Racism in Colonial 25 Alois S. Mlambo

Contents Introduction ...... 430 Defining ...... 430 Scientific Racism and the White Man’s Burden Idea ...... 431 Racism and the Black Peril Phenomenon ...... 433 White Racism and the Alienation and Racialization of Land ...... 436 A Racialized Labor Regime ...... 439 Some Are “More White” than Others (Mlambo 2000)...... 441 The Invisible Minorities ...... 442 Political Marginalization and Other Forms of Discrimination ...... 443 Conclusion ...... 444 References ...... 444

Abstract Colonial Zimbabwe (known as Southern until 1965, and Rhodesia there- after until in 1980) was established in 1890 under the sponsorship of Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Company (BSAC). Rhodes was a firm believer in the White-Man’s Burden idea of the duty of the Anglo-Saxon race to help “civilize” the “darker” corners of the and regarded British imperialism as a positive force for this purpose. The settlers who occupied colonial Zimbabwe shared this view of the world and treated the indigenous African population as children who needed their guidance, protection, and civilization. The policies which the settler state adopted and implemented, therefore, whether in politics, constitution making and governance, education, economy, land and labor policies, social relations, or residential policy, were based on this sense of racial superiority and the determination to promote white interests at the expense of the nonwhite population. permeated the entire colonial project at every level,

A. S. Mlambo (*) University of , Pretoria, e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Pte Ltd. 2019 429 S. Ratuva (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_28 430 A. S. Mlambo

whether it was in sports, hotel facilities, or the use of public conveniences and amenities. White racism in colonial Zimbabwewasalsoinformedbyasenseof fear, given the fact that whites were grossly outnumbered in the country throughout the colonial period and were always afraid of being overwhelmed by the African majority. This contributed to their determination to control the Africans and keep them in their place. Attempts at promoting racial in the 1950s achieved little. State sponsored white racism ended with Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

Keywords Racism · Imperialism · Colonization · Black peril · Land · Education · Labor · Rhodes · Rhodesia · Settler

Introduction

Late nineteenth-century European imperialism and colonization in Africa were motivated by a range of factors, including a predominant European racist view of the world which regarded the Anglo-Saxon race as the most civilized of all the races and, therefore, duty-bound to spread the benefits of their civilization to the “lower” races of the world. Called the White Man’s Burden or “civilizing mission” and “mission civilisatrice” in the English and French world, respectively, this idea was celebrated by Rudyard Kipling in his 1902 poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden,” which was, partly, in celebration the United States victory over in the Cuban-American- Spanish War and, mainly, an assertion of the Anglo-Saxon race’s right to rule other races. As will be shown, the founder of Rhodesia, Cecil John Rhodes, was a strong believer in the civilizing mission idea and had no doubt whatsoever that his race was the best in the world. He firmly believed that bringing the land between the and the under British rule was for the unquestionable benefit of the indigenous people of that . Rhodesian white settlers shared Rhodes’ world view. Not surprisingly, therefore, racism remained the foundation and the pervasive ethos of white colonial rule from the establishment of the British colony in 1890 until the collapse of white rule in 1979, mainly because of the African liberation movements’ determination to dismantle the racist colonial system by any means necessary, including taking up arms.

Defining Racism

For purposes of this study, racism means “any action or attitude, conscious or unconscious, that subordinates an individual or group based on skin colour or race ...[whether] enacted individually or institutionally.” Institutional racism manifests itself in discriminatory policies based on race in schools, businesses, employment, religion, and media, among others, which are designed to “perpetuate and maintain the power, influence and wellbeing of one group over another.” Such discriminatory 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 431 policies often manifest in the denial of benefits, facilities, services, and opportunities to a person or a group of people on the basis of their racial origins. In addition, racism also exists when “ideas and assumptions about racial categories are used to justify and reproduce a racial hierarchy and racially structured society that unjustly limits access to resources, rights and privileges on the basis of race” (Tatum 2003).

Scientific Racism and the White Man’s Burden Idea

While racism and racial prejudice have a long history, as evident in the racial justifications of the transatlantic slave trade as beneficial to the enslaved because it took them away from their savagery in Africa and exposed them to Western civilization and the dignity of manual labor, it is the specific manifestation of this phenomenon in late nineteenth century Western which has a direct bearing on the partition of Africa in general and the colonization of Zimbabwe in particular. Based on the intellectual arguments advanced by American and European Social Darwinists, such as Spencer and Alfred Mahan, which regarded the Anglos-Saxon race and its civilization as the most evolved and best, this version of racism, particularly in Late Victorian Britain, postulated that it was the Anglo-Saxon race’s duty to spread Anglo-Saxon civilization to the “darker” corners of the world through colonial domination for the benefit of the colonized peoples (Hofstadter 1944; Rogers 1972). There was no doubt, for instance, in British arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes’ view that British imperial domination was the best thing that could happen to the world at large. He wrote:

