Introduction^{Footnote 1}

In the late 1990s, the government of Zimbabwe seriously embarked on a move to recognize traditional leaders in the country. With the economic, political, and land resettlement programme of 2000, the relationship between chiefs and the government changed. Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform (FTLR) programme not only affected existing chieftainships in the country, it led to the configuration of territorial boundaries, the resuscitation of old claims, and/or the emergence of new ones. While the number of such claims increased as the land reform gathered momentum, this also coincided with determined moves by the Zimbabwean government to give more powers and packages to impress chiefs designed to win their support. Elsewhere in Africa, chieftainships are subject to contestation and power struggles between competing houses and individuals. In Zimbabwe, the shift of government to recognize chiefs especially after 2000, together with the packages that came with the title and position of chiefs, intensified fresh claims to chieftainships and contestations over existing ones. Some claims involved the restitution of precolonial territories, a matter ignored by all land reform policies to date. While many claimants undertake their own research using archival documents, family consultation involving oral histories, genealogies, family trees, and boundaries and succession sequences to reconstruct their past, others hire professional historians. The shared interest between historians and claimants has not only increased demand for a narrow band of sources in the National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ), but invites interrogation and critical appreciation of the use of the colonial archive with implications for archival policy and research.

In what follows, this article offers a critique of the sources deployed by contracted historians and claimants concerned with chiefly restitution. It uses the case study of the Sanyanga and Mutsango families in Manicaland Province as well as Seke chieftainship in Mashonaland East Province. I argue that the subject of chieftainship in contemporary Zimbabwe demands new approaches because the circumstance surrounding the recording and production of knowledge on this institution has changed in the postcolonial period. Europeans are no longer generating knowledge about or presiding over Africans through a “native” policy; Africans are now interpreting themselves. Moreover, the postcolonial government has transformed the official process of recording this information from general correspondence of traditional leaders in districts by native commissioners or delineation of chieftaincies for community development. The Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, which is responsible for traditional leaders, has transformed and is concerned with other briefings beyond simply chieftainship. More importantly, under Zimbabwe’s prevailing political climate and rising calls for indigenization and the proliferation of community shared ownership trusts, the office of the chief has assumed a new material status with accompanying benefits.

Yet, despite all these changes, the sources used to generate knowledge on the subject remain the same: mainly delineation reports, schedule of chiefs and headmen manuscripts as well as native commissioner’s reports. The colonial government, specifically the Native Affairs Department and later Ministry of Internal Affairs, were responsible for the production of these archival sources mainly for administrative purposes. However, claimants and hired historians continue to derive information from these archival sources because they are reluctant to embrace or not aware of other sources generated during both colonial and postcolonial periods.

In addition, the provisions of the National Archives Act of 1986 that governs the NAZ limit hired historians and other researchers. In 1935, the NAZ came into being through an Act of Parliament now known as the National Archives Act of 1986. The Act provides for the closure of other records for twenty-five years before researchers can access them at the Public Archives. This article argues that despite the existence of the twenty-five year closure period, there are alternative sources of information about chiefs in Zimbabwe outside the NAZ. Within and outside the national repositories, there are some sources rarely used or cited in the reports authored by contracted researchers discussed in this article. If researchers use these sources, they will broaden our understanding of chiefly histories.

Sources on the Writing of Chieftainship Claims Reports in Zimbabwe

In most cases, families involved in chieftainship contestations contract historians, ethnographers, and archaeologists to write their family histories, genealogies as well as mapping boundaries. Hired researchers use oral evidence and archives – mainly delineation reports, chiefs and headmen files, Native Affairs Department Annual articles and “Native Commissioners” reports – to write claims reports for their clients to submit to the Ministry of Local Government for approval. For hired historians and families, the reliance on archives to extract evidence offers insight into the use of the colonial archive in contemporary Zimbabwe by users other than academics. It also shows how contracted researchers interpret the archives, including their value and shifting meanings with time.

In postcolonial Zimbabwe, the value of archives on chiefs has changed. Claimants to chieftaincy rely on archives as evidence to validate their claims for political and social agendas. In some instances, they challenge the authenticity of the archives, especially when there are silences and distortions about one’s family history. At the beginning of each chieftainship claims report, contracted researchers outline their methodology – mainly consisting of archival documents, oral interviews, and some publications by historians.

The first case study involves the Sanyanga family in Nyanga area, Manicaland province in Zimbabwe. In this particular case, the Sanyanga elders claim to have lost their chieftaincy around the 1890s. The family hired researchers to compile a claims report to submit to the government for the restitution of their “lost” chieftainship. The research team drew up a tentative list of would-be oral informants (mainly local chiefs and headmen in Nyanga area), archival documents at the NAZ, and publications at the Africa University in Mutare and the Museum of Human Sciences Library in Harare.^{Footnote 2} They also used Native Affairs Department Annual articles on chieftaincies, totems, and academic publications including visits to important cultural places in the Sanyanga area.^{Footnote 3} In order to investigate the “lost” Sanyanga chieftainship, hired researchers heavily relied on archives.

