THE period 1956-1975 marked the height of the ‘Decentralisation Policy’ debate in the then Rhodesia.
There were forced evictions of thousands of Africans to various rural destinations throughout pre-independence Zimbabwe.
The evictions were justified from a colonialist standpoint that, between 1941 and 1948 the African population in Rhodesia increased by more than
700 000 people, while the area apportioned for their use had remained almost unchanged.
The land position in the native reserves in the post-war period was such that 7 118 200 additional acres of land were urgently required for an estimated 71 182 African families, who lived outside the native reserves on Alienated Land and Crown Land designated as European Land, Forest Areas and Unassigned Areas.
The deciding factor was when the indigenous people residing in these areas were required, much to their chagrin, to move out as a result of the implementation of the ‘politically-driven’ Land Apportionment Act (LAA), of 1930.
Essentially, the Act legalised the (unequal) division of the country’s land resources between the indigenes and the settlers and became highly segregated in all respects.
These categories, according to the Land Apportionment Act (LAA), were defined as follows: European Area consisted of European-owned land; native reserves were those enshrined in the Constitution and within which land was allocated according to African customary laws; native purchase area was reserved for acquisition as farms for individual Africans and was regarded as compensation for the loss of the right to purchase farmland anywhere else in the country; Unassigned Area consisted of European-owned land, which if the owners so wished, could be transferred to Africans and thereafter would become a permanent part of the native purchase area.
The Forest Area consisted of land set aside for development as Forest Area reserves, legally it lay within the European Area.
The Unassigned Area consisted of poor, inhospitable land left under the unfettered jurisdiction of the state to be distributed at a later date among any of the other categories.
The influx of white immigrants from Europe in the post-war period necessitated the evictions of a large number of Africans from Crown and Alienated lands.
To make way for the new immigrants, recourse was made to the policy of eviction of Africans from land so designated as Crown Land by the Land Apportionment Act (LAA), which, for security reasons, lay to some extent,dormant during the war years.
The decade 1945-1955 saw at least 100 000 African ‘squatters’ all over the colony being moved, often forcibly, into overcrowded ‘reserves’ and the inhospitable and tsetse-fly-ridden Unassigned Areas.
Despite all efforts by the Department of Conservation to get rid of the tsetse fly menace through massive spraying campaigns and theengagement of ‘magotchas’ (tsetse fly hunters), the tsetse-fly was never completely eradicated in the area.
Despite this, many people were still moved and resettled in the small and overcrowded Sanyati Reserve under the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA).
The Act, which was a key feature of the 1950s, was justified on the grounds that, by the end of the Second World War, Southern Rhodesia’s ‘native reserves’ were seriously overcrowded and over-stocked.
An official investigation found that more than half of the so-called reserves were overstocked with cattle by 145 percent.
The Southern Rhodesian Government, of the time, responded to this situation by publishing a Native Reserves Land Utilisation and Good Husbandry Bill in 1948, which was later promulgated as the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA).
Its stated objectives were wide ranging, essentially:“…to provide for the control of the utilisation and allocation of land occupied by natives; and to ensure its efficient use for agricultural purposes; and to require natives to perform labour for conserving natural resources and for promoting good husbandry.”
The Act’s more specific objectives were stated as:
λ to provide for a reasonable standard of good husbandry and for the protection of natural resources by all Africans using the land;
λ to limit the number of livestock in any area to its carrying capacity, and, as far as practicable, to relate stock holding to arable land holding as a means of improving farming practice;
λ to allocate individual rights in arable areas and in communal grazing areas as far as was possible in terms of economic units, and, where this was not possible due to over-population, to prevent further fragmentation and to provide for the aggregation of fragmentary holdings in economic units;
λ to provide individual security of tenure of arable land and individual security of grazing rights in communal grazing areas; and
λ to provide for the setting aside of land for towns and business centres in the African areas.
Essentially, the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA), was an attempt to:“attack the multifarious problems of erosion, land fragmentation and tenure, migratory labour and African agricultural traditions.”
Under the Native Land Husbandry Act, a ‘standard area’ or ‘economic unit’ of land was allocated per family unit (comprising a man, his wife and three children) by the Native Commissioner under the direction of the Chief Native Commissioner as primary allocative authorities, thus effectively usurping the right to allocate land by traditional chiefs.
A ‘standard’ or ‘economic’ unit was defined by the architects of the Native Land Husbandry Act as: “…a piece of land which, if farmed according to recommended procedures laid down by the Department of Native Agriculture, would serve not only to support the holder and his family at subsistence level, but was expected to be capable of producing a crop surplus for sale.”
The size of the ‘standard’ unit was fixed according to the climatic and ecological configuration of each area, for instance, in high rainfall regions, the standard holding was six acres, ranging to 15 acres in the driest areas of the country.
Dr Michelina Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant, lecturer and specialist hospitality interior decorator. She is a published author in her field. For comments e-mail: linamanucci@gmail.com