Building a Perfect Pest: Environment, People, Conflict and the Creation of a Rinderpest Epizootic in Southern Africa

Abstract

Rinderpest is often misunderstood in the context of southern Africa’s 1896 epizootic; it is marginalised or ignored by many (and overemphasised by a few) scholars. The literature often tells a story that pits people, environment and disease against each other in a struggle over control of the region, a story in which rinderpest invariably emerges as the victor. However, this story fails to consider the epidemiology of the disease. I argue that rinderpest emerges as the victor because of people and environment, not in spite of them. The disease could not move of its own accord; it depends on environmental factors, cattle management practices and human conflict. Rinderpest’s epidemiology compels scholars to wrestle with an ironic process, in which African and white pastoralists and colonial officials collectively spread the disease by working against each other. Coupled with the disease’s use of the local environment to spread itself, rinderpest effectively destroyed the region’s cattle herds. Focusing on the disease’s epidemiology challenges scholarly assumptions, such as African passivity, colonial hegemony or environmental determinism inherent in this narrative. I shift the focus away from these historical ideas and inevitable outcomes to focus on the process of this event. By exploring what happens during the rinderpest epizootic and why, this article may challenge some assumptions of past conclusions. I examine these ideas using the recent work of J.R. McNeill and focusing on the example of southern Bechuanaland.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the editor and anonymous readers for their useful comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this article. Thanks also to past readers at the University of Wisconsin, and to Westminster College for providing me with the time and resources to complete this article during my merit leave.

Notes

¹ J.R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 6.

² Cape of Good Hope (hereafter CGH), Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Journal (10 December 1896), p. 648.

³ CGH, Department of Agriculture, Rinderpest Statistics for the Cape of Good Hope, 1896–7–8. Series G. ’72–’98 (Cape Town, W.A. Richards & Sons, 1898). According to the report, no district outside southern Bechuanaland lost more than 75 per cent of its cattle population; many districts lost less than half their cattle. Others, such as the Cape Colony, escaped the high mortality rate of this disease, as Robert Koch developed a successful vaccination used only months after rinderpest left southern Bechuanaland; see C.A. Spinage, Cattle Plague: A History (New York, Kluwer Academic, 2003), p. 415.

⁴ McNeill, Mosquito Empires, p. 6.

⁵ Ibid., p. 5.

⁶ M. Pollan, ‘Introduction’, in The Botany of Desire (New York, Random House, 2001).

⁷ G. Marquardt, ‘Open Spaces and Closed Minds: A Socio-Environmental History of Rinderpest in South Africa and Namibia c. 1896–97’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2007), chapter 4.

⁸ M.H. Malik, Q.M. Khan, N. Malik, A. UlHaq Ch., A. Yousaf, ‘Epidemiology and Diagnosis of Rinderpest: Pakistan and Global Eradication Programme’, International Journal of Agriculture and Biology, 5, 4 (2003), p. 651.

⁹ Iowa State University, Center for Food Security and Public Health, ‘Rinderpest’ fact sheet (June 2006), available at http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Infection_Control/FADs/Rinderpest_extension_factsheet.pdf, retrieved 25 September 2015.

¹⁰ McNeill, Mosquito Empires, p. 6.

¹¹ C. van Onselen, ‘Reactions to Rinderpest in Southern Africa, 1896–97’, Journal of African History, 13, 3 (1972), pp. 473–88.

¹² Ibid., pp. 473–4.

¹³ P. Phoofolo, ‘Face to Face with Famine: The BaSotho and the Rinderpest, 1897–1899’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 2 (2003), p. 504.

¹⁴ Spinage, Cattle Plague, chapter 23. To his credit, Spinage incorporates some ideas about rinderpest’s epidemiology into this chapter as well.

¹⁵ N. Jacobs, Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 101–6.

¹⁶ D. Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary Research and the African Rinderpest Epizootic: The Cape Colony, 1896–1898’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 1 (2003), pp. 133–54.

¹⁷ To be precise, the territory lies in the central and west-central region of what is today’s North West province in South Africa; it includes, but is not limited to, Mafikeng, Vryburg, Setlgole, Kuruman and Kakamas.

