Modern sciences and climate change
Correspondent | Friday March 4, 2016 12:15
That’s A and O for sailors! And writers, too. There is a lot of “development professionals” very concerned of my downgrading of western science, especially like the power business writings two weeks ago. But now we are going on – turbulence isn’t that much. The carrier has lost speed on the EU trip, lately! Hit some Greek rocks, they say…..
Part 2 – The Alienation of the African Farmer
In Part 1, we indicated that many small farmers were more or less forced to become miners in South Africa – a deliberate policy of the ruling colonial forces, using the hut tax concept. But there were more forces alienating the farmers in this part of Africa. There was a myth created by the former apartheid regime in South Africa. In short it is:
The Bantu people came to southern Africa about the same time as the Europeans (i.e. end of 15th century – or beginning 1488) to an uninhibited and vacant part of the world.
Based on this hoax, now corrected by modern research (Central African people started to arrive a millennium earlier, we now know for sure); but the Bantu peoples could be kept in infertile “homelands” and regarded as late-comers and regarded as a manual workforce (for the mines, essentially) and they were regarded as knowing nothing about “feasible” agriculture. This hoax became well-established and also used against the Tswana people in Bechuanaland/Botswana by the white late-comers here… This created an open door for “colonial agricultural science” in the region – in other words the kind of science the white settlers quickly applied (with subsidies).
In fact, the “Bantu people” knew very well about soils, climate peculiarities, cultivars and more after centuries of interaction and mixing with the existing indigenous people – Khoikhoi and San (and by the millennia long eastern contacts). In fact, there were also frequent contacts with the South-Western continent as we can see from various imported cultivars.
One might say that the apartheid era nullified this fact with a false history narrative (still found in many books including school books). This is very important to understand the situation we have – imposed agricultural science and cultivars (not very adopted to African conditions) in need of heaps of artificial pesticides and fertilisers and even irrigation in a region often without reliable rains and very limited water even underground. Deep ploughing on savannah soils has consequences, as we will see below. Apart from being fine farmers with well-developed methods for a firm sustainability - the related peoples (Tswana, Sotho etc) also had knowledge since long of how to mine and refine iron, build settlements and most importantly, how to breed cattle. But myths are hard to crack – the indigenous way of growing grains in a sustainable way was neglected by the colonial rulers. There was nothing “automatic” in it – it wasn’t easy to mechanise. It depended on many people working together in fields of poly-cropping. Grain and legumes on the same field. Half the field or fields nearby recovering in fallow with grass for cattle!
This knowledge was too complex for a simplified western science based on quantities more than quality and sustainability and minimum of workforce. Artificial fertilisers and pesticides were preferred for as long as energy was cheap and nobody cared about environment.Interestingly, the indigenous farmer always kept a sharp eye on the environment as he knew that was a good survival strategy! You find that all over the world, North or South, he also managed necessary shifting or rotational cultivars and also the advantage of swidding (slash-and-burn) - all of it perfectly in line with the ecology of today (and also occupied a workforce by family and others – there was hardly any unemployment in rural areas, then).
And the indigenous farmer moved to other places when it was needed and left the land for nature to recover. Of course, impossible for a modern state for mapping farm ownership and thus, control! Interestingly, there are now amounts of books and research papers confronting the once easy-going, well paid experts working for the neo-liberal masters, e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO even some from the UN and very often from “neutral” donors.
I met a few of them during my time at Department of Town and Regional Planning (DTRP) in the early 80-ies. I think I make an interlude here below to demonstrate the great thinking of these “experts” – and it’s touching on something re-invented today, namely “backyard gardens” for the urban agriculturalist (very important for urban survival in the future): In 1980 or thereabouts, DTRP was visited (with an hour notice) by a World Bank (WB) evaluator – I never got to know why he was evaluating the physical planning here. The WB town planner evaluating Botswana standards was seconded by RSA apartheid government to WB. And, of course, he was concerned about the “excessive and expensive” (GoB approved) planning standards we used – far higher than in RSA and homelands like Bophutatswana or “Rhodesia” for “natives” (that have stands, not plots, we learned). I remember very well that he insisted that plot sizes for the “natives” must be kept to minimum (as they are so many) and playgrounds and local open spaces not needed for people with the vast Kalahari outside the door. On top of that, he (and WB) preferred western European type of towns with compact layouts and tenure system was to be the preferred and the easy option. So - he (and WB) instructed us to become more “westernised” but we had already a design concept based on the Tswana tradition of building settlements, housing units and communal spaces, very much based on President SSK’s advice.
We went on basing the layouts on the approved Botswana standards for some years as nobody could verify the importance of the WB conditions. However, in the late 80ies, maybe early 90ies, he was back with a report from western consultants for minimised standards and both DTRP and the Ministry caved in and approved it.
Those are the physical development standards in use since then! I assumed that there must have been loans from IMF and WB involved and my departure from DTRP was partly due to ethical reasons. However, most planning went on as usual and we have decent housing areas today (much due to continued support by the (then) social-democratic Swedish SIDA). Maybe you think that this interlude exposes just a minor detail from the Big Global Institutions agenda. Not so.
From the late 70ies there have been the major marketing organisations for western science, corporations and lifestyle. And they are using money power to impose conditions on the clients. My little story is indicating that the first victims were the small, newly independent states in Africa. And now so called “austerity” has reached even many old countries in the Old World. Botswana was just a laboratory test of the austerity concept.
In fact, I cannot blame the rulers and the public sector of newly independent developing countries for power, water and agricultural problems – the concepts imposed, even pressed on them, were based on already outdated western science, now the big problem for so- called post-industrial countries. And very unfortunately, as their hidden agenda included many big corporations, corruption started gnawing at our bones and we are now used to hearing and accused of being the instigator.
Yes, many leaders in Africa could not resist handsome rewards – but I seldom see the big corporations accused of crime.In conclusion – there is much to say and discuss about the indigenous knowledge that’s been the base for African farming (since BC – Before Colonialism in many academic papers and no blasphemy) and made it very resilient to changes in climate conditions (seven good years and seven bad is known from annual dazumal) and erosion. But, instead of repeating things I’m reading, I recommend a book for your study.
It is written by a professor of political science and anthropology at Yale University in 1998 – James C. Scott and the title is “Seeing Like a State – How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”. One warning in many contemporary books and its many references is very important today for Botswana – no rains and extreme heat combined with years of deep ploughing and harrowing savannah soils can end in a catastrophe like that one called “The Dust Bowl” in the US at the end of 1930. The important savanna grass that kept the soil moist and in place (Buffalo Grass) was gone due to modern agriculture and 650 tons of top soil blown away from 300,000 square miles of the old Great Plain, resulting in 350,000 farmers leaving their homesteads and fleing to California. Read John Steinbeck “The Grapes of Wrath”! I’m afraid that climate change could have a similar effect on our plowed but now fallow land without grass cover if we don’t take utmost care. Herewith is a picture from the Dust Bowl in the late 1930.
*Jan Wareus is a regular contributor to Mmegi with 30 years town planning experience in Gaborone and another 15 in Stockholm, Sweden