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Anthropol South Afr
Anthropol South Afr
Anthropology Southern Africa
2332-3256
2332-3264
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2339255
10.1080/23323256.2024.2339255
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Research Article
Research Article
Killing tsetse and/or saving wildlife? A multispecies assemblage in colonial Zambia (1895–1959)
Anthropology Southern Africa
L. Lacan
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5475-6645
Lacan Léa
Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Email: llacan@uni-koeln.de
8 8 2024
2024
8 8 2024
47 2 Multispecies encounters in conservation landscapes in Southern Africa 133151
Nova Techset6 8 2024
Converted to JATS 1.2 by Nova Techset6 8 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). Co-published by NISC Pty (Ltd) and Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2024
The Author(s)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

This article investigates the problem of the tsetse fly and the trypanosomiasis disease it conveys as a transforming multispecies assemblage in colonial Zambia from the late nineteenth century until 1959. Based on archival research, it analyses the tsetse fly (Glossina morsitans) as a moving target; not only a mobile and elusive insect but also a moving field of knowledge bringing multiple stakeholders into dialogue. It shows that tsetse control and wildlife conservation emerged together in colonial Zambia, in conflicting but also synergising ways, and that the association of large mammals to G. morsitans laid the ground for their classification as killable or preservable species. In the crossed influence of diverse regional colonial expertise, the article finds that the complex multispecies relations between the tsetse fly, the trypanosomes, wildlife, vegetation, humans and cattle, mediated and enacted by colonial experts and others, shaped institutions, policies and landscapes.

Este artigo investiga o problema da mosca tsé-tsé e da doença tripanossomíase que ela transmite como um conjunto multiespécies em transformação na Zâmbia colonial, desde finais do século XIX até 1959. Com base em pesquisa de arquivo, analisa a mosca tsé-tsé (Glossina morsitans) como um alvo móvel, não apenas um inseto elusivo e em movimento, mas também um campo de conhecimento em movimento, trazendo ao diálogo múltiplas partes interessadas. Mostra que o controle da tsé-tsé e a conservação da vida selvagem surgiram juntos na Zâmbia colonial, de formas conflituosas mas também sinergéticas, e que a associação de grandes mamíferos à G. morsitans lançou as bases para a classificação destes como espécies que se podem matar ou preservar. Na influência cruzada de diversas expertises coloniais regionais, o artigo conclui que as complexas relações multiespécies entre a mosca tsé-tsé, os tripanossomas, a vida selvagem, a vegetação, os humanos e o gado, mediadas e estabelecidas por especialistas coloniais, entre outros, moldaram instituições, políticas e paisagens.

Keywords

colonial
conservation
control
multispecies assemblage
trypanosomiasis
tsetse
wildlife
Zambia
European Research Council 101020976
==== Body
pmcIntroduction

The problem of the tsetse fly has always been a multispecies issue. Through its bite, the blood-sucking insect conveys trypanosomes, protozoans of various species that cause trypanosomiasis, a disease dangerous to both humans and livestock. In Zambia, about 37% of the territory is estimated to host tsetse flies (Mulenga et al. 2020). The major vectors of human and animal trypanosomiasis in Zambia are the tsetse flies Glossina morsitans morsitans and Glossina pallidipes, both part of the morsitans group (Nakamura et al. 2019). This article refers to the species Glossina morsitans, subdivided between the two subspecies G. morsitans morsitans and G. morsitans centralis, both present in Zambia (see Muyobela et al. 2023).1 G. morsitans is commonly described as a “savannah fly” associated with big mammals, feeding on their blood. It can convey diverse trypanosome species, including Trypanosoma congolense and Trypanosoma vivax, considered the main agents of animal trypanosomiasis, and Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, causing both human and animal trypanosomiasis (Gaithuma et al. 2019). Yet, whilst cattle get sick from T. congolense and T. vivax, most wildlife are unaffected and therefore constitute reservoir hosts for the parasite (Mulenga et al. 2020). Even though G. morsitans can transmit trypanosomes infective to humans, it is predominantly associated with the cattle disease, referred to as nagana. The fly problem in colonial (and postcolonial) Zambia has therefore revolved mostly around nagana, and this focus is reflected in this article.

Few insects have been recognised as being such a problem as the tsetse, the dreaded “scourge” of the African continent. Despite vast research and intervention programmes to target the disease and its vector from the colonial era onwards in Africa (Rogers and Randolph 2002), the tsetse fly remains a threat in Zambia. Whilst its ecological connections with fauna, flora, people and the disease have been extensively studied, there is little understanding of how these intricate multispecies relations have influenced the tsetse fly “problem” and its human responses. To fill this gap, this contribution investigates the tsetse fly problem2 in colonial Zambia as a multispecies assemblage — and refers to it as a “more-than-tsetse assemblage.” Focusing on the dynamic link between the fly and wildlife as it has been expressed and performed by colonial experts, the article highlights how tsetse control and nature conservation became entangled projects, shaping policies, politics and landscapes.

Anna Tsing (2015, 23) defined multispecies assemblages as “open-ended gatherings,” made of and by beings and lifeways shaping each other. For Laura Ogden, Billy Hall and Kimiko Tanita (2013, 7), paying attention to a multiplicity of human and non-human agents and their “relations of becoming as multispecies ‘assemblages’” allows the movement beyond a neat separation between human social actors and non-human natural objects (in the wake of the relational approaches developed by Haraway 2008 and Latour 2005; see Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster 2016). The assemblage lens brings multispecies relations as drivers of change into focus without hierarchising human social relations on the one side and non-human ecological relations on the other. Instead, it highlights how actors and processes are “becoming with” each other (Haraway 2008; see for example Tsing 2015; Hewitson and Sullivan 2023; Du Plessis 2022).3 This article uses the multispecies assemblage as an analytical framework (see Lacan et al. 2024) to situate the tsetse problem and its human responses within the multispecies relations that shape them. It explores the colonial knowledge, institutions, policies and landscapes that constitute and emerge from this transforming multispecies assemblage.

