Property Rights and Labour Relations: Explaining the Relative Success of Native Purchase Area Farmers in Southern Rhodesia, 1930–1965

Abstract

In the 1930s the colonial authorities in Zimbabwe set aside geographical areas where Africans were allowed to purchase land. Despite having private property rights to land, a rare occurrence among Africans in colonial times, the performance of this group of farmers has rarely been investigated. In this article, we show that the average group of ‘native purchase’ farming households performed far better than the average African farmer in the native reserves. We do more, by offering one of the first explanations behind the ‘success’ of this group of farmers. We argue that the explanation for this is not that private property rights were more secure than other forms of land rights as argued in mainstream economics. The farmers who owned land performed better than those who did not because private property rights changed social relations in a wider sense of the term. Private property rights enabled the emergence of various forms of non-family labour relations including sharecropping and wage labour that the landowner could exploit to increase production.

Keywords:

• capital
• land
• labour
• native purchase farmers
• productivity
• property rights
• agricultural investment
• Southern Rhodesia
• Zimbabwe

Acknowledgements

This article was presented at the 6th annual meeting of the African Economic History Network Workshop at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England, 21–22 October 2016 and at the European Social Science Conference, Belfast, 4–7 April 2018. We are grateful for comments we received from the audiences. The article has also benefited from feedback from Gareth Austin and Mandivamba Rukuni. It has been published in the African Economic History Working Paper Series, no. 62/2021.

Notes

1 M. Nyandoro, ‘Land and Agrarian Policy in Colonial Zimbabwe: Reordering of African Society and Development in Sanyati, 1950–1966’, Historia, 64, 1 (2019), pp. 111–39.

2 Three notable exceptions are B.F. Massell and R.W.M. Johnson, ‘Economics of Smallholder Farming in Rhodesia: A Cross-Section Analysis of Two Areas’, supplement to volume VIII, Food Research Institute Studies in Agricultural Economics, Trade and Development (California, Stanford University, 1968); A.K.H. Weinrich, African Farmers in Rhodesia – Old and New Peasant Communities in Karangaland (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975) and N. Kriger Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992).

3 M. Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation: The Case of TILCOR/ARDA Irrigation Activities in Sanyati (Zimbabwe), 1939 to 2000’ (PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, 2007); M. Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation in the Post-Independence Era: Continuity or Change in ARDA-Sanyati Irrigation in Zimbabwe (1980–1990)’, African Historical Review, 41, 1 (July 2009), pp. 51–89; M. Nyandoro, ‘Emerging Smallholder Cotton Irrigation Agriculture and Tensions with Estate Labour Requirements in Sanyati, Zimbabwe, 1967–1990’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 48, 3 (2022), pp. 453–72.

4 See D.C. North and R.P. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973); D.C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990); G. Feder and D. Feeny, ‘Land Tenure and Property Rights: Theory and Implications for Development Policy’, World Bank Economic Review, 5, 1 (1991), pp. 135–53; H. de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (London, Black Swan, 2000); D. Acemoglu, D.H. Autor and D. Lyle, ‘Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Mid-Century’, Journal of Political Economy, 112, 3 (2004), pp. 497–551. On key institutions enhancing property rights and agricultural intensification, see also R. Bubb, ‘The Evolution of Property Rights: State Law or Informal Norms?’ The Journal of Law and Economics, 56, 3 (August 2013), pp. 555–94; M. Goldstein and C. Udry, ‘The Profits of Power: Land Rights and Agricultural Investment in Ghana’, Journal of Political Economy, 116, 6 (February 2008), pp. 981–1022.

5 For example, D.A. Atwood, ‘Land Registration in Africa: The Impact on Agricultural Production’, World Development, 18, 5 (1990), pp. 659–71; J. Ensminger, ‘Changing Property Rights: Reconciling Formal and Informal Rights to Land in Africa’, in J.N. Drobak and J.V.C. Nye (eds), The Frontiers of the New Institutional Economics (San Diego, Academic Press, 1997), pp. 165–96; J.P. Platteau, ‘The Gradual Erosion of the Social Security Function of Customary Land Tenure Arrangements in Lineage-Based Societies’, United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research (Insurance Against Poverty Project), Discussion Paper no. 26 (2002); P.E. Peters, ‘Conflicts over Land and Threats to Customary Tenure in Africa’, African Affairs, 112, 449 (2013), pp. 543–62.