I contend that we [the English] are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our gives. (Rhodes 1877)

With respect to Africa, specifically, Rhodes stated:

Africa is still lying ready for us. It is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses. (Rhodes 1877)

The White settlers who entered the territory of what was to become (Zimbabwe) in 1890 as part of an invading group of adventurers known as the which Rhodes sponsored were imbued by this sense of mission and superiority which made them regard the indigenous African majority as a lesser breed to be controlled and guided toward Western civilization. Following their victory in the 1893 Anglo-Ndebele War and the subsequent successful suppression of the /Umvukela armed uprisings of 1896, colonial settlers not only claimed the right to rule by conquest, but also consolidated their white supremacist 432 A. S. Mlambo ideology and the conviction that the African majority was a subject race, not only in need of moral guidance and civilization, but also of strict and close control. The determination to control the majority of Africans as closely as possible stemmed from the fear of them inspired by the 1896 uprisings and the ever-present fear of the largely outnumbered white settler population of being swamped by the Africans. Not surprisingly, little effort was made to understand the Africans and their worldview, while a determined resolve prevailed to “civilize” the so-called natives. (This innocuous term normally used to denote indigenous peoples of original inhabitants of a place took on a rather derogatory meaning in colonial Zimbabwe where it increasingly implied inferiority and lack of civilisation. Hence, it will be used in this chapter only in quotation marks.) Thus, the gulf between the races was entrenched in Rhodesian society from the very onset of European . According to Anthony Chennells, the white Rhodesian self-image which devel- oped in the early years of colonialism “was based on the idea that they were civilisers of the wilderness, taming its violence. They saw themselves as peace-bringers and profoundly moral beings, in contrast to the less-than-human blacks that embodied brute nature” (Sicilia 1999). Not surprisingly, therefore, whites generally regarded Africans as perpetual children to be firmly and strictly controlled by the civilized settlers. Africans were, thus, perpetually infantilized and were routinely referred to as “boys” or “girls” regardless of their age, as in the then common references to “houseboys” and “house girls” for grown-up African men and women. Increasingly, therefore, whiteness became a mark of superiority and civilization and, therefore, power and privilege to be promoted guarded and defended at all times, and remained so throughout Zimbabwe’s colonial history. This was very evident in the way the successive generations of white political leaders asserted this superiority and white entitlement and repeatedly affirmed the white people’s civilizing mission in the colony. For instance, , Rhodesian Prime Minister from the 1930s onwards, declared that “the greatest civilising influence in Southern Rhodesia is the White settler, as long as he is really white inside,” while dismissing Africans as incompetent and incapable of holding political or adminis- trative office. When discussions were under way to set up the Federation of Rhodesia and or the Central African Federation, Huggins was adamant that Afri- cans should not be given any administrative positions in its governance structures. He made it abundantly clear that his vision of the proposed Central African Feder- ation had no place for blacks at all in its structures because, “they are quite incapable of playing a full part ...They may have a university degree, but their background is all wrong.” In response to a seeming insistence by politicians in the to make the Federation more inclusive, Huggins asserted: “It is time for the people in to realise that the white man in Africa is not prepared and never will be prepared to accept the African as an equal, either socially or politically” because there was “something in their [Africans] chromosomes which makes them more backward and different from peoples living in the East and West” (Turnbull 1962: 90). Given this racist attitude toward the Africans, it came as no surprise that Huggins spearheaded the policy of separate development which he labelled the two-pyramid system when he became the colony’s Prime Minister in 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 433 the mid-1930s. As the name suggests, the policy had much in common with the later policy of separate or parallel racial development which was the foundation of the South African system when the Nationalists came to power in that country in 1948. Similarly, , the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, in the Unilateral Declara- tion of Independence (UDI) government from 1965 to 1979 justified UDI by saying that by preventing black majority rule in the country, they had “struck a blow for the preservation of , civilisation and .”

