Developing rural Africa: rural development discourse in colonial Zimbabwe, 1944–79
Developing rural Africa: rural development discourse in colonial Zimbabwe, 1944–79
This chapter analyses the realisations, transformations and effects of development concepts and policies throughout various stages of the history of government assistance in Zimbabwe from 1944 to 1979. The “development” that was rolled out in colonial Zimbabwe was more or less equated to Europeanisation of both space and culture. As time went by there was a tacit resignation, however, as to the ability of the “modern” to imbricate on the “traditional” and as such many of the grandiose aims and objectives of earlier development plans of the 1940s and 1950s became minimalist in nature. Drawing on a variety of sources – from colonial records and missionary literature to film, academic texts and personal testimonies – Makombe argues that “development” and development policies in colonial Zimbabwe up to independence had a strong leaning towards controlling the black population and towards the division of a modern, white sector and a traditionalised, rural, black sector.
Keywords: Colonial Zimbabwe, Rural development, Government assistance, Development plans, Rural urban divide, Eurocentric development, Modernization, Traditionalization
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