The separation of the agricultural and non-agricultural sections of the Native population would remove some of the chief hindrances to good farming. For industry it would change the character of labor supply.[The Engledow Report, 1950]1
In 1951 the Rhodesian settler state passed the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLH Act) and characterised its provisions as `a five year plan that will revolutionize African agriculture'2 in the reserves. It was intended to stabilize the rural population and put an end to labour migration. These objectives would be achieved by preventing the fragmentation of peasant-held land beyond the theoretical limits at which, under favourable husbandry conditions, a holding was supposed to provide a modest standard of existence; and second, by placing, through the allocation of individual arable and grazingrights, the responsibility for essential conservation of land and water in the hands of individually accountable persons. The scheme would cover 21 million acres at a cost of £7 million, of which £4 million would come from forced contribution by the peasant farmers. The Minister of Native Affairs, Patrick Fletcher, described the scheme as `unique and probably one of the most extensive of its kind ever attempted in Africa.'3 He was probably right in both respects but no such revolution took place. By 1960, when implementation of the Act should have been completed, only 60 percent of the reserves had been brought under certain of its provisions and only 33 percent had been brought under individual tenure.4 Instead, the Act helped to fuel African opposition to the regime's land policy and was exploited by the nationalist movement to challenge settler rule itself.
While critical of the authoritarian approach and the impact of the Act, commentators such as J.F. Holleman and Malcolm Rifkind failed to grasp the exploitative intentions of the settler regime. Holleman concluded that the Act was `designed in a genuine effort to serve the best interests of the rural African population.'5 Rifkind was even more praiseworthy of the act when he characterised it as `one of the most progressive measures instigated in Africa.'6 The fact of the matter is that Government imposed improvements in the reserves were meant to support a wide system of exploitation in which a section of the peasantry, stripped of its land and stock, would maintain a supply of cheap labour.
The opposition to and failure of the Act provide important lessons to the post-independence government in its resettlement program since it too has adopted the central objective of the NLH Act which entailed institutionalised proletarianisation of a part of the peasantry by separating it from its main means of production, land. In order to understand why colonial agrarian change from above failed, it is necessary to state briefly the context in which the NLH Act was formulated.
The history of settler land expropriation in Zimbabwe and its impact on peasant agriculture and general economic well-being have been well documented.7 The process started with colonization and culminated in the Land Apportionment Act of 1930. Briefly stated, the above Act divided the country's 96 million acres as follows: 49 million acres for settlers, 29 million acres for Africans and the remainder was either unassigned to any racial group or was designated game reserve or forestry. Settlers came to regard the Act as their Magna Carta, the cornerstones of their society. As Premier Coghlan told the all-settler Legislative Assembly in 1927, `this is essentially a country where the white man has come and desires to stay, and he can only be certain of doing so if he has certain portions of the country made his exclusively.'8 Both the development of settler capitalist agriculture and the underdevelopment of the African agricultural sector and indeed the economic position of Africans generally, were intimately linked to settler land expropriation.
Even after additional land had been added to the reserves by subsequent amendments of the Act, African producers were, if anything, worse off in view of population increase and lack of credit and other facilities in the reserves. In 1964 Yudelman noted that settlers occupied 98 percent of the region suited for dairying and fruit farming, and 82, 67 and 60 percent respectively of the three other zones suited for intensive production. He went on: `In short, 70 percent of the 32,900 square miles that comprise the area suitable for intensive production have been earmarked for Europeans use.'9 And yet the colonial state still expected and required African farmers to practice intensive cultivation on land not suited for it.
Already in 1930, E.D. Alvord, agriculturalist in the Native Department, was reporting that -
On many Reserves the populations are dense and they are heavily stocked with cattle so that much of the area is what we term old, worn out Native lands. On these Reserves we are trying to induce the people to centralise their arable lands and set aside permanent grazing lands for their cattle. It is not our intention to necessarily encourage greater production, but rather to reduce the area under cultivation and to encourage better methods on smaller lands in order that people may grow sufficient for their needs and more land may be available for grazing purposes.10
It was not state policy to encourage Africans to produce for the market: the objective of `Native Development' was merely to enable the reserves to accommodate more peasants expelled from land expropriated for settler occupation. The center piece of this policy which began around 1926, was the centralization of dispersed villages, institution of broad conservative measures, demarcation of arable and grazing lands and the appointment of African agricultural demonstrators to advise peasants on better farming methods. In the process of re-locating residential, arable and grazing lands the large cultivator and stockowner, who was viewed by officials as a menace to soil erosion, had limitations placed on his access to land. As a means to raise production, centralization was generally a failure. As the chief technician behind it, Alvord later admitte `We have wasted our time for 17 years in conducting agricultural demonstrations work.' The results had been poor and he placed the blame on what he called the African's failure to change and adopt new farming methods. He concluded that African peasant farmers `will never change without compulsion and control'11 and called upon the state to adopt `drastic methods' to combat the deteriorating ecological conditions in the reserves.
The problem did not, however, lie with the peasants but with the poor and crowded land assigned to them by colonial rule, grossly inadequate technical services and the total lack of credit facilities. As Arthur Pendered of the Native Affairs Department pointed out in 1947: `One of the chief reasons for the weakness of the African as a producer is his almost complete lack of capital resources... and of suitable institutions for the accumulation of it.'12 The Land and Agriculture Bank which was formed in 1924 and was crucial to the success and indeed the very survival of settler agriculture during the hard years of the late 1920's and early 1930's, served `persons of white descent only.'13
The quality of land for the African rural petit bourgeoisie in the Native Purchase Areas (NPA) created under the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, was not significantly better. As Jennings, the Assistant Director of Native Lands, pointed out in 1935, the availability of land not yet given or sold to settlers became almost the determining factor in deliminating NPA's since large tracts of land had already been expropriated for settlers by the time of the Land Apportionment Act.14 Even then, the best of the remaining land was reserved for future white settlement. The result was that land set aside for NPA's was generally remote and far away from communication lines. It was common in official circles and for Commissions of Enquiry to talk and write of areas `suitable for Europeans', and by the same token meaning those already not suitable for settlers were the ones to be assigned to Africans. State officials publicly stated that `the European requires a certain standard of living' and that he could `hardly be reduced to bare subsistence farming.'15
While no different from other settlers in their unquestioned belief in the righteousness of the settler land expropriation, Pendered and von Memrty of the Native Affairs Department nevertheless aptly summed up the impact on the African population. They wrote in 1955:
The coming of the European and the setting apart of the reserves... placed restrictions upon ...the free movement in search of new land. In addition to this since 1902 the African population has increased fourfold and the cattle population has increased thirty-five times. These factors working together have destroyed the system of shifting farming, have increased the pressure upon the soil to such an extent as to endanger the natural resources and have resulted, in many areas, in the fragmentation of the arable land down to uneconomic bits and pieces.16
They noted that over half of the reserves were in a state of `over-population and excess fragmentation', and concluded that:
It is quite obvious that if all this population was permanently at home and had to derive its entire livelihood from farming then economically the outlook would be a poor one. The saving grace, again from the economic standpoint, is that at any one time 50 percent of the adult male population are away at work in the European area.17
The land situation for Africans had become particularly acute in the post-World War II agricultural boom when both the state and private landlords were selling large tracts of land to white ex-servicemen and new settler arrivals in a big way.18 For example, in 1946 the Acting Provincial Native Commissioner (PNC) for Bulawayo was writing desperately to the Chief Native Commissioner (CNC)that,
There has been considerable previous correspondence regarding the removal of native tenants from alienated land in the Essexvale area. We have now been called upon to transfer others. As you are aware there is not a square inch of ground available for settlement of natives in the District... As I have stated on previous occasions the position is rapidly approaching a climax.19
In a letter of the same year to the PNC (Gwelo), the NC for Selukwa summed up the experience of a number of other NC's:
My minute of the 29th October last informed you that 289 persons with 432 head of cattle have been given notice to vacate these farms by October 1947. I have nowhere to put these people and would again ask what is to be done?20
The CNC had in fact provided an `answer' to the above questions in his 1944 annual report when he stated that implementation of the provisions of the Land Apportionment Act `presents a problem of some magnitude'. He went on: `Not only are some Native Reserves... overstocked, but some are over-populated, and until it is possible to find and develop water resources in a number of Reserves... the overflow of the population will continue and removal of natives from the European area will not be possible.'21 In 1947 a joint report of the Department of Lands and Native Affairs stated that `the net Colony position is that the Government has to provide land for 71,182 excess African families.'22 Despite the evidence of overpopulation, the settler regime continued to place the blame for the ecological disaster in the Reserves on peasant farming methods. While Native Affairs Department officials protested against African evictions they did not do so out of moral outrage but simply because they were presented with a problem from above. As Chief Native Commissioner Powys-Jones protested to the Prime Minister in 1947, his Department `was constantly pestered with Department of Lands requests to turn off Natives from land which that Department of Lands requests to turn off Natives from land which that Department has sold and by private companies who in the past have been only too glad to make money out of the rents paid by Natives.'23
There was no land shortage as such but African socio-economic interests were being sacrificed at the alter of settler political and economic hegemony. And to this end any solutions to the African's land crisis were sought within the severe limitations of the Land Apportionment Act. A government report stated in 1949, that `large tracts of useful land in European areas [are] lying idle because of the large size of the farms or through being held for speculative purposes. The present owners of a very considerable number of farms are not even known or cannot be traced.'24 In 1956 a Select Committee appointed by Premier Todd reported that `it is clear that the present percentage of European-held land under crops, approximately 3 to 4 percent, is deplorably low.'25 Independent scholars reported more or less similar low percentages. Barber calculated that `in 1956-57 only 2 1/2 percent of... the European farming area was under crops.'26 Floyd noted that in 1957 only 1,100,000 acres were under the plough in the settler area - about 2 percent of the total land allocated to whites.27 Finally, Yudelman observed that `about 15 percent of the European areas are suitable for cultivation; 3 percent were used for cultivation in 1961 [mostly for tobacco and maize]; 10 million of European land were still unalienated.'28
It was in the light of our exposition of the land question above that from 1941 the settler state began in earnest to take drastic measures to deal with the deteriorating ecological conditions in the reserves. But the proposed `solutions' left the Land Apportionment Act intact and this was to contribute enormously to African opposition to the implementation of the NLH Act in the 1950's. The deleterious effects of over-grazing in the reserves led the state to pass the Natural Resources Act of 1941 which, inter alia, called for compulsory de-stocking in many African areas. By 1944 about half of the reserves carried 927,000 large stock and yet the estimated carrying capacity was only 645,000 head.29 That year saw the publication of Government Notice No. 612 which ordered compulsory de-stocking of `excess' stock (on a pro-rata basis) in forty Reserves, heralding the beginning of numerous compulsory conservation measures.
