‘What Then Happened To Our Eden?’: The Long History of Lozi Secessionism, 1890–2013

This article contributes to revisionist interpretations of Zambian history by exploring both the development of Lozi secessionism over the course of the twentieth century and its present manifestations. Starting with the origins of Lozi particularism in the challenges mounted by the Lozi elite to Northern Rhodesia's early colonial dispensation, it traces the dynamics of subsequent contests between the Lozi, colonial and imperial governments, and emerging African nationalists. Following the negotiations which culminated in the signing of the Barotseland Agreement on the eve of independence, the article describes the movement's postcolonial trajectory from its apparent collapse in the face of an antagonistic Zambian state to its resurgence following the end of the one-party state. Lozi secessionism draws deeply on notions of a powerful precolonial polity to articulate an alternative political vision, but, as this article contends, persistence of Lozi secessionism over the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, does not reflect a primordial attachment to ethnicity and polity. It is instead a movement fed by a particularism bred of resentment and poverty. The course of Lozi secessionism over the twentieth century, and its persistence into the twenty-first, must be understood in light of this history and the ends to which successive generations of Lozi secessionists have put their interpretation of it in the face of changing political and economic circumstances.