The second case study involves the Seke chieftainship in Mashonaland East province. The Seke chieftainship was embroiled in succession disputes dating back to precolonial times but escalated in the post-2000 period. One of the rival factions contracted researchers, a team in which I was also involved to outline the family history and draw a family tree. This team of hired researchers conducted oral interviews with various families interested in the conflict and relied on archives to come up with the Seke claims report. It heavily relied on delineation reports, recorded oral histories, schedule of chiefs and headmen manuscript, and native commissioners’ reports.^{Footnote 4} The research team used these archives to trace the history of the Seke people, map out a family tree and the succession dispute.

The third case relates to the Mutsago family, which claim that it lost its chieftainship during the colonial period to chief Marange in Bocha area, Manicaland province. The Mutsago family contracted researchers to document their claims report where I also participated. The research team used archives (mostly the Marange and Umtali delineation reports) and oral interviews.^{Footnote 5} Besides delineation reports, Native Commissioner Umtali reports were also used to understand the colonial land problems in Bocha area.^{Footnote 6}

More or less the same researchers authored the three reports described above; as a result, they use the same methodology and archival sources. In most cases, authors copy the methodology sections from the previous reports and use their previous experience to document a different report. Usually this compromises the quality and outcome of claims reports. However, the circumstances that claimants make their claim are different.

In the three case studies (Sanayanga, Seke and Mutsago), among other few documents, delineation reports, schedule of chiefs and headmen are the primary source of archival evidence. They contain information about chieftaincy boundaries and, in some cases, genealogies and family trees. At the end of each report, authors attach photocopies of archival documents as part of their justification to convince government officials to approve the claim. To some extent, government officials consider claims reports submitted without archival references to be less valid. This explains why delineation reports and schedule of chiefs and headmen manuscripts are the most sought after archival documents despite the fact that they were last generated in the 1960s. However, hired researchers use these documents uncritically when documenting claims reports for their clients. As a result, they duplicate colonial documents to produce knowledge, a practice that the historian David Beach defined as “antiquarianism.”^{Footnote 7}

In some cases, it is difficult to reconcile archival documents and oral interviews, especially when the archives contradict the basis of the claim. Since the colonial government produced most of the archives for administrative purposes rather than personal histories, there are silences, omissions and the misrepresentation of names and facts concerning other chieftaincies. As a result, the colonial archive does not always contain information that supports the claimant’s argument as chief, as in the case of Mutsago. The Umtali delineation report, which researchers relied on, places Mutsago as one of the headman, a subordinate under chief Marange.^{Footnote 8} This contradicts Mutsago’s claim to be the paramount chief of Bocha area before the colonial regime allegedly downgraded the chieftainship to headmanship in the 1950s. The fact that David Beach supports the view that Mutsago was under Marange complicates their claim. The Mutsago elders vehemently reject Beach’s analysis, alleging, “that he falsified their history and alleged he resided at chief Marange when he did his fieldwork.”^{Footnote 9} The government requires that families engaged in claims to chieftaincy or succession disputes should provide some archival evidence. According to the Assistant District Administrator of Buhera, “colonial documents sometimes provide a starting point although they are not always accurate. In that case we supplement with oral evidence despite its weaknesses.”^{Footnote 10} Ultimately, hired researchers produce compromised reports to support their clients. Such methodological challenges lead to the exclusion and suppression of evidence not supporting the client.

As noted above, hired researchers use oral interviews to augment colonial documents. Yet colonial officials, who produced most of the archival documents about chiefs and headmen, originally compiled them from oral traditions. Gleaning bits and pieces of facts from oral testimonies and traditions helps hired historians to reconstruct the histories of their clients. In most cases, hired researchers interview individuals selected by their clients. This compromises quality since the interviewees usually support the claimant’s argument. Because of factionalism among competing houses, oral traditions and oral histories usually contradict each other. This predicament befalls the Seke chieftainship, where several sub-houses gave different narratives – each supporting their own claim. The colonial official’s narratives contained in the archival documents usually capture authors responsible for documenting histories of their clients. According to Terry Cook and Joan M. Schwartz, “documents are viewed as records of ‘simple truth.’”^{Footnote 11} The bulk of the hired historians, ethnographers, and archaeologists are “ardent” and “faithful disciples” of a rigid empiricist archival tradition. When contracted, they resort to the same documents they are limited to at the NAZ.

The Contradictions and Challenges of Zimbabwe’s Colonial Archive

In colonial Zimbabwe, officials responsible for the production of knowledge had agendas other than producing histories about Africans. They were concerned with labor mobilization, the collection of taxes, and control of their subjects through knowledge gathering about “natives.”^{Footnote 12} Interestingly, their collections form the bulk of primary sources used not only by academics. For example, the delineation reports created in the 1960s contain useful information on borders and populations of chieftaincies but remain silent on their political nature. Another example is the schedule of chiefs and headmen manuscript, chiefs and headmen files and native commissioners’ district reports. The schedule of chiefs and headmen only contain a list of chiefs according to their districts and family trees. It does not explore the general or specific histories of each chieftainship. Since they were no longer used for administrative purposes, these documents were deposited to the Records Office and then to the Public Archives in Harare.

