form from the usual. The first part summarizes a recent bookthat is itself a partial summary of my entire career's research. The secondshows how the pre<olonial perspective highlights the coming crisis inZimbabwe, that threatens every aspect of society. The third examines theuniversity as an entity that ought to be able to play a major role in avertingthis crisis, and then goes on to show how it has itself taken a wrong coursethat makes such a role impossible, unless major changes occur on thecampus.PERSPECTIVES ON HISTORYIN THIS LECTURE, I am addressing at least two audiences at once Š historiansand the non-specialists, whether academics or the general public. This isno new experience: in two recent publications I was writing for, on theone hand, academics who were not Africanists and Africanists who werenot academics, while on the other I was writing for historians and theordinary people of Zimbabwe.2 But nor was this itself new. In the courseof my career I have written at almost every level of education fromprimary to university, and have lectured to audiences at remote missionschools and on sandbanks on the Zambezi as well as in foreign universities.Being a professor in Africa is rather different from the popular image of a1 Professor David Beach's inaugural lecture presented on 15 October 1998 at the Universityof Zimbabwe. This lecture was based on 'Can we escape the past, eh? Development andhistory in Mozambique and Zimbabwe', a seminar delivered at Dalhousie University,Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 6 March 1997. The lecture was delivered following the text givenhere almost exactly, but modifications made during its course and afterthoughts thatreinforce the message are inserted as footnotes.2 The Shona and Their Neighbours (Blackwell, Oxford, 19940 4. These were the aims givenme by the publisher; A Zimbabwean Past, Shona Dynamic Histories and Oral Traditions(Mambo, Gweru, 1994,) xvii-xviii.6 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYprofessor as a dreamy inhabitant of an ivory tower, innocent of suchthings as the value of money.3 Moreover, my own field of the pre-colonialhistory in Zimbabwe and central Mozambique involves a remarkablenumber of other disciplines, from archaeology to zoology, in which thehistorian is forced to become a jack of all trades, attempting to understandat least the basic problems while remaining reliant upon the specialistsfor guidance. Consequently, this lecture is going to try to relate pre-colonial history to nearly every discipline studied here at the Universityof Zimbabwe. If many of the specialists in these can fault my knowledge oftheir fields, I hope that, at least, they will appreciate the fact that somebodyis trying to relate their work to a broader national and world picture.Before I start, however, I must explain my own position regardinghistory itself. Being rather allergic to theory, I will not attempt to discussthe question of 'What is history?' in terms of the various theories inexistence. Quite simply, for me history is the memory of humanity. Justas any human from childhood to second childhood has memories of itsexperiences of varying degrees of accuracy, so humanity retains by onemethod or another evidence about its past. This may be based on thediscipline of history itself or upon archaeology, linguistics, sociology,political science, law, commerce and all the other fields in the humanities.Yet the sciences too relate to the memory of humanity: a basic principleof scientific research, that an experiment must be proven to be repeatablewith the same results, depends upon a sense of the past. In fact, everyhuman is a kind of historian, if not a specialist.4Naturally, this very simple definition would not be accepted byhistorians more wedded to theory. For hard line Marxists, history is aprocess defined by the Founder in the last century, and some of thesehave been heard to state that economic and social history is the only realhistory. For some historians in Africa, history is essentially about race orethnicity. For some old-time liberals, history was related to the beliefthat, given the right checks and balances, humanity would evolve towardsan almost ideal society Š at least, for them. (In this they had more incommon with Marxists than either would care to admit.) But my viewdiffers from all of these on a number of fundamental issues, which is whyat different times I have been labelled as 'liberal', 'conservative', 'positivist',3 Gestures at borrowed academic robes, and states: 'I wanted to wear jeans and a T-shirt,but they wouldn't let me!'4 The following three paragraphs were almost entirely omitted from the lecture, but theywere originally written in order to give future historians some idea of the background tomy thinking. I considered cutting them from the published version as being self-indulgent,but decided to retain them for a very different reason. What follows often provokesstrong reactions, but you, the reader, might well consider, if your reaction is a strong one,just why this is so. Just how did you acquire your own views?D. BEACH 7and so forth.5 The difference lies in the facts that 1 do not see humansociety as necessarily evolving towards any kind of superior form, that Ido not regard humans as being essentially 'good', and indeed that I donot think that humanity can even be proven to be important in anyobjective sense.The influences behind these pessimistic views are as follows: As ateenager I was strongly influenced by reading, first fiction and thenhistory, about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, admittedly in itsmost extreme case, in Britain. To me, it was not automatic that 'developed'societies necessarily continued as such. If I was originally influenced bythe doom-laden atmosphere of the late 1950s and early 1960s, whennuclear war seemed all too probable, early university reading showed mehow the essential problem facing the Roman oecumene was internal, notto be blamed on foreign invaders alone. This was why I never had muchtrouble in seeing continuity between the glories of Great Zimbabwe andthe much poorer Shona societies of the nineteenth century. Consequently,I found almost all schools of thought Š liberal, Marxist and evenconservative Š essentially over-optimistic. Secondly, I had troubleaccepting assumptions about the 'goodness' of humanity. When I beganstudying history, the Rhodesian community in which I lived was regardedby almost all outsiders (except among the extreme right) as more or lessessentially evil. I could see their point, though I disagreed, but I could notaccept the corollary, which was that 'goodness' was the maincharacteristic of the rest of humanity. I could see too many examples ofhuman fallibility in myself, my contemporaries and the peoples of thepast that I studied. This still shows in my work, where I am much morecritical of pre-colonial Zimbabwean peoples and individuals than nearlyany other historian. (Nor can I see anyone else in world history whodeserves to escape censure.) This was why I could not believe in anypolitical system, not even in the attractive dream of anarchism, as long ashumans were as they were. Thirdly, originally influenced by the equallydoom-laden science fiction of the 1950s-1960s, I came to believe that thetotal resources of the world are finite, and that if humans expand beyondcertain limits then disaster is inevitable Š and that even if they do not,external factors such as asteroid strikes or the sun going nova are stillpossible. This, it seemed to me, was more important than whetherZimbabwe was to be ruled by capitalists or socialists.5 I. R. Phimister, 'Zimbabwean economic and social historiography since 1970', AfricanAffairs, LXXVIII, (iii), 1979, 261; M. P. M. Horn, 'Chimurenga 1896-1897: A Revisionist Study'(Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, Rhodes University, 1986), 21; T. Wakaiki, in BunkenSoran: Gendai no Africa (Shinhyoron, Tokyo, 1984) 8.8 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYSo what do I believe in, you might wonder? Simply that, for good orill, humans are essentially similar, but sufficiently different to be worthstudying!6 By now, 1 am too committed to this to be able to stop studyingthem if I wanted to: having started my career writing about the Afrikanersof Enkeldoorn, I now find myself following the careers of Afro-Indo-Portuguese families on the Zambezi, and a host of other variedcommunities of all races and languages from Kariba to the mouth of theSave. Whether the University will leave me sufficient time to complete thethree major projects that I have set myself before retirement is anothermatter. Moreover, even though I cannot believe that humans are importantin themselves because I am one (after all, my cat was convinced that theworld was created for cats), I cannot help hoping, in the teeth ofexperience, that just possibly humans may learn from the past in order toescape an unnecessarily unpleasant future. Hence this lecture. If I havestrayed far into the realm of the personal, there is a reason: If my listenershaven't thought of these questions already, they certainly will have doneso by the end of this lecture.THE PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY OF ZIMBABWE AND CENTRALMOZAMBIQUEI cannot summarise over 30 years of work on this in one lecture, andanyone interested in what I have been doing for all this time is referred tothe appendix. Instead, I will use a book written in 1991 as the basis of myargument.7 This work has four main points:(i) in pre-colonial Zimbabwe, there was a preferred zone of humansettlement, the 'Great Crescent' of population, that offered a relativelyprosperous living to its inhabitants, provided that their numbersremained relatively low;(ii) in over 1 200 years of contact with external economies through inter-continental trade, there was never enough influx of capital to satisfythe needs of the people;(iii) although the thinking of the people was far from static, certain basicattitudes and ideas can be shown to have been firmly rooted in