6 B.N. Floyd, ‘Land Apportionment in Southern Rhodesia’, Geographical Review, 52, 4 (1962), pp. 566–82; W. Roder, ‘The Division of Land Resources in Southern Rhodesia’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 54, 1 (1964), pp. 41–52.

7 G. Austin, ‘Resources, Techniques, and Strategies South of the Sahara: Revising the Factor Endowments Perspective on African Economic Development, 1500–2000’, The Economic History Review, 61, 3 (2008), pp. 587–624. James Fenske, ‘Land Abundance and Economic Institutions: Egba Land and Slavery, 1830–1914’, The Economic History Review, 65, 2 (2012), pp. 527–55.

8 E. Green, ‘State-led Agricultural Intensification and Labour Relations: The Case of Lilongwe Land Development Program in Malawi, 1968–1981’, International Review of Social History, 55, 3 (2010), pp. 413–46; P. Woodhouse, ‘African Enclosures: A Default Mode of Development’, World Development, 31, 10 (2003), pp. 1705–20; A.O. Chimhowu and P. Woodhouse, ‘Customary vs Private Property Rights? Dynamics and Trajectories of Vernacular Land Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 6, 3 (2006), pp. 346–71; P. Peters, ‘Inequality and Social Conflict Over Land in Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 4, 3 (2004), pp. 269–314; J.P. Colin and P. Woodhouse, ‘Interpreting Land Markets in Africa’, Africa, 80, 1 (2010), pp. 1–13; E. Green and M. Norberg, ‘Traditional Landholding Certificates in Zambia: Preventing or Reinforcing Commodification and Inequality’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 44, 4 (2018), pp. 613–28.

9 F. Ellis, ‘Household Strategies and Rural Livelihood Diversification’, Journal of Development Studies, 35, 1 (1998), pp. 1–38; see also G. Feder and R. Noronha, ‘Land Rights Systems and Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa’, World Bank Research Observer, 2, 2 (1987), pp. 143–69.

10 G. Arrighi, ‘The Political Economy of Rhodesia’, New Left Review, 1, 39 (1966), pp. 35–65; I.R. Phimister, An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890–1948: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle (London, Longman, 1988).

11 Cited in M. Andersson and E. Green, ‘Development Under the Surface: The Rise of Indigenous Agriculture as an Unintended Consequence of Settler Institutions in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–1962’, Journal of International Development, 28, 1 (2016), pp. 135, 127–46.

12 Cited in Andersson and Green, ‘Development Under the Surface’, p. 135.

13 Ibid. See also M. Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

14 J. Mujere, ‘Land, Gender and Inheritance Disputes Among the Basotho in the Dewure Purchase Areas, Colonial Zimbabwe’, South African Historical Journal, 66, 4 (2014), pp. 699–716.

15 J. Mujere and A. Mseba, ‘The Politics of African Freehold Land Ownership in Early Colonial Zimbabwe’, African Economic History, 41, 1 (2019), pp. 32–53.

16 E. Green, ‘Development of Settler Agriculture in British Africa Revisited: Estimating the Role of Tenant Labour in Southern Rhodesia, c.1900–1960’, African Economic History Working Paper Series, 29, 2016, pp. 1–32; Nyandoro, ‘Land and Agrarian Policy in Colonial Zimbabwe’; Nyandoro, ‘Emerging Smallholder Cotton Irrigation Agriculture’.

