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Abstract
Legislated zoning as a strategy to enforce racial residential segregation in colonial Zimbabwe failed to prevent Indians from buying properties in white suburbs. This was because of the ambiguous colonial law that classified Indians as citizens yet, practically, they were blocked from enjoying privileges enjoyed by the white residents. For example, when Indians attempted to buy properties in European areas, they met stiff resistance, accused of being “uncivilised’, low class and filthy and of infiltrating European areas to depreciate property values. Yet, since 1930, they were expelled from African residential areas but were not allocated their own residential area then. When MPs failed to craft a Bill that would have legislated the segregation of Indians, in 1973, and as a desperate measure, they unsuccessfully attempted to introduce race restrictive white housing covenants. Based on archival research, council minutes, newspapers and magazines, and through oral history interviews, this article highlights the ambiguous position that Indians occupied within Zimbabwe's colonial hierarchies. It also highlights how some Indians resorted to the racist and segregationist language of the colonial state to try and circumvent their ambiguous position. The article seeks to add to the urban Zimbabwe's scholarship on colonial segregation policies, now specifically focusing on racial residential segregation faced by the Indian minority in Bulawayo.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the anonymous referees of this journal and Professors Alois Mlambo and Rehana Valley for their comments on the paper. I am also indebted to the Bulawayo City Council and the University of Pretoria Humanities faculty. The views expressed in this article remain entirely mine.
Notes
1National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) S235/440/262 Bulawayo Sanitary Board, No. 12 of 1895, Location Regulations.
2The Bulawayo Municipality, however, refused to implement the provisions of the LAA for the next two decades, particularly to declare a ‘Native Urban Area’ in the town, because this was going to place the African Location under the final authority of the central government, which was not desirable because it was always determined not to allow the central government to interfere in its local affairs, especially the running of its African Location. This was due to the fact that the African Location was the oldest in the country and regulations which governed it were drawn up in 1895 before any central government regulations had been laid down. For more information on city/state tensions in Bulawayo see T. Ranger, Bulawayo Burning: The Social History of a Southern African City, 1893–1960 (Suffolk and Harare: James Currey and Weaver Press, 2010), 107.
3Interview with Mr L.M. Naik, TandaBantu Store, Bulawayo, 18 August 2004.
4Robert C. Weaver, ‘Hemmed In: The ABC's of Race Restrictive Housing Covenants’, in http://www.public.asu.edu/-wplotkin/DeedsWeb/hemmed-in.html, accessed 5 April 2011.
5Robert C. Weaver, ‘Hemmed In: The ABC's of Race Restrictive Housing Covenants’, in http://www.public.asu.edu/-wplotkin/DeedsWeb/hemmed-in.html, accessed 5 April 2011.
6Mr J. Desai, chairman of the Hindu Society in Bulawayo, estimated the total Indian population in Bulawayo to be 2 500 at independence, in 1980. They therefore never exceeded this total in Bulawayo during the period under discussion in this article.
7I use the term Asian interchangeably with Indian to refer to Indians unless otherwise specified. In the 1940s there was conflict between various Indian leaders concerning the use of the word ‘Indian’ in Southern Rhodesia. Some wanted to retain this word because nearly all Asians in Southern Rhodesia had come from India, whereas some wanted the word ‘Asian’. While the Bulawayo Indians initially preferred to be called ‘Indians’, this changed after India gained independence in 1948 and even the Bulawayo Indians then began to prefer to be referred to as Asians instead of Indians: Interview with Mr Tulsidas K. Doolabh, 11 February 2005, Makisons Shoe Store, Bulawayo. The agreement to use the term Asian for all associations representing Indians in Southern Rhodesia was reached in 1953 by the Salisbury Indians. See H.H. Patel, ‘Asian Political Activity in Rhodesia from the Second World War to 1972’, Rhodesian History, 9 (1978), 65.
8C. Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 268–269.
9N. Sithole, African Nationalism (Cape Town: OUP, 1962).
10N.M. Shamuyarira, Crisis in Rhodesia (London: Deutsch, 1965).
11B.V. Mtshali, Rhodesia, Background to Conflict (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967).
12F. Dotson and L.O. Dotson, The Indian Minority in Zambia, Rhodesia and Malawi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968).
13P. Stigger, ‘Asians in Rhodesia and Kenya: A Comparative Political History’, Rhodesian History: The Journal of The Central Africa Historical Association, 1, (1970), pp. 1–8.
14Patel, ‘Asian Political Activity’.