Despite authors having put forward the complex socioecological links behind the tsetse and trypanosomiasis research and control (Tilley 2004; Mavhunga 2018), to my knowledge no contribution has focused on the tsetse fly from a multispecies angle. Authors have highlighted the historical and current politics behind tsetse and trypanosomiasis research in Africa (Scoones 2014; Grant 2014). Historical accounts of tsetse and trypanosomiasis control have focused on East Africa (Hoppe 1997; Webel 2019), West Africa (Lyons 2002), Southern Rhodesia (Mavhunga 2018; Gargallo 2009) and Bechuanaland (Bolaane 2007), or are continent-wide or cross-regional (Ford 1971; MacKenzie 1988; Giblin 1990; Tilley 2004). However, no in-depth historical study has focused on colonial Zambia, except over limited time frames (White 1995). This contribution focuses on the colonial history of current Zambia — that is, Barotseland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia from 1899 to 1911, amalgamated as Northern Rhodesia from 1911 to 1964. In this history, the connections between tsetse control and wildlife conservation are unique. First, the territory stood under the mixed influence of neighbouring Tanganyika and Southern Rhodesia and their distinct approaches to tsetse and wildlife management. Second, Northern Rhodesia created the first department which truly integrated tsetse control and wildlife management from 1940 until 1959. Based on archival research at the National Archives of Zambia, this article covers the period from the turn of the twentieth century until 1959.

Colonial archival data is blind to a diversity of perspectives. First and most importantly, it largely omits African knowledge about tsetse and trypanosomiasis, because colonial actors consistently ignored it or used it without acknowledging it (Lyons 2002; Mavhunga 2018).4 Moreover, archival data reflects human views. Whilst archives can be read against the grain to capture silenced perspectives (Glover 2021; Aderinto 2022), this article focuses on European colonial perspectives which, by sidelining African knowledge and interpreting tsetse on their own terms, informed the colonial tsetse and wildlife management that came to dominate. This is useful to explore how a certain human-cattle-wildlife-tsetse (and more) multispecies assemblage partly solidified into colonial institutions that durably shaped policies and landscapes in Zambia. The article starts with the first European glimpses of tsetse knowledge in Southern Africa and colonial Zambia, and the emergence of the multispecies assemblage in the colonial gaze. Second, it highlights the conflict between wildlife preservation and game elimination for the control of G. morsitans, showing that wildlife oscillates between becoming killable and preservable, in the conflicting views and interests of diverse colonial actors. Third, the article shows the search for alternative methods, moving away from game elimination towards a focus on the tsetse-vegetation relation, cast by the mixed influences of Tanganyika and Southern Rhodesia. Fourth, the article examines the creation of the Game and Tsetse Control Department in 1940 and its holistic approach to integrating wildlife conservation and tsetse control, reflecting the complexity of multispecies relations in the more-than-tsetse assemblage. Finally, it shows how this institutional choice led to the territorialisation of human-cattle-wildlife-tsetse relations and permanently shaped the conservation landscape in Zambia.

Identifying the threat: emerging assemblage at the turn of the twentieth century

In the nineteenth century, reports of explorers and big-game hunters travelling in Southern Africa (Austen 1903) described the tsetse as the “hunter’s scourge” (Cumming 1859, 182) that killed their horses and oxen. In what is now Zambian territory, “tsetse” was reported by David Livingstone to be present at the south-east end of Lake Tanganyika in 1872; and by other travellers between Itufa and Sioma in Barotseland in 1878, on the “north bank of the Zambezi” in 1881, and again on the southern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in the Luangwa Valley and in the region of the Njoko and Machile rivers, in the 1890s (Austen 1903). Travellers mention that the local populations were well aware of the dangers of the fly and its relation to wildlife and drew from these local knowledges (Austen 1903; MacKenzie 1988; Mavhunga 2018).

Yet, in these early accounts, the causal link between the fly and the livestock disease was unclear. Opinions prevailed that the tsetse fly directly caused the death of livestock through a poisonous bite (for example, Livingstone 1874, 83–86), whilst others thought that the disease was transmitted through the environment (Austen 1903, 35–36). Nevertheless, the association between the tsetse fly and wild game was frequently observed and widely accepted. As British microbiologist David Bruce wrote in his report on the tsetse fly disease in Zululand in 1895,there can be no question as to the very widely spread opinion which exists regarding the wild animals as in some way or other responsible for the propagation of this disease, and in this connection the Buffalo, Wildebeeste [sic], Quagga, Waterbuck, and Koodoo are usually named. (Bruce 1895, 7)

Bruce’s investigations in Zululand between 1894 and 1896 marked a turn in the knowledge on the tsetse fly and the fly-borne disease (see Figures 1 and 2).5 Whilst some before him had voiced the hypothesis that the tsetse fly carried a pathogenic agent responsible for the disease (Austen 1903, 40–44), Bruce was the first to prove that the tsetse was a vector of nagana and that wild animals were a disease reservoir — he tested specifically the buffalo, wildebeest, kudu, waterbuck, impala, zebra, bushbuck, steenbok, warthog, wild pig and hyena (Bruce 1896) as well as leopard, “Buiker” and “Roi Rei Buck,” “Reed Buck,” “Bopeva” and jackal (Bruce 1903, 7). He was also the first to identify under his microscope Trypanosoma brucei as the pathogenic parasite (Bruce 1895, 1896, 1903). Through these experiments, Bruce situated the tsetse fly in a complex chain of agents and highlighted the triad fly-trypanosome-game as the target to alleviate the nagana problem. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was clear that nagana was mostly transmitted by Glossina morsitans; however, parasitologists still wondered whether other Glossina species could spread diseases and whether other species of trypanosomes could be carried by tsetse flies (Lankester 1903). Figure 1. Representation of Glossina morsitans (Source: D. Bruce, Further Report on the Tsetse Fly Disease or Nagana in Zululand, Plate I6

Figure 2. Representation of trypanosomes in the blood of the dog, the horse and the cow (Source: D. Bruce, Further Report on the Tsetse Fly Disease or Nagana in Zululand, Plate III)

The fly disease received increased attention as parasitologists from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine discovered a trypanosome in human blood in the Gambia in 1902, and in 1903 and 1904 identified T. gambiense as the sleeping sickness pathogen in the Congo (Dutton, Todd and Christy 1904).7 Trypanosomes (including T. vivax and T. dimorphon, later renamed T. congolense) were also detected in north-western Rhodesia by Liverpool parasitologists Eustace Montgomery and Allan Kinghorn. Generally, the distinction and classification of trypanosome species, often morphologically similar, was arduous and required extensive studies of their morphological features and their effects on inoculated animals (see Kirksey 2015 on the making of species in multispecies engagements).8

At the turn of the new century, entomologists and microbiologists therefore began to complement and challenge the tsetse and trypanosomiasis expertise accumulated so far by travellers and hunters (Mavhunga 2006). As new human actors joined the assemblage, European experts started to comprehend the complexity of the multispecies relations (including the diversity of tsetse and trypanosome species) underlying the fly disease. Montgomery, in a private note to the Rhodesia Scientific Associations, pointed outthe many problems of this disease, embracing as it does a study of the Trypanosome itself, the animals which do or may suffer from it, the manner in which the causal organism is carried from one animal to another; various flies which may be concerned in this transmission and, perhaps the most burning part with you, the relation of Tsetse with wild game and with the disease.9

The tsetse fly problem emerged as an assemblage made of the multispecies relations between tsetse flies, trypanosomes, the wildlife, domestic animals and the vegetation of various species, as well as humans as they were expressed, interpreted and enacted by colonial experts. This colonial gaze — as diverse and conflicting as it may have been (see next section) — held the assemblage together and created a space for encounter and dialogue between experts (travellers, parasitologists, veterinarians, and others). Identified as the vector of the deadly disease, the tsetse fly of different species was the first obvious target made “killable” (Haraway 2008; Beisel and Wergin 2022): with no insect, there was no disease spreading. Yet, the fly, highly mobile and not easily visible, was a difficult target. For the case of G. morsitans, its association with wildlife became a proxy for getting at the fly.

