Unleashed: Mhesvi in a Time of War

This chapter discusses the abandonment of “tsetse control operations” as the war of self-liberation intensified, into the fog of war in which the methods designed for mhesvi and other pests are extended to those vatema viewed as varwi verusununguko (freedom fighters) and those designated magandanga (terrorists). This does not mean all vatema and all vachena shared the same perspective or that all freedom fighters behaved consistently with that description but the majority did. This lumping together of “problem animals” and “problem people” into “vermin beings” justified the extension and slippage of instruments and methods from zvipukanana to the dehumanized munhu, whose elimination constituted a form of pest control.

Bombing Flies

This chapter explores the use of aircraft to spray organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). It begins by tracing the origins of the practice in KwaZulu, South Africa, where ndege were adopted for pesticide spraying because of their ease of use, capacity for large-scale coverage, very few personnel required, and capability to reach mpukane habitats otherwise inaccessible by ground spraying. The second section examines the technical aspects of aerial spraying as an example of the extension of methods designed in the United States for agricultural or military purposes to deal with zvipukanana and with conditions for which they were not originally designed. In the final sections, the deployment and performance of first fixed-wing aircraft and then helicopters are closely examined.

Traffic Control: A Surveillance System for Unwanted Passengers

This chapter takes the mobility discussion in a totally different direction—away from trains, from vanhu (humans) and means and ways as the central actors, to mhesvi subverting the transport systems that vanhu contrived. This is to further the thesis of this book—the idea of mhesvi as mobile workshop, this time as a passenger taking a ride on pedestrians, disabling ox wagon transport, riding on automobiles and on bicycles, and forcing vanhu to institute mechanisms and infrastructures of traffic control. On the surface, traffic might be interpreted as automobiles, bicycles, and foot movements—yet such movement is, at any other time, innocuous. What rendered it worth controlling was mhesvi, the real “traffic” that had to be controlled because it carried hutachiwana.

Knowing a Fly

This chapter examines what one government official called “an intelligence system of tsetse”—a thoroughly intrusive infrastructure and procedure of knowing this chipukanana (principally its mobilities) in the most complete way possible. This anthropomorphic formula for intrusive knowing sought “to live and breathe and think with” mhesvi; to do so entailed “a lifetime of affectionate study.” This meant placing a peripatetic chipukanana under surveillance, to know how much time it spent in different parts of the habitat at different times of the year; how much time it spent feeding, sleeping, or simply in vigilant mode, waiting to pounce on anything that moved. Maps—of where it slept, bred, roamed, ate; its boundaries; strong points and weak points—were essential to successful operations against it.

How Vanhu Managed Tsetse

This chapter shows that vanhu vatema understood mobility as the centerpiece of their interactions with the insect. It commences from a view of vatema's management of mhesvi as a site of innovation, illustrating the centrality of mobility in interactions between vanhu and zvipukanana. The chapter strategically deploys the travel accounts of vachana writing in the nineteenth century about their encounters with people living with and despite mhesvi. The strategy herein is to read these travel accounts as acts of witnessing to, and confessions about, ruzivo rwemhesvi (knowledge of tsetse) among the people living in the lands between and along the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. The chapter maps mhesvi-infested areas and mhesvi management techniques—namely, forest clearance, selective culling of mhuka, strategic settlement of vanhu, use of repellents, movement by night, and inoculation. At the end of the day, African mhesvi management was about mobilities management.

Chemoprophylactics

Chemoprophylaxis refers to the administration of medication to prevent disease or infection. This chapter first gives a historical overview of chemoprophylaxis in Southern Rhodesia, then turns to the problem of drug resistance and photosensitization, which is a clinical condition in which the skin's negative exposure and reaction to sunlight is heightened due to phototoxic drugs and chemicals. This photosensitivity occurs when these substances absorb sunlight (ultraviolet radiation), triggering a burning sensation, redness, and swelling. The chapter ends with a case study of chemoprophylaxis operations in Southern Rhodesia, exploring how the early promises of chemoprophylaxis ended with unforeseen complications that poisoned instead of cured animals of n'gana. The argument made is one about pollution of the most intimate kind: within the body, both of the animal and hutachiwana itself.

The Coming of the Organochlorine Pesticide

This chapter deals with the extensive poisoning of the environment to exterminate mhesvi. Given the massive amounts of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) dumped into the environment to kill mhesvi, OCPs present an opportunity to explore the question of pollution and its health effects. The chapter introduces and accounts for the specific circumstances by which OCPs arrived in Southern Rhodesia. In fact, by the time organochlorines like DDT, BHC, and dieldrin and organophosphates like Thallium were deployed in combat against mhesvi, hutunga, hwiza (locusts), and zvimokoto (quelea birds) after World War II, Southern Rhodesia's farmers had been dispatching mhuka, shiri, zvipukanana, and hutachiwana with chepfu through ingestion, inhalation, and skin contact for over fifty years. The chapter therefore starts from this earlier history, well before DDT and its peers, in search of antecedents that profoundly shaped and offered a broader context for the use of OCPs.

Cordon Sanitaire: Prophylactic Settlement

This chapter discusses the deliberate replacement and overcrowding of vatema as forest-clearing agents and shields against ndedzi. It focuses on the use of fencing and forced resettlement of vatema as methods of “tsetse control.” The argument is that vatema and their zvipfuyo were deployed as methods of pest control and to act as an outer ring of early warning systems to protect vachana's cattle ranches. The chapter reflects on the meaning of a humanity experienced and lived under conditions of animalization, wherein vatema are dumped at the unhealthy margins, to live not just like but with other mhuka as vachana helped themselves to their healthy lands on the watershed.

Exposing the Fly to Its Enemies

This chapter builds on and contributes to literature on arboricides or herbicides, which currently is strongest in the United States, where some of the chemicals and equipment used to deny ndedzi shelter originated. It considers two stratagems, both derived from past and prevailing practices of vanhu vatema of killing mhesvi and exposing it to its predators. One involved using moto (fire)—specifically, late-season burning—to achieve maximum destruction and expose to predation all mhesvi in their adult phase, their zvikukwa (the insect at its worm or pupa stage, what vachana called puparia; singular chikukwa), and their zviguraura (literally, “the one that has cut off its intestines,” what vachana called larva). The second strategy was the mechanical clearance and chemical phytocides of the forest for the same purpose.

DDT, Pollution, and Gomarara: A Muted Debate

This chapter considers the link between vachana's organochlorine pesticide (OCP) use, and the high incidence of many types of cancer, a condition known as gomarara. The chapter first explores the state of gomarara in Zimbabwe, drawing out the incidence of those types of gomarara usually associated with OCPs. The second section reconstructs debates about OCPs as environmental pollutants, an issue that was muted at the height of the spraying campaigns of the 1950s to 1970s, and is largely forgotten now. Some of the investigations made into the environmental effects of OCPs elsewhere were also considered, marshalling that evidence to ask questions and to map and follow the itineraries of these pesticides in our bodies and those of our animal cousins.