91ASAFAS Special Paper, 9: 91-104, Mar 2007

THE ‘SOUTH AFRICANISATION’ OF SOUTHERN CENTRAL AFRICA: GLOBAL MEETS LOCAL OVER TIME AND SPACE IN THE UPPER ZAMBEZI VALLEY

Lawrence FlintENDA Tiers Monde, Dakar, Senegal and Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen

ABSTRACT South African influence in the Western Province of Zambia (previously the Barotseland Protectorate) and the Caprivi panhandle of northeastern Namibia is not a new phenomenon. The region, which forms part of the Upper Zambezi Valley, has been linked with the south through social, political and economic networks since the early part of the nineteenth century. Such links have taken the form of invasion, networks of trade, missionary activity, colonialism, labour migration and, particularly since 1994, an economic invasion. All of these can be said to have brought globalising infl uences to play in the region. It can also be reasonably argued that the region has ‘looked south’ for its connections with the outside world despite attempts by the fi rst Republic of Zambia under the direction of its founding President, Kenneth Kaunda, to sever these links.

Globalisation and the infusion of the capitalist world economy arrived slowly in the Upper Zambezi Valley. This was partly due to the physical remoteness of the region and partly to the fact that, during the colonial era, the region was seen purely in terms of a labour reserve for the mines of South Africa and the Copperbelt, and the plantations of Southern Rhodesia. Meanwhile, in the postcolonial era, the independent government of Zambia is perceived to have withheld development of the Valley, partly due to jealousy and suspicion concerning relations with South Africa.

Today, South African infl uence is set to take on new dimensions with the decision to go ahead with the building of a new road between Katima on the Zambian side of the border with Namibia, and Mongu, the capital and chief town of Western Province, located in the heart of the region. This will catalyse processes of change already begun in the southern part of the province with the opening of a rehabilitated road between Katima and Livingstone as part of the highway linking Walvis Bay in Namibia with the Zambian Copperbelt and the DRC. This new conduit of globalisation has brought a welter of political, economic, social and cultural change as new people, goods and money arrive, mostly from or via South Africa, resulting in new notions of identity based largely on contested discourses of modernity.

This paper catalogues growing infl uence from South Africa in the Upper Zambezi Valley and describes current trends associated with a particular brand of globalisation that is catalysing social change the Upper Zambezi Valley.

Key Words: Globalisation; Identity; Modernity; Socio-economic change

INTRODUCTION

The overarching premise of this paper is that the peoples of western Zambia, previously known as Barotseland, have ‘looked south’ in the contexts both of threat and opportunity at least since the fi rst half of the nineteenth century. Before this time, the south was not perceived of with much respect by the inhabitants of the Valley, who are said to have viewed the south with some distaste as this was the direction that the mighty Zambezi that brought life to the Bulozi fl oodplain took all the waste and detritus of life in the valley. Thus the south was perceived of as a kind of waste receptacle from where no good was likely to come [Lisimba, 2000: 146]. The north, meanwhile, was where all good things originated from, including clean, life-giving water. It was also the likely direction from which Bantu peoples had migrated from the Lunda-Luba Empire in the present-day Katanga region of

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Congo some 300 to 400 years ago. All this was to change as mobility increased towards the end of the eighteenth and start of the nineteenth centuries and people, fi rst from the west and east and later from the south, started to arrive in the Upper Zambezi Valley, bringing with them new globalising infl uences, new information on the outside world, new goods and new demands.

The south only began to seriously register in the consciousness of the peoples of the valley, known as Luyi or Aluyi, who had become politically centralised around a ruling clique headquartered in the centre of the fl oodplain, after being invaded from the south in the late 1820s/early 1830s by an invading force that took up residence and intermarried with local people. This invading group, known as the Makololo, were quickly followed by their own enemies, the Matabele, after which, Europeans began to arrive, some of whom were going to have a lasting impact on the local perception of the ‘south’ as a source of power, wealth and modernity. From the middle of the nineteenth century, then, up to the present day, the south, now in the form of the Republic of South Africa, has been a source of threat and opportunity. Thus, South African infl uence today, bringing with it a particularised brand of globalisation and imbuing changing modalities of identity is, in fact a repetition of a process begun 150 years or more ago.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOUTH IN THE PRECOLONIAL AND COLONIAL ERAS

Before independence, Western Province, Zambia was known as Barotseland Protectorate and the province is still affectionately known as Barotseland by many. In this paper, Barotseland and Western Province are used interchangeably but refer to the same region. The peoples inhabiting this region come from around 25 groups who gradually merged or were assimilated into a heterogeneous whole known as the Lozi. The vernacular of the Lozi peoples, Silozi (previously Sikololo), is a language derived from Siluyana (the language of the early settlers in the Upper Zambezi Valley fl oodplain, now known as Bulozi, and Sotho. Other groups are also present in the valley who do not associate themselves with being Lozi. These tend to originate from Angola, and further south, in Caprivi and Botswana, they may be groups who always resisted Lozi overlordship and dominance.