The Director of Agriculture reported at the end of 1945 that his staff had been mobilized for the de-stocking program and that, `cattle sales were organized, inferior stock were culled and in over-stocked areas surplus stock were marketed for disposal by sales, slaughter or exchange.'30 Not only was this policy depriving African peasants of their `stored' wealth, but the proceeds from these sales were pretty meagre. The main buyers at these state-organized sales were settler speculators and auctioneers who `formed rings and fleeced the peasants.'31
The de-stocking program met with fierce African opposition, refusal to dip cattle being the chief weapon. In this regard it should be noted that the whole system of stock control centered on the dip tank, compulsory weekly dipping of cattle against tick-bourne diseases being general. Any inquiry about how a certain control was achieved always led back to the dip card. Every stockholder had a dip card and, at each dipping, the card had to be entered upon by the dip attendant, and the owner had to explain the reason for any increase or decrease. Both large and small stock were registered, and changes were entered on the card. A further indication of the seriousness with which the settler state viewed the issue of stock control in African areas can be gathered from the fact that donkeys, for which no market existed, were bought by the Government at nominal prices at de-stocking markets, slaughtered and buried rather than allowing them to remain as a menace to the land.
While the Natural Resources Act had begun to deal firmly with the problem of over-stocking, the problem of declining yields and fragmentation of holdings remained to be dealt with. In 1944 the Report of the [Godlonton] Commission on Native Production and Trade32 expressed pessimism about the development of African agriculture on the basis of measure taken up to that time. But the Commission did not question the impact of the Land Apportionment Act on African agriculture. It advanced a contradictory argument saying that there was `plenty of land to spare although much of it is at present in uneconomical zones.'33 Rather, it blamed what it called lack of good husbandry practices and want of leadership in African areas. According to the Commission the great majority of the peasants had been `indifferent, suspicious and hostile' to agricultural demonstrators. It therefore advocated an authoritarian scheme, enforcing good husbandry in African agriculture by legislative and administrative means and to be applied more swiftly than the Natural Resources act of 1941.
The Commission went so far as to work out that under optimum conditions (high rainfall, crop rotation and use of manure and proper marketing), a six-acre plot and a basic herd of six large stock were sufficient to provide subsistence and a little cash for an average African family. It even recommended the creating of a statutory board to direct what crops and acreages should be planted and what livestock should be kept. While the Commission deplored the unhealthy social atmosphere created by migrant labour in the Reserves and recognized the need to stabilize the respective careers of peasant farmers and urban workers, it avoided the fundamental issue of wages for urban workers on the grounds that it was `outside the scope of the study.'34 The `reforms' recommended for the Reserves would held maintain land segregation which had caused overcrowding in the first place.
In his Report for 1946 the CNC questioned the effectiveness of de-stocking as a means of control and advocated the limitation of grazing and arable rights: `... a Native will either become a peasant farmer only, adopting proper agricultural and soil conservation methods, or become an industrialised worker,with his tentacles pulled out of the soil.'35 The following year the CNC repeated his warning and stated bluntly: `To reduce the carrying capacity of many reserves on the present population, will make the holdings quite uneconomical, so some solution will have to be found somewhere. There is not enough land available for all Natives to be both wage earners and peasant farmers.' It is in these earlier reports and recommendations that the basic solutions sought in the NLH Act must be located. The Godlonton Commission, for example, not only produced the basic principles of the LH Act as well as the ideological justification for coercive action, but also included as its secretary, Arthur Pendered, who drafted the Land Utilization and Good Husbandry Bill four years later.
By 1950 it had become quite clear to the settler regime that small additional lands to the reserves, hived off NPA's and state-held land (still to be sold to settlers), were at best providing a very temporary safety valve to the ecological crisis in the reserves. But as already noted, settlers were not prepared to abolish their Magna Carta and institute radical land reform.
The Engledow Report of 1950 re-emphasised some of the views advocated earlier on by the Godlonton Report and officials of the Native Department. Engledow pointed out that about 70 percent of the able-bodied males of the nominal reserve population was each year spending varying durations outside in wage employment. He questioned whether industry, commerce and urban employment could maintain their traditional reliance `on what is, in effect, a special form of causal labour without jeopardising the food supply of the country.' Engledow went on to advise that:
The separating of the agricultural and non-agricultural sections of the Native population would remove some of the chief hindrances to good farming. For industry it would change the character of labour supply.36
The basic idea expressed above was not new. The Native Reserves Commission of 1914-15 had stated that in view of the increasing African population, not every African could expect to till land or own cattle. The statement amounted to a rejection of clan law or custom and was probably the first official sign of a developing ideology that African traditions must sooner or later be forced to yield to the values of the new capitalist order. Although this suggestion was made in 1915, it had a singularly modern ring in the 1950's because it expressed one of the cardinal principles behind the Native Land Husbandry Act (henceforth LH Act).
Engledow's views partly represented the interests of industry whose growth had been speeded up by war-time shortages, and had begun to erode the dominant influence of capitalist agriculture. The growth of the manufacturing sector called for a different labour process from that in agriculture which was content with migrant and seasonal labour. An indication of this growth can be gathered from the fact that the net output of manufacturing industries rose from nearly £4 million in 1938 to over £38 million in 1952. In 1938 the manufacturing industry generated one-seventh of the net income produced in S. Rhodesia; by 1955 it was producing a quarter.37
It was this structural change in the country's economy which had led Premier Huggins to tell the Legislative Assembly as early as 1944 that,
...there is the need of secondary industry for an efficient, stable labour force... the provisions of decent accommodation for married natives is essential if the native is to become more efficient and good at his job and unless we can improve the native workers... there is little future for this country.38
While in 1930 the Land Apportionment Act made no provision for permanent African urban residence, by 1944 Huggins and his government envisaged permanent African urban residence. As Arrighi has noted, that he institutional framework established in the 1930's no longer reflected the underlying class interests, and in consequence a series of reforms were attempted by the government.'39 Besides the labour needs of the secondary industry, Huggins stated bluntly that the government could not go on forever finding more land for Africans `to live on whilst the male has another home in the town location'.
From the foregoing we can conclude that the state sought to achieve the following inter-related objectives in its proposed peasant land `reform': (a) to change the character of land ownership and, in this way, arrest the ecological disaster in the reserves and in that way avoid settlers having to give up the Land Apportionment Act; (b) to make peasant agriculture produce more of the country's view in view of settler concentration on the far more lucrative tobacco industry and the resultant post-war food deficits; and (c) to stabilize labour for secondary industry. It was in this context that the LH Act was passed.