17 H.V. Moyana, The Political Economy of Land in Zimbabwe (Gweru, Mambo Press, 1984); B. Floyd, ‘Land Apportionment in Southern Rhodesia’, in R. Prothero (ed.), People and Land in Africa South of the Sahara (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972); L.H. Gann, ‘The Southern Rhodesian Land Apportionment Act, 1930: An Essay in Trusteeship’, The National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Occasional Paper, 1 (1963); M.L. Rifkind, ‘Land Apportionment in Perspective’, Rhodesian History, 3 (1972), pp. 33–62; M. Nyandoro, ‘Zimbabwe’s Land Struggles and Land Rights in Historical Perspective – The Case of Gowe-Sanyati Irrigation (1950–2000)’, Historia, 57, 2 (2012), pp. 298–349.

18 The Native Land Board was an Advisory Board of the Native Affairs Department. It recommended land prices and instituted the necessary land surveys. The Board was empowered to prescribe conditions of tenure in the Native Area, processed individual applications for land and also placed African farmers on holdings.

19 A.K. Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia, c.1931–1952’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 30, 3 (1997), pp. 555–81; Nyandoro, ‘Land and Agrarian Policy in Colonial Zimbabwe’.

20 Kriger, Guerrilla War.

21 O.B. Pollak, ‘Black Farmers and White Politics in Rhodesia’, African Affairs, 74, 296 (1975), p. 265.

22 R.H. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (London, Heinemann, 1977), pp. 213–14.

23 Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’.

24 E. Punt, ‘The Development of African Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia with Particular Reference to the Interwar Years’ (MA thesis, University of Natal, 1979); Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’; Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

25 Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia; Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

26 See also T. Chingozha and D. von Fintel, ‘The Complementarity Between Property Rights and Market Access for Crop Cultivation in Southern Rhodesia: Evidence from Historical Satellite Data’, Economic History of Developing Regions, 34, 2 (2019), pp. 132–55.

27 National Archives of Zimbabwe (Records Centre) hereafter NAZ (RC), Purchase Areas GEN., Volume 4, APL. 69–SEPT.70, Box 135183, Location 4.11.7R, File BJA – Budjga, Volume 1, August 1964 – October 1970, ‘Native Purchase Area Category: Lease in terms of Section 39 of the Rural Land Act, 1963: Crown Land Holding Budjga 87 Mtoko District: 151.9626 acres’, for Director of Lands (Office of the Director of Lands) to Mr Amos (RC No. X 22076 Mtoko), Ref. No. Budjga 87, 7 March 1966.

28 A.P. Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation: Rural Development and Class Formation among Freeholders in Modern Zimbabwe (Gweru, Mambo Press, 1984), p. 39; R.W.M. Johnson, African Agricultural Development in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–60 (California, Stanford University Food Research Institute, 1964), p. 216. NAZ (RC), Purchase Areas GEN., Volume 4, APL. 69–SEPT. 70, Box 135183, Location 4.11.7R, File BJA, Budjga, Volume 1, August 1964–October 1970, ‘Native Purchase Area Category: Lease in terms of Section 39 of the Rural Land Act, 1963: Crown Land Holding Budjga 87 Mtoko District: 151.9626 acres’, for Director of Lands (Office of the Director of Lands) to Mr Amos (RC No. X 22076 Mtoko), Ref. No. Budjga 87, 7 March 1966.

29 V.E.M. Machingaidze, ‘Agrarian Change from Above: The Southern Rhodesia Native Land Husbandry Act and African Response’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 24, 3 (1991), pp. 557–88; Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

30 Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation, p. 7.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

33 Ibid., p. 8.

34 Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation; M. Rukuni, ‘The Development of Zimbabwe’s Agriculture: 1890–1990’, Working Paper AEE 7/90, Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Harare, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zimbabwe, 1990.

35 W.R. Duggan, ‘The Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951 and the Rural African Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’, African Affairs, 79, 315 (1980), pp. 227–39. For approval of NPA land allocation see, for example, NAZ (RC), Ministry of Internal Affairs, Box 158077, Location C19.2.10R, File: LAN 8, 1961–1964, ‘Holdings Applications and Approvals’, G.A. Barlow (NC Gatooma) to the PNC Mashonaland West, 29 June 1959; NAZ (RC), Ministry of Internal Affairs, Box 158088, Location C19.6.8R, File: PTR 2 October 1951 – October 1973, ‘Appendix “A” Crop Production: Gokwe TTL – Copper Queen and Chenjiri Purchase Areas, 1973’; and Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

36 Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War; A.K.H. Weinrich, African Farmers.

