Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture & History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe

The Matopos Hills, occupied by humans for some 40,000 years, have become the scene of symbolic, ideological, political, and armed conflict between Shona, Ndebele, and Europeans for more than 100 years. Supernatural and human voices have joined in rejoicings, laments, and protests. They speak about history, economy, aspirations and grievances.This history of the Matopos, as Terence Ranger states in his introduction, "has become a study of many of the questions crucial to the history of Matabeleland as a whole, and some of those central to the history of Zimbabwe -- the fight relationship of men and women to the land; the nature of culture; the dynamics of ethnicity; the roots of dissidence and violence; the historical bases of underdevelopment. The Matopos are a 'locality' but they are a very special and privileged locality, to which both in imagination and action people far outside the hills have given significance. I believe that this enables a historian of the Matopos to tell a story which has a resonance far beyond the local."