15B.A. Kosmin, ‘Ethnic and Commercial Relations of the Asian, Hellene and Jewish Communities in Southern Rhodesia, 1898–1943’ (PhD thesis, University of Rhodesia, Salisbury, 1974), ii.
16B.A. Kosmin, ‘Freedom, Justice and Commerce: Some Factors Affecting Asian Trading Patterns in Southern Rhodesia, 1897–1942’, Rhodesian History, 6 (1975), pp. 15–32.
17A.M.H. Kalsheker, ‘Immigration and Trading Policies Towards Indians in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1924’, (MPhil thesis, University of Rhodesia, 1976).
18A. Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesia, From Occupation to Federation (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press, 2002).
19M. Twadle, ed., Expulsion of a Minority: Essays on Ugandan Asians (University of London: The Athlone Press, 1975).
20V. Padayachee and R. Morell, ‘Indian Merchants and Dukawallahs in the Natal Economy, c1875–1914’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 17, 1, (1991), pp. 71–102.
21D. Bagwandeen, A People on Trial-For Breaching Racism: The Struggle for Land and Housing of the Indian People of Natal: 1940–1946 (Durban: Madiba Publishers, 1991), 9.
22 D. Bagwandeen, A People on Trial-For Breaching Racism: The Struggle for Land and Housing of the Indian People of Natal: 1940–1946 (Durban: Madiba Publishers, 1991), 9–10, 86 and 93.
23A.J. Njoh, ‘Colonial Philosophies, Urban Space, and Racial Segregation in British and French Colonial Africa’, Journal of Black Studies, 38, 4, (2008), 595.
24Kim Dovey, cited in Njoh, ‘Colonial Philosophies’, 595.
25Njoh, ‘Colonial Philosophies’, 592.
26M. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001), 25 and 28. According to Mamdani, subject races occupied a contradictory position between the coloniser and the colonised and were presumed to be non-indigenous. The members of a subject race were virtual citizens, deprived of rights of citizenship, yet considered to have the potential of becoming full citizens. Both privilege and discrimination marked subject races like Indians in Rhodesia. Elevated to the point that they were governed through civil law, they were at times the target of specific forms of racial discrimination under the same law. This was a contradictory experience. On the one hand, they were above ‘natives’, treated as virtual citizens; on the other hand, they were subjected to racial discrimination, which emphasised their position in the lower rungs of the hierarchy of the ‘civilised’ races.
27M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996), 17.
28A.M.H. Kalsheker, ‘The 1908 Asiatics Ordinance in Perspective’, Henderson Seminar, 27, 4, (1974), 14.
29NAZ MS 308 Racial Minorities 1972–1980, CH 14.11.72, ‘Smith Move to Evict Asian Infiltrators’.
30 NAZ MS 308 Racial Minorities 1972–1980, CH 14.11.72, ‘Smith Move to Evict Asian Infiltrators’.
31H. Patel, ‘Indians in Uganda and Rhodesia: Some Comparative Perspectives on a Minority in Africa’, Studies in Race and Nations, 5, 1, (1973), 8.
32G.C. Grant, ‘The Africans’ Predicament in Rhodesia’, Minority Rights Group Report, No. 8, January 1972, 4–5. This also happened in Durban: see Bagwandeen, A People on Trial-For Breaching Racism, 54.
33Dotson and Dotson, The Indian Minority, 291.
34 Dotson and Dotson, The Indian Minority. A ‘passenger Indian’ was one who emigrated to Africa of his own free will and at his own expense; the ‘indentured Indian’ came to Africa as a contract labourer with provision for his repatriation at the expiry of his contract.
35 Dotson and Dotson, The Indian Minority, 34.
36Dotson and Dotson, The Indian Minority, 150. In some parts of Central Africa, including in Zambia, some of the richest Indian families were Mochis, highlighting that the discrepancies between caste status, leadership and social honour must be sought in the achieved rather than ascribed characteristics in spite of the fact that the caste retained some influence as a determinant.
37P.R. Vaghmaria and L. Rama, ‘Bulawayo Kshatriya Mandal: A Survey’ in T.K. Doolabh, ed., Bulawayo Kshatriya Mandal, 1919–1994, 75th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine, Bulawayo, September 2001, 3. For example, under the four-caste varna system, the priestly caste of Brahmans were at the top, followed by Kshatriyas (warriors), then Vaishyas (merchants and peasants, and so on) and then lastly Shudras (a serf or servant class).