thelast 500 years; and(iv) the increase in population in this century since 1920 is verging oncatastrophe . . . and, in view of the previous points, how will the6 I made an ambitious attempt to prove this point to Zimbabwean children who, I thought,were being taught in a dangerously parochial way by the schools in the 1980s: D. Beach,Ventures History of the World, Volume One, Grade 7 (College Press, Harare, 1990.) It onlyjust scraped through Ministerial censorship.7 Beach, Shona and Neighbours.D. BEACH 9people handle the situation? The fact that the book is written in arelatively readable style should not conceal the fact that its intent isdeadly serious: it is the prologue to a tragedy.The first point arose out of an interest in the demography of Zimbabweand its relationship to geography. I still find it incredible that, afterdecades of argument about the land question in Zimbabwe, by 1990nobody in either twentieth-century Zimbabwean history nor in any of theother disciplines involved should have bothered to find out exactly wherethe early twentieth-century population of this country was. Beinginterested in pre-colonial populations, I found myself forced to look atearly colonial estimates, and to attempt to overcome my own innumeracy.The result was, including an extra 20 percent to allow for theundercounting of children for the most part, a 1920 rural population ofabout 881 000. This was rather lower than might have been expected, butit was the location of that population that was interesting: it was in an arcrunning from the Makonde-Guruve areas right round to the east, southand then south-west, apparently ending in Bulilimamangwe Š although Isuspect that it ran on into Botswana. Now, this was not the result of anypolitical developments in the pre-colonial history of the region, and itmore or less correlated with known sites of settlements of ordinaryvillages revealed by archaeology up to 1984 for the period c.300-1300. Inshort, there appeared to have been a long-term preference for this 'GreatCrescent'. The reasons for this preference seem to relate to the Crescent'svery varied environment that followed long-term erosion over geologicaltime, but it is quite clear that the past populations' preferences were notdirectly related to either altitude or to the much-cited Natural Regions I-V, except that in the lowest and driest areas population density was lowfor obvious reasons. Indeed, the Crescent makes nonsense, in terms ofhuman settlement, of both the highveld-middleveld concept and of theNatural Regions.8The argument about the shortage of capital input from the outsideworld, originally the Indian Ocean economy from around 700, dependsupon archaeology until the early 1500s, and obviously fresh finds are stillbeing made, but so far it still seems that during this time the impact of theworld market for gold and ivory was remarkably uneven throughout theZimbabwean plateau region. Moreover, from the very beginning the limitedgold-bearing area meant that no more than about 20 percent of thepopulation had gold to export in any case. The evidence of the Portuguese8 Modern writers seem to forget that the Natural Regions were originally defined withWhite immigrants in mind, not the African people of the country. Nobody involved in thecurrent land question will get much comfort from my research, as it requires a modificationof practically all accepted views.10 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYdocuments from 1505 onwards definitely confirms the point, and at notime did the Portuguese have anything like the trade goods they neededto expand their trade as they would have liked. However, a fascinatingpoint is that the Zimbabwean region was one of the very few parts ofAfrica to have escaped the inter-continental slave trade. This links upwith the demographic question, as it is clear that after about 1700 peoplehad no objection to capturing each other, but they would not exportthem. Instead, the slave trade was largely confined to the Zambezi valleyitself and also to modern Zambia and Malawi, and Mocambique north ofQuelimane and south of the Save.The question of the thinking of pre-colonial people on practically anyissue is tricky, depending as it does on the evidence from Portuguesedocuments, oral traditions and modern ethnography. In addition, as inmost if not all societies, there was obviously a difference between whatthe people thought that they ought to do in theory and what they actuallydid in practice. Furthermore, as humans are, after all, of the same speciesand have only developed a limited range of types of society, it followsthat much of the thinking of people here was very similar to if notidentical to that of other societies. Deciding just how far common humanideas existed here in a slightly exaggerated or reduced form is not easy.This being said, although most societies are prone to blame their troubleson others Š the 'external' Š it does appear that here, at least in theory,the tendency was unusually strong. One aspect of this was a keen interestin witchcraft and how to avoid it. Fortunately, this was not taken toextreme lengths. Another aspect was a remarkable tendency to offerexaggerated respect to rulers Š muzvambara, flattery or hypocrisy Šderived from the custom of making visitors to a ruler crawl before him, aswas observed by the Portuguese. There was also a belief that in certainways the ruler and his followers were above the law that applied toordinary people. Yet there were limits to this, not least rebellion, and theassassination of rulers or their ritual strangulation. Moreover, in someeras and areas central government was so weak that in local society thestrong could act in defiance of the accepted norms of society.9 One of theuses of history is to check on theories of this kind by reference toexamples, and I'll be the first to admit that my research needs to beexpanded, but it is of considerable importance in view of the importancethat many Zimbabweans attach to 'tradition'.9 D. N. Beach, Mapondera, Heroism and History in Northern Zimbabwe, 1840-1904 (Mambo,Gweru, 1989,) and 'Oral tradition in eastern Zimbabwe: The work of Jason TakafaMachiwenyika C. 1889-1924', paper presented to 'Words and Voices: Critical Practices ofOrality in Africa and in African Studies', Bellagio, 1997.D. BEACH 11Finally, the demographic crisis. In 1920 the indigenous rural populationwas c. 881 000, and in 1992 the total population was c. 10 400 000 Š agigantic increase by anybody's standards, and one due largely t<» naturalgrowth rather than to immigration. Why did the population increase andwhy was it apparently relatively low before 1920? There is no evidencethat it had ever been any higher, and it seems to have been stable up toabout 1911, apparent increases being due to increased efficiency in colonialtax assessment. However, from then onwards increasingly reliable Š ordecreasingly unreliable Š figures begin to show a growth in population,very slow at first, that eventually developed into the explosive increaseof recent times. This is radically different from the demographic pictureavailable for Central and East Africa, which reminds us that a similareffect right through the tropical and sub-tropical zones of the world canhave very different causes. Part of my current research is looking into thepre-colonial era for 'trigger' factors linked to the coming of colonial ruleto explain the initial increase, and I outline my ideas here because theyrelate to whatever methods must be used if population is to stabilise atall in the future.As far as sources are concerned, archaeology can, at least for thespecific sites known, indicate factors such as relative wealth in cattle indifferent areas at different times by showing percentages of cattle remains,or even occasionally the relative ages of human deaths in a communitywhere a large number of burials has been located. The documents, bothPortuguese from 1505 and recent colonial from 1890 in Zimbabwe, cansupply insights absent from archaeology, but they are scanty and oftencontradictory. This is hardly surprising, as the conception of childrenand the factors that might have limited childbirth were and are intimate,private and, in the case of termination of pregnancy and infanticide,sometimes illegal. Looking at population growth from conception onwards,we have a number of possible factors.First, we have conception itself. Historical sources, whetherdocumentary or oral, stress the desire of ruling-class polygynous lineagesto have as many children as possible, and it is clear that many malemembers of ruling families had very many descendants. Indeed, earlycolonial figures, still undergoing analysis, suggest that in 1904 inMashonaland as many as 70 to 80 percent of married women were inpolygynous marriages. If this was so, it would have led to fewer actualbirths per woman. As the equivalent figures for 1921 were around 50percent, and as we know that cattle herds increased dramatically duringthe same period presumably because colonial rule allowed grazing inareas far from traditional strongholds and places of refuge from localcattle-raiders Š it is possible that in the pre-colonial era ruling elites hadbeen able to appropriate for themselves an undue proportion of fertile12 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYwomen by their control of limited cattle herds. This would have increasedthe numbers of ruling-class men's descendants but at the same time haverestricted the overall birth rate per woman and have left a considerablenumber of long term bachelors. However, increased cattle herds in the1904-21 period, linked to increased wealth from peasant sales and to acertain extent from migrant labour, could well have enabled men outsidethe ruling dynasties to accumulate the necessary brideprice, which iswhat the increased percentages of monogynous marriages by 1921 suggest.This would have led to increased births per married woman, and thussupplied the very first 'trigger' factor that led to the modern populationincrease.There is also evidence for voluntary reductions