Making wildlife killable? Attempts at eliminating the fly

By the end of the nineteenth century, hunters’ observations began to suggest that shooting wildlife freed areas from the tsetse. Hunter William Cotton Oswell commented: “The Tsétsé, that great enemy to the cattle-breeder, will disappear before the approach of civilisation, and the killing off of the game, especially the buffalo, its standing dish” (cited in Austen 1903, 218). The rinderpest, which crossed the Zambezi from the north-east to the south in 1895, only confirmed this association: as wild animals were decimated, the tsetse fly also vanished from the areas affected (Bollig and Vehrs 2021). However, the killing of wildlife for tsetse control led to heated debates amongst experts in Britain and Southern Africa (Mavhunga 2006; Gargallo 2009). This section examines the relations between G. morsitans and wildlife (of different species) in the network of conflicting opinions, interests and knowledge held by different colonial actors.

On the one hand, the British South Africa Company (BSAC), white settlers and missionary societies in the region feared the threat of the tsetse fly. In the context of outbreaks of the sleeping sickness in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia between 1908 and 1910, they argued that killing wildlife was an acceptable price to pay to protect people and cattle from trypanosomiasis and to remove this barrier to economic development (MacKenzie 1988, 236–239). Alarming discoveries strengthened this argument. In 1911, the BSAC appointed a commission to conduct trypanosomiasis research in the Luangwa Valley, including the parasitologists Allan Kinghorn and Warrington Yorke. The entomologist Llewellyn Lloyd, Kinghorn and Yorke detected that high percentages of wildlife, especially antelopes, were infected by trypanosomes pathogenic to humans or livestock, including horses, cattle, donkeys, goats and dogs (see Table 1). This clearly established “that the big game is the inexhaustible reservoir of the virus which causes the disease” (Yorke 1913, 323). Kinghorn, Yorke and Lloyd (1913) also showed that G. morsitans could transmit the trypanosome T. rhodesiense, which causes human sleeping sickness (as identified by Stephens and Fanthom 1910), from wild game to humans. Table 1. Percentage of wildlife found infected with trypanosomes pathogenic to humans and livestock at Nawalia, Luangwa Valley, by Yorke and Kinghorn

	
Source: W. Yorke, “The Relationship of the Big Game of Africa to the Spread of Sleeping Sickness”

This was particularly problematic as G. morsitans was the most widespread tsetse species in central Africa. In contrast to the concentrated occurrence of species such as G. palpalis along watercourses, which made their eradication easier (with good results achieved in Uganda, for example), the scattered distribution of G. morsitans disqualified bush clearing as it could never be practiced over large areas. On that account, game elimination appeared as the only way to avoid the spread of the fly and, therefore, the disease. Hence, prominent experts including Bruce (White 1995, 225) and Yorke recommended game shooting. Yorke (1913, 328) argued: “It may seem an act of vandalism to slaughter the wonderful fauna of Africa; but surely when it is definitely proved that this fauna is antagonistic to civilisation, then that which stands in the path of progress must be removed.” In this manner not only the tsetse but also “big game,” as disease reservoirs and spreaders associated with G. morsitans, were now considered a threat (Lynteris 2019) and, thus, became killable. Haraway (2008, 80) highlights that making killable leads to exterminism: large mammals could be legitimately killed for the protection of human health and livelihoods, a necessary step on the path to exterminating the fly.

On the other hand, the opponents of game elimination argued on emotional and moral grounds that the indiscriminate killing of Africa’s scenic wildlife would be a heartbreaking waste, especially given that the links between tsetse and big game were still poorly understood (Spectator 1913). In his contribution to the Journal of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire, the British entomologist Ernest Edward Austen, member of the society that owned this journal, questioned the connection between the game and the tsetse fly, especially for species other than G. morsitans, such as G. palpalis. He also criticised the game-elimination method as being unrealistic because it would require killing all fauna on which the tsetse feeds, which is not restricted to big mammals (Austen 1908, 25). The preservationist position was particularly strong because it was supported by the powerful Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire (MacKenzie 1988, 239), which, as Jeff Schauer (2019, 18) notes, controlled most aspects of wildlife policy in the British Empire in Africa between the 1890s and the 1920s. Tied to tsetse control because of the fly’s affinity for large mammals, wildlife therefore oscillated between the status of being a killable threat and representing a charismatic African heritage that needed to be preserved.10

In this heated debate, tsetse control conflicted with the preservation of wildlife, with the two being framed as opposing interests. Caught in the web of different expertise and various interests, the link between tsetse and wildlife and its contested interpretations shaped the research and policy debates on the tsetse fly and its control. In fact, the controversy over game elimination seems to have halted its use until the 1940s in Northern Rhodesia and everywhere else in the region except for Southern Rhodesia, where it was effectively practiced (Worthington 1938, 269).