Racism and the Black Peril Phenomenon

A clear manifestation of pervasive White settler racism and the fear of the African majority which accompanied and underpinned it was the black peril phenomenon of the early twentieth century which saw White settler society experiencing collective hysteria over the alleged sexual threat of African males to white womanhood. The fear, it seems, stemmed from the 1896 uprisings which had resulted in the killings of almost 10% of the total white population and the resulting and ever-present specter of racial swamping, especially given the ratio of Africans to whites of 45:1 in 1901 and 22:1 in 1931 (Mhike 2016). Constantly aware that Africans resented their domination, White settlers were apprehensive about their future in the country and of the likelihood of Africans seeking revenge at some point, including through possible sexual abuse of white women by the, generally, depraved black males driven by irresistible primitive animal sexual instincts. Commenting on this perva- sive and ever-present fear of the Africans stemming from the 1896 uprisings, Katherine Gombay stated:

The ‘Rebellion’ confirmed the settlers’ preconceptions about the brutishness of the Africans, while also awakening in them a sense of their own vulnerability which diminished little over the next two or three decades. It was this legacy of fear and hate which found expression in phenomena such as the black peril. (Gombay 1991)

Imagining Africans as less than human and naturally depraved and brutish was not difficult for the settlers, given that they regarded Africans as little more than children who were ruled by emotions and, therefore, capable of the most violent outbursts of anger and dark acts of sexual passion. Such attitudes were fed by the “scholarship” of the day which was steeped in the racist principles of Social Darwinism, which “formed such a crucial ideological underpinning to colonial conquest” (Pape 1990) and claimed that Africans were subhuman. An example was Professor Henry Drummond’s book entitled , published in 1890, in which he characterized Africans as “tribes with no name, speaking tongues which no man can interpret” and who were “half animal half children, wholly savage and wholly heathen” (Drummond 1890). According to such “scholarship,” Africans were still at a lower level of evolution and were not yet capable of controlling their sexual urges. This is what was reflected in the statement by one member of the 434 A. S. Mlambo

Legislative Assembly in 1916 that “the male native more or less has a tendency to commit rape” (Rhodesia Herald 14 July 1916). Similarly, describing African girls, N. H. Wilson stressed that African morality was low and that African girls passions “are stronger, they have much more of the animal in them in sex matters and they have not the restraint and control that white women have” (Mushonga 2013). This toxic combination of fear and racial hatred of the Africans inevitably led to the determination to impose strict legal controls on Africans in order to monitor and govern their every activity. Because Africans were believed to be little more than infants, it was presumed that they could not handle European liquor, hence the passage of the 1898 Sale of Liquor to Natives and Indians Regulations. Also, to keep Africans out of white residential areas, the government passed the Native Locations Ordinance in the same year. In 1901 came the Master and Servants Ordinance designed to enforce African workers’ obedience and subservience to their white employers, as well as to limit their work and economic options. Most significantly, in order to address the settler community’s fear of the abuse of white womanhood by African males, colonial authorities passed the Immorality Suppression Ordinance of 1903, followed by the Immorality and Indecency (Suppression) Ordinance of 1916. Thus African actions and behaviors were systematically criminalized. The 1903 Ordinance, specifically, outlawed sexual relations between white women and black men and made such transgressions punishable by a maximum sentence of 2 years in prison for white women and 5 years for black men. In addition, black men could be condemned to death for any act legally defined as “attempted rape.” Significantly, there was no law preventing white men from having sexual relations with black women or pronouncing on attempted rape of black women by white men. Indeed, the growing number of children of mixed race, known in Southern Rhodesia as , is testimony to the prevalence of white male and black female sexual relations over time. Indeed, while white males who married or cohabited with black women were ostracized or criticized by fellow whites, evidence abounds that such sexual arrangements were quite common in the early decades of the twentieth century (Mushonga 2013; Schmidt 1992). Attempts to pass laws criminalizing white men’s sexual interaction with black women were continually unsuccessful until the 1950s. Indeed, as Pape pointed out, while the black peril legislation was the result of white male anxiety and sense of insecurity arising out of the fear of the African majority, it may also have been a diversionary tactic designed to divert attention from their sexual shenanigans with black women. Thus,

By encouraging white rage against black sexual offenders, settler men were able to hide their own far more widespread and often violent sexual relations with black women. This was the real sexual ‘peril’ in colonial society, but it can only be discovered by reading between the lines of the tirades against [Africans accused of such crimes]. (Pape 1990)

Moreover, white settler society seems to have downplayed the role that some white women may have played in encouraging or initiating sexual relations with 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 435 their black servants for purposes of self-gratification or out of curiosity. Mushonga reports that there were 46 cases of white women who used their authority as employers of black men to “persuade” them to have sexual relations with them between 1899 and 1914 (Mushonga 2013). Vambe argued that consensual sexual relations between white women and black men were not that uncommon and that it was only when a white woman involved with a black man was exposed that she would cry rape. Power relations were such, he argues, that even if the black man was reluctant to have sexual relations with a white woman, if the white woman ordered the servant to sleep with her, he had little choice, lest he be falsely reported as having attempted to rape the mistress (Vambe 1976). According to McCulloch, as a result of the immorality and indecency in legisla- tion, no less than 20 African men were “charged and executed for sexual assault of white women,” while, approximately, “two hundred others were either imprisoned or flogged between 1902 and 1935” (West 2003). The sentences meted out to alleged offenders by white-only male kangaroo-type courts, which were “quick to convict African men for any behaviour which could be construed or misconstrued as being threatening to white women” (Vambe 1976), were, most likely, unfair and unjustified and spoke more to the ingrained racial prejudices of white settler males and the hysterical public rhetoric of the threat to white womanhood at the time than to evidence of actual sexual assaults. West observes that:

The brief kangaroo proceedings that passed for trials went hand in hand with the public expression of white outrage, as exemplified in rallies, fulminations in the press, and demands for still tougher action by the colonial legislature and the administration. (West 2003)

The settlers’ hostility to interracial sexual relations persisted for most of the colonial period, as evidenced by the fact that when an African, John Matimba, who had married Adriana von Hoom, a white woman of Dutch descent while studying in England, returned to the country in the mid-1950s, he and his wife found it impossible to settle in the country because of the hostility of the local white society. Not only could they not find anywhere to stay because of the 1930 Land Apportionment Act (LAA) which divided the country into white and black areas and did not provide for mixed marriage accommodation, but they also came under hostile attack in the press, while their marriage was the subject of such acrimonious public debates that they decided to go into in 1959 (Mushonga 2008). Meanwhile, as late as the 1950s, new white female immigrants into the then Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland were still warned “never to allow their female children to exhibit any degree of nakedness and for themselves to make their own beds, wash their own underwear and avoid appearing in a state of casual undress ... [as this would put them] at risk at the hands of male servants” (Mlambo 2014). ’s The Grass is Singing captures the persistent white fear of the back peril and disapproval of interracial sexual relations between white women and black males very well in her portrayal of the murder of Mary Turner, the main white female character, by her African male servant under circumstances which smacked of an intimate relation gone wrong. Lessing’s representation of the settler community’s 436 A. S. Mlambo reaction to this tragic event suggests that, for many, this merely confirmed what was expected of such an unnatural and undesirable interracial liaison. Pointedly, the novel’s opening words are:

Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner, a farmer at Ngesi, was found murdered on the front of their homestead yesterday morning. The houseboy, who has been arrested, has confessed to the crime. No motive has been discovered. It is thought he was in search of valuables. The newspaper did not say much. People all over the country must have glanced at the paragraph with its sensational heading and felt a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction, as if some had been confirmed, as if something had happened which could only have been expected. (Lessing 1950)

As shown, racism, which was informed by Social Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century, underpinned the European colonization project in Africa and gave the incoming settlers a sense of superiority which translated into negative attitudes toward the African majority and discriminatory policies against them. Indeed, as time went on, the settlers’ sense of Africans as infantile and in need of “civilization” deepened, with adult men continuing to be referred to as “boys” who were expected to behave respectfully toward their elders (whites of whatever age) and whose “insolent” behavior, which might include speaking in a loud voice, appearing angry toward any authority figure, and “laughing outright and grinning when being interrogated by the police,” was prosecutable behavior (Shutt 2007). In tandem also developed white ideas of “native stupidity” and “inferiority,” particu- larly among the semiskilled whites.

