When the Rhodesian {now known as Zimbabwe} colonial administrators established the reserves as an area for the concentration of Africans in the Shangani forest, neither they nor the Africans thought the former would emerge to stage another takeover the latter’s land. It would be a different kind of take over though, one not of settling on the land, but of controlling the way the land was used – for the positive.

The background to this was the intensification of colonial regulation on all British colonies following the end of the Second World War. The British had lost their control over India and they felt the urge to ensure that their investment in Africa was efficient and profitable. As a result, British officials were deployed all over the rural areas of the colonies in Africa to ensure better agricultural performance.

In Rhodesia {now known as Zimbabwe}, urgent measures were taken to enforce conservation and improvement of farming efficiency in the reserves. Through such policy initiatives, met with some resistance from the Africans, the colonial government in Rhodesia achieved what some scholars have termed as the second colonial occupation or the colonial occupation of the Shangani. 

Since its establishment in the 1890s, the Shangani reserve had been administered as a single entity under the Native commissioner for Inyathi. By 1950 though, the reserve had been divided into two districts, Lupane and Nkayi.

Agricultural rules for reserve dwellers were spelt out and police were deployed to enforce them and where necessary prosecute offenders. In 1964 in Nkayi for instance, there were thousands of prosecutions of those who refused to dip their cattle. There were thousands of other prosecutions of those who refused to pay taxes. 

There was also a transformation in the official knowledge the Shangani area. By 1960, the whole of Nkayi district had been surveyed with plans for roads and land laid out.

All this new activity by the administrators came as a shock especially to the evictees. They had been told that once settled in the reserve, they would be left alone to do as they pleased, but now they protested to the administrators who had gone against their word behind their back. 

They felt cheated and unsure about their investments in their new land. They had paid dearly from the loss of their former homes and they did not want to lose again. 

Earlier settlers were also not too happy with the new policies which were also interfering with their freedom to farm the niches of land which they had identified as suitable for exploit. 

Due to the new policies, some of the Shangani dwellers were forced to lose their fertile land to the marginal areas which were often difficult to plough. To both evictees and the early settlers, the new order looked much like a new colonial occupation.