From tsetse-wildlife to tsetse-vegetation relations: shifting targets in crossed regional expertise

Methods of tsetse control other than game elimination were actively sought. Helen Tilley (2004) shows how British colonial entomologists tried to understand life and ecologies from the point of view of the fly, understanding its habits to identify targets for its control (see, for example, the detailed account of the fly’s behaviour by Jack 1934).11 At the Tanganyika Tsetse Research Department, the largest organisation for tsetse research in the 1930s and one of the three main centres in British Africa, along with Southern Rhodesia and Nigeria (Worthington 1938), its director Charles Swynnerton and his colleagues experimented with methods to avoid wholesale game destruction (Jack 1934; Swynnerton 1925). The entomologist Patrick Alfred Buxton reviewed their approach as “ecological”:The point of view of this group was “ecological,” this is to say, they sought for the solution of their problem in the field rather than the laboratory, and endeavoured to see the fly’s place in nature in front of a changing background of climate, plants and trees, migrations of game and shifting agriculture. (Buxton 1938, 93)

One of these experiments was carried out in Abercorn in Northern Rhodesia, right on the border with Tanganyika. In the 1930s, coffee planters in Abercorn became increasingly concerned about the advance of tsetse and cattle trypanosomiasis. As a result of their agitation, the government of Northern Rhodesia called Swynnerton12 to study the local ecological conditions underlying the presence of tsetse (G. palpalis and G. morsitans). His report, issued in 1935, focused on G. morsitans as the main vector of cattle trypanosomiasis. It established its association with miombo woodlands (where trees of the Brachystegia genus predominate but also significant numbers of Uapaca and Protea trees) and looked deeply into the fly’s habits in relation to the vegetation. The report discouraged game elimination, arguing that the influx of new game would make the method ineffective, but identified human settlement and the local practice of burning gardens [chitemene] as a helpful barrier against G. morsitans.13 Based on his recommendations, the Abercorn experimental scheme was launched. Until its end in 1949, it successfully and notoriously developed “discriminative clearing” as an alternative to game elimination.14 Compared to other clearing methods, “discriminative clearing” required the destruction of that vegetation that allowed the fly to live and reproduce.15 It thus targeted only a small amount of vegetation (1% in Abercorn).16 With this working alternative, the killability of wildlife was even more questionable. The success of the method decentred the more-than-tsetse assemblage in Northern Rhodesia away from tsetse-wildlife relations towards tsetse-vegetation relations.

Experiments in Abercorn applied what Tilley (2004, 30) identifies as an ecological turn in tsetse research, which she situates between 1925 and 1929 in British Colonial Africa. This shift reflected the influence of the Tanganyika Tsetse Fly Research Department in Northern Rhodesia and the importance of Northern Rhodesia as experimental grounds for regional research. Tsetse and trypanosomiasis research in British Colonial Africa were highly connected (Mavhunga 2006), with international conferences bringing together experts from 1907 onwards (Tilley 2004, 26). Northern Rhodesia stood at the intersection of influences from Tanganyika (East Africa) and Southern Rhodesia (Central Africa). At regional level, cooperation between Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland was encouraged in the late 1920s and 1930s.17 For Southern Rhodesia, where the tsetse fly had been effectively controlled through game-elimination campaigns, cooperation was essential to prevent the reintroduction of the fly from neighbouring territories. Moreover, its long experience and a dedicated institution — the Trypanosomiasis Committee — qualified Southern Rhodesia to take the lead in tsetse research in Central Africa, whilst Northern Rhodesia had little capacity for extensive research on its own.18 Eventually, a Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Standing Committee was launched under the Central African Council in 1946, gathering representatives from Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia.19 On the other hand, cooperation between Northern Rhodesia and East African countries was encouraged by London in the 1940s, through the creation of a Standing Committee for Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Research.20 However, Northern Rhodesia lacked decision-making power and rapidly ceased formal participation.21 Between the influences of Eastern and Central Africa, the Northern Rhodesian administration attempted to pursue its own interests. In 1940, it created the Game and Tsetse Control Department (GTCD), which hybridised both influences to finally develop a unique model (as discussed in the next sections).

The politics of cooperation between East Africa and Central Africa formed part of the morethan-tsetse assemblage in Northern Rhodesia as they shaped the ways in which tsetse fly and trypanosomiasis were problematised and influenced which aspects of the fly’s ecological relations were focused on for disease control. In the colliding of different influences, knowledge and interests, the tsetse’s favourite bushes or favourite wildlife prey alternatively and in intertwined ways became threats, reservoirs and/or spreaders, in short, targets.

The Game and Tsetse Control Department: an institutional response to complex multispecies relations

By the end of the 1930s, more than 62% of the territory of Northern Rhodesia was said to be infested by the tsetse fly, and mostly by G. morsitans (see Figure 3); the other species identified in the territory by 1943 were G. palpalis and G. brevipalpis.22 Whilst new methods of bush clearing for tsetse control were being experimented with in Abercorn, two main courses of action against nagana prevailed in Northern Rhodesia. First, the use of trypanocidal drugs, mainly antimony potassium tartrate (despite its side effects). Second, the installation of “smudge houses” (buildings where travellers and their baggage were inspected) and “fly pickets” (simpler stops where travellers were checked by employed staff, so-called “fly guards”) along the roads to detect and catch flies travelling along in vehicles and with people and animals.23 This section focuses on the institutionalised response to the complex multispecies relations making up the tsetse problem with the creation of the GTCD. Figure 3. Map showing distribution of the tsetse fly in Northern Rhodesia, 193724

In 1940, the GTCD was officially launched as the first wildlife-management department of the territory. For the new department’s director, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, wildlife was to be managed as an economic force of the country: not just preserved, but conserved, which did not preclude its exploitation.25 The reasons for this included the aim to support the economic functions of wildlife (like meat production) and also to limit its conflict with the human economies, for example through crop damage or the spread of diseases. To free the territory of trypanosomiasis and unleash economic development, the control of the tsetse fly legitimised once more the focus on game management — now including both elimination and conservation. Even the unit’s name, Game and Tsetse Control, was meant to signal to the public that the new department did not neglect agricultural and veterinary issues linked to wildlife but intended to tackle all aspects in an integrated manner26 to serve as a “social service department.”27 The complex multispecies relations that made up trypanosomiasis catalysed the emergence of an institutionalised holistic approach.28

The GTCD was unique. Other institutions that specialised in game management had dealt with tsetse control — in Tanganyika, for example, from 1919 to 1929 (MacKenzie 1988, 252). This time, however, the GTCD explicitly integrated wildlife conservation and tsetse control as aspects of one common framework (together with fisheries, the department’s third focus) to bring the country forward economically. It was designed to tackle holistically the interconnected issues of game preservation and control, and to satisfy a wide range of interests, from those of the preservationists and trophy hunters to those of the local populations and the needs of rural development.29 This acknowledged and responded to the tsetse problem as a highly complex ecological problem, as formulated by Vaughan-Jones:The background of all tsetse questions is ecological in the broadest sense, the complex of all the factors, fauna and flora, climate and water which determine the nature of land. It follows that the approach to any particular tsetse problem must depend on the nature of the general ecology of the particular area involved; and it further follows that tsetse are best attacked successfully through one or more of those ecological factors on which they are known to be dependent.30