The government policy document on the LH Act stated that migrant workers in the reserves kept `one foot in the reserves while dabbling in some paid occupation and tends to be grossly inefficient in both.'40 P.B. Fletcher, the Minister of Native Affairs put the government's new policy in nutshell during the debate on the Land Husbandry Bill:
The natives must realize that, if they want to become great people and to make a contribution to the development of Africa, they must face the fact that, as the years go by, a smaller percentage of their people will be able to engage in agriculture. Greater and greater numbers must seek a future in industrial development because there is no future for all natives living on the land taking one another's washing.41
Part I of the Act dealt with good farming practices and provided powers to enforce the provisions. Failure to carry out `good farming regulations' was punishable by a fine of 1 for a first offense, 5 for a second and 15 for a third offense. For grazing without a grazing right (see below), the penalty was forced sale of the beast. For cultivation without an arable right the penalty was confiscation of the harvest which was then sold and the proceeds paid to the Native Development Fund.42 Part III dealt with grazing rights and sought to limit the number of stock in any area to its carrying capacity. The Act granted individual grazing rights on communal grazing land (i.e. land outside the arable blocks). Compulsory weekly dipping aided officials to check that peasant farmers did not exceed their permitted number of stock. `Excess' stock as well as stock belonging to those without arable rights had to be got rid of - either by slaughter or sale.43
Part II and perhaps the cornerstone of the Act provided farming rights in arable land in terms of `economic units', that is, six acres in high rainfall areas and progressively more in the drier areas. Holders of arable rights in the high rainfall areas would be allowed 6 large stock or 12 small stock or a combination of both, it being assumed that one large stock could provide sufficient manure for one arable acre. Where full `economic units' could not be granted because of overpopulation, individual allocation would at least prevent further fragmentation of holdings. It was hoped that individual fixed holdings would enable the state to force the peasant farmers to implement measures against soil erosion. By limiting and `equalizing' arable and grazing rights the Act dealt a telling blow to the enterprising peasant farmer and stock raiser whom officials regarded as a villain in the war against erosion.44 Nevertheless by allowing what was regarded as progressive farmers to purchase from fellow peasants up to three standard units of each of the two land categories (subject to the approval of the NC), the Act sought to re-create class divisions in the Reserves under a controlled ecological regime.
Part IV set aside land for townships and business centers in the reserves, where it was hoped, some of the landless peasants would find a new livelihood. Given that most industrial workers were living below the Governments own Poverty Datum Line (for Africans, see below), the `new livelihood' in the rural townships could only mean abject poverty for most of those driven to live there. Part V stipulated that peasants would be subject to call-up `to perform labour in the direct interest of the native inhabitants... in connection with the conservation of natural resources.' A contracted peasant would be paid a nominal wage, or as the Act put it, `not less than the ruling current wages in the native district concerned for the class of work he is required to perform.'45 This was clearly forced labour since failure to comply with a call-up order would result in a fine or imprisonment.
In theory the procedure for land allocation went like this: an initial survey of a reserve was made, recording the number of people, services, livestock, topography and land cultivated by each family. Plans were then drawn for the best use of the land and sites for villages marked. Roads and bridges were planned and mechanical conservation measures such as grass strips along contours, contour ridges and storm drains would be undertaken. On the basis of the initial survey, an assessment committee46 would consider the man-land and animal-land ratio i.e. the size of the standard holding and the carrying capacity of the grazing land. The area would then be proclaimed in the Government Gazette as coming under the LH Act. Allocation of land rights on the basis of the recommendations of the assessment committee would then start (those not actually working on the land at this time ceased to have any land rights). All rights were registered with the NC and ceased on the death of the individual concerned, or if after due warning, he or she failed to carry out any of the provisions of the Act. None of the rights could be used as collateral to borrow money, but an owner of a land right could nominate a successor with the approval of the NC.
In many cases, houses and holdings had to be re-located and this naturally led to peasant hostility against the government's local agents - the white Land Development Officer and his African agricultural demonstrators (see below). Because of the enormous size of the areas involved and the speed with which the Act was implemented, enormous errors were often made. Even the rough population census was often grossly inaccurate because of the difficulties between the field officer and the people,and such errors proved difficult to correct after implementation, particularly in densely populated areas, without generating further ill-will.
Overall it was hoped that implementation of the Act would conserve the natural resources of the Reserves, maintain and improve peasant subsistence agriculture as well as producing surpluses for sale. It was estimated that once the Act had been fully implemented, a monogamous peasant family could support itself at subsistence level and also obtain a cash income of about 75 per year from surplus production. Eventually the regime hoped that successful cultivators would expand their holdings while the less successful would either leave for the towns or else take up employment as farm labourers.
The following summary points may now be made. First, while the Act attacked the large cattle owner and the large arable farmer whose extensive methods were blamed for soil erosion, it also sought to recreate and maintain rural class divisions under desirable ecological conditions. In an attempt to bolster the tottering power of the regime's administrative agents on the ground, the Chiefs and Headman, the Act gave NC's powers to grant these people more than the standard arable holding and to graze more cattle than those prescribed commoners in a given area. Indeed, the negotiability of arable and grazing rights enshrined in the act was explicitly designed to produce different classes of farmers in the Reserves. As the CNC pointed out in 1955:
It still remains for the holder of farming and grazing rights to realize the monetary negotiability of these rights, when they do, the implication of the Native Land Husbandry Act will be appreciated more than ever.47
Clearly efforts were being made under the Act to bring peasant property relations into line with the dominant productive relations so as to ensure that peasant production would be adapted to and supplement capitalist production. As the CNC noted above, it was hoped that once implemented, the traditional customs regarding land use and land transfer in African society would give way to market forces. Yudelman has commente `The use of land was to be regulated in accordance with the economic principles in practice elsewhere in the capitalist world.'48 It is no wonder that the World Bank provided a loan of over 3 million pounds to help finance the scheme.
The second point is linked to the first. Threatened by post-war anti-colonial struggle throughout Africa and faced by the need to sell the federation `solution' to Britain, the settler regime hoped that the LH Act programme would also serve a useful political purpose. Thus all three major British political parties were brought to the LH Act. As late as 1960 John Thompson of the Liberal Party was maintaining that
energetic steps had been taken with regard to African agriculture. The abolition of communal tenure, measures against soil erosion, the reduction of the size of cattle herds; and the introduction of farming for profit - rather than subsistence - are all helping to end the overcrowding and inefficient farming which have been the two twin evils of the native reserves...49
The third point is that government planners were somehow confident that the `economic unit' would provide a livelihood for peasant families without the need to seek supplementary employment in the towns. Indeed, it was estimated that 300,000 to 350,000 families would be stabilised in the Reserves in this way. Such a development would result in a division of labour between agriculturalists and wage earners, thereby meeting the demands of industry for skilled and semi-skilled labour. As senior Native Department officials confidently noted in 1955: `The industrialisation of the Colony utilises large labour forces and this is the economic salvation of the population for whom there is no longer space to farm.'50
The fourth point relates to the speed of implementation. Initially this was slow - partly due to peasant resistance but, more importantly, due to manpower and financial limitations. In 1952 the Act was fully applied to one Reserve, Chinyika, in Goromonzi District. Chinamora Reserve came under the full act in 1953. Implementation had been completed in a third Reserve by the end of 1954 and work was progressing in 12 others. Only 3829 individual farming rights had been granted by mid-1955 i.e. a mere one percent of the land in the Reserves.51 The regime was so worried about the worsening ecological conditions in the Reserves that in 1955 it outlined a five-year programme of accelerated implementation to cover 26.8 million acres by 1960. Virtually all the resources of the Department of Native Agriculture were mobilized to that end, resulting in neglect of extension work and direct capital inputs in peasant agriculture. All agricultural demonstrators were transferred from their normal work of teaching to such tasks as population and stock sensus.
The fifth and last point is that in keeping with most colonial legislative practice, the African people were not consulted about the LH Act. With characteristic racist arrogance, the CNC could still say in 1956: `The time has not yet arrived when our policy of benevolent paternalism can be shelved; the majority of the Africans... still demand and expect it.'52
By the time of LH Act peasant choices of land were severely limited by overcrowding in the reserves. Nevertheless, young men still aspired to having their own holdings on getting married. Under the LH Act, land rights, the major form of social security for the vast majority of Africans, ceased to be a birthright. A new generation would grow up cut off from the possibility of ever owning land.
The `economic unit' as standard arable holding formed a basic concept of the NLH Act. Operating within the framework of the Land Apportionment Act, larger `economic units' were impossible without creating too large a landless peasantry unable to be absorbed in industry. The scientific basis of the recommended crop rotation was questionable. There had been no prior experiments to ascertain the ability of the `economic unit' to provide a decent standard of living for a peasant family. In areas where the Act had been implemented Africans continued to flock to the towns as migrant workers.