37 Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

38 Chingozha and von Fintel, ‘The Complementarity Between Property Rights and Market Access’.

39 NAZ, S160 DMN 2/9/51 – Confidential Correspondence, ‘Ministerial Economic Co-ordinating Committee’, Director of Native Agriculture to The Assistant Secretary, Native Economic Development, 30 March 1953, pp. 1–2.

40 Ibid.; H. Dunlop, ‘Efficiency Criteria in Primary Marketing: An Analysis of African Marketing Policies in Rhodesia’, Rhodesian Journal of Economics, 4, 3 (1970), pp. 10–20; A.F. Hunt, ‘Native Purchase Area Farms: An Economic Appraisal’ (Salisbury, Department of Native Economics and Markets, 1960); R.W.M. Johnson, African Agricultural Development in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–60 (California, Stanford University Food Research Institute, 1964); D.G. Matondo, An Analysis of Some African Purchase Area Farms: Physical and Financial Records, 1964–65 and 1966–67 (Salisbury, Economics and Markets Branch, Ministry of Agriculture, 1970); M.G. Paraiwa, An Analysis of Some African Purchase Area Farms’ Physical and Financial Records, 1964–1965 and 1965–1966 (Salisbury, Ministry of Agriculture, Economics and Markets Branch, 1970); M.G. Paraiwa, A Two-Year Comparison of Agricultural Production in African Purchase Areas: 1968/69 and 1969/70 (Salisbury, Rhodesia, Ministry of Agriculture, 1972); Nyandoro, ‘Development and Differentiation’.

41 I. Scoones, B. Mavedzenge and F. Murimbarimba, ‘Medium-Scale Commercial Farms in Africa: The Experience of the “Native Purchase Areas” in Zimbabwe’, Africa, 88, 3 (2018), pp. 597–619.

42 NAZ (RC), Purchase Areas ICG5, volume 3, no. 2, ‘Report of the Rural Land Board (RLB) Committee on Productivity Problems in the Native Purchase Areas’, Box 129755, Location 28.2.8R, 1969–1971, p. 1.

43 R.M. Davies, ‘Farming Progress in the African Purchase Areas’, NADA, X, 1 (1969), pp. 21–2.

44 Mount Darwin district contains two NPAs – Chesa and Karuyana – but here we simply refer to both the NPAs as ‘Darwin’.

45 Massell and Johnson, ‘Economics of Smallholder Farming in Rhodesia’.

46 See T.O. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study (London, James Currey, 1985); Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation; Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’; A.K. Shutt, ‘We are the Best Poor Farmers: Purchase Area Farmers and Economic Differentiation in Southern Rhodesia, 1925–1980’ (PhD thesis, University of California, 1995).

47 Massell and Johnson, ‘Economics of Smallholder Farming in Rhodesia’.

48 Ibid.

49 Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War; Weinrich, African Farmers.

50 NAZ, S160, DB 104/1, LDO’s Report for the Month of October 1950, Bikita District, 1950.

51 Weinrich, African Farmers.

52 Massell and Johnson, ‘Economics of Smallholder Farming in Rhodesia’.

53 NAZ, RG-3/AGR-5, no. 20453, An Analysis of Some African Purchase Area Farms’ Physical and Financial Records, 1964/65 and 1965/66, Economics and Markets Branch, Ministry of Agriculture, August 1970, p. 5. Besides children, NP labour categories mainly included the farmer/manager, wife/wives, adult males, adult females, regular labour and others.

54 Interview with Mandivamba Rukuni, director, Barefoot Education for Africa Trust (BEAT), Marlborough, Harare, 17 September 2015; telephone interview with Mandivamba Rukuni, director, Barefoot Education for Africa Trust (BEAT), Harare, 12 April 2020; interview with Caiphas T. Nziramasanga, curriculum and Social Studies education specialist, University of Zimbabwe, Teaching and Learning Centre, Mt Pleasant, Harare, 16 January 2017. All interviews were conducted by Mark Nyandoro.