¹⁸ I use the term ‘Boer’ as the historically appropriate term to identify white, settler populations who spoke Afrikaans. Boers comprised the majority of white settlers in this territory, with major settlements in the short-lived republics of Goshen and Stellaland in the 1880s. Today the term ‘Afrikaner’ is usually preferred.

¹⁹ Jean and John L. Comaroff, ‘Goodly Beasts and Beastly Goods: Cattle and Commodities in a South African Context’, American Ethnologist , 17, 2 (1990), pp. 195, 210. The Comaroffs provide an informative description of how Tswana society used cattle as their economic, social and political wealth in the 19th century.

²⁰ K. Shillington, Luka Jantjie: Resistance Hero of the South African Frontier (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 180. Shillington notes that the Tswana produced agricultural crops for the mining community in the 1890s, providing some evidence of a diverse agricultural economy in the territory.

²¹ H.A. Bryden, With Gun and Camera in Southern Africa (London, Edward Stanford; reprint Prescott, Arizona, Wolfe Publishing Co., Inc., 1988) p. 43.

²² S.W. Silver & Company, S.W. Silver & Co.’s Handbook to South Africa (London, S.W. Silver & Co.,1891), p. 372.

²³ K. Shillington, Colonisation of the Southern Tswana (Braamfontein, Ravan Books, 1985), p. 175. According to Shillington, springs and dry riverbed wells were ‘at a premium’ throughout the country.

²⁴ P. Breutz, Tribes of the Vryburg District (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1959), p. 7. ‘The average rainfall of the district is between 10 and 20 in[ches] and decreases towards the west. Most rain in the territory falls between December and March of the year’.

²⁵ Jacobs, Environment, Power, and Injustice, p. 5.

²⁶ Sweetveld is important to pastoralists in southern Bechuanaland because it provides an important food supplement to the diet of cattle. Grasses in sweetveld locations are very palatable, highly nutritious, and require much less rain than grasses in the sourveld to grow. However, sweetveld is very prone to overgrazing (which causes bush encroachment). Therefore, pastoralists often use it to supplement sourveld grazing. See F. van Oudtshoorn, Guide to Grasses of Southern Africa (Pretoria, Briza, 2002), p. 28.

²⁷ F. MacNab, On Veldt and Farm in Bechuanaland (London and New York, Edward Arnold, 1897), pp. 78–9.

²⁸ Cape Archives (hereafter CA), Surveyor General British Bechuanaland (hereafter SGBB), vols. 69, 70, and 71.

²⁹ Cited in Shillington, Colonisation, p. 94.

³⁰ CA, Native Affairs British Bechuanaland (hereafter NABB), 1896, p. 44. Based on the land size of these reserves, neither reserve had enough land to support its cattle population. Even if Montsioa claimed control over half of the Molopo Reserve, the total land claim would amount to only 119,473 morgen. The Setlagoli Reserve encompassed 82,533 morgen, enough land for approximately 9,170 head of cattle. Veterinarian Soga estimated Setlagoli’s cattle population, see: CGH, Report of the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon and the Assistant Veterinary Surgeons, for the year 1896, Series G. ’64–’97 (Cape Town, W.A. Richards & Sons, 1897), p. 136.

³¹ Moffat Mission Library, Kuruman, N. Jacobs, ‘Interview Notes on Social and Environmental History Conducted in the Vicinity of Kuruman, 1997–1998’, 15 October 1997.

³² W. Beinart and K. Brown, African Local Knowledge and Livestock Health: Diseases and Treatments in South Africa (Rochester, Boydell & Brewer, Inc., 2013), pp. 174–84.

³³ L. van Sittert, ‘The Supernatural State: Water Divining and the Cape Underground Water Rush, 1891–1910’, Journal of Social History, 37, 4 (2004), pp. 919–20. The use of borehole technology in Bechuanaland before 1911 averaged 0 to 0.01 boreholes per square kilometre. The high cost of this new technology and southern Bechuanaland’s geographical remoteness are two key reasons for the lack of boreholes.

³⁴ MacNab, On Veldt and Farm, pp. 70–71, 92–3; Jacobs, Environment, Power and Injustice, pp. 62, 100.

