Next Year will be better (1952)
By Hylda Richards
Published by Howard B. Timms for Hodder & Stought, London

THERE is a view, a very wrong view that the white minority farmers had innate farming skills that made them successful.
It is one error that the white community has never cared to correct.
Because it is an error that has made them ‘champions’ in the face of the ‘concerned’ world.
But a book I recently fished out in the archives, Next Year Will be Better, published in 1952, written by Hylda Richards tells an interesting story of the Rhodesian farmers, it highlights some of the challenges that they met in establishing their operations.
It is a poignant book that highlights not only the difficulties but how a majority of the farmers were clueless and required massive handholding to establish themselves.
Rhodesian farming operations began bearing fruit after 60 years.
The author showers praises on these inexperienced farmers who were given another chance to prove their worth in Rhodesia.
To her they were indeed heroes and heroines who rescued the ‘natives’ who were ‘clueless’ and ‘did not know’ what to do with the land.
“They had failed as farmers in London and could not pay off debts and the department of Relations gave them another chance by sending them off to farms in Rhodesia,” writes Richards.
But it is a fact that for years the Rhodesians depended on locals for food as they embarked on agricultural activities.
The book is an honest account that is detailed.
Reading the book one cannot help but wonder why pole and dagga huts on the pieces of virgin land occupied by indigenes have been splashed the world over and a fuss made over them.
The dwellings have been used to support the argument being that the ‘invaders’ were ill-prepared and had no business being on the land.
One would be tempted to think the white invaders built mansions when they occupied the land but the author tells a different story.
“For over a year Nkosi (the white master) and I had been drawing beautiful plans for the House. When it came to the actual building however, all designs and plans were scrapped for we found we could only afford to build three rooms,” wrote Richards.
Not only have the lifestyle of indigenous farmers made news but also the state of their crops, weeds in their fields have made headlines, pointing to the inability of the blacks to produce.
“Our dreams of a bumper crop were shattered, for the maize turned yellow and stopped growing while the weeds towered above them.”
“A soft rain would help the maize, but the sun…seemed to have come to stay and day after day dawned cloudless and brilliant and the mealies gave up the fight and died. The crop so anxiously waited for would be less than half of what we had expected,” wrote Richards about their own production.
The tobacco crop which is being produced by the ‘new’ farmers and judged to be of low quality, reading Richards, is way better than that of pioneer Rhodesians.
“The tobacco looked like small starved cabbages. Our crops were so bad that year that Nkosi said it would have been better to have grown no crops at all.”
Our farmers when they started off they were made fun off even turned into villains for failing to ‘fully’ provide for their school-going children.
But it seems the white farmers had the same problem as well in the beginning.
“It was difficult finding…. clothes demanded on Bryan’s school list. To save buying a blazer, I accepted an old one given me by a friend whose son had just left the same school.”
She described the poverty they experienced as very depressing.
“It was very depressing, because when things were broken they could not be replaced, could not even be mended and the few treasured possessions had to be taken into everyday use.”
“I used to make skimpy shirt blouses of cheap Jap silk, buy outsize men’s hats at sales….which I used to machine until they fitted me”.
To the author it was proper for the white farmers to hold on to the hope that the coming seasons would bring them smiles, the same is however not allowed for the resettled farmers.
“It only meant holding on a little longer for Next Year, the wonderful mirage which kept us going”.
It is only 14 years since the resettled farmers got land and a significant number are well-off and this is despite droughts but the bitter white commercial farmers label them failures.
Production levels have picked up, the quality of crops has improved and farmers have mastered the art of doing agriculture as a business.
Tobacco production has grown from an all-time low of 48.8 million kilogrammes in 2008 to 167 million kgs last season.
The verdict is yours.