The name Lozi came about as a result of invasion and occupation by an army (known popularly as Makololo) led by a Sotho clan, whose language became the lingua franca during the occupation and was merged with Siluyana in the period since. The region under the infl uence of the Luyi/Makololo/Lozi gradually increased in size to the point, immediately before colonisation by the British, that it included parts of present-day Zambia, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, and, some Lozi historians claim, northwest Zimbabwe. Figure 1 shows the location of the region in question. The Makololo called the Luyi peoples Lotsi or Rotsi which is where the names Barotse and Lozi originate. The political community that developed in the region was centralised under a kingship, known as Litunga (‘keeper of the earth’) and elite class of royals and chiefs that today is collectively known as the Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE).

Barotseland’s relations with South Africa began in earnest with the arrival of traders and missionaries from the middle of the nineteenth century. Before this, only a few Portuguese and Arabs explored as far inland as the Upper Zambezi Valley in the fi rst half

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93The 'South Africanisation' of Southern Central Africa

of the nineteenth century. Instead, it was from the south that infl uence arrived that was to have a lasting impact on the Lozi cosmos, in particular, perceptions of the outside world and of the Lozi self and others. The process started in 1851 with the arrival in Caprivi, after a trek directly across the Kalahari, of the explorer and missionary, David Livingstone. Here Livingstone he met the chief of the Makololo, a hybrid horde led by a Sotho military clan originating from the Bafokeng in South Africa, who had invaded and occupied the valley, possibly in the late 1820s. In Caprivi, Livingstone fi rst heard of the prosperity of the Upper Zambezi Valley and its inhabitants, then known by the name that the Makololo had given to them, the Barotse [Livingstone, 1857]. Livingstone went on to visit the Upper Zambezi valley fl oodplain, known as Bulozi, describing it in glowing terms as ‘a land of milk and honey’.

Livingstone was concerned that the leadership of the Makololo might fall prey to the temptations of the slave trade (indeed, some already had) and so encouraged trading in ivory, a previously little valued commodity, fi rstly to the west coast. However, when Livingstone returned to England in 1856, it was to raise interest in missionary and trading activity in Barotseland. This resulted in the ill-fated Hellmore-Price expedition to Caprivi in 1860, which also accessed the region from the south, taking a similar route to that fi rst used by Livingstone [Kilby, 2001].

Livingstone’s visits to Barotseland took place from 1851 to 1860, yet during this time the intrepid explorer transcended his supposed role as a missionary and crusader for the abolition of slavery almost into a development consultant, adopting the Makololo, who greatly assisted Livingstone with infrastructure for his travels, as a cause. Livingstone’s interaction with the Makololo left an indelible mark on the later Lozi consciousness, pioneering the sense of warmth towards ‘Englishmen’ (Livingstone was actually Scottish) coming from the south that exists to this day in the minds of people in the Upper Zambezi Valley, particularly among the Lozi royal classes.

Later on, tales of ivory and other wildlife led hunters and traders such as George

Map showing location of Western Province, Zambia (bold line) and probable maximum extent of infl uence of old Lozi Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century (dotted line).

Figure 1.

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94 Lawrence Flint

Westbeech to set out from England for a life of adventure and opportunity in Southern Africa. Westbeech set up a base camp at Pandamatenga just south of the confl uence of the Chobe and Zambezi rivers in 1871 and, from there, hunted and traded extensively throughout Barotseland, becoming a confi dant of Lozi kings and a mediator of power in the process [Sampson, 1972]. Westbeech was followed by other traders, adventurers, miscreants and missionaries, nearly all of whom went to Barotseland from the south. Most notable among the latter was the French missionary Francois Coillard who, like Westbeech, went to Barotseland after trying his luck with the Matabele in what is now western Zimbabwe, and spent most of the latter part of his life (1885-1904) in Barotseland, leaving behind an indelible Christian infl uence, being feted today, along with Livingstone, for bringing Christianity to the country [Prins, 1980]. Though decidedly French, Coillard was also enjoined to the ‘English’ tradition because of his close connections to Britain where he sourced much of his funding, his close connections to British colonialism with whom he acted as mediator and by marrying an ‘English’ (although actually Scottish) woman.

