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Right to land denied

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UNDER the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA), the size of land holdings was to depend on climatic conditions. 

More specifically, the size of ‘a full standard holding’ depended on the size of the arable holding, and the amount of grazing land needed to maintain the livestock. 

This represented one large animal (for example, a cow) or two sheep or three pigs or the equivalent in other animals. 

All of these factors were to be adjusted according to rainfall conditions.

This stipulation in the Act was aimed at intensifying production by changing what was perceived as the haphazard system of ‘shifting cultivation’, referred to as ‘slash-and-burn agriculture’, to one more suited to a sedentary type of agriculture. 

Ideally, a holding in the 28-inch rainfall area would have eight acres of cultivatable land.  

A producer’s stock would require 10 acres of grazing land per animal unit. 

His/her total requirement would be 68 acres, with the eight acres of arable land to be farmed under crop rotation, combining a two-acre fallow with grain and leguminous crops, which,if supplemented by the manure from cattle, would preserve the nitrogen in the soil. 

The position adopted by the NLHA was backed by Ian Smith, the then Prime Minister of Rhodesia (1964-1979), who pointed out that the original type of agriculture in the country was what he called ‘peasant farming’. 

During a personal interview, Smith said: “In the pre-colonial period, the people (Africans) didn’t know anything about modern cropping, the use of manure and artificial fertilisers. They didn’t understand scientific farming, for example, green cropping, crop rotation and the use of legumes.” 

The NLHA also intended to terminate what were perceived as ‘traditional’ practices of land tenure by introducing ‘individual ownership’. 

The architects of the Act hoped that the concept of ownership would help reduce land fragmentation and give incentives to the peasant farmer to undertake improvements on the farm which, in turn, would assist in checking soil erosion thereby increasing agricultural productivity. 

Moreover, the colonial state attempted to structure land distribution in order to check African competition against white settler-farmers, while at the same time injecting some sort of egalitarianism which was believed to be an aspect of African ‘traditional’ land holding practice.

Significantly, while the Act erroneously sought to ‘equalise’ land holdings for the majority of rural households, it also created conditions for the emergence of a small class of large land holders who, in the Sanyati Communal areas, were among the many peasants who had challenged the eight-acre allocations per household.

In Sanyati the allocated land area was too small to sustain a family and their animal possessions, neither was it sufficient to produce a saleable surplus as stipulated in the NLHA. 

Sanyati, being a land-scarce area compared to Gokwe, was therefore, more prone to erosion and an organised pattern of migratory labour.

Hence, in view of the very low rainfall received and that it was not well endowed with fertile soils, the allocation of eight acres per family was staunchly resisted.

Ironically, the primary motivation behind the NLHA, that the land could not continue to cater for the subsistence needs of an ever-growing rural population, had in fact long since been accepted by rural communities themselves. 

Evidence in colonial Zimbabwe, since the turn of the century, showed that the peasant economy had ceased to depend entirely on agriculture; that most cash requirements was derived from wage incomes outside it. 

A large proportion of the average rural household income was derived, not from agriculture but, from migrant labour. 

This shift in economic orientation by the migrant labourers was a result of the appalling size of household land holdings in Sanyati Reserve. 

The Mangwende Commission of Inquiry of 1961, after land allocation under the NLHA, revealed that although some landholders cultivated 10-or-more acres, many households actually cultivated much less than the standard allocation of six-to-eight acres of land. 

In areas of excessive land pressure, such as in the Sanyati area, the restricted size of arable plots per family was attributable to the scarcity of available land. 

Thus, in Sanyati, where the land was less available than in neighbouring Gokwe, it seemed appropriate for the officials to apply the ‘tight formula’ under the NLHA allocations as it was a question of survival for the landless peasants or those whose economic needs were not fully catered for by the restricted eight-acre allocations or in labour migrancy and other off-farm activities.

Despite its erroneously perceived suitability to the Sanyati situation, the NLHA still engendered forms of resistance hitherto unknown since the passage of the Land Acquisition Act (LAA) that preceded it.

One of the stipulations of the NLHA was that, for one to be registered as a farming right holder, one had to be a cultivator of land in the area concerned on the date selected for implementation of the Act. 

As a result, many migrants who were absent at the time the allocations were made were simply not considered for an allocation, and a considerable portion of the recognised membership of the rural village was deprived of its basic right to land. 

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 views and comments, email: linamanucci@gmail.com

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