The looting of African cattle under the aegis of ‘destocking’ the native reserves was one of the most painful measures ever taken by the European settler-Government under the Land Husbandry Act of 1951, writes Dr Felix Muchemwa in his book The Struggle For Land in Zimbabwe (1890 – 2010) that The Patriot is serialising.
Land Husbandry Act of 1951 (Nhimuro)
AS early as 1932, one year after the promulgation of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, many native reserves were already congested and, as a result, an estimated 50 000 Africans moved into some of the designated native purchase areas without permission.
Ironically, these were not evicted.
Instead, a leasehold tenure was introduced for them in February 1933.
The move provoked an avalanche of Africans applying to move onto the native purchase areas on leasehold terms. (Palmer, 1977: pp.199-200)
Destocking the African herd
The attention paid to the numbers of African-owned cattle was far greater than that paid to the African population.
African cattle holdings were closely monitored by the white settler-farmers under the Compulsory Dipping Ordinance of 1918 which levied high dipping charges on the Africans.
The dipping records showed that the African herd had increased from 1 197 466 in 1926 to 1 547 623 in 1936, while European-owned cattle had, during the same period, dropped from 991 216 to 753 419. (Palmer, 1977: p.211)
As early as 1932, just one year after the Land Apportionment Act, the Southern Rhodesia Agricultural Union had produced an alarmist report on soil erosion due to overstocking of cattle by Africans in the native reserves and recommended a destocking exercise that saw Africans losing most of their cattle to the Cattle Selling Market at the dipping tanks.
At that market, most cattle were not ‘worth more than a sheep’. (Southern Rhodesia Debates 1923, p.572)
Native commissioners, especially those in Matabeleland, were more enterprising, opening big meat business factories in West Nicholson, sustained by African cattle looted under guise of ‘destocking’ the native reserves. (Palmer, 1977: p.204)
In the long run, the Southern Rhodesia Government response to the congestion in the native reserves was the Land Husbandry Act of 1951 which sought to compulsorily reorganise all native reserves by replacing communal tenure of land ownership with individual land tenure and ‘good land husbandry’.
Part One of the Land Husbandry Act empowered the Governor of Southern Rhodesia to regulate ‘good farming including destocking of cattle’ as a measure of addressing overcrowding and congestion in the native reserves by both African people and their cattle.
Yet, interestingly enough, a drastic reduction of the African population in the native reserves would have certainly better achieved the objectives of the Land Husbandry Act of 1951 than destocking the African herd.
Under the Land Husbandry Act of 1951, each African family was only entitled to eight acres of land, six acres for cropping, and two acres for grass levy and 80 acres or 32 hectares of land for grazing in areas of good rainfall averaging 24 inches of rain a year.
In areas of poor rainfall, averaging 16 inches of rainfall per annum, the acreage for cropping was doubled to 16 acres. (Rifkind, 1968: p.100)
The number of cattle allowed to graze on the 80 acres per family was only five animals and the wider implications on African survival were dire.
At a time when ploughs were the common means for cultivation in the native reserves (Palmer, 1977: p.201), it was an absolute necessity for each family to own four (4) steers for drought power only, which left just one extra cow possibly for milk.
On the wider scope, the act totally denied Africans of any form of cattle wealth for lobola, cultural rites like healing and funerals as well as restitution in serious crimes.
The looting of African cattle under the aegis of ‘destocking’ the native reserves was one of the most painful measures ever taken by the European settler government under the Land Husbandry Act of 1951.
Above all, the Land Husbandry Act of 1951, ‘completely ignores, if not deliberately rejects, the customary basis of African land tenure by introducing the principle of individual and negotiable rights to land. This made many rural populace landless’, overnight. (Palley, 1966: p.163)
While Section 21 of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 had already prohibited Africans from occupying land in the European area: “Except as herein specially provided, no native shall after the first day of April 1931, hold or occupy land in the European area.” (Land Apportionment Act, CAP 240, p.118), the Land Husbandry Act of 1951 went further to make it illegal for Africans working in towns, mines or other urban places to occupy land in the native reserves without a ‘special farming permit’.
Cultivation in the native reserves was therefore denied to African people working in towns, mines and other urban areas.
It did not matter that their wives and their families permanently lived in villages in the native reserves.
Only Africans permanently resident in the native reserves were allowed to occupy land in the native reserves and were issued with ‘Special Farming Right permits’. (Rifkind, 1968: p. 100)
Suddenly, Africans found themselves prohibited from owning any land or property in the European areas of towns and mines under the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, and prohibited from owning any ancestral land in the native reserve under the Land Husbandry Act of 1951. (Rifkind, 1968: p.163)
The Land Husbandry Act of 1951 was conceived on the same basis as the Glen Grey Act of 1892 in South Africa, which had subdivided the over-populated ‘kaffiraria’ into eight-acre plots and formed the basis of the South African Land Act of 1913 which further curtailed African rights to land in both ‘native reserves’ and European held farms, towns and mines, in order to induce adequate ‘labour’ for European settler enterprises. (Terreblanche, 2002: p.261)
In the same manner the South African Land Act of 1913 ultimately made the African ‘not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth’ (Terreblanche, 2002: p.264). The Land Husbandry Act of 1951 was designed to create perpetual ‘slaves’ or ‘vagabonds’ out of the Africans of Southern Rhodesia in the land of their birth.
Joshua Nkomo, the leader of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (ANC) put it bluntly in the statement:
“Any law, Act or measure whose effect is to undermine the security of our small land rights, dispossesses us of our little wealth in the form of cattle, disperse us from our ancestral homes in the reserves, and reduces us to the status of vagabonds and a source of cheap labour, will ultimately turn the African people against society to the detriment of peace and progress.
The Africans need more land today and conditions of tenure similar to other people.” (Rhodesia Herald, September 13 1958)