Premier Huggins' shift in policy from `parallel development' in the 1930's and 1940's to `partnership' or multi-racialism in the early 1950's, involved no fundamental change in the political and economic status of the African people. The settler state hoped that the successful implementation of the LH Act would take the pressure off the need to radically amend or even abolish the Land Apportionment Act and so maintain the status quo. The LH Act would create a contented peasantry, and those made landless would become proletarians serving the expanding industrial development. Huggins viewed the promise of multi-racialism written in the preamble to the Federal Constitution as the unpleasant part of the bargain with the British Government. Thus he told the Federal Assembly: `Let us for the sake of Federation, which was for economic advancement, not for the preamble, which was forced upon us, have patience.'53
As we have seen the solution sought in the LH Act was permanent industrialisation of a part of the peasantry with all that this entailed. There was a major contradiction in the thinking that the stable labour force would be a `good thing' for the economy, when there was no place for African workers' families to live and, moreover, there was no way that they could even survive at the meanest level. In the early 1950's and indeed throughout the period in which the Act was implemented, African urban conditions, particularly grossly inadequate and poor housing, discriminatory legislation, poor wages, insecure tenure and lack of social security, discouraged many urban workers from cutting their roots in the land. The philosophy that Africans were temporary visitors to the town was clearly expressed in the denial of the right to purchase land and in the wage structure that generally catered for single migrant workers only. `Segregation,' said the Howman Committee in 1944, "has assigned to these labourers a purely temporary, make-shift existence in the urban areas; the very words `location' and `compound' are expressive of the theory which visualises `homes' and `communities' as something to be associated only with the Native Reserves to which the labourers was expected to return."54
The state-appointed Organizing Secretary of the Federation of Native Welfare Societies, the Rev. P. Ibbotson, reported in 1943 that `average wages paid to African workers are too low and do not allow for the maintenance of life at a reasonable standard.' He noted that the housing situation in the townships was deplorable and that in the Civil Service, post office messengers were being paid only £2 10s to £5 per month and police constables £2 to £4 10s.55 Ibbotson concluded that an African family with two children needed a basic income of £4 15s per month. This figure, however, excluded important expenses such as hut tax and education. In 1943 only 8.8 percent of African workers received 4 15s a month. Fifty percent of married African workers earning only cash wages received less than 3 per month and, of the total labour force, 51 percent earned less than £1 10s per month exclusive of accommodation and some sort of rations.
In 1944 Professor Batson of Cape Town University and a team of social scientists put the poverty datum line (PDL) for a family with two children in Salisbury at £7 7s 4d per month and £3 2s 5d per month for an unmarried worker. Since African wages remained virtually stationary, Batson's survey revealed an even more serious situation. He pointed out that the standard living catered for by the PDL was `more remarkable for what it omits than for what it includes. It does not allow for a penny for amusement, for sport, for medicine, for education, for saving, for higher purchase, for holidays, for odd bus rides, for newspapers, stationery, tobacco, sweets, hobbies, gifts, pocket money, or comforts or luxury of any kind.'56 Commenting on the draft Land Husbandry Bill in 1950, Chief Justice Tregold criticised the lack of `elementary provision for social security in the urban areas' to make up for the loss of the village base by urban workers.57 A statutory minimum wage was ruled out. As a senior official of the Native Affairs Department had told the Howman Committee earlier on, `You are bound to have repercussions amongst the farming community and today the farming community rules this country so that flattens out the minimum wage straight away.'
It was this abject poverty noted above, exacerbated by war-time and post-war rampant inflation which led to assaults on settler capitalism in the 1945 African railway workers' strike and the 1948 General Strike. The gains from these struggles were, however, very minimal. In 1958 yet another Commission revealed abject poverty among African urban workers. The Plewman Report noted that very little money was being put into African urban housing. Its sample of households in Salisbury revealed that 56.3 percent had incomes more than 35 percent below the PDL income level. Only about 20 percent of households were within or above the PDL limits. The Report conclude
The overall picture is one of poverty in all but a few households composed of childless couples or with very few children. The majority of the sample are being brought up under conditions of extreme poverty.58
It is no wonder that 53.8 percent of the workers in the sample did not have their families with them in Salisbury.
The situation was no better in the country's second largest city, Bulawayo. A study in 1958, for example, revealed that about 40 percent of African families living in `rent-free' housing were unable to meet current expenses out of their earnings. The average family owning its own house and with an income of nearly 13 per month (which was well above the national average), failed to cover expenditures from its income. Families with even higher income from wages managed to meet their minimum requirements by renting out part of the house to lodgers.59
As the implementation of the NLH Act went into full swing from 1957 onwards, the economy needed to produce at least 20,000 jobs a year. Although the number of African workers had increased by 62 percent from about 377,000 in 1946 to about 610,000 in 1956, a large percentage of them were historically foreign migrants, who now numbered about 310,000.60 Foreign migrant workers, most of whom were employed in the lowest wage sector, agriculture, were welcomed by employers because they undercut the bargaining power of indigenous labour.
From 1957 onwards the rate of industrialisation slowed down dramatically. Among the causes for this was uncertainty about the Central African Federation which reduced the inflow of foreign capital investment. In 1960 the number of African workers stood at 660,000 of whom 300,000 were foreign migrant workers. Thus between 1956 and 1960, a period when thousands of peasants were being dispossessed and many workers deprived of their land security, the number of African jobs rose by a mere 50,000 (taken up to be both indigenous and foreign Africans). At the end of 1962 the government publicly acknowledged the contradiction between the implementation of the NLH Act and the lack of alternative means of livelihood for those deprived of farming rights. The CNC wrote:
... it was hoped that the increasing industrialization and economic growth in the non-Tribal areas would provide this alternative [livelihood]...Up to the end of 1956,this is what in fact happened, the population increasing during the period 1951-56 by 16 percent, and overall employment by 15 percent. Since then there has been a slowing down in the rate of industrial expansion and economic growth.The population has increased by 18 percent in the succeeding five years [1956-61] but the increase in overall employment outlets have not kept pace with the increase in population, nor has any means of social security, other than land in the Tribal areas, been devised.61
To make things worse for the regime, in 1962 the first census of the African population showed that the government had underestimated the African population by 20 percent in its calculations.
State policy of job reservation for white workers and encouragement of large-scale white immigration could not help the employment outlook for African workers to say the least. In the late 1930's settler immigration into S. Rhodesia ran at about 4,000 a year but, by the late 1940's and early 1950's, it ran close to 14,000 a year. Such a policy was seen by the state as vital to the continuation of white political and economic hegemony in the country. Given the strong competition for British immigrants from the well-established Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, it was thought necessary to attract would-be immigrants with offers of a much higher standard of living than they enjoyed at home. Hence the policy of job reservation enshrined in the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1934. In addition, as already noted, millions of acres were left idle for use by new white immigrants. The white immigration policy and the employment needs of dispossessed peasants contained an inevitable contradiction in a country where job reservations was an important aspect of social policy, even for simple occupation as shop assistant.
A major weakness in the implementation of the act was concentration on conservation and infrastructure which did not lead to direct and immediate rise in production. Between 1950 and 1958 almost 50 percent of the limited funds of the Department of Native Agriculture went for soil conservation, provision of water supplies, road construction and maintenance. In the same period, only 2.5 percent of total expenditure went on services required to raise production - such as research, extension service and credit.62 According to the architects of the NLH Act, maintenance of soil fertility and increased production in the reserves would depend on the use of cattle manure, as artificial fertilizers were out of reach of the vast majority of the peasants. Cattle performed a second and equally important function as draught animals. In the more heavily populated reserves de-stocking required even owners of three large beasts to sell or slaughter one.63 By 1961, 37 percent of the land holders were entirely without cattle. In Mashonaland West the proportion was 49 percent and elsewhere in Mashonaland it was 40 percent. By 1965 it was estimated that 48 percent of African farming families had not cattle.64 And no cattle virtually meant no manure. Even among those with cattle, many could not afford to own scotch carts with which to convey compost or manure to the lands. These were costly items of equipment, and the majority tended to be owned by men with employment outside the village. Added to the shortage of cattle was the shortage of land itself. For example, by the early 1960's there were 79,000 cultivators in South Mashonaland but only enough land for 32,000 `economic unit.' In Mashonaland West, there were 45,000 cultivators but only enough land for 34,000 `economic units.' Some reserves in Mashonaland East could provide sufficient `economic units' while in others less than 33 percent of the population could have full `economic units.'65 In 1955, for example, Beck, the Native Commissioner, Chinyika, observed that in the Chinyika Reserve (25 miles east of Harare), `on average the acreages are well below the standard six acres.'66
As part of the package to deal with the ecological problems in the reserves and to stabilize labour for industry, the LH Act sought to enhance the regime's political control of the peasants. The CNC revealed this objective quite clearly, in 1954, when he stated that -
Rapid implementation of government policy by application of the Native Land Husbandry act right through all the Native Reserves... is vital to establish and ensure a contented and progressive Native peasant. Inevitably he will disregard the political sirens of the urban areas, who themselves are making no headway with their self-aggrandisement schemes.67
But, as should be clear by now, the Act proved to be no basis for such hopes. Moreover most African urban workers were adversely affected by the new agrarian measures. The prevailing socio-economic conditions in the towns did not allow Africans permanent urban residence. As already noted, the combination of low wages, lack of pension schemes and social security, lack of housing and insecurity of tenure, made it necessary for the vast majority of urban workers to maintain a village base where they could leave their families to work on the land to supplement the husband's meagre earnings. Although there had been a policy shift in favour of African urban residence since the end of World War II, the Plewman Commission could still report in 1958 that African urban tenure was `essentially one to meet the needs of the urban workers as someone distinct from the urban dweller. Employment is undoubtedly pre-requisite to getting accommodation... except [in] in a native village settlement.'68
Thus official reports such as those of the CNC, which viewed urban workers who agitated against the LH Act as outsiders, miss the point that the urban worker and the peasant farmer were virtually one and the same person and that objective conditions existed for this dual economic behaviour. Since the Act stipulated that Africans had to be actually living and working on the land at the time of land allocation, many urban workers returned home when they heard news or rumors that their area was to be surveyed in the near future. In this way they hoped to be granted arable and grazing rights. For those who failed to secure land rights, it was an agonizing experience as they adjusted to complete reliance on meagre wages and/or relations with land rights.