of births: sexualabstinence during the period of breast-feeding of babies, the taking ofmedicines to prevent conception, abortion, and in the case of births oftwins or albinos Š infanticide. Even this evidence varies over time, twinsand albinos being written of as commonplace in the 1580s,10 while twin-killing in the 1790s was restricted to only one of a pair11 Š and yet it wasgeneral a century later. So on the one hand we have restriction of humannumbers by communities, yet we also have inter-village raiding for womenand children and a tiny import slave-trade from the Zambezi valley andbeyond onto the Zimbabwean plateau in the late nineteenth century. Addto all of this the questions of involuntary population control mechanismssuch as infant mortality, which of the available scanty evidence wasaround 50 percent; famine, which so far seems not to have been a majorfactor except in catastrophic periods such as in 1823-31; infectious diseasessuch as smallpox, which on the whole seem to have been rare; warfare,which in the best-known long-term case of the raids of the much-malignedNdebele on the southern Shona seems to have had no serious effect at all,and a host of other possibilities, and we have a remarkably complexpicture that promises to keep me and anybody else 1 can attract into thefield busy for the next decade.To return to the question of the population increase of this century:looking at the figures I have already given for the increase from 1920 to1992,1 do not think that it can be denied that the demographic factor has10 Joao dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental (Convento de Sao Domingos, £vora, 1609), I, 23.11 Carlos Jose dos Reis e Gama, 'Resposta das questoens sobre os cafres', 7 de julho de1796, (ed.) G. J. Liesegang, Estudos de Antropoiogia Cultural, No. 2, Junta de Inuestigafdesdo Ultramar, Centra de Estudos de Antropoiogia Cultural, Lisboa, 1966, 18. Just how goodthe few documents that deal with such intimate matters can be, can be seen in ArquivoHist6rico Ultramarino, Lisboa, Mozambique Caixa 34 (ex 17), Doc° 91, Anonimo,'Discripcao Corografica do Reino da Manica seus Custumes e Leis', f.9, which refers tothe following traditional medicines used to ease childbirth and the expulsion of theafterbirth: the nest of an insect called psoto, the bark of a tree called vungute and theleaves of another tree called tono.D. BEACH 13to be seen as the most important element in modern Zimbabwe. This isnot a popular view, and it hits against the beliefs not just of otherhistorians with their own special interests, but also against one of thebasic biological urges of humanity, reproduction. At this point, however,I wish to take a look at the question of humans' attitudes to long-rangeplanning, with special reference to Zimbabwean history.LONG-TERM PLANNING AND HUMAN FRAILTYI believe that from 1890 humans in Zimbabwe have suffered from a refusalof their rulers to think ahead, and that most of our troubles stem fromthis Š but also, that in many ways the rulers have simply been reflectinga more general human reluctance to do the same. A few examples willsuffice. One of the most serious problems facing us, obviously, is the landquestion. Part of the problem is that the commercial farms of the countryare relatively large compared with their possible productivity. Yet thedecision to make the original basic 'Pioneer' farm one of 1 270 ha.,doubled for Matabeleland in 1893 and some other areas, was hastilymade in 1890 and never seriously rethought. But it was demographicallyinsane; if the object of the 'White farming' policy of the British SouthAfrica Company was, eventually, to have a large White farming community,then even if half the country was taken for such farms on such a regionalbasis, disregarding local environmental conditions, and if only one familyheld one farm with an average of five members, then the maximum Whitefarming community that could have been anticipated without extensivesub-division would have been about 57 000. If the Rhodesians wanted alarge White population and were prepared to subdivide in the end, why inthe name of Heaven did they not start with smaller farms? The entire planfor a large White population in the face of an African majority was alsoinsane: although as late as 1970 there were still dreams of major Whiteimmigration, the fact was that there was a limited supply of Whiteimmigrants from anywhere, especially if English-speakers were preferred,and that supply was competed for by other areas of 'White settlement' inNorth America, Australasia and even South Africa. A third rural exampleof demographic insanity was the 1951 Native Land Husbandry Act: verysimply, whether its framers realised it or not, it was trying to cram into adecade the same process of the so-called Agricultural and IndustrialRevolutions in Britain, which had been accomplished with unparalleledindustrial expansion and considerable emigration over at least twocenturies. Yet the Huggins government undertook this without botheringto take a proper census of the entire population, and only did so in theend after the failure of the Act!14 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYEven urban planning was atrociously bad. Leaving aside the lack ofthinking that left only a 45" segment of Salisbury for the African population,the very siting of the city was and is incompetent. It is well known that in1890 the site was chosen at very short notice, but what is not generallyknown is that in 1891 the Company did think of resisting it, consideringNorton, Mvurwi, Uarwendale and even Rusape. The proposal to move thetown was rejected, allegedly because the other sites were a few metreslower and thus less healthy, but actually because six brick buildings hadalready been put up, and the property developers did not want to losetheir investments.1- Consequently, the town remained where the city is,upstream of its main water supply, and thus we are condemned to drinkour own recycled waste!Unfortunately, when it comes to long-term planning Homo sapienszimbabwcensis is not significantly different from H. sapiens rhodesiensis.Indeed, the two are far more alike than many would care to concede,eighteen years after Independence, the government has been deluged byreports on economic and social problems. We have shortages ofagricultural land for the mass of the population, shortages of jobs andhousing, shortages of water and power and, increasingly, shortages ofmoney. We also have a host of indications of the desperate moral conditionof the people: gambling, drinking, sexual abuse of minors, abandonedstreet children, rumoured or real muti killings, financial corruption,nepotism or tribalism, confidence trickery, increased attachment tochurches making more extreme claims than others, increased xenophobia,and so forth. Yet the government has never really tried to look at thesefactors as a whole, and consequently has no real overall policy to offerpeople. Perhaps it is unfair to blame ZANU(PF) for its lack of forethought;it is in many ways a prisoner of its own past, having evolved as anorganisation devoted to the acquisition of power from the RhodesianFront and Its predecessors.Yet the government is, in the last analysis a product of the people,and they themselves have no alternative policies to offer, as their failureto evolve any convincing opposition party shows. It is not difficult to seewhat the people want, as they air their views in the media regularly: land,job.s and houses for all, tarred roads to every village; convenient, efficientand cheap hospitals and schools; fast, cheap and safe buses; low pricesand taxes, and much else. But the big question is, is this possible and, ifnot, why not?12 National Archives of Zimbabwe, LO 5/2/16 Vol. 1. H. M. Hole to Acting Secretary CapeTown, Salisbury. 24 November, 1891.D BEACH 15DISASTER APPROACHETH'Meph. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.'1!Mephistophilis was making acomment, true for humans as well as devils, on the fact that disaster isnot always fully apparent but that it remains disaster nevertheless. TheEurasian 'Black Death' pandemic was a terrible disaster. In 1347-9 at leastone third of the population of a continent died.14 Yet the sun shone andthe birds sang just as brightly in these years as in any other, and even theAnglo-French Hundred Years' War was not seriously impeded. Thecenturies-long fall of the Roman oecumene was also, on balance, a disaster.Rigid and extortionate as it had become, its end led not only to increaseddisorder and violence but also to a serious decline in the quality of life,whether urban or intellectual. It took nearly a thousand years for thedownward trend to be reversed, yet the olives and vines continued to betended throughout all of this.Although the coming disaster in Zimbabwe may not turn out to be aHollywoodesque scenario of blood, flame and pillage, I doubt that thehappy future hoped for by Zimbabweans is possible, for the simplereason that population growth has already outstripped Zimbabwe'sresources. For a start, the increase from 1920 to 1992 was on such a scalethat, if an equivalent increase had taken place during the same period inBritain, with which uninformed comparisons are often made, Britainwould now have a population of 473 000 000. A similar increase in the USAwould have led to a population of 1 236 000 000. I do not think that eventhe latter economy could have supported such an increase. Is it anywonder that the far less developed economy of Zimbabwe cannot do soeither? (In other words, we have the grim possibility that the vast majorityof the young Zimbabweans of the next century will never have properemployment). But let's consider the current and near future situationhere: in 1990 our population was thought to be doubling every 22 years,which would give us 20 800 000 people by 2014. Granted, projectionsallowing for the AIDS epidemic give us a mere 16 000 000 by 2010, buteven if they turn out to be correct this is cold comfort.IS Moreover,neither figure is necessarily thought to represent a final, stable