The GTCD’s integrated approach reflected the ecological complexity of the tsetse fly problem but also responded to the elusiveness of the fly. Trypanosomiasis outbreaks occurred often in a surprising way, just like the fly, which tended to appear in unexpected places. As expressed by John F.C. Haslam, the director of medical services in the Northern Rhodesia Legislative Council in 1943, “it is a characteristic of [the] fly that it appears here and then disappears: it appears again and again it disappears, for no known reason.”31 Occurring in widely different regions, the factors leading to outbreaks of sleeping sickness in Northern Rhodesia were a “puzzle.”32 Indeed, the tsetse fly was difficult to detect, yet highly mobile travelling — over long distances — on the backs of animals and people, or in vehicles and trains. This intensified with the construction of new roads and with the African population being increasingly encouraged to travel for labour. Whilst smudge houses and fly pickets were used to stop and monitor the spread of tsetse, they were only installed on the main roads and were easily bypassed by pedestrians and cyclists (Mavhunga 2018, 171–186).33 The Tsetse Control Ordinance of 1941 allowed the government to proclaim any area a tsetse fly area, introduce regulations to kill the game, clear the vegetation and enforce the control of human and animal mobility in and out of the areas.34 Concretely, however, the fly often remained invisible until an outbreak was declared. Facing this elusive threat, the department adopted a pragmatic stance, as described by Vaughan-Jones in 1943: “without the full perspective … the only practical approach to the problem is to chop off the Medusa’s heads as and when they threaten the Territory’s economic interests.”35

To tackle this highly complex problem, the department positioned itself as a unique attempt to explicitly combine multiple fields of expertise, cutting across disciplines and departments.36 It also pushed for employing more staff dedicated to tsetse control and research from the mid-1940s, and even more so from the mid-1950s (Table 2). Fly rounds monitored the effects of control operations. Surveys were multiplied in the 1950s to map fly areas, until the fly infestation had been completely surveyed across the whole territory of Northern Rhodesia by 1955.37 The GTCD institutionalised tsetse control as a holistic multidisciplinary and multispecies ecological assemblage. Yet, it also worked to territorialise this assemblage to control the relations between tsetse, wildlife, cattle and humans, as shown in the next section. Table 2. GTCD staff employed specifically for tsetse control, 1945–194838

	

Civilisation vs. the wild: territorialising and disentangling multispecies relations

In practice, the establishment of the GTCD reinforced the focus on wildlife management for tsetse control. But it did so in a way that considered wildlife as both a killable threat and a usable and conservable resource. In the 1940s and 1950s, tsetse control schemes in Northern Rhodesia combined game elimination with vegetation clearing and the planned resettlement of populations, hybridising the Southern Rhodesian model with the East African model of tsetse control. Game elimination in Northern Rhodesia was legitimised by its success in Southern Rhodesia, where it was practiced since the 1900s (MacKenzie 1988, 237; Gargallo 2009) and where similar conditions prevailed — that is, the strong association of G. morsitans with big game and the fly’s scattered presence over large areas. To reinforce this means of control, elimination zones were fenced off to deplete these areas of game. From 1945 until the dissolution of the GTCD in 1958, more than 16 000 head of game were eliminated for tsetse control in Northern Rhodesia (see Table 3). Table 3. Number of game shot for tsetse control in Northern Rhodesia, 1945–195840

	
*From available figures

†At least (some figures missing); ‡At least

At the same time, it was combined with discriminative barrier clearings and with the resettlement of populations,41 methods partly developed in East Africa (see, for example, Hoppe 1997). The relocation of people out of heavily infested areas aimed to prevent their contact with the tsetse, and Vaughan-Jones described their “organised settlement and cultivation” into de-flied zones or areas with a diffuse presence of the fly as “the most efficacious barrier against Tsetse yet devised.”42 Under the resettlement method, African agricultural practices were used both to keep the game away and to destroy the vegetation habitat of G. morsitans, at low cost, and to produce the conditions for local economic development.43

At the core of this approach to tsetse control was the goal of physically separating the realm of human civilisation from the realm of the wild, where wildlife and the tsetse fly coexisted. This is made explicit in a letter from Vaughan-Jones to the colonial secretary in 1946:For any of the “savannah” flies [like G. morsitans], which feed mainly on game and are widely dispersed, the best start is in my opinion the “sharp delimitation of game-fly communities from man-stock communities,” each category keeping as far as possible to its own designated area. This formula, first given in these words by Mr H.E. Hornby when Director of Tsetse Research in Tanganyika Territory, is in my opinion thoroughly sound as a basis for tsetse control. Our whole system of game conservation is being built on it. The game areas must be large enough to contain the game without the exertion of more pressure than the people can manage; conversely the population must be strong enough in the non-game areas to keep them more or less free of game.44

At the inception of the department, this “regional system,” as Vaughan-Jones called it, structured conservation into three main zones45: 1. tsetse-free areas for human settlement; 2. zones of complete wildlife protection without tsetse control (“Game Reserves”)46; and 3. buffer zones in between, where wildlife uses and tsetse control would take place (“Controlled Areas”). The idea was to control human settlements — their location and density — and the movement of people between these zones and the areas infested by the fly: “fauna-fly areas should be kept as distinct as possible from areas of human settlement, with geographical barriers if possible,”47 and, if not possible, artificial barriers were to be achieved through vegetation clearing. Conservation areas were seen as complementary to tsetse control. By 1958, as shown in Figure 4, they matched the tsetse fly areas of the late 1930s. Figure 4. Map showing conservation areas in Northern Rhodesia, 195848

This was all meant to ensure that the balance between humans and nature would be sustained, as Vaughan-Jones wrote in 1938: “the heart of the matter is not so much the preserving of game for its lucrative exploitation as the keeping of the balance between the whole fauna of a Territory and the human race in its development.”49 This is symptomatic of a colonial dichotomic vision of nature as a potential threat but also a resource to be held separate from people, controlled and harnessed for economic development, often to the severe disadvantage of local populations (see Grove 1996; Neumann 1998; Rose 2004; Ferdinand 2021). It fit well with preservationist ideas linking tsetse presence to wildlife preservation. In his Report on the Faunal Survey of Northern Rhodesia, which became the basis for the new Northern Rhodesia wildlife-management model (Schauer 2019, 38, 47–48),50 Charles Pitman, a game warden in Uganda sent to survey the wildlife in Northern Rhodesia, suggested that tsetse’s presence might prevent the overstocking of the country (Pitman 1934, 102). In a similar vein, GTCD entomologist W.S. Steel balanced planned resettlement with the ecological benefits of the fly’s presence, pinpointing in 1952 that “fly infestation at any rate helps to keep virgin the natural resources of the area.” 51

Thus, in the synergies of conservationist, preservationist and civilisationist ideas, conservation and tsetse control policies developed together. Both fed into the logic of compartmentalising the wild and the civilised world, disentangling the multispecies relations that threatened human lives and livelihoods. Both aimed to engineer the landscape to displace and minimise the threat of the tsetse fly and enhance the productivity of the land: together they shaped a conservation landscape of a controlled kind. The resettlement strategy as anti-tsetse method also meant that local populations were relocated. With the resettlement legitimised by the threat of trypanosomiasis to people’s health and to the country’s economic development, experts handled the local populations as passive victims to be saved and/or as a cheap labour force for tsetse control (Mavhunga 2018, 153–169).52 This all served the aim of facilitating cattle rearing, in zones to be kept or rendered tsetse-free. The expanding cattle industry would help to support colonial projects of economic development whilst speeding up the ecological transformation of bushy lands that are favourable to tsetse into fly-free pastures (Ficek 2019). In the more-than-tsetse assemblage, colonial policies rearranged landscapes and the physical relations between people, cattle, wildlife and the fly to pursue colonial and capitalist dreams of development.