Barotseland’s entry into the colonial system came about in a way that also helps to explain the gaze to the south. After the overthrow of the ruling Sotho clan of the Makololo in 1864, leadership of the now seriously mixed community of the Upper Zambezi Valley became, as it had been before the invasion, a competitive process between the ruling class in the north of the Bulozi plain and oppositional factions in southern Barotseland and Caprivi. So much was this the case that it was with considerable apprehension that Litunga Lewanika viewed his position in 1885 on his return to the kingship after being overthrown some 18 months previously by militias of a competing faction. Lewanika had originally come to power in 1878 during a period of turmoil and intense competition between different sectors of the elite class (essentially those who had cooperated with Makololo rule and those who had not). Beset by threats from within, and from the enduring menace posed by the Matabele to the south east as well as the relentless wave of white colonial expansion from several directions, Lewanika knew that if he was to retain power for long, something drastic would need to be done to ensure his tenure of the Litungaship and the political cohesion of Barotseland.

Lewanika took advice from Khama of the Bamangwato in Botswana and from Coillard and English traders and applied for ‘protection’ from Britain [Coillard, 1897], in particular, from the ‘great white queen,’ Victoria. This proved to be a pragmatic move in securing Lewanika’s own position, buttressed as it became by British interests, avoiding the fate of the Matabele under Lobengula who adopted a more confrontational approach to white colonial power. In short, Britain was perceived as the most likely candidate to fulfi l Lewanika’s purposes. However, the convoluted process by which British ‘protection’ came about over Barotseland was by no means an easy one. Initially, to Lewanika’s dismay, he found his kingdom in the clutches of the British South Africa Company (BSAC). In 1924, this gave way to colonial rule, whose structure gradually became decentralised from South Africa to what became known as Northern Rhodesia, although real power was still perceived to be located at the Cape. The point here, particularly for Lozi historians today, is that Barotseland was not taken by force and submitted to colonial rule but rather that protection was sought from one great monarchy by another, seen almost an arrangement between contemporaries.

All was bound together by a series of agreements between Lewanika and Britain, mostly through BSAC proxies. Today, the old relationship with Britain, however one-sided in

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reality, is often described as a friendship [Flint, 2005], mediated through and via the Cape. The route to Cape Town was the route to Britain. After Lewanika’s tour of Britain in 1901 and attendance at the coronation of King Edward VII, the gaze to the south and onwards to Britain became the gaze to security, modernity and development. Unfortunately for Lewanika and his successors, Britain did not share the latter two of these objectives for Barotseland which, by the end of colonial rule, was described by one observer as a ‘living museum’ [Caplan, 1970].

With the arrival of British colonialism, Barotseland’s links with the south intensifi ed although, it should be added, these links were essentially with the Litunga and his closest advisors. Most ordinary people were, as they had always been, suspicious of or hostile to foreigners, particularly whites. Colonial authority emanated, at fi rst, from the BSAC although the company’s power was mediated by the British High Commissioner based in Cape Town, with whom succeeding Litungas communicated directly when unhappy with company rule. And while colonial rule decentralised to Northern Rhodesia, the reins of power always appeared to emanate from the south. So, for example, when a British royal dignitary visited Barotseland and other parts of Northern Rhodesia, it would likely be as part of a visit that focussed primarily on South Africa. Examples were the visits of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) in 1925 [discussed in Ranger, 1980], King George VI in 1947 and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1960 (see Figure 2).

It was also during colonial rule that labour migration commenced to the mines of South Africa in an economic relationship that endured until the early years of independence. Labourers were mostly recruited by an organisation which became known by the acronym WENELA (Witwatersrand Native Labour Association). It has been estimated elsewhere that, at its height, some two thirds of Barotseland’s employed men worked in South Africa [Prothero, 1974]. The introduction of migrant labour was one of the ways in which Britain

Mwanawina III with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in the grounds of the Kwandu Palace, Limulunga, May, 1960.