populationfigure.My conclusion is pessimistic, and there are two main factors behindmy pessimism. One is the land question. Looking at the 1982 population13 Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, SceneIII, 80.14 C. McEvedy, The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1992),90-1.15 The Herald, 27 February 1997. A later report in The Herald, 14 July 1998, increases thedoubling period to 23 years, with a current population of 12 300 000.16 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY. DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYmap (when the total population was only about 7 500 000) Š as far as Iknow the 1992 Census has been neither officially reported upon normapped Š we have overcrowding in the Communal Lands that wouldhave staggered the imagination of earlier generations, who were alreadycomplaining of overcrowding by 1900! Given even the increases projectedIn the light of the AIDS epidemic, the land question is not primarily one ofthe dispossession of White commercial farmers. Rather, it is one where atfirst all commercial farmers Š and here I include the ZANU(PF) PolitburoŠ will be pushed off the land by uncontrollable waves of land-hungrypeople from the Communal Lands"* and then, when population densitieshave filled up the former commercial farm lands to the densities that ledtowards the Second Chimurenga, the population will continue to rise.This could lead to struggles between the people to dispossess eachother, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these would be violent.17The standard response of Zimbabweans presented with this scenarioIs to turn to the possibility of major urbanisation and industrialisation,just like the Huggins government in the late 1940s. (It is also odd howoften they refer to the British equivalent of two centuries ago.) Frankly, Ido not think that this will work. The crucial factor is water, with powerfollowing. Since the cities are likely to increase in population at a ratefaster than the national average, they are going to run short of waterrelatively quickly. The Bulawayo problem that is supposed to be solvedby the Zambezi pipeline scheme (when that is completed) is in fact notlikely to be solved thus because if Bulawayo's population continues todouble at any rate, what will be needed will be 2,4,8,16 Zambezi pipelinesover time. Harare is no better off. With its population increasing fasterthan Bulawayo's, the Manyame dams are not going to be sufficient, as isalready known. However, whereas the pure water of the Nyaguwe-Kunzvischeme will be welcome, the fact remains that its catchment area is lessthan a third of that of the Manyame system, and whatever the theoreticalcapacity of the dam I suspect that it will be a relative disappointment. Asearch for more and more dam sites at increasing distances is thus likely,but with diminishing results. Moreover, the water supplies of many ruralareas are problematic, and likely to become worse in droughts as theHi This was written before the events of June and July 1998. I predicted exactly these in1977. when I argued for the pre-emptive redistribution of all unoccupied and underusedcommercial farms by the end of 1978 as a means of defusing the growth of the war: D. N.Beach. A Framework for Extension, A Commentary on The First Day of Work at theRhodesian Institute of Agricultural Extension Workshop', 6 June 1977.17 What Zimbabwe badly needs is a modern Domesday Book Š pun only partly intended Šin more than 50 volumes in which lists and maps show precisely who owns which farmsand what they are doing with them. Only thus can we know how much land can beresettled without affecting exports, not all of which can necessarily be supplied by thepeasant sector.D BEACH 17rural population increases. Obviously, the rural people will tend to moveinto the cities looking for water, thus speeding up the strangulation anddeath of urban industrial development."*Power may also be a problem: hydro-electric power in southernAfrica is approaching its limits even if every major flowing river is dammedalong its entire length, and will be bought by those with the most money,which means the South Africans and not us. Thermal power, once thoughtto be on its way out because of hydro-electric power, is once again seenas the answer. In 1986 the total mineable coal resources of Zimbabwewere estimated at 26 650 million tonnes,'11 though obviously there couldbe problems in exploiting these and getting the coal translated intopower. Another problem is that these resources are finite whereas thedemands of a doubling population are not, until stability is reached.Given these, I do not see a prosperous future for Zimbabwean cities orindustry if the population continues to rise.All of this is an unpleasant scenario, not least for me because I expectto be living in the middle of it. Naturally I would love to turn out to bewrong. But this is a case where in the end all the clever argument in theworld will not directly alter the population of Zimbabwe, its land, water orpower by a single baby, hectare, litre or kilowatt. On the other hand, theone thing that we cannot afford to do is to avoid the issue. Very many ofmy fellow citizens and foreign colleagues would like to. Some take theview that resources are in fact infinite, arguing on the optimistic groundsthat 'science' will somehow find substitutes for the materials that are orwill be in short supply. They can point to the possibility of growing evermore crops on the same land area, of using techniques adopted by thedrought-prone Cabo Verde islands, of adopting nuclear power, and so on.Others argue that my predictions are 'Malthusian' and therefore will nothappen because they have not come true so far, between Malthus's dayand now. Still others feel that 'the Lord will provide' and that Hecommanded His people to 'go forth and multiply". My response to this isthat even scientific technology has certain limitations; that the fact thatMalthus has not been right so far does not mean that he never can be;and that the Lord's advice might have been appropriate for Iraq in about18 Those fond of looking at Britain's industrialisation for comfort should realise that ifBritain had a rainfall profile like ours, it would never have become a major industrialpower in the first place, as there were insufficient dam sites.19 KB. Duguid. 'Coal resources of Zimbabwe', in C. R. Anheuser and S. Maske (eds.) MineralDeposits of Southern Africa (Geological Society of South Africa, Johannesburg, 1986), 2Vols.. 2097. Thanks to the Institute of Mining Research. University of Zimbabwe, fordirecting me to this source. (Under the proposed new University Code of Conduct, itmight have been an offence to visit the Institute!).18 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITY4000 BC but that He probably expected humanity to know which of Hiscommands were appropriate for which occasions.The more common response I have received to my scenario is that ofSt. Augustine: 'Give me chastity and continency, but not yet'. In otherwords, my views may be right, but nothing should be done about themuntil some later date. With respect, that is faulty logic. It may be pridefulto assume with the Jehovah's Witnesses that one is so important that acataclysmic event must occur in one's own lifetime, but on the other handif it is coming then it must occur in somebody's. Moreover, supposingthat Zimbabwe's population growth can be stabilised, the quality of lifethat Zimbabweans will experience when it does will depend greatly onwhen, how and at what level it takes place.I suspect that the real reasons for these reactions lie in humanbiology and psychology: humans have a major difference from theirfellow-mammals in their oestrus cycle, and thus can and do reproduce atvery high rates. Moreover, they can employ methods not available toother mammals to push the reluctant members of their species intobreeding more than they want to. As sociologists of many different peoplescan confirm, the mother-in-law of a married woman can bully her intoreproduction in order to avoid the threat of replacement. But there is anethical side, too: humans are programmed to reproduce, partly in orderto ensure their own survival in old age, yet they are also programmed tolove their children. The idea that by having conceived children the parentshave also condemned them to a miserable existence and a squalid deathin the kind of situation that I envisage is an unpleasant one, so thereforesome consider that the idea that Zimbabwe faces a demographic disastermust necessarily be wrong.This theory can be tested against the methods used by pre-colonialZimbabwean societies, or by the external factors that limited their growth.Look at what modern Zimbabweans think about the following options:the response is confusing. Sexual self-restraint? Mainly popular amongthe Roman Catholic clergy, but anathema to the members of manyindependent churches, and highly unpopular in society at large.Contraception? Relatively popular with women, but not to the sameextent with men, especially some clerics. Sterilisation? Misunderstood,and unpopular. Abortion and infanticide? Illegal. But the external optionsare worse, if anything. Infant mortality? The whole policy of society is tosee every child born, and live to its puberty, and beyond. Death by theFour Horsemen of the Apocalypse Š Conquest, Famine, War and Deathitself Š is also unattractive as a method of population control. Oddly, thespectre of disease, often misattributed to the Horsemen, provokes differentreactions among Zimbabweans: some argue that AIDS will limit populationD. BEACH 19without any effort on their part, at the same time that others seek a cureso that they can continue to reproduce unchecked Š or, at least, gothrough the preliminaries to reproduction without fear. Other scenariosinvoke emigration and/or sustained aid from the developed world. Theseforget that we are not the only people undergoing population pressures,and that just as capital input was always insufficient in the pre-colonialworld it is