Social and Environmental History of Elephants and Human Groups in Southeast Zimbabwe, c. 1965-2020
Guided by a multispecies and environmental history framework, this study reconstructs the intertwined histories of humans and elephants in Gonarezhou in the southeast of Zimbabwe over fifty-five years, from 1965 to 2020. It examines how political change, economic priorities, and shifting conservation ideologies continually reshaped the terms of coexistence between the two species. Central to this inquiry is the recognition of elephants not as passive figures within human history but as active participants whose movements, behaviours, and ecological impacts influenced land use and conservation policy. To understand these interactions, the research integrates archival sources, oral histories, and scientific data, offering a multi-scalar understanding of human and elephant agency. The study first investigates how relations between people and elephants evolved during the UDI period (1965-1975), when wildlife policy, commercia and subsistence agriculture, and land control converged in the Lowveld. It then explores the impact of the Rhodesian civil war or Second Chimurenga (1971-1979), asking whether wartime conditions stimulated the ivory trade, how that trade affected human-wildlife conflict, and whether elephants in the region exhibited behavioural shifts in response to violence and ecological disruption. It also considers how local communities adapted to these pressures. The first decades of black majority rule (1980-1999) offered both continuity and change in human-wildlife coexistence under evolving conservation frameworks. The thesis then examines how ZANU-PF's land redistribution programme (2000-2009) altered the ecology of Gonarezhou National Park and the welfare of its elephants, while reassessing the effectiveness of the CAMPFIRE model. Finally, the study addresses the most recent decade (2010-2020), analysing how corruption and governance failures have shaped conservation practice and affected the long-term prospects for sustainable human-elephant coexistence in Zimbabwe.
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