Claimants to chieftaincy consult these documents to extract or counter colonial accounts. In some instances, the colonial archive has gaps – delineation officers did not delineate certain chiefdoms properly or not recorded at all. In his search for the Chishanga history, the historian Gerald Mazarire faced the difficult task of locating it in the colonial archive. Because of the fluid nature of Chishanga, wrote Mazarire, “it failed to fit specific descriptions that these early administrators considered to be ‘states,’ ‘tribes’ or ‘chieftaincies.’ It therefore escaped their attention and was not readily available in this public record.”^{Footnote 13} However, by the time of colonial rule, Chishanga had ceased to exist; and it was not entirely in the best interests of colonial officials to record its earlier existence. This is one of the many examples where researchers fail to locate specific files about chieftaincies.

Moreover, the delineation process was fraught with many discrepancies. According to Gwangwawa, who identified himself as the spirit medium of the Rozvi, “people who were interviewed during the delineation process were biased; some of them were chiefs who supported the colonial regime.”^{Footnote 14} “Archives are corrupt and contain nothing because they were documented by Europeans,” stated Julian Maodza, who claims to be a descendent of Nehanda.^{Footnote 15} Fungai Mutsago, a leading member of the Mutsago family fighting for the resuscitation of their “lost” chieftaincy, supports this claim. Mutsago argues that, “some documents contain wrong spellings for names and some are missing. For example, the Marange delineation report deliberately reduces the Mutsago chieftaincy to a headmenship and the family tree is not in order.”^{Footnote 16} Arguably, the colonial archive does not offer a true representation of “national” history or fit the definition of a “national memory” site.

A reading of chiefly and headmen archives provides insights into colonial Zimbabwe’s administrative history. Firstly, files produced during the administration of the British South Africa Company (BSAC) and settler rule in Zimbabwe inform the reader about the structure and nature of the colonial administration as it grappled with “native” administration. In some instances, colonial administrators collaborated with African men and women (usually elites) to produce knowledge about Africans. Colonial officials were collecting such information not to document their general histories but for administrative purposes. African agency in the processes involving archival generation was not given full attention it deserved by the native commissioners. When knowledge about chiefs and headmen was required, colonial officials collected traditions, customs and beliefs over their conquered subjects for the government. Nevertheless, I argue that African subjects were not passive in the production of their histories. Instead, chiefs and headmen in advantaged positions used their political and social standing in a colonial economy to submit narratives that fitted their own goals.

Some colonial documents are not accurate in presenting general histories of chieftaincies. This owes much to the way colonial officials generated knowledge about Africans. As Beach observed, “when it comes to quotations from colonial officials obsessed with conspiracies and ‘superstition,’ there is a danger that the author may get too close to the evidence and unconsciously accept basic assumptions that should have been questioned.”^{Footnote 17} Archival documents about traditional leaders have inconsistencies and inaccuracies. For example, the Schedule of Chiefs and Headmen manuscript contains only estimated dates because records used in its compilation do not have accurate dates. In his introduction to the manuscript, the author highlights that limitation.^{Footnote 18} Indeed, the Schedule of Chiefs and Headmen actually omits some chiefs and headmen. As Mazarire notes, among other archival documents, chiefs’ registers, minute books, chiefs and headmen files, and native commissioners’ files provided the bulk of the data to compile the schedule, which are not all consistent.^{Footnote 19} This observation confirms the gap in the colonial archive from the 1960s. Consequently, this gap limits research on chieftainships in Zimbabwe since the 1960s.

The attainment of national independence did not directly translate to the decolonization of the archive. The colonial archive continues to stand as a symbol of colonial prejudice where the brutal colonial past remains in written canonical texts. The use of such records requires critical attention and researchers must read colonial records and archives critically. As argued earlier, hired historians continue to use this narrow band of archives without fully utilising other useful alternative sources about traditional leaders.

The Nature and Usefulness of Alternative Sources about Chieftaincy in Zimbabwe

It is possible for researchers to reconstruct precolonial African history not only relying on the colonial archive. In addition to drawing from primary evidence to justify chieftaincy claims from canonical colonial documents and oral traditions from senior members of the families, there are alternative sources within and beyond the national archives repositories. The use and availability of these sources should change the way people understand chieftaincy institution. Not only do these sources deal with traditional leadership questions, they also cover national challenges. However, this does not mean they all fit into the definition of the colonial archive. Most importantly, these sources cover the period since the 1960s to bridge the information gap in the colonial archive. A limited number of scholars have used these documents. In the claims reports I co-authored, I was able to use my knowledge of the archives because I was working at the NAZ. This gave me the opportunity to appreciate fully the value of these documents to other researchers interested with chiefly histories in Zimbabwe.