ABSTRACT
Water is a vital economic resource, the management of which has become increasingly politicised over the millennia of human existence. In southern Africa, water becomes a critical issue when there is either a shortage of or an abundance of rainfall, with both scenarios having negative consequences for communities. This chapter shows some of these issues by examining the role of water in shaping human cultures in southern Zambezia, the region dominated by the Zambezi, Limpopo, Shashe, Save and Runde rivers. The region witnessed the development and the decline or demise of complex socio-political systems, since the late first millennium ce, where water played a decisive role. This also impacted on neighbouring small-scale societies. There is no evidence to suggest that precolonial societies, particularly major states in Zambezia, required large-scale irrigation works to manage their arid to semi-arid environments, such as those found in Asian and Central American civilisations.