White Racism and the Alienation and Racialization of Land

White racism in colonial Zimbabwe was most pronounced in the manner in which the incoming white settlers arrogated themselves the right to land without any consultation with the local inhabitants whom they found already in the country and then proceeded to decide what parts of the country Africans could legally occupy based on their race. The expropriation of land by the whites commenced with the arrival of the Pioneer Column in 1890. Through his British South Africa Company (BSAC), Rhodes funded a group of adventurers called the Pioneer Col- umn to occupy the land north of the and promised them 3000 acres of land claims each for participating in the occupation. No negotiations with local African authorities had been conducted prior to this decision being taken and then implemented; the assumption being that, either the land belonged to no one or the incoming whites had the right to allocate the land as they wished. This right, it was assumed, was bestowed on the settlers by the Royal Charter given to the BSAC by the British Government, authorizing it to govern the territory it was, yet, to establish. It was assumed, therefore, that the company could dispose of the colony’s land on behalf of the British Crown. It can be argued that the settlers’ decision to arbitrarily expropriate and allocate land was, initially, based on a misconception that any uninhabited land at the time 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 437 of occupation belonged to no one and was, therefore, available for the taking, whereas, the situation was very different. In African society, land did not belong to either individuals or chiefs and kings, but to the community as a whole, together with the yet to be born and those who had passed on. Individuals only had usufruct rights on the land which was allocated to them and which was administered by the traditional leaders. The fact that there were stretches of land which were not occupied at the time of the British occupation did not necessarily mean that the land belonged to nobody, as local populations and their rulers knew exactly which group owned which stretch of land, without boundary pegs or picket fence demarcations. In the early years of occupation, Whites used very little of the land allocated to them as they concentrated mainly on prospecting for gold. After all, most early settlers had entered the colony in the hope that they would make their fortunes from the fabled gold deposits that, reportedly, were as rich as those at the Rand in South Africa. With time, however, disappointed at not finding the reported rich gold deposits, many of the pioneers either abandoned their land and drifted back to South Africa or sold the land to a number of speculative land companies that were emerging in the colony. Some settlers turned to agriculture, but for a long time, this was little more than subsistence farming. Meanwhile, the small, but growing white settler population depended on the agricultural produce of the African peasant farmers who had responded favor- ably to the market opportunities offered by this incoming population and increased their output for sale in the mines and other emerging white settle- ments. Eventually, more Whites took up farming for a living and sought government support for their industry. In the process of developing white agriculture, the colonial government, under pressure to promote and defend the white agricultural sector, proceeded to destroy African agriculture and to promote white agriculture, instead. The destruction of African agriculture was effected, mainly, through land alienation and confining Africans to designated areas of the country known as African reserves. The first three African reserves, namely Gwaai, Tsholotsho, and Nkai, were established in 1893 in Matebeleland, following the recommendations of the Commission of Enquiry on future land policy set up by the Company Government in that year. What all three areas had in common were poor soils and little rainfall. They were also far away from the emerging urban centers which provided viable markets for agricultural produce. This pattern was to characterize most of the African reserves established by successive governments throughout the colonial period. By 1905, 60 reserves had already been established. More reserves were established following the recommendations of the 1913 Reserves Commission, most of them also located in areas “with little rainfall and far away from major transportation lines and market towns” in order to eliminate compe- tition from African farmers in the agricultural market (Mlambo 2014;Phimister 1988). By 1914, Whites, whose population amounted to only 28,000 people or 3% of the total population, controlled 75% of the land, while Africans, number- ing 836, 000 people and accounting for 97% of the population, were confined to 438 A. S. Mlambo only 23% of the land in the agriculturally marginal areas of the country (Mushunje 2005). The most defining law of Southern Rhodesian’s racially based land segregation was Land Apportionment Act (LAA) of 1930 which became the pillar and key symbol of racial segregation in colonial Zimbabwe. Dividing the colony’s land surface into white, African, and crown lands, the Act decreed where the two racial groups could legally own land or reside, with a minority population of whites amounting to 50,000 people receiving 52% of the land, while the 1 million African majority were allocated a mere 29.8%, designated as Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs). In order to create a buffer class between whites and Africans, the Act also provided for the so-called Native Purchase Areas (NPAs), where Africans could purchase land. lands were owned by the state in reserve for future allocation, as well as for public parks and state forests. The 1930 LAA was a close copy of the South African 1913 Native Land Act, which also sought to cripple African agricultural self-sufficiency in order to generate cheap African labor, among other objectives. When, as expected, the growing African population began to exert pressure on the allocated land resources through soil erosion and other forms of environmental degradation, the colonial governments placed the blame on poor African agricultural practices and imposed cattle destocking measures as well as a number of very unpopular soil conservation policies which alienated a growing number of Africans. These measures were accompanied by the 1951 by the Native Land Husbandry Act (LHA), Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA), which was designed to reform the African land tenure system from communal to individual ownership, ostensibly, in order to improve efficiency in African agriculture. A not-so-obviously stated objec- tive was to promote stable labor in the emerging industries in the colony’s emerging towns and cities by creating a class of Africans permanently divorced from the land and, therefore, obliged to provide labor in the emerging industries. The last major piece of land legislation during the colonial period was the Land Tenure Act of 1969 passed by the government of the day, which replaced the LAA and still unfairly allocated an equal amount of land to Africans and whites, even though whites comprised only 5% of the colony’s population. Thus, approximately 5 million Africans were to share 44.9 million acres at the ratio of 67.9 persons per square mile, while less than a quarter of a million whites shared 44.95 million acres at 3.2 persons per acre (Austin 1975). As was presaged by the first three African reserves created in 1893, most of the land allocated to the Africans in subsequent legislation was in dry areas with marginal and unproductive soils, thus contributing greatly to the eco- nomic marginalization and underdevelopment of the African majority. In the words of Reg. Austin,