Figure 2.

Source: Max Gluckman Collection.

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96 Lawrence Flint

underdeveloped Barotseland by depriving the pre-existing basis of production and self-suffi ciency of its workforce. This factor is often overlooked by contemporary Lozi historians who look back with some positivity on the colonial period as a time when internal strife was ended and local leaderships respected by a force that, like the Makololo, came to be respected. In 1966, the fi rst Republican President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, using a Lozi Minister of Labour, banned the recruitment of migrant labourer by WENELA [Flint, 2005]. However, this caused discontent among local communities, many of whom had become reliant on remittances of migrant labourers and for whom no other source of income existed.

For Britain, devolving power to compliant local leaders who supported British colonial rule was the ideal way of controlling colonies whose only prime resource appeared to be its people. This was the articulation of ‘Lugardian’ indirect rule. Local leaders in Africa who bought into the system, meanwhile, tried to maintain a semblance of independence and sense of power. The system promoted a kind of ‘tribalised’ underdevelopment in which traditional authority was protected while denying access to modernity and urbanisation. Conversely, it is fair to describe indirect rule as a form of resistance by local leaders who were making pragmatic decisions both for themselves and, quite often, their subjects. This point is often made today by Lozis keen to point to the survival of Lozi cultural traditions and icons such as the Kingship which other groups lost as a result of more overt opposition to the colonialists. This becomes a pivot of disjuncture between Lozis and other groups in Zambia causing Lozis to feel different and more aligned to the south than to Zambia.

For the Lozi elites led by the Litunga, the relationship with Britain came to take on great symbolic value, epitomised by the annual Kuomboka ceremony where the Litunga dons the uniform of a British admiral for part of the ceremonial procession, the original being a present to Lewanika from Edward VII [Flint, 2006]. Kuomboka, literally meaning ‘to get out of water,’ was originally a survival strategy responding to the annual inundation of the fl oodplain but was given more ceremonial and cultural value by Lewanika [Kalaluka, 1979]. It took on renewed signifi cance in the postcolonial era when Lozis became alienated from the attempted ‘Zambianisation’ of the country, which threatened the diminution of the Kingship that fi gures so strongly in constructions of Lozi identity [Flint, 2005].

During the period of colonial rule following the end of the BSAC’s administration, and throughout the period of Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953-1964), the relationship with Britain was sustained by the maintenance of a myth. This myth consisted of the perception that Barotseland was, like Swaziland and Basutoland, a real British protectorate that it could withdraw from any time it felt its sovereignty was threatened. Unfortunately for Barotseland’s royal elite, this myth, regularly confi rmed by colonial offi cials of all ranks, was disproved just at the time Litunga Mwanawina III tried to invoke it in 1964. Instead, at the head of an increasingly unpopular royal establishment at home and under threat of withdrawal of economic and political support by Britain, Mwanawina, who had been offi cially honoured with a knighthood by Britain, found, to his dismay, that he had no choice but to agree to Barotseland’s incorporation into the new Republic of Zambia led by Kenneth Kaunda [Caplan, 1970].

However, Mwanawina and the BRE did succeed in extracting some promises and privileges from Kaunda that would form the basis of the ‘Barotseland Agreement 1964’, signed by Mwanawina, Kaunda and, Britain’s Colonial Secretary, the latter only as a witness.

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97The 'South Africanisation' of Southern Central Africa

The administration of Kaunda, despite having been helped into power in November 1964 by several leading Lozis, adopted a somewhat negative approach to Barotseland and its traditional authority, stripping it of many powers and abrogating the Barotseland Agreement in 1969, an affront to Lozi dignity that is still the subject of considerable bitterness today [Flint, 2005]. Kaunda appeared to be under the impression that Barotseland’s traditional leadership was a hotbed of secessionist fervour, prepared to form an alliance with apartheid South Africa in order to pursue separation from Zambia. This view was later adopted by the second republican President, Frederick Chiluba, especially after the foiled military uprising in Caprivi in 1999 led by Caprivi nationalists, who, both the governments of Namibia and Zambia believed, wanted to restore the pre-colonial kingdom of Barotseland, including Caprivi.

