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“If We are Still Here Next Year”: Zambian Historical Research in the Context of Decline, 2002–2003

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Miles Larmer
Miles Larmer*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

This paper addresses the challenges facing researchers seeking to explore the post-colonial history of Zambia, a country whose social infrastructure in general, and academic and research facilities in particular, are in a state of apparently perpetual decline. It describes some of the major archival resources available and their (significant) limitations. It surveys recent and ongoing attempts to document the history of nationalist movements and leaders. Finally, it explores the potential for developing a history of post-colonial Zambia which escapes the assumptions of a still dominant nationalist historiography, and which thereby contributes to a deeper understanding of the lives actually lived by Zambians since Independence.

The tendency for colonial and post-colonial governments and their advisors to seek to depoliticize issues of power, inequality and control, by turning them into “technical” or developmental issues, has been noted by historians and anthropologists. The historiography of post-colonial Zambia is a prime example of the conflation of history with development, creating a discourse that assesses historical change by the achievement of supposedly neutral development goals, and conflates the ideologies and policies of nationalist politicians with those of the nation as a whole. The relatively benign judgments passed by prominent historians of the colonial era in their postscript surveys of the government of Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia's First Republic (1964-72) have retained an unwarranted influence. This is partly because of the dearth of post-colonial historical studies of equal importance conducted during the last 20 years. UNIP's leading historian, Henry Meebelo, while providing valuable insights into the African perspective on decolonization, played a leading role in establishing nationalism as the unquestioned norm of progressive understanding, axiomatically placing all social forces which came into conflict with it as reactionary and illegitimate.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 31 , 2004 , pp. 215 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2004

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References

1 See Ferguson, James, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; and Cooper, Frederick, Decolonization and African Society: the Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 Information on the Network is available by email: .

20 For information on the survey project, contact Dr Giacomo Macola on , or the National Archives, on .

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