38 P.R. Vaghmaria and L. Rama, ‘Bulawayo Kshatriya Mandal: A Survey’ in T.K. Doolabh, ed., Bulawayo Kshatriya Mandal, 1919–1994, 75th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine. For more information on the Indian caste system, see G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
39T.K. Doolabh, ‘The Bulawayo of Yesterday’ in Doolabh, Bulawayo Kshatriya Mandal, 16.
40C2/1/1 Census: Salisbury Municipality, 1 November 1897 quoted in Kalsheker, ‘The 1908 Asiatics Ordinance in Perspective’, 7.
41M.F. Clarke, ‘Ramanbhai Khandubhai Naik’, unpublished paper (Oxford, April 2002), 19. [obtained from the author]
42Kalsheker, ‘The 1908 Asiatics Ordinance in Perspective’, 1–2.
43Kosmin, ‘Freedom, Justice and Commerce’, 18, and S. Thorntorn, ‘The Struggle for Profit and Participation by an Emerging Petty-Bourgeoisie in Bulawayo, 1893–1933’, in B. Raftopoulos and T. Yoshikuni, eds, Sites of Struggle: Essays in Zimbabwe's Urban History (Harare: Weaver Press, 1999), 43. See also Kosmin, ‘Ethnic and Commercial Relations in Southern Rhodesia’, 112.
44NAZ S235/440/246 Indian Traders.
45Interview with Mr E. Ebrahim, Toppers Trading Store, Bulawayo, 18 August 2004.
46Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, 65.
47M. P. Vaghmaria and N. Morar (eds), The Hindu Community of Bulawayo-Past and Present, (Bulawayo: Bulawayo Ramakrishna Youth League, 1972), 11. Also see Dotson and Dotson, The Indian Minority, 75. For more information on Indians entry into wholesale trade see E. Kramer, ‘The Evolution of Policy: Trade and Production in the Reserve Economy of Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890–1952’ (DPhil thesis, Harare: University of Zimbabwe, 2003).
48 Bulawayo Chronicle, 20 September 1895.
49 Bulawayo Chronicle, 10 April 1897.
50Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, 64–65.
51 Bulawayo Chronicle
52Patel, Indians in Uganda and Rhodesia, 15.
53Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, 66. See footnote 2 for the source of tension between the municipality and the central government.
54Doolabh, ‘The Bulawayo of Yesterday’, 17; Clarke, ‘Ramanbhai K. Naik’, 2.
55Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, 65.
56NAZ S235.440/120, ‘The 1930 Native Affairs Commission’, Section on the Report of Trading Stores in the Location.
57 Ranger, Bulawayo Burning.
58 NAZ S235.440/120, ‘The 1930 Native Affairs Commission’, Section on the Report of Trading Stores in the Location
59 NAZ S235.440/120, ‘The 1930 Native Affairs Commission’, Section on the Report of Trading Stores in the Location.
60Southern Rhodesia: Debates in the Legislative Council 16 June 1908, cols.7–11.
61Interview with Mr Tulsidas K. Doolabh, 11 February 2005, Makisons Shoe Store, Bulawayo.
62NAZ S235/440/244, Letter from the Chairman, Bulawayo British Indian Association to The Native Affairs Commission, Bulawayo, 14 March 1930.
63 Interview with Mr Tulsidas K. Doolabh, 11 February 2005, Makisons Shoe Store, Bulawayo.
64NAZ S235/440/244, Letter from the Chairman, BBIA to The NAC.
65 Interview with Mr Tulsidas K. Doolabh, 11 February 2005, Makisons Shoe Store, Bulawayo.
66 Interview with Mr Tulsidas K. Doolabh, 11 February 2005, Makisons Shoe Store, Bulawayo.. Eating-houses were public eating places where Africans could be served with food as hotels in town were only reserved for whites.
67Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, 28, (1984), 126.
68 Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, 132.
69 Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, 127.
70 Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, 129.
71 Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, 130.
72Doolabh, ‘The Bulawayo of Yesterday’, 17.
73T. Ranger, ‘City, State and the Struggle over African Housing: The Native (Urban Areas) Accommodation and Registration Act (NUAARA) and the Transformation of Bulawayo, 1946 to 1960’, Paper presented to the Economic History Departmental seminar, University of Zimbabwe, 27 April 2001, 11. [obtained from the author]
74D.M. Desai, The Indian Community in Southern Rhodesia (Salisbury: Herald, 1948), 23.
75The CSO, Zimbabwe, Main Demographic Features of the Population of Zimbabwe, Harare, 1985, 11, quoted in Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesia, 69.