³⁵ Beinart and Brown, African Local Knowledge, pp. 112–14.

³⁶ G. Endfield and D. Nash, ‘Missionaries and Morals: Climatic Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Central Southern Africa’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, 4 (2002), p. 730.

³⁷ Shillington, Luka Lantjie, chapters 10–12.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 178. Ironically, Tswana chiefs, such as Luka, started buying back land formerly held by their forebears in the 1890s.

³⁹ Shillington, Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, p. 178.

⁴⁰ Shillington, Luka Jantjie, chapter 13.

⁴¹ The outbreak of epizootics during war or periods of instability is widely acknowledged in scholarship. See, for example, J.R. Crowther, ‘Rinderpest: At War with the Disease of War’, Science Progress, 80, 1 (1997), pp. 21–43; J. Dudley, J. Ginsberg, A. Plumptre, J. Hart and L. Campos, ‘Effects of War and Civil Strife on Wildlife and Wildlife Habits’, Conservation Biology, 16, 2 (2002), pp. 319–29; D. Brantz, ‘“Risky Business”: Disease, Disaster and the Unintended Consequences of Epizootics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France and Germany’, Environment and History, 17, 1 (2011), pp. 35–51.

⁴² See Iowa State University, ‘Rinderpest’ fact sheet (cited in footnote 9), ‘Introduction’ for a description of rinderpest’s epidemiology.

⁴³ G. Marquardt, ‘Water, Wood, and Wild Animal Populations: Seeing the Spread of Rinderpest through the Physical Environment in Bechuanaland’, South African Historical Journal, 53 (2005), pp. 91–4.

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 74.

⁴⁵ CA, SGBB, vol. 69.

⁴⁶ CGH, Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Journal (25 June 1896), p. 329.

⁴⁷ CGH, Rinderpest Conference Held at Vryburg, August, 1896, Series G. ’82–’96 (Cape Town, W.A. Richards & Sons, 1896) p. 17; Spinage, Cattle Plague, p. 561.

⁴⁸ CGH, Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Journal (20 August 1896), p. 427. On 15 August, Vryburg reported no rainfall for the winter. ‘Rinderpest has broken out on some farms to the west of Vryburg and at the Morokwen location but it is hoped that the progress of the disease will be arrested’. Local roads passed by many pans and dams in northern Vryburg.

⁴⁹ Diamond Fields Advertiser (DFA), 17 September 1896, p. 6.

⁵⁰ DFA, 23 September 1896, p. 5.

⁵¹ CA, NABB, 1897, pp. 69–70.

⁵² See PRO, CO 417/165. The State Secretary in Pretoria reported that hundreds of carcasses lay dead in the water on the north side of the now infected river.

⁵³ Spinage, Cattle Plague, p. 534.

⁵⁴ MacNab, On Veldt and Farm, pp. 121–3.

⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 133.

⁵⁶ CGH, Report of the Select Committee on Rinderpest Contracts, Series A.1–1897 (Cape Town, Cape Times, 1897), p. 33.

⁵⁷ ‘Wild herds’ refer to unherded cattle. This practice appears to be very common among Tswana in the 19th century.

⁵⁸ CGH, Report of the Select Committee on Rinderpest Contracts, p. 33; also see CGH, Rinderpest Conference Held at Vryburg, August, 1896, p. 14.

⁵⁹ Marquardt, ‘Open Spaces and Closed Minds’, pp. 71–2.

⁶⁰ Spinage, Cattle Plague, p. 545.

⁶¹ W. Beinart, ‘Transhumance, Animal Diseases and the Environment’, South African Historical Journal, 58 (2007), pp. 20–31.

⁶² See below; see also Spinage, Cattle Plague, p. 542.

⁶³ CGH, Rinderpest Conference Held at Vryburg, August, 1896, p. 18.

⁶⁴ J.R. Fischer, ‘British Physicians, Medical Science and the Cattle Plague, 1865–1866’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 67, 4 (1993), pp. 652–3.

⁶⁵ A government-approved vaccine for rinderpest did not become widely available until the first quarter of 1897.