Opposition to the Act was initially spear-headed by urban-based organizations and individuals. On 7 December 1950, for example, the Reverend P.J.M. Ndebele wrote to the Rhodesia Herald: `The Government can rest assured that this Bill will meet with strong opposition from African people throughout the country.' The Reformed Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (RICU) lobbied the Commonwealth Secretary to use his veto on legislation relating to the Reserves. And to this end, the RICU General Secretary, Charles Mzingeli, enlisted the support of Revd. A.S. Cripps (a missionary advocate of African rights), the Fabian Colonial Bureau and the Anti-Slavery Society in London.69 But Mzingeli was rebuffed by the Labour Commonwealth Secretary, Patrick Gordon-Walker,who merely recommended amendment of the compulsory labour measures to avoid conflict with the ILO Convention - and the Bill was approved on 18 February 1952. Another urban-based organization, the British African Voice Association, led by Benjamin Burombo, adopted a much more aggressive campaign against the Land Apportionment Act itself, removals, de-stocking, the Land Husbandry Bill and the Act that followed. Burombo and his organization appealed against some evictions and hired lawyers who exploited the procedural complexities in sections of the legislation to win a number of cases before amendments were made to the law.70
In 1953 the CNC was extremely confident about the implementation of the LH Act and stated that even the Federal referendum had produced no political activity in the rural areas. But the introduction to the 1954 report commented, there have been the usual vociferous few who have made the occasion one of maligning the motives of the Europeans.' The CNC report for 1955 indicated increasing agitation against the Land Husbandry Act in the countryside. The introduction commented,
various measures introduced during the year, such as the accelerated implementation of the Native Land Husbandry Act, have generally been received with satisfaction, while in the past certain aspiring leaders were wont to deride their Chiefs and Headmen and temporarily acquired some support from malcontents through this process, they find that they have failed in this direction, and are now endeavoring to build up a political reputation by ingratiating themselves with the Chiefs and Headmen and by this hope to solicit their support. However, careful attention to the assemblies of Chiefs and increased Government interest in their activities will nullify their efforts.71
Four points can now be made from the CNC's report. First, in 1955 African opposition to the implementation of the LH Act had increased as the Government speeded up implementation. Second, African political activists were capable of undermining the authority of the Chiefs and Headmen who cooperated with Governments policy. Thus, African political activists made efforts to form a united front with some Chiefs and Headmen in opposing the Act. The fourth point is that the Government, whose implementation of the Act was heavily reliant on the support of the Chiefs and Headmen, resorted to bolstering up the position of the Chiefs in the rural areas.
The CNC's report for 1957 indicated increasing government reliance on the support of the Chiefs: `...during the year the Government showed further appreciation of the long continuing loyalty of Chiefs and Headmen by introducing favourable scales of subsidies.' The CNC noted in particular the help Chiefs had given in the tasks of tax collection, the dissemination of Government measures and the implementation of the LH Act.72 By 1957 the degree of agitation against the Land Husbandry Act, which had also become an attack on traditional rulers who co-operated with Government policy, was such that some Chiefs urged the Government to introduce legislation to ban meetings in the Reserves. The Chiefs had a real interest in `law and order' since their own authority was being threatened.
The regime increasingly took desperate measures to make the act `work' only to fuel African resistance in the process. For example, in order to forestall claims to land by urban workers especially those from Reserves with greater land shortage, the Land Husbandry Standing Committee - the major policy making body established for accelerated implementation - recommended immediate proclamation of the Act in all Reserves in 1957. Under this new dispensation, only those who had farmed in the Reserves during the previous 12 months were eligible for land allocations.73 In the same year the Committee approved reductions in man-land and animal-land ratios on which arable and grazing allocations were based. By then, officials of the Standing Committee were acknowledging -at least among themselves - their reliance on authoritarian measures. As the Committee's chairman, Cunliffe, sai `We can only face opposition when people are broken into small units - the principle of divide and rule.' Arthur Pendered, also a member of the Committee, declare `You needn't have 100 percent cooperation, 50 percent would be enough - do all you can to meet him half way, then as last resort you have got to govern them.'74
At the end of 1957, the Native Affairs Department was forced to admit publicly that, `the implementation of the Act has not been a straight forward task, and during the early stages stiff opposition has been met in areas which are heavily over-populated and over-stocked.'75 On occasions such opposition took the form of physical attacks on agricultural demonstrators and threats to the white Land Development Officers (LDO) as well as on those who cooperated with implementation. However, more often it took the form of derision of Chiefs and members of the Native Affairs Department, refusal to dip cattle, disregard of the allocations made under the Act and refusal to communicate with the regime's field workers. Opposition was particularly stiff among post-World War II victims of eviction who were now being called upon to go through another resettlement under the LH Act. William von Memerty, Administrative Officer, Land Husbandry, summed up the mood in such an area, Nkai District, in 1955:
The position has arisen in the Nkai District where the Natives refuse to supply the necessary information for ultimate registration of farming rights. As wholesale passive resistance has been adopted it is unlikely that the natives will register their claims when called upon to do so...76
In 1957 the CNC maintained that there were many Africans capable of forming sound opinion on political matters:
If only their so-called Native leaders... were to present true facts and refrain from making deliberate and malicious misrepresentation.
And he went on:
Unfortunately these tub-thumping traders in politics, by their sage antics... by hurling invectives and insults against Europeans... and against the police and this Department... prevent the development in many natives of any sound political opinion.77
The CNC was referring to the leaders of the African National Congress which had been formed on Occupation Day (September 12) 1957, when the old ANC centered on Bulawayo and merged with the Youth League (YL) centered on Salisbury. The YL had conducted a successful bus boycott against fare rises in Salisbury in 1956 and, since its foundation, had tried to link up African urban and rural grievances in an effort to widen its base and to politicise the masses.78 YL leaders such as George Nyandoro, James Chikerema, Edson Sithole and Dunduzu Chisiza, made bitter attacks against the LH act. From September 1957 onwards, the ANC and its successors, the NDP, ZAPU and ZANU, became the chief organs through which African opposition to the Act was aired.
Congress, as the ANC came to be known, was not a radical movement as clearly indicated by its statement of principles, policy and programme, which, inter alia, stated that, `Congress believes that individual initiative and free enterprise are necessary to the life of young country...' However, behind this low-key approach, Congress quickly organized Africans throughout the country. The CNC reported at the end of 1957 that Congress
appears to be having trouble reconciling a declared policy of moderation with the utterances of some of its extremist spokesmen, who are quick to offer unconstructive criticism based largely on distortion of facts and deliberate falsehoods, to rural and unsophisticated people. Imagining grievances and hardships are said to have been brought about by the implementation of the Native Land Husbandry Act in some areas are popular signature tunes to solicit support in the rural areas.79
Clearly, ANC activities were making themselves felt in the countryside.
The CNC Report for 1958 states that Chiefs and Headmen were encountering `a new and strange influence on them in the shape of the ANC. Blandishments, threats... ridicule and intimidation were meted out to them according to their reactions...' The report goes on to say that most Chiefs stood for Government, but `one or two proved broken reeds or very unreliable ones.' Most Chiefs `denounced these political visitations from unknown urban orators who made a point of collecting grievances.'
