It may be a historical fact that the anti-colonial struggles of the 1890s and 1970s were precipitated by the land issue, but the viewpoint that it was about the soil holds sway.

In its broader sense, land covers a wide spectrum; rivers, mountains, buildings, forests and minerals. The contestations of heritage since 1890 reflect on the tangibles and intangibles pertaining to land as an ancestral birthright. The physical, spiritual and psychological dispossession of Africans (Zhuwarara, 2001) couldn’t have been an issue, had it not been for the soil.

The creation of Reserves and Tribal Trust Lands, through the Land Apportionment Act of 1931, amended 60 times to divide land ownership between blacks and whites, that allocated white setters more than 80 percent of the land, despite being in the minority (five percent), and blacks 20 percent; was more of a soil issue than a land one.

So what is soil?

Soil is defined as the upper layer of earth consisting of a mixture of organic matter, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. The earth’s body of soil, known as the pedosphere, has four crucial functions. These are as a medium for plant growth, means of water storage, supply and purification, modifier of earth’s atmosphere and a habitat for organisms.

And what is land?

As stated in the Land Commission Act (Chapter 20:9), of the Constitution of Zimbabwe “land” includes anything permanently attached to or growing on land.”

Although the Act does not define what land is, it outlines what it comprises, and what it is capable of doing.

It allows for growth and permanence of life, which is both limiting and broad, depending on how one reads it.

In the limited sense the land is an expanse or sod of soil where crops may be grown, but not all soils can sustain life.

But in the broader sense, as the Act outlines, the word comprises everything that grows on it, or is permanently attached to it; like buildings, mountains, rivers, forests, minerals and animals.

It also refers to the motherland, or country. Since soil is encompassed in land, it may also be referred to as one’s country. Also, because land comprises soil, it sustains life, without which man and his environment are doomed. What becomes clear is that soil is a part of land, which can only sustain life if it is able to allow plants to grow, stores, supplies and purifies water, modifies the earth’s atmosphere and functions as a habitat for organisms. For this to happen the composition of what constitutes it as alluded earlier on should just be right.

Whites took the richer parts of the land as determined by the composition of the soil, and condemned blacks to arid, dry and barren areas, like Shangani and Gwai.

In “The Chimurenga Protocol” (2008), Nyaradzo Mtizira aptly captures this issue of the soil through Cecil John Rhodes’ emissary Mason as is illustrated in the following: “Getting off his horse, Mason scooped up a handful of the soil. The texture was loamy and it weighed lightly in his hand. His eye approvingly noted the dark red colour of the soil as it glistened in the sunshine.”

“He granted in satisfaction. Casting his eye over the distant plain, he marvelled at the richness of the green vegetation. The fertility of this soil will feed and enrich the descendants of my settlers, he thought proudly.”

Four issues are raised in Mason’s assessment of the soil. The first thing is the “texture” — it is “loamy”; the second issue refers to its colour — “dark red”; the third aspect is the environs — “green vegetation”; and the fourth issue sums up the whole essence of the soil. It “will feed and enrich the descendants” of “settlers”.

The contestation of heritage here is profoundly on the basis of the quality of the soil and not the land per se. The soil will be able to carter for the tangible gains associated with the land; and if it so happens that the area or areas with good soils have shrines and gravesites with spiritual connection to the indigenous people, then, the intangibles are also affected.

Also, the idea of legacy and psychological dispossession cannot be fully understood in the absence of the soil.

Mason, like other settlers, is aware that it is through studying the soil that whatever may be beneath the land, can be discerned.

Mtizira reveals: “Moreover, he was convinced that significant mineral wealth lay beneath the soil of the colony”, as “it was apparent that the colony promised substantial mineral wealth beneath its soil”.

The issue has always been about the soil, because it is the soil that sustains livelihoods. If the soil cannot produce anything, then, it is not worth having.

When Mason, Rhodes’s emissary, asks Cummins, the administrator in Mashonaland, what the indigenous people’s concerns were, he is told that “their argument” is the deprivation of “fertile land to grow food for their communities”.

With the settlers claiming all the good land, either for farming, ranching or mining, basing on the soil, the contestation culminated in the First Chimurenga; and seven decades later, in the Second Chimurenga. In post-2000 Zimbabwe, the same issue of the soil takes centre stage.

De Vere Stent, a journalist present at an indaba between Cecil John Rhodes and Ndebele chiefs, towards the end of the Chimurenga of 1896, captures an interesting exchange involving the imperialist and a young son of the soil; a chief (Frederikse, 1990).

The young chief asks Rhodes a pertinent question: “Where are we to live when it is over? The white man claims all the land”; and the colonialist responds:

“We will give you settlements. We will set apart locations for you; we will give you land” (Frederikse, 1990:41).

The irony of it is not lost on the young chief, who is aware that Africans should be the ones giving out the land, and not the other way round. All the good soils were now in the hands of settlers on the basis of the legality of claims, and the desire to steal and pass on a heritage to their descendants.

Realising that mwana wevhu (son of the soil) was armed, Rhodes tries to persuade him to put down his rifle, but he refuses, saying:

“I find if I talk with my rifle in my hand the white man pays more attention to what I say. Once I put my rifle down, I am nothing. I am just a dog to be kicked” (Frederikse, 1990:41).

There is no other way to fight colonialism except violence. The young chief, like the young freedom fighter in Mtizira’s “The Chimurenga Protocol”, is aware that decolonisation is as violent as colonisation (Fanon, 1967).

There is no other language to use except that which speaks of Chimurenga, as Mtizira puts it, a “word that reflected the existential struggle between the dark forces of colonialism and the noble aspirations of the indigenous people.”

Through setting, Mtizira portrays Bulawayo, as both the site of the great robbery by settlers through the dubious Rudd Concession; and the site for the birth of the Chimurenga. The spirit of struggle that De Vere Stent cited in Frederikse (1990), highlights through the defiant young Ndebele chief, is revamped in Mtizira’s “The Chimurenga Protocol” (2008), thus redeeming Bulawayo and Lobengula, and setting the stage for patriotic nationalism.