55 NAZ, RG-3/AGR-5, no. 20453, An Analysis of Some African Purchase Area Farms’ Physical and Financial Records, 1964/65 and 1965/66.

56 Interview with Rukuni, 17 September 2015 and interview with Rukuni, 12 April 2020.

57 Weinrich, African Farmers.

58 Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation.

59 Ibid.

60 Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War; G.C. Mazarire, ‘A Social and Political History of Chishanga: South-Central Zimbabwe, c. 1750–2000’ (PhD thesis, University of Zimbabwe, 2009); Ranger, Peasant Consciousness; Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’.

61 R.C. Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992); R.C. Allen, ‘Economic Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Europe, 1300–1800’, European Review of Economic History, 4, 1 (2000), pp. 1–25.

62 A.K. Shutt, ‘Pioneer Farmers and Family Dynasties in Marirangwe Purchase Area, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1931–1947’, African Studies Review, 43, 3 (2000) pp. 59–80.

63 Ibid., p. 64.

64 See, for example, Arrighi, ‘The Political Economy of Rhodesia’; K. Good, ‘The Direction of Agricultural Development in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi’, in Z.A. Konczacki, J.L. Parpart and T.M. Shaw (eds), Studies in the Economic History of Southern Africa. Volume 1: The Front Line States (London, Frank Cass & Co, 1990), pp. 127–58; Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia; Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’; Shutt, ‘Pioneer Farmers and Family Dynasties in Marirangwe Purchase Area’; M.O. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe 1898–1965 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002).

65 Shutt, ‘Pioneer Farmers and Family Dynasties in Marirangwe Purchase Area’, pp. 68–9; A.K. Shutt, ‘Squatters, Land Sales and Intensification in Marirangwe Purchase Area, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1931–65’, Journal of African History, 43, 3 (2002), pp. 473–98; Scoones et al., ‘Medium-Scale Commercial Farms in Africa’, p. 602.

66 Andersson and Green, ‘Development Under the Surface’.

67 Shutt, ‘Squatters, Land Sales and Intensification in Marirangwe Purchase Area’.

68 Ibid.

69 Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation.

70 Shutt, ‘Squatters, Land Sales and Intensification in Marirangwe Purchase Area’. The epithet ‘squatter’ was initially applied, by Government officials, to all residents on NP farms who were not members of the landholders’ immediate families or known dependents. Over the years, this usage was extended to all adults to whom the landholder granted rights of cultivation on his farm, including his sons, whether married or not. However, NP freeholders resented or deplored the fact that their children and dependents were called ‘squatters’ who had to be contracted on the farm as paid labourers without which they would have to face immediate eviction; see A.P. Cheater, ‘Formal and Informal Rights to Land in Zimbabwe’s Black Freehold Areas: A Case-Study from Msengezi’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 52, 3 (1982), pp. 79, 77–91; see also Nyandoro, ‘Zimbabwe’s Land Struggles and Land Rights in Historical Perspective’, p. 318.

71 Shutt, ‘We are the Best Poor Farmers’; Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’; Scoones et al., ‘Medium-Scale Commercial Farms in Africa’.

72 Mazarire, ‘A Social and Political History of Chishanga’, p. 212.

73 W.B. Mazobere, ‘The Native Purchase Areas: A Success in the Development of African Farming? A Case Study of Mshagashe Purchase Area’ (BA Honours dissertation, University of Zimbabwe, 1985), p. 30.

74 Annual Report quoted in Mazobere, ‘The Native Purchase Areas’, p. 20.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erik Green

Erik Green Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer, Department of Economic History, Lund University, PO Box 7083, 220 07 Lund, Sweden; Fellow at LEAP, Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland, 7602, South Africa. Email: [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7805-4696

Mark Nyandoro

Mark Nyandoro Professor of Economic History/Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe; Extraordinary Professor Research, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, Building 11B, Office 029, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa. Email: [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1716-0102