Project A02, Past Futures

In order to tell the turbulent story of KAZA, and to understand how notions of ‘future-making’ may have been represented in past development initiatives, the project seeks to answer the following questions by looking at both the economic history of development and the political history of ‘future-making’:

1) In how far is development in KAZA defined by local demands, or shaped by external supply? To what extent have local communities here got the development they wanted? And to what extent have they appropriated this development?

2) Have the benefits of development allowed people to make better futures? Who have been the beneficiaries of rural development interventions, and of the exercises in political ‘future-making’ in KAZA?

Taking up findings from fieldwork recently completed within A04 Future Conservation, we anticipate there may be significant discrepancies between official records of past events in KAZA and the collective memory of local communities. It will be especially important to ensure a balance between the collection of oral histories, and the scrutiny of archives. Firstly, oral histories collected amongst local communities will form a key element of the data for our project. Key settlements will be selected through Namibia’s Zambezi Region, and across the borders into Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, there targeting migrant communities with connections to KAZA, as well as those most prominently involved in resource extraction.

Secondly, the project will draw upon an unusually wide and rich range of archive sources. The consulted archives include the Namibian Archive in Windhoek, the South African National Archives and archive of the South African National Defence Force in Pretoria, national archives in Harare (Zimbabwe), Lusaka (Zambia) and Gaberone (Botswana), as well as archive collections held in Lisbon, London and Germany.

The Kilombero valley region has been the stage for a far greater number of development visions than we had previously realised. Most of these were state- or capital-led and many either ultimately unrealized or unsuccessful. This project traces these successive waves of investigations, plans, and trials – indeed, acts of ‘future making’ – to better understand how the valley was viewed and understood by those who sought to impose development from above, and how this was met by those whose roots had long been planted in the valley soil. The project argues that the valley’s ecology was often misunderstood, and its capacity for large-scale agricultural production was frequently overestimated. The result is that we can trace the same assumptions, the same challenges, and the same mistakes across an entire century. The project concludes by assessing how this history has shaped the valley of today; and, while some projects can be said to be ‘successful’, what scope is there for history to repeat itself in the future?