Medi-Caring on the Colonial Margins: The Position of African Medical Assistants in Rural Colonial Fort Victoria, Southern Rhodesia, 1930s–1960s

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Focusing on the experiences of African medical auxiliaries belonging to rural colonial Fort Victoria province’s sprawling Ndanga Native Medical Unit, this article considers the ambiguous position occupied by this front-line group who pioneered black medical care work in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Although a great deal of work has been done on the histories of medical auxiliaries across colonial Africa, how they managed their incorporation into a marginal but evolving colonial healthcare system requires a fresher look. The recent emphasis on auxiliaries’ cultural power and clinical acumen – two extremely important traits – has tended to overshadow the daily realities of their positioning on the margins of colonial health-care systems. Adopting a holistic approach, I reconsider the opportunities and constraints of their occupation. I argue that although African medical auxiliaries in remote rural places such as Ndanga were influential as culture brokers and providers of frontline care – a source of pride and inspiration for many – their haphazard recruitment, ad hoc training and casual conditions of service negatively exposed them to the vicissitudes of their colonial and professional subjugation. Moreover, as African medical training became more professionalised from the 1950s onwards, the once prestigious position of medical assistants was overtaken by newer categories of professionally trained African health-care personnel.