BAROTSELAND, SOUTH AFRICA AND THE LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Barotseland’s relationship with South Africa came under considerable pressure during the 1970s and 80s as freedom struggles in other countries, particularly Namibia, strayed onto Barotse soil. Today, the Zambian government tries to make light of the exigencies suffered by local people during the freedom struggle, preferring to refer to it as Zambia’s necessary sacrifi ce in the emancipation of Africa and Africans from colonial rule but this line does not play well with older Lozis who suffered during the freedom struggle period [Flint, 2005].

Briefl y, Kaunda decided that Barotseland should play a leading role in the freedom struggle by allowing the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) fi ghting, after 1966, for the liberation of Namibia from South African rule, to establish bases in Barotseland. Realising this might not meet with much approval locally, Kaunda also presided over the setting up of brigades of ‘Home Guards’ located in all large villages and towns, particularly close to borders. According to local people, these acted as the eyes and ears of the government to detect opposition among local people to the embedding of SWAPO bases. Coming so soon after the ending of migrant labour, local people again felt that the Zambian government was imposing some kind of penalty on Barotseland, for reasons they did not, at the time, grasp. The result was a sense of serious alienation from Lusaka.

For Barotseland, the era of the liberation struggle was to last from the mid-1960s through to the late-1980s, by when, white South Africa’s grim determination to hang on to Namibia at all costs had been overtaken by a more pragmatic geopolitical approach that took account of international pressure and politico-economic realities at home. Barotseland and its peoples also endured hardships created by confl icts surrounding the independence struggles of Zimbabwe and Angola that, in the case of the latter, extended into a protracted civil war that impacted on Barotseland until 2001.

The decision was taken to upgrade South Africa’s military presence in Caprivi and take a more proactive role in the social and political life of the Lozi peoples on both sides of the Zambezi. Part of the problem both for South Africa and local people in Barotseland was that SWAPO camps were victualled and provisioned from local resources and protected by Zambian National Defence Force (ZNDF) troops. Thus the emphasis for the South African Defence Force rapidly became elimination of these camps. After the embedding of SWAPO bases in Barotseland, the SA military was also given the go-ahead to enter Barotseland in hot-pursuit raids and missions to cut communications links that could be used by SWAPO.

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South Africa also set about a particular brand of colonialism with the Caprivian population, designed to alienate dissident Caprivians (some supported the freedom struggle and fought for SWAPO under the banner of the Caprivian African National Union (CANU)) and Zambian Lozis from each other and from other population groups in Namibia and Zambia respectively. Meanwhile the rest of the Caprivian population was enticed to think more positively about South Africa by the introduction of a higher degree of development than other so-called ‘Bantustans’ and the introduction in 1972 of a ‘Legislative Assembly of the Caprivians’. Here local politicians regularly criticised SWAPO and complemented South Africa on its care for the Caprivian people [Flint, 2003].

Higher levels of development in Caprivi were, meanwhile, not lost on Lozis across the border in Barotseland proper whose standard of living was declining fast. It became clear that South Africa was grooming Caprivi for the possible creation of a client state that would be separate from the rest of Namibia [Flint, 2005]. Several strategies were employed to achieve South Africa’s aims. One was to vigorously pursue, prosecute and detain any Caprivian suspected of supporting nationalist aims. Another that particularly affected Lozi perceptions of South Africa was the dissemination of propaganda.

A powerful radio transmitter was erected at Katima Mulilo from where South Africa could disseminate selective information and propaganda to people living in Barotseland. These signals were received very clearly, more clearly in fact than transmissions from Lusaka. Indeed, poor telecommunications in Zambia’s rural areas, particularly in Western Province, a legacy of the colonial era left unchanged during the Kaunda years, made it considerably easier for South African efforts at destabilising the population. Thus, radio broadcasts were transmitted in the 1970s from Katima in Silozi as well as in English to the people of Barotseland. Broadcasting schedules incorporated Lozi cultural programmes including history and language, educative programmes, programmes about health, current affairs and a large dose of South African propaganda. Propaganda was also disseminated by leafl ets, which were dropped from helicopters and planes. These leafl ets showed illustrations of a Lozi man, very thin and a SWAPO freedom fi ghter, very fat. The accompanying text, in Silozi, announced that the Lozi man was thin because of Kaunda’s neglect and the freedom fi ghter was fat because Kaunda was feeding him.

