A Most Promising Weed

Book excerpt: Thousands of African men, women, and children worked on European-owned tobacco farms in colonial Zimbabwe from 1890 to 1945. Contrary to some commonly held notions, these people were not mere bystanders as European capitalism penetrated into Zimbabwe, but helped to shape the work and the living conditions they encountered as they entered wage employment. Steven Rubert's fine study draws on a rich variety of sources to illuminate the lives of these workers. The central focus of the study is the organization of workers' compounds, the social relationships there, and the labor of women and children, paid and unpaid. Rubert's findings indicate the beginnings of a moral economy on the tobacco farms prior to 1945.