‘Even the calves must dip’: East Coast Fever, Africans and the Imposition of Dipping Tanks in Southern Rhodesia, c.1902–1930

This article utilises dipping tanks as a lens to understanding the relationship between African livestock owners and the colonial state. More specifically, it discusses how East Coast Fever influenced the introduction of the systematic dipping of livestock, and reshaped the nature of veterinary interactions in Southern Rhodesia in general, and the African reserves in particular. It draws on but challenges Colin Bundy's argument that from the late nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century developments in Eastern Griqualand, a similar colonial context to that in Southern Rhodesia, were closely shaped by the disease environment, and that change in rural communities was increasingly forced upon Africans through veterinary interventions.