76Kosmin, ‘Freedom, Justice and Commerce’, 25.
77Ranger, ‘City, State and the Struggle’, 11.
78CSO, Main Demographic Features, 11.
79Desai, The Indian Community in Southern Rhodesia, 23.
80Bagwandeen, A People on Trial-For Breaching Racism.
81Mrs McKeurtan to Godfrey Huggins, 2 February 1934, S482 789/19, National Archives, Harare, cited in Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, 64. Ranger indicated that it was well known that Mrs Mckeurtan had a special interest in the separation of races because her husband, a white artisan, was an inveterate hunter of black women, prostitutes and others in the Bulawayo Location.
82Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, chapter 3.
83Patel, Indians in Uganda and Rhodesia, 7.
84 Bulawayo Chronicle, 10 October 1947.
85 Bulawayo Chronicle
86 Bulawayo Chronicle
87 Bulawayo Chronicle, 10 October 1947 and Bulawayo Chronicle, 4 October 1947.
88 Bulawayo Chronicle, 10 October 1947.
89Kosmin, ‘Freedom, Justice and Commerce’, 28.
91 Bulawayo Chronicle.
90 Bulawayo Chronicle, 10 October 1947.
92 Bulawayo Chronicle, 24 December 1947.
93 Bulawayo Chronicle, 17 December 1947.
94 Bulawayo Chronicle.
95 Bulawayo Chronicle.
96 Bulawayo Chronicle, Also see NAZ S482/179/2/48 Extract from The Natal Mercury, 17 December 1947, ‘Restrictions on Indians Demanded’, and NAZ S482/179/2/48, Letter from D. B. Naik to the Secretary, Commonwealth Relations Dept, London, 1 April 1948. Indians in Southern Rhodesia argued that they could not be compared with those in the Union of South Africa in Durban, Natal in terms of numbers and total property they owned. Any comparison of the Indians in these two areas was odious and invidious, certainly not analogous.
97 Bulawayo Chronicle, 19 December 1947 and Bulawayo Chronicle, 22 December 1947.
98Bagwandeen, A People on Trial-For Breaching Racism, 9.
99 Bulawayo Chronicle, 21 January 1948.
100 Bulawayo Chronicle.
104 NAZ S482/179/2/48 Euro-Africans and Asiatics, Disabilities of Non Europeans and Indian Population, ‘Letter from the Secretary for Internal Affairs to the Secretary to the Prime Minister on the Restrictions on the Ownership of Land in Approved Township by Indians’.
101Desai, The Indian Community in Southern Rhodesia, 21.
102NAZ S482/179/2/48 ‘Letter from the Secretary to the Governor to the Governor, 24 January 1948.
103NAZ S482/179/2/48 Euro-Africans and Asiatics, Disabilities of Non Europeans and Indian Population, ‘Letter from the Secretary for Internal Affairs to the Secretary to the Prime Minister on the Restrictions on the Ownership of Land in Approved Township by Indians’.
107 Bulawayo Chronicle, 17 December 1947.
105J. Muzondidya, ‘Sitting on the Fence or Walking a Tightrope? A Political History of the Coloured Community in Zimbabwe, 1945–1980’, (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 2001), 214. Explaining ‘block busting’ in Parliament, Mark Partridge argued that it occurred when unscrupulous individuals (Asians) and Coloureds acquired properties in the area concerned for occupation or ownership of a different race (whites), often by paying a price above the prevailing market values in order to encourage owners to sell their properties. Once, however, sufficient penetration has been secured (by Asians and Coloureds), Partridge alleged that the property values throughout the area became unstable, prices fall and properties become available at far below their market value, (thus encouraging more Asians and Coloureds to come into the area). See Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 67, no. 24.1 June 1967, cols, 1859–1860.
106NAZ S482/179/2/48, Letter from The High Commissioner of India to the Under Secretary of States for Commonwealth. In the Bulawayo Chronicle, 29 April 1948, the Rent Board argued that experience in the Union of South Africa showed that Europeans preferred living in areas which were wholly European residential areas, with the result that when they are encroached upon, they leave and the encroachment increases, resulting in a very appreciable fall in the rateable value of all surrounding property.
108 The African Home News, 1, 49, 13 November 1954.
109Bulawayo Municipal Records Library (BMRL), File S18/29 Sale of Stands to Indians, ‘Letter from H.J. Broughton-Headmaster to The Town Clerk’, rec. I December 1954.
111BMRL, S18/29, ‘Extract from Minutes of Town Lands Committee’, 28 August 1953.
