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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how African peasants negotiated survival during drought under the British South Africa Company (BSAC) rule in Southern Rhodesia between 1911 and 1923. African peasants engaged both the Company government and private traders as well as inventing their own ways to survive drought.

Paper long abstract:

Southern Rhodesia was hit by three droughts in the first two decades of the twentieth century when the BSAC government had turned to white settler agriculture, on top of the not-so-glamorous mining, as two pillars of the economy. At this point, the government, settler farmers and miners were all facing acute labour shortages. This paper explores the measures put in place by the Company government to ensure that the reservoir of cheap labour, as African peasants were viewed, would survive droughts. Equally important, as demonstrated in this paper, is how the Africans reacted to the options made available by the government as well as inventing new ways of survival. Instead of opting for wage labour, which the state encouraged, African peasants embraced capitalism by engaging the government and private traders in commercial transactions to survive drought. The paper demonstrates that between 1911 and 1923, the BSAC government (in its efforts to establish settler agriculture to compensate for the failure to find satisfactory mining claims), deprived African peasants of their land and livelihoods, thereby making them more vulnerable to drought. I argue that during drought, the BSAC used grain advances to lure Africans to provide much-needed cheap labour, but Africans only accepted the offer as a last resort as they prioritise trading with private traders and tapping into nature for survival. I rely on qualitative research methodology, using archival data largely in the form of government correspondence (reports, letters, commissions of inquiry etc) and newspapers to write this paper.