Apart from tenure and scale, Africans suffer other disadvantages: The main roads and railway lines were planned only in relation to white areas. Urban centres and, hence, industry and associated activities are concentrated in white areas. In relation to soil fertility and rainfall, the better agricultural land is predominantly in white areas. By and large, whites have almost as much ‘good’ land as ‘bad’ land, while the African land is three-quarters ‘bad’ and only a quarter ‘good’. (Austin 1975) 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 439

A Racialized Labor Regime

A dilemma facing early white settlers was how to maintain spatial racial segregation while ensuring the constant supply of cheap African labor. The solution was found in the creation of African reserves where Africans could permanently reside but be allowed to provide labor in the white areas as transient laborers. For this reason, there was great resistance to the provision of urban housing and social amenities to Africans, especially since there was also a widely held belief that Africans were “unhygienic” and most likely to engender disease outbreaks which would impact negatively on the white population. According to Ginsburg,

Under the policy of segregation, Africans were categorised as temporary lodgers in white cities to fulfil the most menial of tasks. It was believed that physical proximity meant more chance of social mixing, and the spread of disease ...Africans were seen to carry infectious diseases over to the white population and this provided a powerful justifi- cation and motivation for urban segregation. (Ginsburg 2017)

Consequently, the state passed the Native Urban Locations Ordinance (1906) and the Private Locations Ordinance (1908) restricting Africans to designated native areas or native locations which were very basic, since they were regarded as only temporary homes for the transient laborers who had their permanent homes in the Reserves. In order to control African labor, the state passed the 1901 Masters and Servants Ordinance and the 1902 Natives Pass Ordinance, both designed to enforce labor contracts and to regulate African labor mobility. The first regulated relations between white masters and African servants in ways which gave the former unchallenged control over the latter, while the second was meant to control the movement of male laborers in the colonial economy and to reduce desertions, among other goals. Indeed, the lives of African males above the age of 14 years became closely governed by a variety of passes, namely registration certificates, work-seeking passes, visiting passes, contract service passes upon gaining employment, and passes to get out of the employers’ premises at night. Meanwhile, mine owners adopted the compound system which housed laborers, mostly migrant workers from the sur- rounding countries of , Nyasaland and , in prison- like institutions where they were closely monitored and could be easily disciplined. To get the labor out, the state introduced a range of taxes, including the Native tax, dog tax, dip tax, and a tax for every second and subsequent wives; all payable in money and, therefore, necessitating Africans to seek for employment in the white economic sector in order to raise the required amounts. Meanwhile, white workers, like white farmers, remained strongly hostile to African competition, as evidenced in the open hostility by white artisans to the training of African artisans at Missions in the early 1920s, resulting in the commit- ment by the country’s Chamber of Mines under pressure from the white trade unions that “coloured employees should not be employed on certain skilled work” (Steele 1972). Opposition to possible African competition in the work place was pushed 440 A. S. Mlambo vigorously by the Rhodesian Labor Party in the 1920s, which, reminiscent of white workers on the Rand in South Africa at the time, insisted on guaranteeing the white workers’ future through an industrial color bar that would ensure that African artisans would be permitted to work only in their own areas. It maintained that Africans should be employed in white areas only as unskilled workers. Significantly also at its foundation in 1929, the White Rhodesia Association, whose first chairman was the future Prime Minister, Godfrey Huggins, proposed to stem African compe- tition in the labor market through increased white immigration which would result in the country having more whites than Africans and, thus make African labor redun- dant. It was partly under this pressure that Prime Minister Huggins promulgated his two-pyramid policy in which whites and Africans were to develop separately from each other. This was followed by the state passing the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1934, which was enacted partly “in response to a strike by European workers within the building industry who felt threatened by being replaced by African workers” (Gins- burg 2017). The Act effectively introduced a labor color bar by providing for the establishment of trade unions and industrial councils for employers as part of an industrial conciliation system, but pointedly excluding Africans from the definition of employees and, thus, making it unlawful for them to be part of trade unions. Meanwhile, apprenticeships were restricted to whites under the Act. This was in addition to the fact that the Public Services Act of 1921 had already excluded Africans from employment in the civil services, meaning that Africans could not work as “foremen, telegraphists, postal sorter, salesmen, typists, printers, dispensers, or even mechanics employed by Government or industry.” Despite such restrictions, an African middle class developed, nevertheless, over time, much to the consterna- tion of some white workers (Ginsburg 2017). Justifying his policies, Huggins stated:

The Europeans in this country can be likened to an island of white in a sea of black, with the artisan and tradesmen forming the shores and professional classes the highlands in the centre. Is the native to be allowed to erode away the shores and gradually attack the highland? To permit this would mean that the leaven of civilisation would be removed from the country, and the black man would inevitably revert to a barbarian worse than before. ( Chronicle, 31 March, 1938)