110BMRL, S18/29, Extract from the Agenda of Town Lands Committee, 30 December 1954, ‘For Suggested Indian Housing: Lady Stanley Avenue Area’.
112BMRL, S18/29 Extract from Minutes of General Purposes Committee, 29 April 1954, ‘Suggested Housing Scheme for the Indian Community’.
113 BMRL, S18/29 Extract from Minutes of General Purposes Committee, 29 April 1954, ‘Suggested Housing Scheme for the Indian Community’.
114BMRL, S18/29, Extract from Minutes of Town Lands Committee, 3 December 1954, ‘Site for Suggested Indian Housing Scheme: Lady Stanley Avenue Area’.
115BMRL, S18/29 Letter from Prag. R. Vaghmaria, Secretary of the Bulawayo British Indian Association-to The Town Clerk, 18th Sept 1958, ‘re-Sale of Land in Paddonhurst’.
116BMRL, S18/29, Letter from Town Clerk to Alderman J. H. Butcher, OBE, 23 September 1958.
117 BMRL, S18/29, Letter from Town Clerk to Alderman J. H. Butcher, OBE.
118BMRL, S18/29, Memo from The Town Clerk to City Engineer, 2 December 1959, ‘Proposed Indian Housing Scheme’.
119BMRL, S18/29, Memo form the Medical Officer of Health to The Town Clerk, 23 June 1960-Special (Coloured and Indian) Housing Committee.
120The City Of Bulawayo, Report of the Director of Housing and Amenities, June 1963, 6.
121 The City Of Bulawayo, Report of the Director of Housing and Amenities. Also see The City of Bulawayo, Report of the Director of Housing and Amenities, June 1964, 6.
122In the 1960s, the ‘Bulawayo Chronicle’ had changed its title to ‘The Chronicle’ hence my use of ‘The Chronicle’ from Footnote 122 onwards.
123 In the 1960s, the ‘Bulawayo Chronicle’ had changed its title to ‘The Chronicle’ hence my use of ‘The Chronicle.
124 The Chronicle, 24 November 1967.
125 The Chronicle, 25, November, 1967.
126 The Chronicle
127 The Chronicle, 29 November 1967.
128 The Chronicle, 2 December 1967.
129 The Chronicle, 14 December 1967.
130 The Chronicle, 6 January, 1968.
131 The Chronicle, 15 December 1967.
132 The Chronicle, 4 January 1968.
133 The Chronicle, 6 January, 1968.
134 The Chronicle
135 The Chronicle, 30 January 1968.
136 The Chronicle, 24 February 1968.
137 The Chronicle, 1 June 1968. The Minister of Local Government and Housing Mr Partridge argued that the infiltration of Asians and Coloureds into European areas had ‘more or less sterilised’ large areas in Bulawayo against development, a statement that was described by Indians as ‘irresponsibility’. See The Chronicle, 3 May 1968.
138 The Chronicle, 16 July 1973.
139 The Chronicle, 29 November 1967.
140 The Chronicle, 30 December 1970.
141Doolabh, ed. The Bulawayo Kshatriya Mandal, 8–9. In Salisbury Indians were allocated the Belvedere, Lincoln Green and Ridgeview suburbs while Coloureds were allocated Arcadia. In Bulawayo, Coloureds were allocated Thorngrove Township and Barham Green suburb.
142 The Chronicle, 16 January 1971.
143 The Chronicle.
144 The Chronicle, 30 December 1970.
145NAZ MS 308/54 Racial Minorities, 1972–1980, Sm 21.10.73. Similar evidence against depreciation of values was also found in Natal and Transvaal and in America: see, Bagwandeen, A People on Trial-For Breaching Racism, 50.
146NAZ MS 308/54 Racial Minorities, 1972–1980. RH 29-6-73 and Chr 27-10-73.
147NAZ MS 308/54 Racial Minorities, 1972-1980, RH.25.10.73, SM.21.10.73, Rh.26.9.75. RH.25.9.75, ‘Halt Asian “Intrusion” Call’. Dennis Divaris, MP for Belvedere, made a similar call in Salisbury (Harare).
149NAZ MS 308/54 Racial Minorities, 1972–1980, RH.25.10.73, SM.21.10.73, Rh.26.9.75. RH.25.9.75, ‘Halt Asian “Intrusion” Call’.
148Patel, Indians in Uganda and Rhodesia, 8.
150Patel, Indians in Uganda and Rhodesia, 8.
151 The Chronicle, 29 November 1967.