Despite the predictable bias in official reporting of the situation, the 1958 CNC report reveals widespread ANC success within a year of its formation:
This ANC... began to reach out tentacles to the rural areas during 1958, probing about for grievances and local talent on which to fasten... In six districts we have witnessed a gradual intensification of soapbox oratory which was so characteristics of weekends in the urban areas, we have viewed with increasing concern the effect on unsophisticated peasants of violent and lurid speeches...80
Congress gained much support and succeeded in embarrassing the Native Affairs Department by taking up and winning court cases against some evictions. Congress agitation against the white minority Government in general, and the LH Act in particular, had the effect of undermining the authority of Government officials (including the Chiefs) in the rural areas. Indeed the concerted agitation against the Act was decisive factor in Whitehead's declaration of a State of Emergency in February 1959, the proscribing of Congress and detention of about 500 Congress leaders and activists.81 As the Central African Examiner reported at this time, many Congress branch Chairmen were farmers of standing in the African community.
The seriousness with which the Government took the Congress agitation and the African opposition to the Act in particular, is further indicated by the passing of the Land Husbandry Amendment Act of 1959. The Amendment Act made it an offence for an African to refuse to move to a new dwelling site. It also became an offence not to answer questions relating to information needed to grant farming rights or to point to a new dwelling site. The Native Affairs Amendment Act of 1959 increased State power and was aimed at stopping anti-LH Act activists from undermining the Government's authority, particularly in the Reserves. It became an offence for `any native (or Headman) who makes any statement or does any act or thing... which is likely to undermine the authority of an officer of the Government... or any Chief...'82 No meetings could be held in the Reserves without the written permission of the NC. Failure to assist Government officials in conservation measures, the reduction and prevention of over-stocking became an offence liable for prosecution.
The Unlawful Organizations Act of 1959, under which Congress and its successors, were proscribed, accused Congress of `wickedly and maliciously' embarking upon a campaign `for usurping the functions of Government and in furtherance thereof have resorted to various dishonest and seditious practices and have assembled meetings ... of ignorant and unwary persons, whereat in violent... language, the Speakers have willfully misrepresented facts... urging disobedience and passive resistance...'83 The Beadle Report of 1959 echoed a similar degree of nationalist agitation. It stated that the ridiculing and undermining of authority had been worse in the Mrewa and Sipolilo areas, but that there was little doubt that the object of Congress leaders was `to instill into the African population as a whole a general contempt for European authority.'84 Thus Nyandoro's assertion that the NLH Act was `the best recruiter Congress ever had' was valid.
The National Democratic Party (NDP) which succeeded Congress in January 1961, was an overtly political party and its objectives went beyond mere agitation against certain oppressive practices. The party aimed for capture of political power (Nkrumah's political kingdom, after which everything would follow.) The report of the CNC for 1960 notes that the `calmness' in the urban and rural areas following the proscription of Congress, was short lived. Because of the ban on meetings in rural areas, the NDP was forced to concentrate on the urban areas. During 1960 the party held numerous meetings at weekends in the urban areas. However, these meetings were attended `not only by urban dwellers, but also by the young elements from the rural areas and, because of this, dissatisfaction soon spread in the rural and tribal areas. This showed itself by organized interference at meetings called by Government officials... The interference took the form of breaking up meetings, holding to ridicule Agricultural Advisers and Demonstrators and Chiefs....' The CNC commented that it was precisely nationalist political and anti-NLH Act agitation which had led to the undermining of the authority of the NC's and the Chiefs. He went on to say that this agitation had retarded or even brought about many development schemes in the rural areas to a standstill. Thus, despite the ban on meetings in the Reserves, the NPD managed to make its agitation felt.
The Constitutional Conference held in February 1961 produced no desired result for the nationalists. The NDP countered the ban on meetings in the Reserves by holding them in neighbouring Purchase Areas, providing transport where necessary. NDP activists urged villagers not to attend cattle markets organized under the de-stocking programme. They urged peasants to disobey the instructions of agricultural demonstrators and to engage in `freedom ploughing.' At the end of 1961 the CNC reported that some Councils had been brought to a stand still by NDP agitation and that many dip tanks had been burned. At the end of 1962 the CNC wearily reported,`The Chiefs... throughout the country have had a difficult course to steer this year in their efforts to retain the support of their people and to stand up to the kinds of pressure which nationalist parties describe as political.' That was a distortion of facts. Sister Aquina observed in her fieldwork in Chilimanzi at this time that `... one thing is clear: agriculture in Chilimanzi firmly rooted in politics, and politics is expressed in agricultural terms.'85
`Freedom ploughing' which, as we have seen, disregarded the allocations and prohibitions of the LH Act, was perhaps the most effective weapon used to blunt implementation. In January 1961 the Undersecretary for Native Agriculture and Lands lamented at countrywide `freedom ploughing': `Umtali District have had to cope with a problem similar to that which has arisen in the Plumtree District'86 - where people were `ploughing all over the place, disregarding the land allocations.'87
While many farmers were prosecuted and imprisoned, the regime lacked the resources to deal with the hundreds who defied the Act. And so at the end of 1961 we find the CNC reporting a general slowing down in the implementation of act. At the end of the following year the CNC reported that it had been decided to `curtail further the rate of implementation of the tenure aspects of the Native Land Husbandry Act and to proceed with the allocation of land and grazing rights only in areas where this was specifically requested by the tribesmen.'88 The CNC Report gives four main reasons for this radical change of policy. First, the speed of the team approaching in the field had been making it impossible to sort out human problems in individual cases as they arose. Second,there had been a shortage of staff. Third, doubts had arisen (among agronomists) whether the Land Husbandry Programme would provide the most suitable form of settlement in low veld areas. Fourth, the failure to meet the target had been, in the main, due to `increased land pressure,which in turn, was due to a slowing down in the rate of economic growth; to the activities of Nationalist organizations,which many districts consider to be the prime reason and the failure of the team approach or accelerated method of implementing the Act.'89
Needless to say, the `increased land pressure' was not the creation of nationalist organization but of overpopulation caused to a large extent by the implementation of the Land Apportionment Act. Indeed, some government officials intimately involved in the implementation of the Act did point out that soil erosion in many reserves did not arise from peasant households having too many beasts: many in fact did not have any or enough to produce manure or for ploughing. At the end of a meeting in 1959 to discuss the LH Act, Maincaland NC's unanimously passed the following resolution:
that the Government be asked to take cognisance of the present position and adopt a more realistic approach towards the problem of de-stocking... and further ...the Government be asked to increase the terms of reference of the Select Committee on the resettlement of natives to deal specifically with the problem of overpopulation in the native reserves90 [emphasis added].
Missing in the CNC's reasons for curtailing implementation is the fact that a statistical survey during 1959 and 1960 of African agricultural production failed to reveal a positive effect of the LH Act on African agriculture. There had actually been a decline in the production of millet, sorghum and rapoko. Weinrich observed in Chilimanzi in the early 1960's that despite the implementation of the act, `the basic pattern of cultivation and gaining a livelihood in the rural areas has persisted. This is seen both in the type of crops grown and in the way in which labour is organized throughout the agricultural year.'91 The degree to which the implementation programme had been slowed down is indicated by the fact that by the end of 1960, no land allocation had started in 57 Reserves. Only 33 percent of the estimated arable rights and 28 percent stock rights and 13 percent residential sites, had been allocated.
The Magnwende Commission of Inquiry into the disturbances (1958-1961) which led to the deposition of the well-known and popular Chief Mangwende, observed that not enough propaganda work had been done prior to the implementation of the LH Act. It discussed the implementation of the Act in Magwende Reserve, including the consequence following the denial of land to nearly 40 percent of the young men, many of whom were employed intermittently in the Salisbury area and were drawn to African nationalism because of their sense of land deprivation. J.F. Holleman, a member of the Mangwende Commission, has attributed the failure of the LH Act mainly to `the lack of understanding of the human factors involved in the complex problems of social, economic and mental adjustment during rapid transition, and the over-confidence of the architects and executors of the Act in the remedial power of legislative and administrative action imposed from above.'92 The Commission pointed out that it was `this supreme confidence in the power of intellectual planning based on slide-rule and statistics'93 which had resulted in the lack of appreciation of the human factors involved in the implementation programme. The result was that the field workers had met with stiffening resistance and sometimes open defiance. The Commission urged that more land be made available for Africans, and recommended that all further implementation of the Act be temporarily suspended until full cooperation could be obtained from the people. The Philips Report94 went further and suggested that African farmers be allowed to farm as tenant farmers on white farms. Holleman has commented on the Mangwende Commission,
... It believed that it was high time that equal weight should be given to the premise that no sound economy could possibly exist on an unstable social foundation. The Commission could not foresee at that time that, with these remarks, it had provided the Administration with one of the most useful slogans with which, not long afterwards, the new approach to `Community development' was launched.