unlikely to be sufficient in the future. Indeed, it looks as thoughthe developed world is growing heartily sick of the Third World.This raises another point: just whose advice should Zimbabweansheed? For some, my pessimistic view will be discredited by my colour,although they might wonder why, if I meant them harm, I do not simplyremain silent and watch disaster ensue. Here, the element of over-stressof the 'external' in pre-colonial Zimbabwean thought, exaggerated intomodern xenophobia, surfaces again.20 Yet foreign sympathisers can beequally suspect. If some offer quite sincere advice, others are noted forrecommending to Africa courses that they would not dream of seeingapplied in their home countries. The one-party state, scientific socialismand even corruption in a country's civil service have been winked at inthe past.21 If foreign advisers should offer reassurance that a Malthusiancrisis is not here, then they will not be living with the consequences ifthey are wrong. We will be. (It was noteworthy that when the Ugandanhistorian Phares Mutibwa proposed that his country's troubles wereprimarily the work of Ugandans themselves, it was a British scholar whoslightly weakened his message, though not with the intention of destroyinghis point.22 But not all foreign commentators are as honest as ChristopherWrigley, and many are very reluctant indeed to criticise anything thatAfricans have done. This can be deadly dangerous, because how can anyhumans learn without criticism?) But the question remains, if there is acrisis coming or already here, what are Zimbabweans to do about it?Part of the problem lies in the fact that very long-held beliefs of thepeople, dating from pre-colonial days, have to be challenged. The fact is20 if I am right, the Germans will say that I was a German, and the French will say that I wasa Jew. If I am wrong, the Germans will say that I was a Jew, and the French will say thatI was a German1, Albert Einstein, attributed. In other words, if you don't like the message,you shoot the messenger! 'But if you be afear'd to hear the worst, then let the worst,unheard, fall on your head' (W. Shakespeare, King John, Act IV, Scene 2, 135-6) .21 C. Leys, "The non-existent political theory of Africa', Contact, I, May 1960, cited in T. O.Ranger, 'Some attitudes to African nationalism', Historians in Tropical Africa, Proceedingsof the Leuerhulme Inter-collegiate History Conference, held at the University College ofRhodesia and Nyasaland, September 1960 (University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland,Salisbury, 1962), 335 n.2.22 Phares Mutibwa, Uganda Since Independence, A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes (Fountain,Kampala, 1992), xii-xii; review by C. C. Wrigley, The Journal of African History (1994),XXXV, (i), 159.20 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYthat, even though there were some land shortages then, the idea thatthere was no serious limit to resources had taken root, with good reason.The possibility of moving to a different part of the 'Great Crescent' andstarting a new agricultural settlement was always there, as the manylocal migrations recorded by oral traditions show. Nor is there any realevidence for environmental damage done by humanity. Even the extendedfamily and nepotism made sense: in a relatively unspecialised economy,numbers meant strength. For a ruling dynasty, extra numbers meantmilitary strength in local wars, while even in a relatively specialisedfamily iron-working group, even the least talented member was of use incollecting timber, if he could not be trusted with a furnace or forge. Butthat was then, this is now. Although the people can justifiably point tocommercial farms or state land on which nothing appears to be happening,now the country really is running out of land. Similarly, if many individualsdo benefit from financial corruption or nepotism in state or privatebusiness, the fact remains that this is not good for the country as awhole. Moreover, on one issue the people have a definite point: althoughmany of them do in fact concede that their numbers are too great, justhow are they to survive as peasant farmers with only two children permarried couple, the numbers required for population stability? There isno obvious answer, though obviously one must be found.To begin with, I do not think that matters can be left to the politicians,at least not alone. In so far as a politician is in fact elected fairly, he or shedoes not usually succeed by telling the electorate that it simply cannothave what it wants, which is one of the corollaries of recognising thedemographic crisis. (Yet we already know what happens to undemocraticleaders, in the long run). ZANU(PF) in particular, having started as a veryhuman reaction to racist minority rule, has degenerated sharply in thelast few years into an equally human blind instrument for the maintenanceof itself and its hangers-on. It also has most of the more unpleasantcharacteristics of pre-colonial states, as I warned the Minister responsiblefor presenting the case for the executive presidency as far back as 1987.23But, looking at the available alternatives, the main case for preservingZANU(PF) is the fear that something worse might follow.Obviously, if Zimbabwe's people are to limit their population tomatch Zimbabwe's resources, the necessary action must come from thepeople themselves. It cannot be done by compulsion. Zimbabweans donot have the long experience of the Chinese in bowing to Imperial23 Zimbabwe, Parliamentary Debates; House of Assembly, XIV, 31, Tuesday 27 October 1987,1575-1580; D. Beach, 'Precedents and presidents'. Prize Africa, December 1987. 24-5.Minister E. Zvobgo was then arguing for the strengthening of the Presidency. How timeschange.D. BEACH 21authority. On the contrary, they may be rigidly unbending where thingsthat do not affect them directly are concerned, such as the granting oftemporary employment permits, but when it comes to things that reallymatter, such as streambank cultivation, then the almost anarchistic streakvisible in pre-colonial society comes very much to the fore. In such anintimate and personal matter as what a couple does in bed, theythemselves must decide.But how are they to make such a decision, without being in possessionof the facts, whatever they might be? The government is unlikely to tellthem, as things are. Nor, gallant as are the efforts of many non-governmental organisations, are they going to learn the whole picturefrom these, primarily because NGOs tend to confine themselves to specificaspects of the overall problem. Where is there a Zimbabwean institutionthat has access to all of the data required and that is capable of carryingout the necessary research, arguing over its meaning and presenting theresults to the people?I hope that by now the answer is obvious. It must be the University ofZimbabwe first and foremost. By now I have dragged in, one way oranother, almost every Faculty and Department in the University into myargument. I admit that in the past the University tried to play a major rolein a coming crisis, and failed miserably: from the late 1950s to 1980 theHumanities departments in particular warned the Rhodesian Front andits predecessors that they were leading the country into disaster. Theywere ignored, and we all know what followed: democracy turned out tobe only achievable by war. Yet this is no reason why the Universityshould give up now. Too much is at stake. The University should take upthe task of analysing the crisis and presenting its findings to the people.However, can it do so as it stands at present?THE DECLINE BUT NOT THE FALL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWEThe essential starting point is to decide what a University is and shouldbe. Clearly the people and government do not know, and I suspect thatmany of my colleagues do not know either. Basically, a University is anassociation of free scholars for the purposes of study, research and teaching.All these components are essential, and if any one of them should grow atthe expense of the others, or if any of them should fall away, then aUniversity ceases to deserve the name. By looking at the history ofuniversities, this point becomes clear.Although there were universities in the classical Eurasian world, thereal origin of modern universities lies in the later medieval period ofEuropean history, when Europe was beginning to climb out of thethousand-year economic and political depression that began with the22 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYdecline of the Roman oecumene. As Europe became richer, it was possiblefor funds to be invested in the support of scholars for the purpose ofstudy, and at the same time to finance the copying of the books survivingfrom the classical era, often through Islamic scholars' efforts. Suchscholars were often at first part of the Church, which is why clericalterms such as 'Doctor' and 'Dean' still survive, along with academicrobes. The scholars were not to be burdened by ordinary clerical duties,but were allowed to study, to read the books and absorb their data. Thevery word 'college' comes from the Latin term for 'reading together'. Thebooks were at first what we would now call 'core texts' with commentaries,and early university work was for a long time remarkably sterile as aconsequence of few new ideas being generated. Yet, in time, the principleof research developed: the questioning of old assumptions and theirtesting by experiment. Research led to new fields, and very slowly towardsthe technological 'revolution' that is still with us. Teaching was a naturalby-product of all this, though limited to certain fields such as medicine,law and theology for a long time.24The vastly increased wealth generated in the nineteenth century ledto a great expansion of libraries, laboratories, fields of study and ofteaching. Increasingly, a degree became regarded as essential foradvancement in fields undreamt of before. Nevertheless, certain principlesremained essential for the success of the system: the professors andlecturers had to have their books and time to read them, and they had tohave funding for research and time to carry it out. Teaching was not tobecome the overriding aim of the institutions. Moreover, although researchand study became ever more expensive and thus required far morefinance from the state and the private sector, it was not always wise thatthe funding bodies should dictate the terms of research. If the PrussianAcademy of Science had bowed to the needs of the German state oreconomy in 1913 and had controlled Einstein's research, he might haveended up doing work towards the production of superior dreadnoughts.To its credit it gave him a free hand, and the Theory of Relativity was theresult.25 Here, we should understand one basic difference between theSciences and the Humanities, although they have much in common. TheSciences, whether they deal with neutrons or mountains, bacteria orelephants, are dealing with the physical. If they proceed carefully, theycan obtain funding more easily than the Humanities. The Humanities dealwith the ways in which humans think, communicate, and function insocieties over time and space. Their work is essential, and neither the24 H. Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade (Dent, London. 1957"). /SOKMfi25 C. P. Snow. Variety of Men (Macmillan. London, 1967). 86-9.D. BEACH 23Sciences or society can do without it, any more than humans can affordto do without a sense of balance. Yet, essential as it is, their work doesnot command a market price as readily as that of the Sciences. But not allof human activity is for profit: justice and the military are obvious cases,but so in the end is the University. A world without true universities is asterile one, as the interregnum between the fall of Rome and theRenaissance proved.I won't pursue First World university history any further, except tonote two disquieting trends: one is the increasing tendency of fundingbodies to assume that they and not the academics know what needs to beresearched. There was a fine example of this kind of thinking in thecrucial years of the 1930s.both the army and the air force were concerned with the problem ofdetecting enemy aircraft at a greater distance than the existingsearchlights and sound rangers could do. The army said they wantedsearchlights and sound rangers that could pick up an aircraft at 30 000feet and 20 miles instead of the then limit of 20 000 feet and 10 miles. Indue course they got what they had asked for Š better searchlights,better sound rangers. The air force defined their object more accurately:to detect and track aircraft from as great a distance as possible. They gotradar.26In other words, by giving the scientists freedom to approach theproblem in their own way, they obtained an invention of vast use tohumanity in both the civil and military spheres. Another is the devaluationof the term 'university' by its being used for low-grade centres that arereally no better than training colleges, with little real research and limitedstudy linked to a massive demand for teaching towards rather limiteddegrees. So far this has not seriously impeded the technologicaldevelopment of North American or European societies, primarily becausetheir populations are so large that enough good scholars survive thissystem to ensure that there is still a superior core of scholarship. Butthese trends are deadly when applied to Africa.Here in Zimbabwe we are suffering from a blind expansion of teachingat the expense of study and research, and at this University Š which isstill the senior education body in the country Š this policy has had veryserious effects over the last decade or even longer. The root cause lies inthe population expansion. As Zimbabweans increase in numbers, theyhave become desperate for money, and one of their demands is forincreasing numbers of graduates with some sort of 'degree' that willenable them to obtain a job that is at least better paid than the average.This need makes itself felt in political pressure exerted by the electorate,26 J. Masters, Pilgrim Son (Michael Joseph, London. 1971). 48.24 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYand the politicians have thus far bowed to the demand for universityexpansion regardless of its effects on scholarship. To a politician, athousand low grade BA or BSc graduates are worth far more than goodpostgraduate degrees in electoral terms. Moreover, the country simplycannot afford to give the university and all of its swarming numbers ofstudents the financial support they need. The results are such that theUniversity may already no longer deserve the name.The physical resources of the university are already insufficient forthe student and staff numbers that we have. The buildings are worn out,especially in the Arts block, which simply was not designed for thenumbers experienced now. Offices and lecture theatres are overcrowded,and teaching in them is becoming increasingly difficult. The Library is ashameful sight. Journals have not been obtained, and the acquisition ofnew books appears to be haphazard. Of the books upon which we rely,most are showing signs of being worn out where they have not beenmutilated, defaced or stolen. Even the valuable holdings built up in theearly years of the University are being slowly destroyed, with lovelybooks a century old that are still essential for researchers being damagedby students desperate for something to read. Even assuming that theneeded resources can be obtained through computers, computer accessis inadequate for thousands of readers. Assuming that students needonly eight hours of study daily and that they can work throughout thenight 9 000 students would need 3 000 computers! More to the point,much crucial scholarship is not available through computers and willnever be. As a place of study of the accumulated scholarship of theworld, this University can no longer claim to qualify as such.Equally worrying is the quality of human resources. The studentssuffer from having gone through a school system that has exactly thesame problem as the University, stemming from the attempt by agovernment under electoral pressure from an expanding population tosupply too many school places with inadequate funding. What appears tohave happened in the schools is that overloaded teachers have beendictating notes, allowing plagiarised essays to the point where studentsdo not understand what is wrong with plagiarism, 'spotting' examinationquestions and allowing model answers to be prepared. This evidentlyfools the A Level examiners, but the students who pass on to the Universityhave had almost every trace of initiative suppressed, which is fatal toreading for university degrees. Nor do I think that every University lecturertries to remedy these faults. The University, even in the 1970s, was veryreluctant indeed to fail students, but at least those who barely scraped apass then had some knowledge. Nowadays, some students are obtainingtheir degrees on an absolute minimum of actual study, and 1 have seenentire course papers where almost every student has relied upon aD. BEACH 25memorised model answer, presumably the work of only one or two out ofmore than fifty. Yet these pass, going out to the schools as teachers tocontinue the process of decline. One solution, devaluing the markingsystem, is counterproductive: not only is it an insult to those who obtainedgenuinely high marks in the past, but also in the long run a devalued Firstor Upper Second is not a real First or Upper Second, and eventually otheruniversities and employers will realise the fact.27Furthermore, the system used means that students can passexaminations for course work where the lecturers have done most of thethinking for them, but they are fatally handicapped when it comes toindividual research for postgraduate degrees. No supervisor can do allthe thinking for a dissertation. Only those who have such strong mindsthat they can survive practically any educational system have muchchance of obtaining a doctorate, and these are few indeed. Funding forpostgraduate research is almost impossible to obtain, and the Universityis having trouble training replacement staff. For example, historians mustuse documents or interviews in order to obtain doctorates, but inZimbabwe we have only sources for Zimbabwean history. Our ideal of abalanced degree in history, with African courses balanced by non-Africancourses on the Americas, Europe, or Asia, is in jeopardy because anestablishment of lecturers with postgraduate research only in Zimbabweanor southern African history will not be able to teach the non-Africancourses to university level. Yet to send our promising graduates to thearchives of other continents is becoming ever more expensive.Unfortunately, foreign universities do not help much. They have theirown priorities, and care little or nothing about ours. Indeed, the Britishstill treat us like a colony, the South Africans think of us as a Bantustanand even the North Americans are not always prepared to help in a wayuseful to us. If we send a graduate to them, that student tends to bediverted into yet another dissertation topic related to Zimbabwean history,which is the one field where we are relatively strong. The continentalEuropeans are indeed more helpful, but here we have the languageproblem: like the Rhodesians, modern Zimbabweans are not usually keento learn new languages after leaving school.The picture is depressing, but it shows every sign of getting worse.28It appears that society and the government are still obsessed withcramming yet more students into the University regardless of the quality27 Nevertheless, it must be stressed that, at its best Š in History at least Š this Universityalways did and still does set an extremely high standard of undergraduate degree, farsuperior to that set by North American and South African universities.28 Here 1 must stress that this lecture was written before June this year, since when thesituation has become still more complex.26 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYof the end