Social banditry in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Mozambique, 1894–1907: an expression of early peasant protest

Abstract

It has been almost two decades since Hobsbawm first advanced the concept of social banditry and a decade since he fully developed this analytical construct in his seminal study of rural protest.2 The social bandits' organic relationship to the peasantry and their efforts to destroy the institutions that oppressed the rural populace, Hobsbawm argued, differentiated them from a variety of outlaws and brigands who indiscriminately preyed upon all sectors of the society. As a result, the latter were feared and despised while the social bandits were 'considered by the people as heroes, as champions, as avengers fighting for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported'.3 Despite their political commitments social bandits were hardly revolutionaries. Their self-defined mandate was to recreate social harmony within their natal society and specifically to protect the poor against the abuses of the rich and powerful. 'Insofar as bandits have a programme', noted Hobsbawm, 'it is the defense or restoration of the traditional order of things as it should be (which in traditional societies means as it is believed to have been in the real or mythical past).'4 Hobsbawm's thesis is extremely important for two reasons. First, it provides a conceptual framework within which to reexamine the question of rural protest. Rather than uncritically accepting and reproducing the state's legal categories, categories defined to protect the privilege and property of the ruling