Under the terms of the grant, I went with my colleague, Tabona Shoko of the University of Zimbabwe, in July and August 2004, to two regions of Zimbabwe: Mount Darwin in the northeast, where recent activities by war veterans and spirit mediums had been reported, and to the Mberengwa District, where land resettlement programmes have been widespread. Since spirit mediums had played such an important role in the first Shona uprising in 1896–97 against colonial occu¬pation (the so-called First Chimurenga) (Parsons, 1985: 50-51) and again in the war of liberation between 19 (the Second Chimurenga) (Lan, 1985), I suspected that these central points of contact between the spirit world and the living communities would be affecting the sometimes militant invasions of white commercial farms that began sporadically in 1998, but became systematic after the constitutional referendum of February 2000.
For cannabis and inhalants, no relationship with local cultural orientation was demonstrated.Įarlier this year, I received a small grant from the Edinburgh University Development Trust Fund to determine the feasibility of formulating a major research project exploring the religious dimensions within the recent land resettlement programme in Zimbabwe. Use of all four drugs was positively associated with global cultural orientation, whereas local cultural orientation was negatively associated with use of alcohol and tobacco. For cannabis and inhalants use, the social distribution differed from that of alcohol and tobacco in that the subgroups low and high on the socio-economic dimension scored highest. Results showed that self-reported drug use in general varied between the social groups and that experience increased with increasing socioeconomic status. Exploratory principal component analyses revealed a 2-factor solution, representing a Global and a Local cultural orientation dimension. Cultural orientation was operationalised by means of a Likert-type 14-item scale on choice of media, language and music. Stratification was based on the identification of four different socio-cultural groups. Data collection followed international standardised procedures. Respondents were selected by means of a two-stage random sample design. The lifetime prevalence and measures of more frequent use of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and inhalants are presented as well as an analysis of the relationship between drug use and social and cultural predictors. A classroom survey among 3 211 secondary-school students was conducted in four provinces in Zimbabwe in 1994.
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