Marcia Wright

Technology, marriage and women's work in the history of Maize‐Growers in Mazabuka, Zambia: a reconnaissance

This paper concerns the ways in which marriage patterns and command of capital resources, agricultural implements in particular, have been linked in Mazabuka, southern Zambia, where the polygynous nuclear family has emerged as a manifestation of successful commercial farming. 1 The aim is essentially historical: to retrieve something of the situation of family and production in the early years of the twentieth century; to follow the rise of paternal power as it won out in a struggle for accumulation, at the expense of matrilineal claims; and to see how this power has been strengthened by the unwaged labour of wives. It is both a reconnaissance and a call for more research. Amidst the wealth of writings that chart the rise and exploits of the Tonga maize growers, those by Elizabeth Colson and Patrick Mbulo are exceptional in revealing the relations of production and control of wealth within the family.2 There are other strengths in the literature, particularly the dissertations of Vickery and Dixon-Fyle which are based on extensive archival research,3 and the technical writings by agriculturalists and allied social scientists.4 These works leave us in no doubt about the outline of African commercial farming in Mazabuka, which commenced just

An old nationalist in new nationalist times: Donald Siwale and the state in Zambia: 1948–1963

Donald Siwale took the positive view that governance in colonial Northern Rhodesia could be beneficial to the people. He was a pace‐setter amongst the early educated elite and served in numerous capacities as a mediator. He was also a moralist and social critic. This article examines his thought and career in the late colonial period, when he straddled between prominence in the African National Congress and positions within the hierarchy built upon Native Authorities. He participated vigorously in the African Representative Council throughout its existence, 1946–1958. As an improver, he could not forego the opportunity to prod the administration, for example, by joining the Provincial Development Team. Opposing Northern Rhodesias incorporation into the Central African Federation, he expounded on the nature of chiefs as repositories of legitimacy. Nationalism, however, drew on increasingly populist sources, isolating the educated elite as a differentiated class. The discussion examines his background and ...