Ecologies of Pain in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather

Mary Louisa Cappelli

Vol-6,Issue-2,March - April 2021

Author: Mary Louisa Cappelli

Keywords: Bessie Head, Botswana, modern capitalism, ecological apartheid, ecological genocide, rural marginalization, sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, ecofeminism, agribusiness, postcolonial literature, African literature, When Rain Clouds Gather.

Abstract: Bessie Head’s first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, is perhaps one of her most ethico-political narratives to examine the introduction of modern capitalism and patriarchal science against the haunting spectral of traditional tribal systems in pre-Independence Botswana. Set in Golema Mmidi, which ironically translates to “grow crops,” Head provides a detailed historical trajectory of how the imposition of agribusiness development projects onto traditional pastoral livelihoods devoured traditional tribal structures and ecosystems. In this essay, I examine how the implementation of modernized agricultural technology supplanted the collective relationship of subsistence farming, kinship systems, and cattle herding. I argue that When Rain Clouds Gather offers an interdisciplinary space for probing ecologies of pain in which scientific agribusiness projects have violently separated humanity from nature and rendered 63 percent of the Botswana’s population food insecure.

Article Info: Received: 18 Jan 2021; Received in revised form: 19 Mar 2021; Accepted: 03 Apr 2021; Available online: 27 Apr 2021

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.62.56