product, and here the attitude of the Administration and theUniversity's leadership has taken a turn for the worse. Instead of defendingthe University against these demands, it shows every sign of going alongwith them. Indeed, one can see a growing trend towards an arrogant,bullying attitude towards the lecturers that began when the red brickKremlin, the Administration block, was erected in a dominant position inthe early 1970s. In fact, the concept of a university as an association ofscholars has been eroded: from the medieval universities down to theSecond World War, scholars chose their own registrars, bursars andlibrarians from among their own ranks, and these tasks were carried outby scholars working in addition to their own study, research andteaching.29 Obviously, the vastly more complex universities of the pasthalf-century require professionals in these fields, but here many of theseappear to have delusions not merely of adequacy but of superiority,especially where the academics are concerned. It should be a basicprinciple that even the most junior scholar outranks the most seniorprofessional administrator Š provided, of course, that the law is obeyed.I admit that even now many of my colleagues are still all too ready to bowdown to a bullying posture from those higher up, an inheritance from pre-colonial muzvambarara subservience compounded by the habits acquiredunder colonial rule.Unfortunately, there are other traces of the historical past in this, ourAfrican university. Earlier in this century, migrant mineworkers who weredriven by the colonial states from rural poverty into appalling conditionson the mines developed their own very clever means of survival.30 Toomany lecturers tend to take the same course as the migrant mineworkers,responding to ever longer teaching hours and ever higher mountains ofessays by moonlighting or avoiding extra work because if they do morethey know that yet more loads will be piled upon them. Moreover, whilepatronage is as old as the hills in First World universities, with the dangerthat the preferred mediocre will promote the mediocre, in Africa thereare other overtones. Is it a coincidence that in a Department, anoverwhelming number of staff come from one particular part of thecountry? Both yes and no, I would judge. But is it a coincidence that ourthree Pro Vice-Chancellors come from the one Faculty in which theMinister of Higher Education once served? Probably not, though of coursethere may be an explanation that is academically acceptable.A further point concerns research. Without research, study andteaching become sterile. Moreover, we have to be able to co-operate with29 C. P. Snow, The Masters (Macmillan, London, 1951). 385.30 van Onselen, Chibaro African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia 1900-1933 (Pluto. London1976).D. BEACH 27foreign scholars who come here: we ourselves cannot do all that isrequired. Yet the Zimbabwean government, possibly influenced by theStalinist dream of controlling thought that led to Lysenkoism, possibly byxenophobia or simply hunger for foreign currency, has instituted aResearch Act that has done us nothing but harm. It makes things verydifficult indeed for foreign researchers, and has done nothing butantagonise them while adding yet more to our workloads. 'All thisbureaucracy dishonours the name of our land.'31 The Act should bescrapped and not replaced, in the name of academic freedom.But the ultimate constraint is not in buildings, books or in humanfrailty. The ultimate limitation is time, and not even unlimited and thusimpossible Š funding can solve that. It takes time to teach, time to markessays and examination papers, and if the increase in the student bodygoes on as promised then in the end the work will not be done becausethere will not be time enough in which to do it. Not even the AdministrationKremlin nor its bosses in the Ministry of Higher Education can increasethe number of hours or days in the year. This even the Kremlin willdiscover, as its hamfisted changes in the academic year reach fruition inthe second half of 1999, and when it finds that its beloved course unitsystem means that Humanities students simply will not have time enoughto read enough in a semester to pass anything resembling a universityexamination. However, we do know from recent history that not evenKremlins are invincible!TOWARDS A NEW UNIVERSITY AND A LESS DISASTROUS FUTUREI argued earlier that the University is the only national body that has achance of studying the national demographic crisis and coming up withany kind of solution. I also argued that it must make its findings clear tothe people of Zimbabwe, if they are to decide what must be done. Yethow can the university do this if it is in the dreadful condition that I haveoutlined above Š and in an understated way, I might add?At first, what you have heard may sound like yet another appeal formore and yet more money, the same cry that can be heard across theentire country. Not entirely. Obviously, more money would be useful, butI seriously doubt if there is much more money in the country in any case.In my view, we have to try to make better use of what we have, andthis has radical implications. Look at these in the same order in which Iraised the original problems. If the buildings are overcrowded and thereare neither the funds to build new ones nor the room in which to build31 D. Beach, 'Fontes para a historia de Manica e Sofala no Arquivo Nacional do Zimbabwe',Arquiuo, Boletim do Arquivo Historico de Mozambique, 6, outubro de 1989. 366.28 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYthem, if even an efficient library will not have enough books and journals,if the A Level students need an extra year of remedial teaching by universitystaff before they are fit to enter First Year, if we cannot find more moneyto send postgraduate students overseas so that they can become lecturers,then we have to face the fact that we are already trying to do too muchwith too little. In other words, if we had too few students in 1980, we nowhave too many. To state such a thing is likely to be immensely unpopularwith the electorate, the government and many of my colleagues on thecampus, but I can see no alternative, much though I would like to be ableto do so.Somehow, we have to be able to calculate exactly how much moneywe can realistically expect to get. We then have to calculate just howmuch we can allocate to the very best students so that they are properlysupported, through scholarships for the deserving and not grants to themasses, to a build-up of library holdings to educate them and to payingtheir lecturers to teach them and to fund research and research students.Obviously, economies must be made, not least in non-teaching universityposts, but the money available must be spent on academic excellence.Only then can the University become once again a true centre for study,research and teaching in the face of the coming demographic crisis. Inother words, it will become a deliberately smaller-scale higher academiccentre, not a factory for turning out increasingly unconvincing degreediplomas. However, we must retain a strong emphasis on excellentundergraduate teaching. Only thus can we be sure of having a goodintake into higher studies. I have my doubts about the new provincialuniversities. If they can create and build up major Libraries, as was donehere until the 1980s, they may be centres of study, but at least in the caseof the Humanities, whose national research bases are concentrated inHarare, they will find research expensive in terms of time and money ifthey are to be true Universities. Simply calling them 'Universities' will notmake them so until they have proven themselves. Until then, we have torely on our own graduates.Here we run into the problem of the electorate and the politicians.Obviously the electorate will not like this, for it will mean that fewer oftheir children will gain degrees from us. Very definitely the politicianswill not like it as they see every extra graduate in terms of extra votes. Butthe politicians are going to have to face other unpleasant facts soon, notleast the limited amount of land and water in the country. Is there anyhope of convincing them that it will be to their advantage to turn againstthe will of the electorate? Just possibly. Politicians have one weakness:they worry terribly about their historical image. Why else do they worryso much about where and how they are to be buried in sacred burialD. BEACH 29grounds like those of pre-colonial rulers?32 It is just possible that wecould appeal to this, to point out to them that they need not beremembered as the government that saw so many thousand studentsgraduate with sub-standard degrees but as, if they so choose, thegovernment that stopped the rot in Zimbabwe's higher education systemand allowed the academics to play their real role as scholars, researchersand teachers in identifying Zimbabwe's problems and finding solutions tothem.33 But first of all, again obviously, we ourselves as academics mustrediscover our position as inhabitants of a true University, defy theKremlin and force it to obey our orders. And, to do that, we must decidewhat the actual situation is.In this lecture, I have tried to offer something new, not just anotherlearned inaugural on a specialised subject but an all-embracing one thatcontains something to which not just the academics but every otherZimbabwean can relate. In fact, it is not simply concerned with theUniversity or Zimbabwe but with the whole world. Latin America, Africaand Asia are bulging at the seams with people, who are beating on thegates of the already overcrowded North American and Europeancontinents. If in Zimbabwe we can solve the problem of stabilising tropicalpopulations we can do much to avert not just a national but a worlddisaster. To speak of a world disaster has not been a pleasant task, whichis why 1 have put it off for six years. I have spent most of my academic lifetelling unpleasant truths to my fellow-Zimbabweans, and I intend to go ondoing so whenever necessary for the ten years that I have left here. But Ibelieve that this is my academic duty.34APPENDIXHere I supply a list of my publications, which are the basis of the lecture.I do not suggest that their number is exceptional by some world standards.Indeed, they include some translations and some reworking of oldermaterial. The total of 63 published under my own name between 1970 and32 N. Kriger, 'The politics of creating national heroes: The search lor political legitimacyand national identity', in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger, (eds.) Soldiers in Zimbabwe s LiberationWar Volume One (University of Zimbabwe Publications, Harare, 1995), 139-62.33 However, in the last resort the issue must go to the people: if they are, as 1 believe,sufficiently responsible to make the hard decisions that must be made about childbirth,then they are also sufficiently responsible to understand what the University reallyneeds, even if this hits against their immediate interests.34 Finally, this analysis is pessimistic but not defeatist! An optimist is usually doomed toalmost perpetual disappointment, whereas a pessimist is rarely surprised by disaster,faces the facts as they are and proceeds to deal with them: My centre is giving way, myright is in retreat: situation excellent. 