Life for the people of Barotseland, particularly in the south, was very diffi cult at this time with feelings being torn between loyalty to the freedom struggle (as already mentioned some SWAPO operatives were Caprivians from CANU), anger at Kaunda for putting Lozis in danger and animosity at the depredations of both the SWAPO freedom fi ghters and South African forces. Most Lozi families throughout Barotseland had relatives living in Caprivi and were indeed aware of the higher living standards in Caprivi and the plethora of South African names on the main street of Katima Mulilo simply confi rmed what was plainly obvious. The South African propaganda machine was thus able to tap into a vein of disillusion with the Zambian government. Meanwhile, during this time a slow seepage of South African consumer goods into Barotseland started to occur, albeit often by illicit means, goods that were often of a superior quality to whatever goods were available locally.

Thus, in spite of the fact that South African troops, often behaving in a brutal and xenophobic manner, had invaded Barotse soil during the freedom struggle and in spite of the racist nature of the white South African regime, which was well understood by Lozis of all

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classes, positive perceptions of South Africa continued to be held by many, although this was by no means universally the case. However, these perceptions must be set in the context of Barotseland’s underdevelopment and construction of cultural identity.

NEW ROADS AND DECENTRALISED DEVELOPMENT

In 2004, a rehabilitated tarmac road including a new bridge over the Zambezi was opened linking the Zambian village of Katima, on the Zambia-Namibia border, with Livingstone, creating a corridor of socio-economic change in one of the most under-developed parts of Zambia. The new road was largely funded by the German development agency GTZ and forms part of a link between Namibia’s port at Walvis Bay and economically important regions in Central Africa.

Since the completion of the work, new fl ows of people, goods and money have impacted local socio-economic dynamics as long-dead businesses have re-opened and towns en-route, such as Sesheke, have sprung into life. Various types of people pass by on the road, some disembarking temporarily, some staying longer. People from other deprived regions such as south eastern Angola are also arriving to take advantage of perceived opportunities for progression. Meanwhile, local people use the road for increasingly easy access to Southern Africa in the search primarily of new economic opportunities. The rehabilitation of the Katima-Livingstone road means that it is now possible to drive from Cape Town at the southern extremity of Africa to the southern boundary of Western Province in just two days on good quality tarmac roads. The reduction in journey times means that South African consumer goods reach the Upper Zambezi Valley more cheaply and in greater quantities than previously, and, signifi cantly, have no competition from other sources.

All of these activities have had a dramatic impact on local notions of identity, both of self and others as more strangers arrive, transporting new cultures, particularly global cultures that local people have hitherto had little exposure to. Most of this global culture arrives from or via South Africa. It arrives in the form of goods, services and people. South Africans (and other strangers arriving from South Africa) include entrepreneurs in the search for new business opportunities, tourists and even some unsavoury elements bent on illegitimate activities such as illegal timber extraction, and the running of prostitution and drug rings. South African entrepreneurs tend, very often, to be white males with strong Afrikaans accents, seeking out new opportunities and ready to take over or start any local business that shows potential.

This continues a trend set in place already by South African corporations to take advantage of industries and services in Zambia being privatised or simply vulnerable due to smallness of markets or lack of skills and infrastructure. In this way, South African brands and global brands that use South Africa as a staging post have become accepted consumer icons in the consciousness of Zambians. This dynamic has gained speed considerably in Western Province in recent years due to improvements in communications infrastructure and the opening of a South African supermarket in the chief town, Mongu, selling goods mostly imported from South Africa.

A new road is now under construction, funded by the Danish development agency that will, for the fi rst time, connect South Africa, Namibia and the heart of Western Province

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100 Lawrence Flint

with an all-season tarmac road, enormously increasing the potential for penetration of South African goods and culture. Meanwhile, restaurants, hotels and the few well-healed in the region who can afford satellite TV and the generators to keep them powered, subscribe to a South African satellite TV company now operating throughout most of Sub-Saharan Africa, carrying news and entertainment channels far superior than anything produced locally and also transporting global culture and the South African gaze on Africa and the rest of the world via specifi cally South African news and entertainment channels and programmes.

