White farmers, black tenants and landlord legislation: Southern Rhodesia 1890–1930

Abstract

The theme of this paper is the array of legislation controlling African tenancy on white-owned farmland. This legislation spread from South Africa (the Cape, 1869; Natal, 1896; Transvaal, 1887; Orange Free State, 1893; Southern Rhodesia, 1908; Nyasaland, 1917; Kenya, 1918). In each case, the legislation had a common purpose-to deny to Africans use of white-owned land, except in the capacity of labourers. In each case, the form the legislation took, although derived from South African practice, was determined by the particular constellation of forces in the political economy at the time. The core of this study is an examination of the Southern Rhodesia Private Locations Ordinance of 1908, and of its application. There are three levels of discussion. At the regional level, I have drawn on recent published and on some unpublished material which seems to me to be worth bringing together. At the level of white Rhodesian politics, I have looked in more detail at the manipulations which went into the making and implementation of the legislation. And at the local level, I have examined its implementation in one particular district, MelsetterChipinga, in the south-east of what was formerly Southern Rhodesia. Labour tenancy was a relation of serfdom which emerged wherever white farmers with limited capital took land from agricultural peoples. It is argued in this essay that in the colonial context it was inherently an unstable relation of production. The development of capitalism in urban, rural and mining areas tended to undermine all forms of tenancy, and tended to create landless proletariats, both urban and rural. But while an effective attack was mounted on other forms of African tenancy on white-owned land, white farmers, by virtue of their disproportionate influence in the