Even before any of the Commissions noted above had reported, the Government, worried by the lack of progress in the local council programme and by the opposition to the LH Act, had embarked on the new policy of `community development'. It went beyond the ambit of the LH Act and according to the regime it was aimed at giving local a real opportunity to deal with `as wide a range of local problems as possible in their order of priority.'95 Such a policy was designed to sidestep the nationalists. The UFP Government and even more the RF, abandoned any prospects of a working relationship with the nationalists but instead sought the support of the Chiefs in the implementation of the new policy. Weinrich comments that, `if during the Federal period (the majority of) African Chiefs rose to power, during the post-Federal period, they were propelled into power.'96 In 1961 Chiefs got back their power to allocate land and their salaries were increased. A meeting of 500 Chiefs and senior Headmen held in Gwelo resulted in the setting up of a National Council of Chiefs.
Weinrich observed in 1963 that community development was opposed by missionaries, Nationalists, teachers and peasants (and some more nationalistic-minded Chiefs). According to Weinrich, the first three groups feared that community development was apartheid in disguise. The peasants saw in the new policy another means by which the Government extracted taxes from them. A comment by the Deputy Secretary of Internal Affairs in 1964 illustrates the high degree of African opposition to the new policy: `If politics could be kept out of community development, we will get on with it like a house on fire. Now it is an uphill battle.'97
The Land Apportionment Act, one of the most hated instruments of settler political and economic repression in Southern Rhodesia, was the foundation upon which most discriminatory legislation relating to African political, social and economic control was built. The purpose of the Act was not, as apologists of the Rhodesian political system would have us believe, to protect African land against white land speculators. Indeed, the Act led to the State herding thousands of African families into the crowded reserves and prevented Africans from purchasing land in the best farming areas and thereby enabled the white minority to monopolize a far greater share of the country's economic resources.
It took just over twenty years before the Reserve economy began to crumble beneath the pressure brought to bear upon it by the implementation of the Land Apportionment Act. By that time the Act had become an institution, a part of white Rhodesia's `way of life'. No Rhodesian Government could remove it from the Statute book without precipitating a hostile white political backlash.98 This is where the LH act came in.
Although the NLH Act was presented as basically a conservation measure, `because it gives the individual a stake in the land and fixes the responsibility for conservation fairly and squarely on his shoulders,'99 beyond land reform per se lay an ambitious plan to make peasant agriculture contribute more to the country's food needs.
The LH Act did not work for a combination of reasons. Assigning deteriorating land to individual tenure was often the worst possible thing as the land needed rest, not perpetual usage.100 The major underlying reason for the implementation of the NLH Act - white desire to save the Land Apportionment Act - set conditions for its failure. Indeed, when the white minority government was telling Africans of land shortage in the 1950's, there were 10 million acres of white-assigned land still unallocated.101 To many Africans the measures instituted by the LH Act were almost all irrelevant to a rational or just land-use policy. The architects of the Act were far too ambitious in thinking that Southern Rhodesia's industrial growth would provide alternative forms of livelihood for the thousands of dispossessed Africans as well as the natural increases. Population pressure in the Reserves continued and the Act neither stabilized the rural population nor put an end to labour migration. Johnson noted that for many Africans in wage employment `it remains cheaper to grow food requirements in the rural areas and to foray out for wage work than to move the whole family to the place of wage employment.'102
Unfortunately for the white minority Government the LH Act had the unforeseen consequence of heightening rural unrest by undermining Chiefly authority and creating a class of landless peasants. By depriving the urban worker of his rural base and security, the Act facilitated the linking of urban and rural grievances by the YL, the ANC and their successors. As the CNC Report for 1962 commented, `From the very outset nationalistic organisations have made the Act one of their foremost targets, and have done all in their power to bring it into disrepute.' In 1959 and in the previous years the CNC accused urban `agitators' of causing the unrest in the rural areas, but the 1961 CNC Report publicly admitted that opposition to the Act `is not confined to the landless but is shared by their parents and relatives, in fact the whole community, and has induced a radical change of attitude. It is the implementation of the Native Land Husbandry Act... that more than anything else has soured relations between the NC and the rural African, who has little or no knowledge of the workings of the Government.'103 This paper has argued that Africans made a correct appraisal of the LH Act and attacked not only the new agrarian measures, but also undermined Government authority in the rural areas by attacking the Chiefs, LDO's and agricultural demonstrators, and thereby challenging white minority rule in general.
In conclusion, it must be stressed that the LH Act was devised by the state in the interests of capitalist economic development, particularly of the white minority. However, the failure of the white politicians and administrators alike to appreciate the essential underlying links which bound urban and rural African life, coupled with the false assumption that the country's industrial expansion could absorb those dispossessed, proved counter-productive to the Act's original objectives. The essential economic, social and cultural disruption caused to both rural and urban Africans and the continual discriminatory land legislation, ensured and stimulated overt hostility to the Act. The nationalists then capitalised on this situation, utilizing and channelling the discontent to challenge the Southern Rhodesian political system.
1. Report on the Agricultural Development of S. Rhodesia by Professor Sir Frank Engledow (Gov.t Printer, 1950) p.21. All references, unless otherwise stated, are from the National Archives of Zimbabwe.
2. What the Native Land Husbandry Act Means to the Rural African and to S. Rhodesia: A Five Year Plan that will Revolutionize African Agriculture (Govt. Printer, 1955).
3. Ibid., Foreword by the Minister.
4. Report of the Select Committee on the Resettlement of Natives (Govt. Printer, 1960) para. 179.
5. J.F. Holleman, Chief Council and Commissioner (OUP, 1969) p.44.
6. M. Rifkind, "The Politics of Land in Rhodesia," (Univ. of Edinburgh, M.Sc. thesis, 1968), p.170.
7. See for example, R. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Heinemann, 1977).
8. Debates in the Legislative Assembly, 5/527, Co. 99.
9. M. Yudelman, Africans on the Lan Economic Problems of African Agricultural Development in Southern, Central and East Africa, with Special Reference to S. Rhodesia (Harvard Univ. Press, 1964) p.78.
10. SI193/F3 Alvord to Chief Agriculturist, 1/4/30.
11. Quoted in Report of the Secretary for Native Affairs, the CNC and Director of Native Development, 1961, p.25.
12. A. Pendered, Report on a visit to Certain African Colonies to Study Problems of Native Production, Marketing and Cooperation, Part I, p. 61.
13. S139/21 Manager, Land Bank to CNC, 3/9/26.
14. A.C.Jennings, "Land Apportionment in s. Rhodesia," J. of the Royal African Society (1935) p.306.
15. Ibid., p.311. See also papers relating to the S. Rhodesia Native Reserve Commission, 1915 [British Command Papers] Cmd 8674, London, 1917, p.9.
16. A Pendered (Under Secretary, Native Economic Development) and W. Von Memerty (Administrative Officer, NLH Act), "The Native Land Husbandry Act of S. Rhodesia," J. of African Administration, (Vol. 7, 1955) p.99.
17. Ibid., p.101.
18. In the 10 years following World War II alone, 85,000 African families were forced out of settler areas into the crowded reserves.
19. S1194/190/1, Acting PNC (Bulawayo) to CNC, 25/2/46.
20. Ibid., NC (Selukwe) to PNC (Gwelo), 20/2/46.
21. CNC Report for 1944. No sufficient water resources were developed and the expulsions of Africans continued.
22. S1194/190/1, Land Surveys: Ad Hock Reports, 1947.
23. S1561, L. Powys-Jones, "Memorandum on the Allocation of Land for Native Settlement and further Policy on Occupation and Use of Land by Natives Generally" 28 Aug. 1947.
24. Development Coordination Commission, Second Interim Report (1949), p.38.
25. Quoted in P. Keatley, The Politics of Partnership (Penguin, 1963) p. 361.
26. W.J. Barber, "Federation and the Central African Economy" in C. Leys and C. Pratt (eds), A New Deal in Central Africa (London: 1960) p.61.
27. B.N. Floyd, Changing Patterns of African Land Use in S. Rhodesia (Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Lusaka) p.164.
28. Yudelman, Op.cit., pp80-81.
29. Floyd, Op.cit., p.128.
30. Quoted in R.W.M. Johnson, "The Economics of African Agriculture in S. Rhodesia: A Study in Reserve Use" (unpublished Ph.D thesis, London: 1967) p.105.
31. Interview with C.A. Murray, Salisbury, 7/6/1979. Murray joined the Dept. of agriculture in 1930 as animal husbandry specialist and rose to become Secretary for Agriculture.
