COLONIAL LEGISLATION ON LAND IN RHODESIA

 

The Land Appointment Act 1930.

By Wilbert Masamba

-In 1930,the act was enacted which divided rural land along the racial lines, creating four types of land: white owned land that could not be acquired by Africans; purchase areas for those who could not afford to purchase land; Tribal Trust Lands designed as African reserves,and Crown lands owned by the state reserve for future use and public parks.

-Fifty one percent of the land was given approximately 50,000 white inhabitants, with 29,8 percent left for over a million of Africans.

-Before the 1930 Act, land was not openly accessible to natives,but there were no legal barriers to ownership.

-The act was passed under the colonial government rule in an attempt to prevent a loss of government authority over those native to the region.

The act led to the overpopulation of Native Reservations and limited African access to quality land that resulted in large economic and social inequality.

-The Land Appointment Act of 1930 was viewed as the legislation passed to address the issues it created,such as the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1950s , that also enforced land segregation and limited native opportunities in Southern Rhodesia.

-Land allocated to white farmers tended to consist of richer soil and high rainfall ultimately seen as land with higher production potential.

-Natives who had settled on what were now white-only territories were forced to relinquish their land rights and expected to subside on overcrowded reservations.

-Africans were only allowed to purchase land in Native Purchase Areas.

-The lands available for purchase were far from the technical services and resources needed for proper farming, with some lacking access to water or suffering from overuse and soil erosion.These lands were considered to be poor in quality and less valuable,and only a few individuals were able to acquire land through these methods.The majority of Africans were forced to access land through what was known as customary tenure in Native Reserves.

The Native Land Husbandry Act 1951

The Europeans discovered that the Land Appointment Act could not supress the desire of Africans to own the land.The land and environment were also deteriorating at a faster rate in the native reserves.So as to improve the situation they passed the Land Husbandry Act of 1951.

Some of the reasons behind the enactment of the act:

-to regulate conservation measures and ensure good farming practices.

-to relate the stocking of each area to its carrying capacity.

-to allocate grazing rights to individuals.

-to redistribute arable land into compact and economic units,and to register each individual's holding of land.

-to replace communal ownership of land among natives with private ownership.

Measures taken taken for the success of the policy.

-Each family was allocated 8 acres of land which could not be subdivided among their children and this conflicted with traditional belief.

-The power to distribute land was stripped from the chiefs.The District Commissioners were given the power to redistribute the land.

-Complusory conservation methods were introduced to regulate farming practices.Construction of contour ridges ,destocking and storm drains.

-The number of cattle owned was limited to five.

-Those who failed to get into the reserves had to work for Europeans in mines and factories.

-Africans were forced to get involved in public projects such as construction of dams, bridges and roads.

-Failure to comply with the provisions of the act was subject to punishment either by fine or imprisonment.However the project failed and it was replaced by the Land Tenure Act of 1969 which was amended in 1977.

Rationale behind the failure of the Land Husbandry Act.

1.Many individuals were deprived by the Act of their right to land but were not given any compensatory form of social security within the urban community (Garnett,1959)

2.The chiefs in many cases resented the loss of their authority to allocate land to individuals.

3.To the rural African, cattle mean wealth and destocking could easily be potrayed as lessening of that wealth.(Rhodesian History Vol.3,1972).

The Land Tenure Act of 1969.

-it was a more rigidly segregationist law that suppressed the Land Husbandry Act in 1969,and was amended in 1977.

-the act was enacted in a bid to ensure that each race should have its own area and the interests of each race should be paramount in its own area.Also neither race may own or occupy land in the area of the other race except by permit, which should be issued or refused by a Minister of Government whom it seemed in his opinion desirable.

-96 million acres of land in Rhodesia were divided into 6 millions acres of National land and 45 million acres each for African and European areas.

-For the purpose of the Act,an African was defined as a member of aboriginal tribes or races of Africa and the Islands adjacent thereto, including Madagascar and Zanzibar:or any person who had the blood of such tribes or races who lived as a member of an aboriginal native community.A European was defined as a person who was not an African.The provisions were specifically entrenched for the purposes of Section 80 of the 1969 Constitution.

-The Act was a direct result of the report of the Land Commission,set up in 1925, of which Sir W.Morriss Carter was a chairman (Carter Commission) in 1926 which recommended the segregation of all land on virtually permanent basis.