This conservation landscape lived on. The controlled areas became the current game management areas, which, located around national parks, continue to serve as buffer zones between settlement and conservation zones (Schauer 2019, 57). The GTCD remained in place for almost two decades. In 1959, wildlife management was transferred to the Department of Game and Fisheries and tsetse control to the Department of Veterinary and Tsetse Control Services.53 By that time, insecticides — dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and benzene hexachloride (Gammexane) — had become “the best hope” 54 and the most successful method for killing tsetse flies. Whilst game elimination had always been and, in the 1950s, remained contested, insecticides made it even less justified,55 and joint management of wildlife and tsetse control was no longer necessary. From 1968, aerial spraying was used for tsetse control in Zambia. This new method, highly efficient to kill tsetse, rendered the insect not only killable but eradicable (Beisel and Wergin 2022): the hope to exterminate tsetse flies from the continent suddenly seemed achievable. This led in the 1980s to large-scale international programmes for tsetse and trypanosomiasis control,56 such as the Regional Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Control Programme (RTTCP) between 1986 and 2000.57 Launched in 2006, the Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign supported transboundary tsetse control. In recent years, it led notably to aerial spraying in southwestern Zambia in 2009 and 2014, in conjunction with the deployment of traps and targets to monitor and control the presence of the tsetse fly.58 Overall, these last two sections have shown how multispecies relations conditioned and promoted an institution, the GTCD, through the prism of ecologically and holistically minded decision makers like Vaughan-Jones. They have also shown how the GTCD institutionalised and territorialised tsetse-wildlife-cattle-human relations in lasting ways.

Conclusion: multispecies transformations in assemblage

This article has sketched out the transforming multispecies assemblage of the tsetse fly problem throughout the colonial history of tsetse research and control in colonial Zambia. From the first European observations on trypanosomiasis in the nineteenth century, the complexity of the multispecies relations made the tsetse and trypanosomiasis a particularly arduous problem to tackle. To control the disease, colonial scientists and administrators continually adjusted their target to the evolving knowledge of the fly, of its affinities with game, its behaviours and its habitat preferences, and also to the diverse interests and priorities of colonial stakeholders (and, especially for some, their dependency on livestock). In these debates, wildlife preservation appeared as antagonistic to tsetse control and wildlife moved in and out of killability, for the sake of eliminating G. morsitans. In the 1920s and the 1930s, alternative methods for the control G. morsitans developed under the influence of Tanganyika experts and a wider ecological perspective. “Discriminative clearing” shifted the focus towards tsetse-vegetation relations. Yet, the proximity of Northern Rhodesia with Southern Rhodesia and the success of Southern Rhodesia with game elimination also influenced the Northern Rhodesian model. From 1940, the GTCD hybridised both approaches to propose a unique model integrating wildlife and tsetse management as two mutually reinforcing fields. The department institutionalised the response to tsetse’s complex ecological links and its association with wildlife. This response included measures of wildlife elimination and conservation, both of which were justified in the context of tsetse control. As experts and administrators identified and performed the tsetse problem as a complex multispecies issue, institutions, policies and landscapes were shaped: the GTCD developed wildlife conservation and tsetse control together in its efforts to disentangle the multispecies relations that endangered people’s well-being and divided the landscape into zones of civilisation and wilderness.

The more-than-tsetse assemblage is made of these articulations between multispecies interdependencies and the conflicts and synergies of their human interpretations and enactments into discourses, policies and practices. Tracking the role of non-humans in the emergence and evolution of institutions is methodologically challenging (Hamilton and Taylor 2012), especially when based on archives that largely emphasise a human colonial perspective (Swart 2010; Glover 2021). Whilst the non-human points of view cannot be invented from the archival data, working with the assemblage lens with a longue durée perspective, however, allows tracking the heterogeneous elements manifested in archival documents across time — insects, plants and animals, parasites and diseases, colonial fears and domination, preservationist ideas, wildlife conservation zones, policies, scientific networks, tsetse control practices and others. It allows the analysis of how these elements are holding together and becoming in connection with each other. The assemblage approach helps to trace the genealogies of the roles assigned to non-humans: such as the tsetse fly as vector and scourge, or wildlife as reservoirs and spreaders, killable, preservable and/or conservable. However, it does so by considering the multispecies links from which these categories emerge. Specifically, this article highlighted how tsetse-wildlife affinities shaped the more-than-tsetse assemblage. Mediated by different institutions and stakeholders, marked by diverging interests, experiences and knowledges, the link between the fly and wildlife influenced the framing of the tsetse problem and the responses to it. Wildlife preservation and conservation in Northern Rhodesia first grew in opposition to tsetse control through game elimination and later developed in synergy with tsetse control, in the pursuit of a controlled nature, tamed and used for the economic development of the territory.

The assemblage lens thus also emphasises what emerges from the encounters of diverse agentive beings (Ogden, Hall and Tanita 2013). In this case, it showed how tsetse and wildlifemanagement policies and practices developed within the more-than-tsetse assemblage and durably transformed the landscape and Zambian conservation. Both tsetse control and wildlife management facilitated the rearing of cattle, another notorious protagonist of this assemblage, whose expansion, following colonial and capitalist aspirations, was entangled with the conversion of wild and tsetse-infested landscapes into productive rangelands, yet was bound up with unintended ecological consequences (Ford 1971; Ficek 2019). In his volume of reference The Role of Trypanosomiasis in African Ecology (1971), J. Ford, notable glossinologist involved in leading positions in tsetse research and control in Eastern Africa and Rhodesia, pointed out that, whilst indigenous practices allowed African populations to coexist with the tsetse fly and keep the trypanosomiasis threat in check for centuries, large-scale rapid tsetse elimination could not be a long-term solution. Large areas without continuous human presence and control are subject to reinfestation, and growing cattle herds add even more potential hosts to trypanosomiasis and potentially favour its spread (Ford 1971, 490). As Ford prophesised, large-scale tsetse eradication campaigns have in fact been largely unsuccessful (Rogers and Randolph 2002) and their results temporary.

