Ian Manning
AH senior member
Preface
Zambia is a territory that has moved from aboriginal occupation by Bushmen and Pygmy to invasions by Bantu tribes and then colonized in 1889 by the British South Africa Chartered Company. In 1924, it became the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, and in 1964, it became the independent state of Zambia.In what is now Zambia, colonization by the British in 1989 destroyed the Arab slave trade in which some chiefs were complicit but then introduced laws forcing the tribes to live in large villages and pay hut tax. Following this, villagers were ‘recruited’ forcibly for the newly established mines, their ownership rights to wildlife were removed, and their inter-tribal trade was destroyed by imports.
In 1896, numerous game reserves were established, and the inhabitants were told to move out. In 1924, Indirect Rule through the chiefs was implemented, and in 1936, financial control of customary land was given. In 1942, the game reserves were converted to national parks, and in 1945, Chiefs were given responsibility for wildlife in the controlled hunting areas. From 1946, sport hunters were encouraged to hunt in Controlled Areas with payment made to the Native Authority treasuries. In 1949, the Government introduced a controlled hunting scheme for commercial safari hunting in Nsefu’s chiefdom, with 50% of revenue going to the chiefdom. Since then, Zambia has become a vassal and subsidiary state of Britain, America, China, the UN, the World Bank, IMF, myriad donors, and big businesses. It is a land of two parts: Western capitalist and traditional ecosocialist.
The customary people, girded by their kinship and spiritual customs, exist on the wildlands in their ancient ecosocial way. But, as I revealed in God’s Country: Volume I - Plunderers of Eden, they are increasingly oppressed by the failings of a pre-modern colonial state and its rent-seeking and land-grabbing, the chiefdoms reduced from 72% of the country at independence to 52% today - though if the seizure of 22% of the land as Game Management Areas is taken into account, the chiefdoms now make up only 30% of Zambia’s land. The tools used for this re-colonization are bogus conservation, some corrupt chiefs and district councils, tourism, mining, industrial agriculture, colonial privatizations, and foreign aid project incursions that send villagers to horrific medieval prisons for five years for eating game meat.
I extracted the Guardians of Eden Manual from Guardians of Eden, Vol. II of God’s Country, for easy use as a guide to identifying what is wrong in the chiefdoms, municipalities, and political structures and putting it right. It is a practical manual, a legal, policy, and organizational aid to the future, and a reference site for the chiefdoms to regain and maintain their eco-social sovereignty. It is time for the customary people to affirm their kinship and for the country to redefine its future along indigenous spiritual and socioecological lines, not on Western neo-capitalism. To do this, they must take back much of their land and natural resources - including the fish and game - and manage this legacy, the loss of which imperils their well-being and that of Zambia and Mother Earth.
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