ABSTRACT
Richard Grove’s main attention is to the ideas and actions of colonizers. By contrast Nancy Jacobs here looks at the lives and thoughts of formerly colonized people, in the Kuruman region of South Africa. Images developed through the socio-environmental approach to the history of Kuruman will be reflected in histories of other places – in southern Africa and in other parts of the continent. The extremely low level of phosphates in the soil and the high price of fertilizer, not to mention the lack of water, suggest that cultivation will not be a cost-effective option in the near future. Most fundamentally, however, it is necessary to recognize that environmental and social justice are linked and that power imbalances will determine the ways men and women, rich and poor, and blacks and whites live with each other and the natural world.