Under the Huggins administration, African workers faced other restrictive dis- criminatory legislation, including the 1936 Native Registration Act, which regulated the movement of African males into the urban centers by requiring that, in addition to the registration certificate introduced earlier in the century, one had to have either a “pass authorising him to seek work in town, a certificate to prove that he was employed in the town, a certificate signed by a native commissioner” testifying that he was “earning a living in the town by lawful means” or a visiting pass from his employer if employed outside town (Phimister 1988). With time, however, Huggins realized that separate development was not practical in the Rhodesian context and moved more toward a discriminatory but more integrated development model. 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 441

Discrimination between white and black workers persisted into the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) years from 1965 until the country’s indepen- dence in 1980, during which period many white workers supported the Rhodesian Front Party’s policies to maintain “segregation, land apportionment, the colour bar” and “to protect the white settler state” and its claims to fighting to maintain “standards” and against communism. While the official rhetoric was that of defending Christian civilization, white workers, in fact, sought to maintain so-called standards, “through upholding racist labour practices” and “conflated their own fate with the idea of ‘white civilisation’” (Ginsburg 2017).

Some Are “More White” than Others (Mlambo 2000)

Racism in Southern Rhodesia manifested itself, not only along the white and black racial divide, but also among whites themselves, with settlers of English stock regarding themselves as superior to whites from other countries or of the world. While Cecil John Rhodes had dreamt of developing Southern Rhodesia as a white man’s country, this was not to be because Rhodesian governments were very particular about who they let into “their” country, preferring to accept only the “right type” of immigrant, by which they meant British immigrants. In fact, despite the semblance of unity, the white Rhodesian community was deeply divided by, among other factors, racism and racial chauvinism which emanated, largely, from settlers of British stock and which evoked equally strong animosities from other white groups, particularly the . By the 1920s, Afrikaners were generally regarded as illiterate, indigent, and undesirable and a group which was once described as “neither black not white but really worse than animals; and ... mentally deficient” (Townsend 1964). British settlers also dismissed Afrikaners as people with “no code of honour such as is understood by the Britishers,”“low class,” and “persons of a poor and shiftless type, physical degenerates, sick and diseased” as well as people who were “low in mentality and mode of existence ... little removed from the native” (Mlambo 2003). Also looked down upon were Poles, Greeks, Italian, Spaniards, and people of the Jewish religion (Mlambo 2003). Writing in the 1920s, E. Tawse Jollie, the only female member of the Southern Rhodesian , noted that the “average-born Rhodesian feels that this is essentially a British country, pioneered, bought and developed by , and he wants to keep it so” (Jollie 1921). Similarly, in 1939, C. Harding of the Department of Internal Affairs gave the official Southern Rhodesian government position on immigrations as follows:

The policy of the government in regard to immigrants is to maintain a preponderance of British subjects in about the same proportions as last year when the total number of immigrants was 3 500 of whom 3 000 were British subjects and 500 aliens i.e. 6 to 1. (Mlambo 2003) 442 A. S. Mlambo

Ginsburg reported that the 1933 Immigration Bill listed “Levantines, Europeans from , Europeans from South Eastern Europe, Low class Greeks, low class Italians, ‘Jews of low type and mixed origin and other persons of mixed origin and continental birth’” as undesirable immigrants (Ginsburg 2017). As Gann and Gelfand correctly observed, in the post-Second years as well as in earlier years, “After dinner speakers would extol ‘white Rhodesia’ but agreed that white aliens should not be allowed to overrun the country but must only be assimilated in penny packets”(Gann and Gelfand 1964).