The assemblage approach followed in this article highlights that tsetse and its control are inevitably bound together with complex multispecies relations and unexpected ecological transformations. With this lens, the killability and eradicability of the tsetse fly is no longer just a technical issue but also a situated idea, bound to a historical endeavour to separate the wild world of tsetse from that of civilisation. By contrast, the One Health approach that emerged in the early twenty-first century proposes to support the health of humans and animals living alongside each other instead of separating them (Nadal 2019). In a region where nature conservation has become an economic model for development, One Health provides possibilities to reckon in the long term with the complexity of multispecies coexistence (also see Grant 2015). Yet, for understandable reasons, this approach does not regard the tsetse fly as a species with which to coexist. A recent study by the director of Zambia’s Tsetse Control Unit and colleagues shows that the prevalence of trypanosomes infections in G. m. morsitans depends on the fly’s level of nutritional stress (Chilongo, Manyangadze and Samson 2021). Perhaps unexpectedly, then, caring for the fly’s “wellbeing” might yield more conclusive results for trypanosomiasis control than tsetse eradication.

Acknowledgments

This research is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101020976). It is indebted to the staff of the National Archives of Zambia and the Tsetse and Veterinary Control Unit for their assistance, to the valuable comments of Michael Bollig and reviewers, and the stimulating discussions with colleagues at the workshop “Multispecies Encounters in Conservation Landscapes in Southern Africa” in Windhoek in February 2023.

Notes

1 Earlier accounts like the archival documents used in this article do not distinguish between these two subspecies.

2 The “tsetse problem” applies to the tsetse fly and how it has been enacted and performed as a problem by various human and non-human actors.

3 The concept of “assemblage” was originally translated from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of “agencement” to describe heterogeneous elements (human and non-human, material and discursive) holding together in rhizomatic (non-hierarchical) relations with each other. Multispecies assemblages draw (loosely) from this legacy to emphasise the entanglements and co-constitutions of agentive beings, human and non-human (see literature cited in the text).

4 For more on African knowledge on tsetse and trypanosomiasis and the African response to colonial tsetse and trypanosomiasis control measures, see Lyons (2002), Mavhunga (2018) and Webel (2019).

5 National Archives of Zambia (hereafter NAZ), British South Africa Company (hereafter BSAC), A3/29/4, Tag 390, Location 76, “The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine … ”, 1907–1909 (hereafter A3/29/4), E. Montgomery, “Trypanosomes and their Transmission (Fly Disease) in Relation to South Africa,” undated, 3.

6 The material displayed in Figures 1 and 2 has been provided by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Library and Archives Service and digitised by the Internet Archive in 2015 (CC0 [CC 1.0] Universal Public Domain Dedication).

7 NAZ, BSAC, A3/29/4, E. Montgomery, “Trypanosomes and their Transmission (Fly Disease) in Relation to South Africa,” undated, 3.

8 NAZ, BSAC, A3/29/4, E. Montgomery, “Trypanosomes and their Transmission (Fly Disease) in Relation to South Africa,” undated, 4–5; NAZ, BSAC, A3/29/4, Report by E. Montgomery and A. Kinghorn, 1908, 36–41.

9 NAZ, BSAC, A3/29/4, E. Montgomery, “Trypanosomes and their Transmission (Fly Disease) in Relation to South Africa,” undated, 1–2.

10 See Nadal (2019) on the dynamic framings of dogs in relation to rabies in India.

11 This approach lived on; see for example the recent work by Torr and Vale (2015).

12 NAZ, Secretariat files (hereafter SEC), 3/525 Vol. I, “Trypanosomiasis and Tsetse Control North-Eastern Rhodesia,” 1932–1939 (Secretariat files) (hereafter 3/525 Vol. I), Unknown author, “Tsetse Fly Control,” October 1, 1934; NAZ, SEC, 3/525 Vol. I, Provincial Commissioner Northern Province to the Chief Secretary, “Tsetse Fly: Abercorn,” June 25, 1935; NAZ, Government publications (hereafter GP), Box 163A, Veterinary Department, Annual Report 1936, 64–65.

13 NAZ, SEC, 3/525 Vol. I, C. Swynnerton, “A Late Dry-Season Investigation of the Tsetse Problem in the North of the Abercorn District,” October 29, 1935.

14 NAZ, SEC, 3/528 “Trypansosomiasis and Tsetse Control,” 1938–1939 (hereafter 3/528), “Minutes of Tsetse Fly Conference held at Abercorn on March 31st 1939”; NAZ, GP, Box 76E, Game and Tsetse Control Department (GTCD), Annual Report 1949, 9.

15 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Tsetse Control in Northern Rhodesia, General Report to 31st August 1943,” 1.

16 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, W.S. Steel, 1952, “Some Notes on Northern Rhodesia Tsetse Fly and their Relationship to Trypanosomiasis,” 1952, 14.

17 NAZ, SEC, 3/524 “Trypanosomiasis Investigations, Cooperation with Other Governments,” 1928–1936 (hereafter 3/524), Governor of Northern Rhodesia to Governor of Southern Rhodesia, May 21, 1928; NAZ, SEC, 3/524, Report of the Veterinary and Medical Conference, Salisbury, December 18, 1935.

18 NAZ, SEC, 3/524, Trypanosomiasis Bureau (Southern Rhodesia) to Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, January 24, 1936; NAZ, SEC, 3/540 “Trypanosomiasis Commissions and Conferences,” 1928–1937 (Secretariat files) (hereafter 3/540), Chief Veterinary Officer (Livingstone) to the Chief Secretary (Livingstone) Northern Rhodesia, April 23, 1929.

19 NAZ, SEC, 1/206 “Reports of Central African Council on Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis,” 1944–1947 (Secretariat files) (hereafter 1/206), Agreed Record of the First Meeting of the Council’s Standing Trypanosomiasis Committee on May 7, 1946.

20 NAZ, SEC, 3/530 “Trypanosomiasis and Tsetse Control General,” 1943–1944 (Secretariat files) (hereafter 3/530), Colonial Office (Downing Street) to the Chief Secretary of East African Governors Conference, December 19, 1942; NAZ, SEC, 3/530, Conference of Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Research and Control in East Africa, Nairobi, June 25–26, 1943.

21 NAZ, SEC, 3/530, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones to the Chief Secretary, March 14, 1944; NAZ, SEC, 3/530, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones to the Chief Secretary, September 26, 1944.