1 am attacking! (General Foch, Battle of the Marne,8 September 1914).30 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITY1998 is far fewer than the 102 for the period 1957-1996 noted in T.Moidram, 'Terence Ranger's works: A preliminary bibliography', Journalof Southern African Studies (1997), XXIII, (ii), 353-61, and is dwarfed by theoutstanding Š in depth and coverage as well as in number Š output ofProfessor Jan Vansina between 1954 and 1994 (189!) Š listed in D. Henige,'The writings of Jan Vansina', in R. W. Harms, J. C. Miller, D. S. Newburyand M. E. D. Wagner (eds.) Paths Toward the Past: African Historical Essaysin Honor of Jan Vansina (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1994), 473-80.Numbers of publications, in any case, take no account of the actualamount and complexity of the research that led to them. I supply this listbecause, for reasons outside my control, I have become almost the onlyremaining academic historian of four centuries of pre-colonial Zimbabweanhistory. Not only is this an unhealthy situation in itself but it seems tohave led to a situation where few academics in the fields that surroundmine are fully aware of what I have been doing.1970 'Afrikaner and Shona settlement in the Enkeldoorn area, 1890-1900'Zambezia, I, (i), 25-34.Š 'Ndebele history in 1971', (Review article), Rhodesian History, I, 87-94.1971 'The Adendoiff Trek in Shona history', South African HistoricalJournalMl 30-48.1972 'Kaguvi and Fort Mhondoro', Rhodesiana, XXVII, 29-47.1973 'The historiography of the people of Zimbabwe', Rhodesian HistoryIV, 21-30.Š 'Great Zimbabwe as a Mwari-cult centre', Rhodesian Prehistory II 11-13.Š 'The initial impact of Christianity on the Shona: The Protestants andthe southern Shona', in A. J. Dachs (ed.) Christianity South of theZambezi, I (Mambo, Gwelo), 25-40.1974 'Ndebele raiders and Shona power', The Journal of African HistoryXV, (iv), 633-651.1975 'Mutapa: An alternative approach to the study of titles in Shonahistory', Rhodesian History, VI, 97-99.Š 'Introduction', The '96 Rebellions (Books of Rhodesia, Bulawayo), xi-xiv.1976 'The Mutapa dynasty: A comparison of documentary and traditionalevidence', History in Africa, III, 1-17.Š 'Africana in the Goa Archives', History in Africa, III, 171-173.Š 'Second thoughts on the Shona economy', Rhodesian History, VII, 1-11.1977 'The Shona economy: Branches of production', in R. H. Palmer andN. Parsons (eds.) The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and SouthernAfrica (Heinemann, London), 37-65.D. BEACH 311978 'Shona settlement around the Buhwa range', Occasional Papers ofthe National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia, IV, (iii), 106-111.1979 'The Shona generation', Central African Journal of Medicine, XXV,(iii), 45-50.Š 'Chimurenga: The Shona rising of 1896-7', The Journal of African History,XX, (iii), 395-420.1980 'Revolt in Southern Rhodesia' (review article), International Journalof African Historical Studies, XIII, (i), 103-108.Š The Shona and Zimbabwe 900-1850 (Heinemann, London; Africana,New York; Mambo, Gwelo), xviii + 427pp.Š 'The Marquis de Sade: First Zimbabwean novelist', Zambezia, VIII, (i),53-61.1982 Zimbabwe, A New History for Primary Schools (College Press, Harare),88pp.1983 'The Zimbabwe plateau and its peoples', in D. Birmingham and P.Martin (eds.) History of Central Africa, 1 (Longman, Harlow), 245-277.Š 'The Rozvi in search of their past', History in Africa, X, 13-34.Š 'Oral history and archaeology in Zimbabwe', Zimbabwean Prehistory,XIX, 8-11.1984 Zimbabwe Before 1900 (Mambo, Gweru), 88pp.1986 War and Politics in Zimbabwe 1840-1900 (Mambo, Gweru), 165pp.Š 'NADA and Mafohla: Antiquarianism in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe withspecial reference to the work of F. W. T. Posselt', History in Africa.XIII, 1-11.Š 'As origens de Mocambique: um passado de resistencia com licoes deactualidade', (Review article), Diario de Noticias, Lisboa, XI, de maiode 1986, iv-v.Š 'The uses of the colonial military history of Mozambique', (Reviewarticle), Cahiers d'etudes Africaines, CIV, (iv), 707-713.1987 'Documents and African society on the Zimbabwean plateau before1890', Paideurna, Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, XXXIII, 129-145.Š 'Precedents and presidents', Prize Africa (Dec, 1987), 24-25.1988 "Refuge" archaeology, trade and gold mining in nineteenth-centuryZimbabwe: lzidoro Correia Pereira's list of 1857', ZimbabweanPrehistory, XX, 3-8.Š 'From heroism to history: Mapondera and the Northern Zimbabweanplateau, 1840-1904', History in Africa, XV, 85-161.Š 'A. B. S. Chigwedere's histories of Zimbabwe and Africa', (Reviewarticle), Zambezia, XV, (i), 87-93.32 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY, DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER AND THE UNIVERSITYŠ 'The changing face of Maputo ŠFresh look at an African port', ZimbabweTobacco Today (April, 1988), 21-27.Š 'Lisbon disaster sends out a signal to Zimbabweans', Zimbabwe TobaccoToday (Nov., 1988), 15-17.1989 'Fontes para a historia de Manica e Sofala no Arquivo Nacional deZimbabwe', Arquivo Boletim do Arquivo Historico de Mozambique, VI,347-367.Š 'The early history of tobacco and smoking on the Zambezi', ZimbabweanTobacco Today, XII, (xii), 33-40.Š 'Shona dynastic histories: The central and southern Shona Š Thecentral shava belt', in N. Bhebe (ed.) The Methodology of the Use ofOral Sources in History, Report of the First India-Zimbabwe Conference(University of Zimbabwe, Harare, 23-26 Sept., 1989), 24-27.Š Mapondera, Heroism and History in Northern Zimbabwe 1840-1904(Mambo, Gweru), 93pp.1990 Ventures History of the World, 1 (College Press, Harare), 118pp.Š 'First steps in the demographic history of Zimbabwe', in B. Fetter (ed.)Demography from Scanty Evidence, Central Africa in the Colonial Era(Rienner, Boulder), 45-79.Š 'Zimbabwean demography: Early colonial data', Zambezia, XVII, (i), 31-83.Š 'Publishing the past: Progress in the "Documents on the Portuguese"series', Zambezia, XVII, (ii), 175-183.Š 'The early history of Harare to 1890', Heritage of Zimbabwe, IX, 5-27.1993 'As origens de Mozambique e Zimbabwe: Paiva de Andrada, aCompanhia de Mozambique e a diplomacia africana, 1881-1891',Arquivo, Boletim do Arquivo Historico de Mozambique, XIII, 5-80(Incomplete, Preliminary and unauthorised version).Š 'The rise of the Zimbabwe state', in R. O. Collins (ed.) Problems inAfrican History, The Precolonial Centuries (Markus Wiener, Princeton),127-134.1994 A Zimbabwean Past: Shona Dynastic Histories and Oral Traditions(Mambo, Gweru), xvii +368+80pp.Š The Shona and Their Neighbours (Blackwell, Oxford and CambridgeMA), xviii+246pp.Š 'Publicando o passado: progressos na serie "Documentos sobre osPortugueses", Arquivo, Boletim do Arguivo Historico de Mozambique,XV, 109-120.Š 'A Evolucao das Tradico da Dinastia Mutapa', Arquivo, Boletim doArquivo Historico de Mozambique, XVI, 135-195.D. BEACH 331995 'Le plateau et ses habitants', in J-L. Balans et M. Lafon (eds.) LeZimbabwe Contemporain (Karthala, Paris), 23-60.Š 'Archaeology and history in Nyanga, Zimbabwe: An overview', in G.Pwiti and R. Soper (eds.) Aspects of African Archaeology (Universityof Zimbabwe Publications, Harare), 715-718.Š 'But what about the war?' (Review article), Zimbabwean Review(October, 1995), 8-10.1996 'Y a-t-il eu une periode classique dans l'histoire shona?' StudiaAfricana, Barcelona, VII, 115-118.1997 'The Zimbabwean region c. 1490-1900: Aspects of history', in W.Dewey and E. De Palmenaer (eds.), Legacy of Stone: Zimbabwe Pastand Present (Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren), 97-111 (andin French and Nederlands versions).Š 'Review of T. N. Huffman, Snakes and Crocodiles' in South AfricanArchaeological Bulletin, LII, 125-127.Š (ed.) 'Zimbabwe's south-eastern highlands in 1891-2: The Journal of J.B. Don', Heritage of Zimbabwe, XVI, 1-36.1998 'Cognitive archaeology and imaginary history at Great Zimbabwe',Current Anthropology, XXXIX, (i), 47-72.Š 'An innocent woman, unjustly accused? Charwe, medium of the Nehandamhondoro spirit and the 1896-97 Central Shona rising in Zimbabwe',History in Africa, XXV, 19-45.Š 'Mutapa', in J. Middleton et.ai, (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Africa South ofthe Sahara (Charles Scribner, New York).Forthcoming 'Oral tradition in eastern Zimbabwe: The work of JasonTakafa Machiwenyika, C. 1889-1924', paper to be published in theProceedings of the Words and Voices: Critical Practices of Orality inAfrica and African Studies, Conference held at Bellagio, February1997.Š 'As origens de Mozambique e Zimbabwe: Paiva de Andrada, aCompanhia de Mozambique e a diplomacia africana, 1881-1891',Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos, Lisboa (Complete version).