Colonial Policies in Zimbabwe

)
 Primitive Accumulation
• -many farmers were undercapitalized- did not have enough capital to engage in
profitable farming.
• -use of non-market force (unconventional means to accumulate wealth)
• Previous capital in the case of Southern Rhodesia was facilitated by
• a)the state’s land policy
• b) cheap African labor made available through state coercive apparatus
• c) land granted free of charge or sold at low prices, and in many cases bought with
Company or Government loans
• d) farmers got state grants, loans and agricultural research and extension services.
 The Land Apportionment Act (1930
• Like a number of colonial laws this act was born
out in part out of fear of black competition. The
Act divided the country into white and black areas.
•
• 49 million acres-------------------white settlers
• 29 million acres-------------------Africans
• The remainder ( 8 million acres) was either
unassigned to any racial group or was designed
game reserve or forestry.
• Blacks could only buy land in the In Native
Purchase Areas, which were poor agricultural
lands, and were located far away from major
transport networks. Said one farmer at the
time; “We are here to make this a white man’s
country, and if the native has half the land and
got the franchise, the white man would be
ousted.” (I.Phimister, p.194).
 The Establishment of the Land Bank in 1912

• Remember most of the whites who settled in Southern

Rhodesia were undercapitalized. They did not have the
capital to engage in profitable farming. The Land Bank
(later the Land and Agricultural Bank and later the
Agricultural Finance Corporation) was established to
perform that role. The Bank was set up to make credit
facilities “available for persons of European descent
only.” The bank gave loans for the purchase of farms,
livestock, and agricultural equipment, and for
improvements such as fencing and irrigation works.
 Pass Controls
•After 1902 all men over the age of fourteen were required to carry a traveling or

visiting pass to move from one district to another of the colony. By the early 1930,

although the traveling and visiting passes had been abolished, a man entering a

town still had to have a pass to showing what his business there was. The “town

pass” only allowed him to sleep in certain parts of town (usually the municipal

location). In order to travel outside the location (that is, into white parts of the

country) between the hours 9 pm and 6 am another pass was needed.

•The pass system was extremely burdensome for African people. In the 1950s, for example, an African

needed to carry with him fourteen different documents. If he was going to town, he was supposed to

carry his chitupa (registration book which set out his full details, details of employment, and the date of

his last examination for venereal disease), and apply either a ‘visiting pass’ in order to stay for a certain

period of time, or for a town pass to seek work. If he found employment he had to be medically

examined in order to register a ‘contract of service’ with the employer (men were forced to strip and be

examined in groups, not individually in front of doctors). All women entering towns and/ or centers of

employment were examined for STDs.

 Maize Control Act (1931)

• Despite the existence of the Land Apportionment Act

whites, especially poor whites continued to face
competition from African farmers in the reserves and
those still living on white farms as tenants and/ or
squatters. Some Africans lived on Crown Land (basically
State land). European farmers demanded protection,
and they got it. This was the context in which the
Tobacco Control Board, Dairy Control Board, Tobacco
Marketing Boards and Grain Marketing Board. (Note
that Marketing Boards were and are still government
institutions)
•Through a complicated formula, the Grain Marketing

Board, for example discriminated against African

farmers; they were paid less for their maize (corn) than

white farmers. Thus, in effect, Africans were subsidizing

white agriculture. The same Act was passed in Kenya.

 The Industrial Conciliation Act
• During the Depression white workers also face
competition from Africans. As the profitability of
industries declined during the depression years
most employers turned to cheap labor, that is
African labor. Whites were concerned about this
development, which threatened the very basis of
colonial rule. Europeans were supposed to be a
superior race and were supposed to maintain a
certain standard of living that was beyond that of
Africans.
•. The depression threatened this philosophy. Whites

in power, that is, the elite also feared that the poor

whites/ workers would join forces with Africans. This

had happened on the Rand, South Africa in 1922. The

Prime Minister of the country in the 1930s observed:

“The European in this country can be likened to an Island of white in a sea

of black, with the artisan and the tradesman forming the shores and the

professional classes the highlands in the center. Is the native to be allowed

to erode away the shores and gradually attack the highlands? To permit

this would mean that the leaven of civilisation would be removed from this

country and the black man would inevitably revert to a barbarism worse than

ever before.”
•To thwart African competition on the job market the government passed

this Industrial and Conciliation Act of 1934, this was amended in 1937.

The Act prevented blacks from competing with whites for skilled jobs.

Also, “natives” were excluded from the definition of an employee and as

such they could not join industrial councils (sort of trade unions).

•
 The Native Land Husbandry Act (1951)

•“A native will either become a peasant farmer only, adopting

agricultural and soil conservation methods, or become an

industrialized worker, with his tentacles pulled out of the

soil…. There is not enough land available for all Natives to be

both wage earners and peasant farmers.” (CNC, 1946 quoted

in Machingaidze,” p. 565)
• By the 1940s and 1950s reserves there was
both overcrowding and overstocking-causing
an ecological decline manifested in soil
erosion, declining agricultural output, etc, etc.
• Colonial government blamed the ecological
decline on bad farming methods, and they
sought to make reserves produce more
• At the same time the manufacturing sector
had expanded during W.W.11.
• Before W.W.11 Africans were not welcome in
towns in any capacity other than temporary
residents who were only there to provide
services to white masters, but with the coming
into being of the manufacturing sector there
had to be a change of attitude.
• Manufacturing sector by its nature needs a lot
of semi-skilled and skilled workers and to gain
any skill you need to be employed at a
particular place for a relatively long time. The
second motive for passing this Act was the
need to stabilize the labor force. It is in the
context of the expansion of the
manufacturing sector that they sought to
restructure the African society.
• Among other things the Act sought to:
• -arrest soil erosion by encouraging good
farming methods such as the application of
manure, construction of contour ridges.
• -increase production in reserves as many white
farmers had become tobacco farmers.
• -those actually not working on the land at the
time ceased to have land rights-were supposed
to be urban workers
• Africans resisted the scheme and in the end it
failed.