⁶⁶ L. van Sittert, ‘Holding the Line: The Rural Enclosure Movement in the Cape Colony, c. 1865–1910’, Journal of African History, 43, 1 (2002), p. 106. Even by 1911, most of southern Bechuanaland remained less than 25 per cent fenced.

⁶⁷ CGH, Government Gazette (Cape Town, Government Printers, 1896), p. 733. Proclamation decreed on 3 April 1896.

⁶⁸ Shillington, Luka Jantjie, pp. 196–7. The Phokwani rebellion of 1896 started as a result of cattle wandering on to private property and being shot by rinderpest guards.

⁶⁹ DFA, 8 September 1896, p. 5.

⁷⁰ CGH, Report of the Select Committee on Rinderpest Contracts, pp. 199–200, 203.

⁷¹ Cape Times, 10 September 1896. Under this policy, livestock and dairy products could not cross quarantine lines.

⁷² DFA, 15 May 1896, p. 6.

⁷³ DFA, 20 April 1896, p. 6; DFA, 12 May 1896, p. 5. According to the 6 June edition of the DFA, 250 rinderpest guards are listed as white and 150 as black.

⁷⁴ Bechuanaland News, 14 November 1896. The editorial satirically read: ‘[o]n one or two of the bad plague spots in this district stands a notice board: PLEASE DISINFECT YOURSELF. Underneath is an empty tin supposed to contain some disinfectant. There’s vigilance for you! What could be more effective?’

⁷⁵ DFA, 6 May 1896, p. 5.

⁷⁶ MacGregor Museum, Kimberley, 2661, ‘The Rinderpestial Guards’.

⁷⁷ See August 1896 editions of the DFA.

⁷⁸ Shillington, Luka Jantjie, p. 193.

⁷⁹ Rinderpest has consistently been linked to periods of warfare and social instability; see, for example, Brantz, ‘“Risky Business”’, p. 43.

⁸⁰ CGH, Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Journal, 10 December 1896, p. 648.

⁸¹ DFA, 9 September 1896, p. 5.

⁸² African Review, London, 20 February 1897, p. 350.

⁸³ DFA, 25 April 1896, p. 7.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 9 September 1896, p. 6.

⁸⁵ Spinage, Cattle Plague, p. 543, as cited in DFA, 19 September 1896. In reply to this comment, Hutcheon responded that humans were sent here to ‘learn the whole of nature’s laws and bring them under as servants of mankind’. If they avoided these duties, he suggested that God would blame them for this event; his retort earned him a polite round of applause.

⁸⁶ CGH, Special Report on Rinderpest in South Africa by the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon, March 1896–February 1897, Series G. ’33–’97 (Cape Town, W.A. Richards & Sons, 1897), p. 40.

⁸⁷ Cape Times, 7 November 1896.

⁸⁸ CGH, Department of Agriculture, Report of the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon and the Assistant Veterinary Surgeons, for the year 1896, p. 25.

⁸⁹ CGH, Rinderpest Conference Held at Vryburg, August, 1896, p. 14. In April 1896, Secretary Washson of Barkley West also reported that Barolongs in the protectorate were sending their cattle to the outstations in lieu of culling by police in the villages. See University of London School of Oriental and African Studies Library, Council for World Mission/London Missionary Society, Box 53, South Africa, Incoming Correspondence, 20 April 1896.

⁹⁰ CGH, Department of Agriculture, Report of the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon and the Assistant Veterinary Surgeons, for the year 1896, p. 25.

⁹¹ DFA, 17 September 1896, p. 6. See full example above.

⁹² CGH, Report of the Select Committee on Rinderpest Contracts, pp. 129, 131–2, 141 and 163.

⁹³ Ibid., pp. 131–2.

⁹⁴ Spinage, Cattle Plague, p. 542.

⁹⁵ DFA, 28 May 1896, p. 2.

⁹⁶ Phoofolo, ‘Face to Face with Famine’.

⁹⁷ ‘Decimate’ is used widely in the literature as meaning ‘to kill, destroy or remove a large percentage or part’, and not necessarily confined to its original signification of ‘to kill one in ten’.