The Zambezi – A History
By Malyn Newitt
Hurst £25

WE OFTEN think of rivers as unchanging and ancient as the hills and valleys that encircle them, but in very recent times human beings have challenged such views by playing god with these torrential beasts.

The Zambezi — “Great River” in the language of the Tonga nation — is Africa’s fourth longest river and one of the continent’s principal arteries of movement, migration, conquest and commerce, had its first bridge built only in 1905 and, since 1959, three enormous dams, transforming its behaviour from a wild and often magnificent, raging torrent to a largely tamed, placidly flowing stream; modern steamers now transport people and commodities.

These developments have changed the character of the waterway, and impacted, often drastically, on the ecological systems of the valley and the communities living alongside its banks. Newitt, however, does not deal with the rich natural riparian wildlife or ecology, but looks solely at its peoples and their history.

In his book — which is less about the river as such — historian Malyn Newitt quotes rarely used Portuguese sources that throw vivid light on the culture of the river peoples and their relationships with Portuguese creole society.

Hitherto unused manuscripts illustrate Portuguese and British colonial rule over the people of the long-lived Lunda kingdoms, and the Lozi of the Barotse Floodplain. Later, the Zambezi became a war zone during the “Scramble for Africa,” the struggle for independence and the civil wars that followed the departure of colonial powers.

The river flows through what is today, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Much of this part of Africa was first colonised by the Portuguese, who brought Catholicism to central Africa.

The mainly Jesuit or Dominican pioneers left the first written accounts on the life and culture of the African peoples living here, and Newitt uses insightful quotations from such texts.

The river and its seasons very much determined the life of the peoples. The river’s large-scale seasonal flooding, while creating highly fertile flood plains, made the establishment of big settlements not feasible; there was also much migration up and down the course of the river.

Unlike other colonial nations, such as the British or French, the Portuguese didn’t impose racially divided policies but intermarried readily with the local people and created a strong Creole system, and settlements were often an easy mix of Africans, Indians, Arabs and Portuguese.

In his epilogue, Newitt gives us a sobering summary of changes in the post-colonial era. Many of the old colonial policies and systems remain in place, there is corruption at the top and the mass of the people left no better off than they were under the colonists; the only real change: the top dogs now speak the same language and have the same skin colour as the people.

And, on an even more ominous note, he concludes that the Zambezi could be the first great African river to run dry.

A fascinating and informative history but perhaps too detailed for the average reader, more suitable for scholars and African specialists.