The Guinea Fowl Survived, but a European Died that Afternoon: Confronting Colonial Hunting Policy in Zimbabwe, 1965–1966

Abstract

At midnight on Tuesday, 11 May 1965, in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, Basil Johnson, a European farmer who occupied Petronella farm, telephoned the British South Africa Police (BSAP) and reported that his brother, David Patrick Johnson, had gone missing that afternoon. The next morning, the BSAP-led search team assembled at the Johnson homestead and mounted an eight-hour ‘sweep search’ for the whereabouts of David, whose body was later located on a bushy hill some seven miles from the Johnson homestead. This was followed by a seven-day search for the person who killed David, and, upon his arrest and charge of murder, a nine-months legal battle that would finally be settled by the highest court of the land, the Appellant Division of the High Court of Rhodesia. Taking a microhistory approach, this article traces the story of an African hunting excursion that turned fatal to analyse contradictory Western and African game ownership and hunting philosophies. Simultaneously, this story is also a lens to view other facets of colonial encounters: race, class, justice, the meaning of colonial borders, and African agency.