Maize, Cattle and Mosquitoes: the Political Economy of Malaria Epidemics in Colonial Swaziland

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Abstract
Malaria was a major health problem in Swaziland during the colonial period. Prior to the commencement of vector control measures in the late 19405 annual outbreaks of malaria occurred during the summer and autumn months from December to May. These seasonal epidemics incapacitated large numbers of Swazis as well as a few Europeans. During most years the epidemic was limited to the lower regions of the country and was marked by relatively few deaths. In other years, however, the annual epidemic spread throughout the country and was accompanied by a high rate of mortality especially among young children. Colonial medical opinion ascribed these major epidemics to abnormally heavy rainfall and increased vector breeding. Yet they were also a product of long-term trends in the Swaziland political economy – the semi-proletarianization of Swazi herdsmen/cultivators and the subordination of Swazi economic interests to those of South African and local European capital - which produced a state of nutritional vulnerability among many Swazi families. This, vulnerability in combination with short-term economic crises, such as the worldwide depression of the early 19305, and drought, gave rise to famine conditions which greatly increased the severity of subsequent outbreaks of malaria, as seen in the histories of the major epidemics of 1932 and 1946.

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