Crossing The Zambezi

This book is a history of claims to the Zambezi, focussed on the stretch of the river extending from the Victoria Falls downstream into Lake Kariba, which today constitutes the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is a story of 150 years of conflict over the changing landscape of the river, in which the tension between the Zambezi's 'river people' and more powerful others has been central. The Zambezi is one of Africa's longest and most important rivers - securing access to its waters and control over its banks, traffic and commerce were crucial political priorities for leaders of precolonial states no less than their colonial and postcolonial successors. The book is about the ways in which the course of the Zambezi has shaped history, its shifting role as link, barrier or conduit, the political, economic and cultural uses of the technological projects that have transformed the landscape, and their legacies in the conflicts of today. By investigating how the claims made today by Zambezi 'river people' relate to longer history of claims and appropriations, the book contributes to long-standing debates over the relationship between geography and history, landscape and power. JOANN MCGREGOR is a Lecturer in Geography at University College London

Traveling overland through South and East Africa, I had to cross the Zambezi River three times in 1972. Starting in Sioux City, Iowa, it takes two and a half years traveling through fourteen countries on three continents. What will become my plan to travel to California begins in Ely, Nevada. Wanting to be original, I will head east. My circuitous route will take me rafting the Colorado River, betting all my savings on one spin of the roulette wheel in the Caribbean, and a van and Mediterranean villa in Europe, including a shuttle service between Paris and Amsterdam. In the Caribbean again, I restore and create a private nightclub in Historic Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Next, it's on to traveling and bartending in South Africa. From there, I travel overland through East Africa toward the coast to catch a ship to India. This requires crossing the monsoon swollen Zambezi River multiple times. I have to survive: military convoys, armed guerillas, mined roads, landslides, dead ends, cave-ins, crocodiles, mosquitoes, and a train wreck; and experience Eden along the way. My voyage begins on the moon.

The Zambezi river is the fourth longest in Africa, crossing or bordering Zambia, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The river basin is widely recognised as one of the most important basins in southern Africa and is the focus of contested development, including water for hydropower and for agriculture and the environment. This book provides a thorough review of water and sustainable development in the Zambezi, in order to identify critical issues and propose constructive ways forward. The book first reviews the availability and use of water resources in the basin, outlines the basin’s economic potential and highlights key concerns related to climate vulnerability and risk. Focus is then devoted to hydropower and the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, sustainable agricultural water management, and threats and opportunities related to provision of ecosystem services. The impact of urbanisation and water quality is also examined, as well as ways to enhance transboundary water cooperation. Last, the book assesses the level of water security in the basin, and provides suggestions for achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6. Throughout, emphasis is placed on entry points for basin-level management to foster improved paths forward.

The Trials and Tribulations of a ZIPRA Soldier is a riveting spider web story of courage, determination, pursuit of justice and survival against all odds. The reader is taken on a path of unparalleled heroism and determination of a young Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) soldier, Churchill Mpiyesizwe Guduza. Churchill was born in Johannesburg to a Rhodesian father, Makhathini Bhekisizwe Guduza and Amy Poppy Lottering, a South African. After attending Fatima Secondary School in Rhodesia, with his father in continued political detention and his mother merely scrapping a living in the rural hinterlands of Rhodesia, he was compelled to leave for Johannesburg in early 1973 where his already shaped political consciousness led him to participate in the June 1976 Soweto student uprisings. At just under 20 years of age, Churchill escaped South Africa to join ZIPRA in Zambia, just in time before the apartheid net rapidly closed in on him. No sooner had Churchill joined ZIPRA than he experienced similar injustices which he immediately opposed with resolute bravery. Upon completion of military training in Angola, he was immediately deployed to the battlefields of Rhodesia where his unit gallantly fought against the Rhodesian security forces. Churchill's nom de guerre was Taffy Carlos. From Rhodesia, Churchill returned to Zambia to face off ZIPRA's High Command, from where he fled to Angola. After his incarceration in Angola, he returned to independent Zimbabwe, from where he again escaped to the United Kingdom via Botswana and Zambia. Today, he leads the Mthwakazi Liberation Front (MLF), which seeks to EXIT Zimbabwe, and establish the Federal Republic of Mthwakazi.

This book examines the national borders and borderlands of Zimbabwe through the presentation of empirically rich case studies. It delves into the lived experiences, both past and present, of populations residing along the borders between Zimbabwe and its neighbours, i.e., Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique. It locates these lived experiences within the political economy of Zimbabwe, and highlights a wide range of themes pertinent to borders, including health, COVID-19, marginalisation, resource access, conservation, human-wildlife conflicts, civil wars, politico-economic crises, border jumping and cross border trade. The borderland communities discussed also include ethnic minorities such as the Tonga, San, Ndau, Shangane, and Kalanga. Overall, the book demonstrates the centrality of borders to the Zimbabwean nation-state and the importance of reading history, politics and society from the borderlands. The book fits into the wider prevailing literature of border and borderlands in Africa and beyond and thus has appeal far beyond Zimbabwe. Its diverse themes also relate to topics covered in multiple disciplines, including history, anthropology, and sociology. Academics, development specialists and policy makers will benefit in different ways from the depth and breadth of the analysis in the book.

The book recounts my struggles and suffering under colonial oppression in Southern Africa (Rhodesia). It exposes a vicious cycle of racial hatred perpetrated against black people by white supremacists on my homeland and abroad. I was discriminated and deprived of individual rights because of the color of my skin. In education, I was segregated and confronted with conflicting irreconcilable cultural and social values from the West. I was denied equal justice and access to education with restricted freedoms to choose where to live, assemble, or who to marry and associate with. Through a series of unfortunate political events and circumstances, I took up arms and fought for freedom in my homeland. I was imprisoned and persecuted for sedition and was accused of political treason without due process. During this period, I found sanctuary in my American and Canadian teachers, who catapulted me to study science at American universities in California. Even then, I continued to suffer the horrors of racism implicitly imbedded in white America. Remarkably, I would also find love and support across racial lines, and I was blessed with two beautiful biracial children born in America. With the passage of time, I came to terms with my difficult past and began to heal from the indelible wounds of racism. With renewed hope for freedom in America, I harnessed the healing power of love and forgiveness across racial barriers. Sadly, my dreams were unpredictably shattered by the death of my twenty-seven-year-old daughter in an auto accident, leading me to question the meaning and purpose of life on this cosmic journey of existence.

When in 1971 James and Katrina Martin take a short local leave trip from Zambia across the Zambezi into Botswana, they have no idea that they will run into a distant relative of Katrina's or that they will cross paths several times with ivory poachers. James and Katrina go on an expedition into the Kalahari Desert to retrieve an item buried there by one of Katrina's ancestors.On their return they meet with Piet Englebrecht, the distant cousin of Katrina's who runs a safari business in northern Botswana, near the border with what was then South West Africa. They are invited by Piet to join him and his guests for a week in the bush. While they are there they come across the site of an elephant killing and are involved in the subsequent apprehension of one of the poachers.The poachers come from South Africa and are after ivory for a buyer who is using what they all assume to be a fictitious name. n