A Better Mousetrap

The Batonga tribe, some 50,000 strong, has survived for more than 500 years on the banks of the Zambesi where it flows through the steaming, fertile Gwembe Valley between Southern and Northern Rhodesia. Nature has guarded them, for their valley lies between the foaming splendor of the 350-ft.-high Victoria Falls, over whose sheer cliff pours 75 million gallons of water per minute, and a narrow, rock-walled gorge called the Kariba by the tribesmen because of its resemblance to the funnel-shaped traps they set for mice, rats and other small animals.

Quilled Noses. The centuries have been mostly peaceful ones for the Batonga. They plant and reap two crops a year. The great tribal wars to the southeast between the Mashona and the fierce Matabele were only a distant rumbling. To frustrate Arab slave raiders, the Batonga took a typical way out: their women were ordered to knock out their four upper incisors and insert porcupine quills and twigs through holes bored in their noses. Object: to lessen their attractiveness and, therefore, their value in the slave marts. When the white men arrived and broke the power of the Matabele with guns and treaties, the Batonga submitted quietly and kept on as before.

But in 1955 the turbulent present caught up with the age-old ways of the Batonga. In Salisbury, the decision was made to build a dam across the Kariba gorge to get the power needed for heavy industry and the copper mines. The dam would turn the Gwembe Valley into the world's largest man-made lake, storing 130 million acre-ft. of water--more than the combined capacity of the Shasta, Hoover and Grand Coulee dams in the American West. Soon the Kariba gorge, which had been inhabited only by crocodiles, hippos and an occasional Batonga hunter, echoed to the roar of earth-moving equipment.

Upland Air. The government had not forgotten the docile Batonga. Official spokesmen appeared, told the tribesmen they were to be moved to more fertile land. The officials conceded that parts of the new area were infested with lions, elephants and the tsetse fly, but they were sure the Batonga would find the upland air bracing after centuries of breathing the swampy vapors of the Gwembe Valley.

The bewildered Batonga were further unsettled by the arrival of zoot-suited agitators from the African National Congress who told them the government scheme was merely a plot to steal their ancestral land. When the dam began rising in tHe gorge, the agitators took a different tack, began selling magic tickets to the villagers that guaranteed that the "white man's wall" would be overthrown by the most potent god in Batonga mythology: the mighty Snake of the Zambesi, whose whiskers are the spray of Victoria Falls and whose tail stretches 250 miles to the Kariba gorge.

Queen's Words. When the police arrived to evict the Batonga, some diehard villagers would not move. Said a government official: "I told them that the words I was saying were the Queen's words and asked them if they would refuse the Queen's words. They said they did refuse the Queen's words." And with that unexpected defiance, the long docile Batonga erupted in a brief spasm of fury. Some 500 young tribesmen, armed with spears and pointed sticks, charged the police, were promptly scattered by a volley of gunfire which killed eight and wounded 22.

The engineers of the Italian contractors last week plugged the last gaps on the upstream side of the Kariba dam with 20,000 tons of rock and gravel. For the first time in history, the mighty Zambesi River was stopped dead in its tracks and the backed-up water rose slowly over islands, mud flats and deserted native villages. As for the evicted Batonga, they were safely huddled in their new upland homes, shivering in the unaccustomed chill and listening to the roar of lions and the buzz of the tsetse fly. The great Snake of the Zambesi had clearly failed them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.