22 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Tsetse Control in Northern Rhodesia, General Report to 31st August 1943.”

23 NAZ, GP, Box 163A, Veterinary Department, Annual Reports 1935–1939.

24 Based on NAZ, SEC, 3/540, Northern Rhodesia Survey Department, “Tsetse Fly Distribution” (map), 1937.

25 According to Schauer (2019, 22), preservationists advocated for animals to be protected from any human interference, whilst conservationists preferred the sustainable management, including exploitation, of animals as resource.

26 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Game and Tsetse Control Department, Progress Report to 31st December 1943,” 2.

27 NAZ, SEC, 3/462 “Development Plans Game and Tsetse Department,” 1946–1947 (Secretariat files) (hereafter 3/462), T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Game and Tsetse Control Development Plan 1945–1955,” 1945, 4.

28 This points to the role of non-human beings — animals but also, in this case, insects and microorganisms — in shaping institutions (Tallberg and Hamilton 2022).

29 NAZ, GP, Box 76B, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “A Short Survey of the Aims and Functions of the Department of Game and Tsetse Control,” 1948, 12.

30 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Game and Tsetse Control Department, Progress Report to 31st December 1943,” 1.

31 NAZ, SEC, 3/530, Hansard Record December 10, 1943, Session at the Legislative Council, December 9, 1943; also NAZ, SEC, 1/206, “Agreed Record of Second Meeting of Standing Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Committee held in Lusaka on 27th June 27, 1946.”

32 NAZ, SEC, 1/206, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Notes on the Incidence of Rhodesia Sleeping Sickness in Northern Rhodesia,” April 24, 1946, 1.

33 Debates in the Northern Rhodesia Legislative Council in the 1940s show the concern of members of parliament with the difficulty in controlling the movements of the local population. NAZ, SEC, 3/530, extracts from sessions on June 12, 1940, and July 16, 1941.

34 NAZ, SEC, 3/537 “Tsetse Fly Control Legislation” (Secretariat files) (hereafter 3/537), Tsetse Control Ordinance, 1941.

35 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Game and Tsetse Control Department, Progress Report to 31st December 1943,” 5.

36 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Game and Tsetse Control Department, Progress Report to 31st December 1943,” 2.

37 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, GTCD, Annual Reports 1945–1958.

38 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, GTCD, Annual Reports 1945–1958; NAZ, SEC, 3/462, “Game and Tsetse Control Development Plan 1945–55.” Staff such as game wardens, rangers and scouts, or biologists from 1948 onwards, have cross-cutting functions, which sometimes included assisting tsetse control staff. In addition, veterinary, livestock and medical officers attached to other departments also collaborated with the GTCD.

39 The 1958 figure for tsetse control officers excludes officers on leave.

40 Based on NAZ, GP, Box 76E, GTCD, Annual Reports 1945, 1948–1950, 1954–1958. The reports mention that game elimination in Fort Jameson (Eastern Province) started in 1943.

41 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, GTCD, Annual Reports, 1945–1958.

42 NAZ, GP, Box 76C, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, 1938, “Memorandum on Policy Concerning the Foundation of a Game Department and the Conservation of Fauna in Northern Rhodesia,” 33.

43 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, W.S. Steel, 1952, “Some Notes on Northern Rhodesia Tsetse Fly and their Relationship to Trypanosomiasis,” 1952,” 14.

44 NAZ, SEC, 3/531 “Trypanosomiasis and Tsetse Control General Vol. II,” 1946–1948 (Secretariat files) (hereafter 3/531 Vol. II), T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones to the Chief Secretary, October 8, 1946.

45 NAZ, GP, Box 76C, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, 1938, “Memorandum on Policy Concerning the Foundation of a Game Department and the Conservation of Fauna in Northern Rhodesia”; NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Game and Tsetse Control Department, Progress Report to 31st December 1943.”

46 After the Second World War, national parks were also added and dedicated to wildlife protection and tourism development: NAZ, GP, Box 76E, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, “Tsetse Control in Northern Rhodesia, General Report to 31st August 1943,” 2.

47 NAZ, GP, Box 76C, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, 1938, “Memorandum on Policy Concerning the Foundation of a Game Department and the Conservation of Fauna in Northern Rhodesia,” 34.

48 Based on extracts from NAZ, GP, Box 76B, F. Fraser Darling, “A Report on Wild Life in Northern Rhodesia,” 1958.

49 NAZ, GP, Box 76C, T.G.C. Vaughan-Jones, 1938, “Memorandum on Policy Concerning the Foundation of a Game Department and the Conservation of Fauna in Northern Rhodesia,” 42.

50 Extracts from NAZ, GP, Box 76B, F. Fraser Darling, “A Report on Wild Life in Northern Rhodesia,” 1958.

51 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, W.S. Steel, 1952, “Some Notes on Northern Rhodesia Tsetse Fly and their Relationship to Trypanosomiasis,” 1952, 14.

52 Lyons (2002) also argues that the threat of trypanosomiasis was used as a tool of colonial domination in what she calls “medical imperialism.”

53 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, Department of Game and Fisheries, Annual Report 1959; NAZ, GP, Box 163A, Department of Veterinary and Tsetse Control Services, Annual Report 1959.

54 NAZ, GP, Box 76E, W.S. Steel, 1952, “Some Notes on Northern Rhodesia Tsetse Fly and their Relationship to Trypanosomiasis,” 1952, 12.

55 NAZ, SEC, 3/531, “Readers’ Views: How to Kill Fly and Save Game,” Bulawayo Chronicles, July 23, 1947; NAZ, SEC, 3/531, H.G. Maurice, “Game and the Tsetse: Avoiding Slaughter,” October 13, 1947; NAZ, SEC, 3/531, “New Line of Attack on Tsetse Fly,” Bulawayo Chronicles, January 6, 1948.

56 NAZ, GP, Box 163A, C. Evison and K.D.S. Kathuria, “An Introduction to the Status and Control of Tsetse (Glossina sp.) in Zambia,” 1982.

57 Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Control Section archive (hereafter TTCS), Department of Veterinary Services, A. Maseko, “The Final Report for the Zambian Component of the First and Second Phases of the RTTCP of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe 1987–2000.”

58 TTCS, K. Chilongo, “Report: Aerial Spraying for Tsetse Control in Parts of Sesheke and Shangombo Districts Implemented May-July 2009,” 2010; TTCS, K. Chilongo, “Preliminary Report: Aerial Spraying Operation for Tsetse Control in Parts of Sesheke/Mulobezi Districts in the Western Province — Undertaken June to September 2014,” 2014.
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