Cattle as Capital

Cattle represented humane capital in pre-colonial Zimbabwe. Cattle  were used in agriculture and they represented a store of wealth. The use of cattle in traditional marriage meant cattle helped families come together, as families which recieved cattle from marrying off their daughters could use these cattle to get wives for male members of the family. Families, in commune, would hold a stock of inherited lineage cattle. Furthermore, the fact cattle raising skills were passed from one generation to the next meant; if drought or pestilence decimated stocks they could be easilly rebuilt. Cattle, as a means of facillitating family union, represented a form of social capital which was non-expolitative in nature.

Marx studied the exploitative role of capital using neo-liberal analytic approaches. Capitalist and neo-liberal economists look at capital as a means of production which facillitates self-interest and profit. Given the biased nature of both capitalistic and socialist analyses of capital, the true nature of capital as the power in extractive exploitative interaction was not emphasised. Capital is power, regardless of whether it is productive or financial in origin.

The power of capital has been clarified in neo-colonial financial arrangements and the role of multi-lateral aid agencies. In Zimbabwe, this has meant during years of aid reciept, more aid repayment goes out compared to resources coming. Zimbabwe should learn from the past, anti-social or exploitative capital is not self replecating. The country needs technological training to rebuild all the capital lost since 1975, for just as cattle raising you cannot rebuild without skills. The cattle owners of old knew it was taboo to use any form of wealth, or capital, to entice and seduce the underprivileged. Today, the wealthy in society are not using their wealth to build and support communal capital. Worse they are not building the capital that was lost.