What this does to the psyche of local people in Western Province is to reinforce an already prevalent perception of South Africa as a purveyor of global culture and as a source of wealth and opportunity. Not so clear-cut are perceptions of the people and infl uences arriving in the region from the south. As suggested, some of the arriving dynamics are highly exploitative of local resources, both human and physical and remind local people, particularly in traditional authorities, of the ban put in place by Litunga Lewanika at the turn of the twentieth century on white settlers, particularly Afrikaners, with the exception of odd traders and others perceived as capable of benefi ting the country. Today, there are still unoffi cial bans in place, particularly on south Asian, Arab and Lebanese entrepreneurs, who are considered too exploitative, although, as any visitor to Western Province can see, there are some obvious exceptions to this rule. No business, however big, can effectively hope to operate in the province without the approval of the BRE but the ability to police new arrivals and their activities is increasingly curtailed by the speed of their arrival and the low capacity of the BRE to enforce its will.

Another recent development that cuts across politico-economic and socio-cultural dynamics concerns the two local national parks, Sioma-Ngwezi and Liuwa Plains. These parks, both inhabited by local people, located close to the Angolan border and subject to ravages perpetrated on the fl ora and fauna of the region by the spilling over of confl ict and poverty stricken refugees from Angola, both hitherto diffi cult to access became the target in 2003 of a part-private/part-public venture launched by an organisation based in South Africa called African Parks Conservation, the brainchild of a Dutch captain of business.

The arrangement reached between African Parks, the Zambian Government (through its Wildlife Authority), the current Litunga and the BRE was that African Parks should be given a lease over the two parks and that it should set about creating high class tourist facilities, by re-stocking the parks with game and building lodges where well-healed visitors (mainly from South Africa and overseas) would pay high prices. Part of the idea is that some of the revenues generated would also be ploughed back into local communities by the provision of jobs and environmentally friendly development among villages in the parks.

However, considerable controversy surrounded the project which was opposed by certain elements of the royal family opposed to the current Litunga and several local members of parliament who felt that the sovereignty of local people over their land, guaranteed throughout history by the Litungaship which holds all land in trust on behalf of the Lozi nation, was being put in jeopardy. In plain words, it was suggested that the Zambian government, the Litunga and his Ngambela (Prime Minister) were somehow in league to sell the land of the Lozi nation to ‘South Africans’ in return for fees advanced by African Parks and a share in any future profi ts.

In fact, this was mostly a misreading of the objectives of the project but a groundswell

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of negative reaction was generated (although not among local people in the parks concerned, who welcomed any chance of local economic development) and the project was later reduced to just one park—Liuwa Plains.

IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION

The above set of dynamics revealed in fi eld research conducted between 1999 and 2006 provides some indication of the impact of South Africa and of the south of Africa on perceptions of self and others in western Zambia. To date, association with culture and tradition has been the predominant feature of identity construction for the Lozi and other peoples of the Upper Zambezi Valley. The lack of impression made by modernity can be ascribed to the constraining effects of colonisation under Britain and independence under the fi rst and second republics of Zambia together with the region’s physical remoteness that effectively barred access to outside, particularly global infl uences.

In the pre-independence era, identity was negotiated according to the growth of the Lozi nation and the expansion of its infl uence up to the second decade of the nineteenth century; the invasion and occupation of Barotseland by the Makololo in the mid-nineteenth century; and British colonialism from around 1890 until 1964. From independence in 1964, identity with the new nation-state was harder to negotiate in the face of a sense of rejection and alienation by the national political community. Association with South Africa and the south of Africa was conditioned by the cessation of migrant labour recruitment, the appearance of South African military might and the propaganda effort in the freedom struggle years, and the slow growth in consumption of South African produced goods, services and medias.

However, since the beginning of the Third Republic of Zambia under President Levy Mwanawasa in 2001, the ‘consumption of South Africa’ has increased and the opening up of new conduits of communication such as the Katima-Livingstone road have reduced the isolationist aspect and cultural content of identity construction. This has been catalysed by the appearance of more development organisations and development activity in the region following considerable decentralisation of governance. The attachment to the concept of Zambia, which was very weak up to 2001 has, paradoxically, increased since the opening up of Western Province to outside infl uences. This can be explained partly by the softening of feeling towards the government in Lusaka. It is very signifi cant, in this respect, that the President and government ministers seem to spend a lot more time in Western Province than previously. In addition to this, most local politicians have enlisted with the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) which now enjoys hitherto unrealised predominance in the region.