The Invisible Minorities

In addition to the racial categories of European and “native,” there was also another category, that of Asians and Coloureds, who Muzondidya calls the “invisible subject minorities ... who held an intermediate status in the Rhodesian racial hierarchy, distinct from the white and African populations.” (The category of “natives” com- prised two distinct groups, namely the so-called colonial natives, who included all the Africans in the country and who originated from outside the country, and indigenous natives, i.e., those descending from tribes indigenous to Rhodesia.) Included in this category were local and foreign descendants of mixed race, includ- ing “Griquas, Malays and from South Africa” and Indian immi- grants (Muzondidya 2007). The settler state strongly discouraged Indian immigration into the country, resulting in the Indian population in the country remaining small for much of the colonial period. The immigration of Indians into Rhodesia was regarded with both fear and hostility. The fear was of economic competition as Indians were accused of undercutting European merchants which threatened the very existence of whites in the country (Douglas n.d.). In 1908, the state passed the Asiatic Immigration Ordinance of 1908 designed to discourage Indian immigration except at the discretion of the Company Administrator. The ordinance was rescinded following protests from the British Association and the Indian Government (Mlambo 2003). Despite being regarded as inferior to whites, the invisible minorities were considered superior to the “natives” and were, accordingly, granted some privi- leges which were denied the indigenous population. For instance, they did not have to carry passes and had easier access to the urban areas. They also were free to live in the urban areas and were not confided to the Locations, until the passage of the 1930 LAA after which they were required to reside in segregated areas. Asians and Coloureds also had access to white , schools, and other social amenities and had some voting powers, at least until the Rhodesian Front removed this right in its 1969 Constitution. These privileges notwithstanding, the subject races were still discriminated against in the types of employment they could take up and “remained on the margins of colonial society where they faced exploitation, discrimination and denial of full citizenship because of their race and origin” (Muzondidya 2007). 25 Racism in Colonial Zimbabwe 443

Political Marginalization and Other Forms of Discrimination

Throughout the colonial period, Africans remained politically marginalized even though, technically, the vote was open to everyone who met the various stipulated qualifications. The main problem was that these qualifications were set so high that very few Africans could meet them, so the majority of the African population could not vote. A good example is the 1923 Constitution which granted the vote to all men (White women had been allowed to vote in 1919) who were British subjects over 21 years of age and literate enough to fill the particulars of the application form but set the conditions that to be eligible, applicants for enrolment must have an income of £100 per annum, occupy buildings worth £150, or own a mining claim. Given the fact that the average wage of an African was £3 a month, only whites were eligible to vote under this constitution (Mutiti 1974). Subsequent constitutions raised the property qualification bar to levels that excluded the African majority as well as demanding specified educational levels that were unattainable to most Africans in an educational system which favored white children over blacks in several ways. The state discriminated against African children in education by showing no interest in African education and leaving it in the hands of the missionaries until well into the 1940s and encouraging mostly industrial education in those schools through a grant system which it provided the mission schools with (Dierdorp 2015). The state had no interest in providing a well-rounded education for African children, for as one member of the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly emphasized in 1927:

We do not intend to hand over this country to the native population or to admit them to the same society or political position as we occupy ourselves ...We should make no pretence of educating them in exactly the same way as we do the Europeans.

Following that logic, African education was consistently underfunded throughout the colonial period. In addition, while education was made compulsory for all white children from 1930, over 50% of African children were not attending school as late as 1979, while the government established the first secondary school in the country only in 1946 (Mlambo 2014). It is no wonder most Africans could not meet the educational requirements for voting. Apart from the political marginalization, as in South Africa, Africans in Rhodesia were also governed by petty discrimination legislation barring them from using Whites-only toilets, park benches, and other public facilities, and, until the late 1920s, from walking on the pavements in the towns. Until the 1960s, the major hotels in Salisbury, the Miekles and the Ambassador, enforced a color bar and did not serve Africans in their bars and restaurants. The third, the Jameson, was multiracial but deliberately exclusive of the African majority by insisting on certain standards of “culture,”“civilization,” and dress code. Lastly, until 1959, “it was illegal to accommodate Africans in hotels that were located in European areas (and vice versa)” without special permission from the Secretary of Native Affairs (Craggs 2012). 444 A. S. Mlambo

There was also rampant discrimination in sports (Novak 2012, Dierdorp) and in other social spaces. Such discrimination belied the official policy as a member of the Central African Federation (1953–1963) which was, officially, one of promoting partnership between the races, although it later turned out that the partnership which was envisaged was that between a rider and a horse, rather than one based on genuine equality. White liberal organizations, such as the Interracial Association (IRA) and the Capricorn Africa Society (CAS), mushroomed in this period and maintained the fiction of racial partnership, succeeding in attracting the attention of a few African nationalists for a while until the Africans realized that partnership was a sham (Mlambo 2014; Townsend 1964; Craggs 2012). It was the cumulative result of the many years of political, economic, social, educational, and other types of marginalization on the basis of race which eventually led to the rise and intensifica- tion of which culminated in the armed struggle as African nationalists fought to end white settler colonialism in the country.

Conclusion

Colonial Zimbabwe was born out of a racist ethos espoused by its patron, , and rooted in the late nineteenth century scientific racism, social Darwin- ism, and the white-man’s-burden philosophy which extolled the virtues of whiteness and Western civilization and denigrated everything African. Not surprisingly, the African population was treated as second-class citizens and marginalized in every walk of life throughout the colonial period, resulting in African nationalists taking up arms in a bitter struggle to overthrow the racist colonial dispensation. The result was Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

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