32. Report of the [Goldlonton] Commission on Native Production and Trade (Govt. Printer, 1945).
33. Ibid., p.60.
34. Ibid., p.173.
35. Report of the CNC for 1946, p.2.
36. The Engledow Report, op.cit., p.21.
37. Report of the Urban African Affairs [Plewman] Commission (Govt. Printer, 1958) para. 44.
38. Debates, 23/11/44, Col. 2499-2506.
39. G. Arrigh, "The Political Economy Rhodesia" in G. Arrighi and J.S. Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (Monthly Review Press, 1973) p.360.
40. What the Native Land Husbandry Act Means to S. Rhodesia, p.2.
41. Debates, April 1951, Col. 35-6.
42. The Statute Law of S. Rhodesia 1951, (Govt. Printer, 1952) p.893.
43. Ibid., p.894.
44. T.O. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerilla War in Zimbabwe, pp.69-70. The LH Act Grazing Control Regulations (1952) required large stock owners to first reduce their herds to three times the "Standard number," and then be subject again to pro-rata reductions along with everyone else.
45. The Statute Law of S. Rhodesia 1951, pp.917-19.
46. Among its members were the local LDO and NC.
47. CNC Report for 1955, p.14.
48. Yudelman, Op.cit., p.119.
49. J. Thompson, Conceived in Frau the farce of Central African Federation (A New Orbits Group Publication, London, 1960), p.14.
50. Pendered and von Memerty, Op.cit., p.103.
51. Rifkind, Op.cit., p.161.
52. CNC Report for 1956, p.2.
53. Quoted in C. Sanger, Central African Emergency (Heinmann, 1960), p.46.
54. Report on Urban Conditions in S. Rhodesia (Govt. Printer 1945) para. 269.
55. Report on a Survey of Urban African Conditions in S. Rhodesia by Percy Ibbotson (Bulawayo, 1943).
56. The Poverty Datum Line in Salisbury (Cape Town, 1945) p.2. The PDL here is of course laden with the racism of a colonial society. The PDL for whites would be placed at a much higher figure.
57. R.C. Tredgold, The Rhodesia that way my Life.
58. Report of the Plewman Urban African Affairs Commission (Govt. Printer, 1958) p.189.
59. Preliminary Report on Urban African Budget Survey in Bulawayo June 1958 (published as a supplement to Monthly Digest of Statistics (Govt. Printer, November 1958).
60. Plewman Report, para. 65.
61. Report of the CNC for 1962, p.11.
62. Yudelman, Op.cit., pp.159-61.
63. Internal Affairs Files Box 84275, J. Cramer, "De-stocking Plan: Manga Reserve," 24 Oct. 1956.
64. G. Kay, Rhodesia: A Human Geography (New York, 1970) p.91. The number of cattle per family naturally varied from area to area, there being, for example, more cattle per family in the cattle area of Matabeleland.
65. Yudelman, Op.cit., p.123.
66. "Yafele's Kraal: A sample study of African Agriculture in S. Rhodesia", Geography, Vol. 45 (1960) p.72.
67. CNC Report for 1954, p.18.
68. The Plewman Report, Op.cit., paras. 172 and 338.
69. Hss, Ms. CR 4/1/1, Correspondence, reverend Arthur Shearly Cripps, 1950-52.
70. Ngwabi Bhebhe of the University of Zimbabwe is working on a biography of Benjamin Burombo.
71. CNC Report for 1958, p.5. Not all Chiefs were uncritical of government policy. For example, Chiefs Nyandoro of Marandellas, Dendera of Urungwe and Mangwends of Mrewa were deposed for criticising government policy.
72. Internal Affairs files, Box 84276, "Minutes of the Native Land Husbandry Standing Committee, Sixth Meeting, 6 December 1956".
73. Ibid., Seventh Meeting, 5 March 1957.
74. CNC Report for 1957, p.6. See also Joshua Nkomo, "Why they banned Congress", Venture, Vol. 2 (June 1959).
75. Internal Affairs files, Box 35582, W. Von Memerty, "Native Land Husbandry (Land Census) Regulations, 1955." See also Ranger, Op.cit., pp.140-16 on Makoni District.
76. CNC Report for 1957, p.9.
77. See D. Mugabe, "Rhodesia African Majority", Africa Report (Feb. 1967) p.16.
78. CNC Report for 1957, p.10.
79. CNC Report for 1958, p.5.
80. Among these detained in, for example, Mangwende Reserve, were members of the Village Headmen's Association, which kept ward representatives on the local council informed of public opinion. See J.F. Holleman, Op.cit., p.192.
81. "The Native Affairs Amendment Act", The Statute Law of S. Rhodesia 1959, p.297.
82. Ibid., "The Unlawful Organizations Act", p.334.
83. The Beadle Report, p.13.
84. Sister Aquina (A.K.H. Weinrich), "The Social Background to Agriculture in Chilimanzi Reserve", Rhodes-Livingstone Journal Vol. 36 (1964) p.37.
85. Internal Affairs files, Box 84265, H.B. Masterson to PNC (Matabeleland), 17 January 1961.
86. Ibid., NC (Plumtree), "District Data: Immediate information," 30/12/60.
87. CNC Report for 1962, p.10. See also P. Hamilton, "Population Pressure and Land Use in Chiweshe Reserve", Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, Vol. 36 (1964) p.56.
88. CNC Report for 1962, p.12.
89. Internal Affairs files, Box 84275, NC (Makoni), "Record of a Meeting of Native Commissioners, Maincaland", 26 June 1959.
90. Sister Aquina, "The Social Background for Agriculture in Chilimanzi Reserve", Op.cit., p.18.
91. Holleman, Op.cit., p.66.
92. The Report of the Mangwende Commission of Inquiry (Govt. Printer, 1961) para 427. See also Holleman, Op.cit., p.66.
93. The Report of the Advisory Committee on the Development of the Economic resources of S. Rhodesia with Particular Reference to the Role of African Agriculture - The Philips Report (Govt. Printer, 1962).
94. Quoted in A.K.H. Weinrich, Chiefs and Councils in Rhodesia (Heinmann, 1971) p.23.
95. Ibid., p.20.
96. Quoted in Holleman, Op.cit., p.284.
97. Whitehead's plan to repeal the Land Apportionment Act was a major factor in the UPF's defeat by the RF in 1962.
98. D.A. Robinson (Director of Native Agriculture), "Soil Conservation and the Implication of the Native Husbandry Act", NADA (vol. 37, 1960, p.31.
99. Ken Brown, Land in Southern Rhodesia (London, Africa Bureau, 1959) p.11.
100. The 1961 Amendment to the Act temporarily allowed people entitled to, but without, land, to cultivate in grazing areas. Garbett noted in 1961 that "By 1959 it had been clear that if the Act was to be implemented properly more land would have to be made available for the 102,000 families entitled to it." G. Garbett, "The Doomed Revolution", Central African Examiner (Dec. 1961) p.19.
101. R.W.M. Johnson, Op.cit., p.349.
102. CNC Report for 1961, p.17.
APPENDIX A
MAIZE, TOBACCO AND COTTON PRODUCTION 1920-1929
__________________________________________________________________________
| | MAIZE | TOBACCO | COTTON |
| |--------------------| (virginia) |--------------------|
| Year | | |--------------------| | |
| |Production| Value |Production| Value |Production| Value |
| | (bags) | £ | (lbs) | £ | (lb) | £ |
|_________|__________|_________|__________|_________|__________|_________|
|1920/1 |1 220 768 |672 000 | 3 193 000| 121 000| | |
|1921/22 | 662 636 |387 000 | 2 880 000| 215 000| | |
|1922/23 |1 505 580 |364 000 | 2 541 000| 174 000| | |
|1923/24 |1 080 084 |565 000 | 3 426 000| 154 000|1 691 000 | |
|1924/25 |1 068 904 |594 000 | 1 987 000| 216 000|5 888 000 |41 000 |
|1925/26 |1 393 654 |481 000 | 5 313 000| 141 000|8 220 000 |77 000 |
|1926/27 |1 659 597 |697 000 |18 631 000| 393 000| 735 000 |76 000 |
|1927/28 |1 268 100 |808 000 |24 491 000|1 731 000| 114 000 | 4 000 |
|1928/29 |1 826 345 |666 000 | 6 704 000| 779 000| 339 000 | 2 000 |
|1929/30 |1 917 252 |762 000 | 5 494 000| 271 000|1 906 000 | 4 000 |
Table complied from S1180/51 (5),Maize Inquiry Committee, 28 November 1930; H.Weinmann, Agric. Research and Development in S. Rhod, 1924-1950 (Sby, 1975), appendix; and Palmer, Land and Racial Domination, p.92.