The new warmth between Lusaka and Western Province has also permitted local people to consume a deeper sense of the south of Africa because there is no longer a sense of disapproval. Meanwhile people living in Barotseland, close to new conduits of intruding outside infl uences feel a new need to identify themselves as Zambians in the face of similar badges of national identity displayed by strangers. Meanwhile, the revived movement of young people to South Africa, often illegally, in search of employment and new opportunities, together with the arrival of people from the south via new roads and new development

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102 Lawrence Flint

initiatives has served to reduce the psychological distance between Province and the south while similar perceptions of distance to the north and west have remained the same. This sense of reduced distance has helped to cement feelings of a more global identity among the young, while older generations and traditional authorities (which form a gerontocracy across the region), fi nd such new expressions of identity bewildering and threatening to their position in society, not least as respect from the youth diminishes. This dynamic is a repeat of the situation that arose during the colonial era when young male migrant workers often lost respect for elders and the chiefl y structure at home (although not, signifi cantly, for the kingship, which remained throughout as the loadstone of Lozi identity). Thus history is seen to repeat itself in this way.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The feelings of local people towards the south and South Africa, in particular, in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century are nearly as equivocal to those of the late nineteenth century when Barotseland sought ‘protection’ from Britain. In terms of South Africa as an external place, perceptions are of a centre of power and wealth, the one being closely associated with the other. Barotseland has looked south across time to access economic development and progress towards perceptions of modernity because other directions either provided very little in these respects. However, there has always been a perception of the South and South Africa as a potential poisoned chalice. In the post-independence era, despite the exigencies of the liberation era, people in Barotseland have felt that there is more chance of development and incoming wealth from South Africa than from Zambia. On the other hand, there is also a resentment at past and potential usurpation of local culture and authority and of the sovereignty of Lozi political institutions left in place by colonial and independence authorities alike, by ‘foreign’ (and essentially white) interlocutors. Crosscutting this, South Africa has become ominously closer both in subjective and objective senses, together with the aforementioned opportunities and threats.

Looked at from the viewpoint of local people, the position remains ambiguous. South Africa represents a willing supplier of sought-after accoutrements of modernity of modern things and modern processes such as roads, supermarkets and modern consumer goods. It is also a conduit of information and global culture that is fi ltered and imbued with a discernable South African fl avour via the intervening conduits of South African medias and people coming from South Africa who variously re-interpret and redefi ne external infl ows. However, South Africa is also a source of threat, not least for traditional authorities and even national authorities who fear absorption into what is perceived as a white-dominated South African sphere of politico-economic and socio-cultural domination and subservience. Also, in this vein, the sufferings endured at the hands of the South African military and Namibian freedom fi ghters, reminds local people of the threat posed by foreigners from the south.

In analysing these two vantage points one can detect the re-emergence of an age and class gap that existed in the colonial era when migrant labour became a dominant dynamic, the poorer and younger strata of society being the most eager to access modernity and urban living (‘the bright lights’ syndrome) and the traditionally privileged elites who stand to lose status and wealth plus older generation holding the most hesitant and negative

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103The 'South Africanisation' of Southern Central Africa

viewpoints. There is also an air of inevitability prevalent throughout the region that the South Africanisation of economic and cultural processes is an unavoidable force and must therefore, as in the time of Lewanika, be negotiated in as pragmatic a manner as possible.

Particularly among young people, the previously strong feeling of Loziness promoted by rejectionism and isolation caused by underdevelopment that bound all sectors of Lozi society together is fraying at the edges as identity of self and others starts to utilise more global imagery and myths in its construction. Meanwhile, not all of the South Africanisation of central Southern Africa has historical connotations as the world economy today is very different to that in play in the colonial era. Where global meets local in the Upper Zambezi Valley, there is a discernible frontier pushing north, unstoppable in its nature, driven by the global forces of capitalist economic advance, seeking new opportunities for exploitation. This process, in turn, is mediated and directed by South African economic agencies. These, held in check during apartheid, are now in play as willing ‘franchisees’ of global economic and cultural dynamics, seeking market penetration and enrichment, drawing profi ts back to the south and from there to the outside world, creating, in effect, a new colonialism sweeping from south to north.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The fi eld research for this paper was carried out variously over the period 2000-2006 thanks to grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the UK and Birmingham University and with suport from the Institute of Economic and Social research (INESOR) at the University of Zambia, from the Zambian Government and the Barotse Royal Establishment who provided help and logistical support throughout.

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Author’s Name and Address: Lawrence Flint, ENDA Tiers Monde, 54, rue Carnot, Dakar, SENEGAL and Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen.E-mail: lawrence@endaenergy.org, lawrence.flint@gmail.com

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