City Versus State in Zimbabwe: Colonial Antecedents of the Current Crisis

Abstract

There is currently a major urban crisis in Zimbabwe. This expresses itself in failures of provision of water, electricity, medicines, transport, housing etc. Descriptions of conditions in the high density townships of Harare and Bulawayo today are strikingly reminiscent of the last great urban crisis – in the late 1940s of colonial Rhodesia. Two other features are common to both crises. One is the problem of governance. The other is the relation between the city and the state. In both periods there was a great debate about what consituted urban ‘citizenship’, with the great majority of African residents in the cities believing themselves to be unrepresented by illegimitate institutions of local government. In both periods, too, there was deep tension between the city and the state. In the Rhodesian as well as in the Zimbabwean period there was debate between the two over who was responsible for the urban crisis and over who should take what steps to resolve it. To many Zimbabweans the present crisis, and the contemporary clashes between the government and the cities, seem unprecedented. This article seeks to explore its colonial antecedents.

Acknowledgements

Greatly varying versions of this article were presented to seminars at the University of Zimbabwe, the University of Toronto, and the University of Edinburgh. the London School of Economics and the University of Helsinki. I am grateful to the participants on these occasions for their clarifying and corrective comments.

Notes

1. Kamete, ‘The Return of the Jettisoned’; Potts, ‘Restoring Order’.

2. Zimbabwe United Residents Association (ZURA)/Combined Harare Resident Association(CHRA) Advocacy Workshop Report, 24.

3. Kunene ‘War Vets Rampage through Bulawayo’.

4. Olakeye and Tungwarara eds., An Analysis of the Demolitions in Zimbabwe. Tabaijuka's UN report ‘Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe'described it as ‘a disastrous venture based on a set of colonial era laws and policies’, pp. 22–24. I take these citations and the material on the CHRA from Ennie Chipembere, ‘History and Advocacy-Oriented Action Research’.

5. Jackson, Surfacing Up, 134.

6. I choose Bulawayo as my case study because it has the most dramatic story of confrontation with the Rhodesian state and because it has been the object of my own research for the last few years. I am writing a book to be entitled Bulawayo Burning. Where assertions are made about Bulawayo in this article they are derived from my reseach unless otherwise attributed. I have published two articles drawing on this research: ‘Dignifying Death’ and ‘The Meaning of Urban Violence in Africa’. Two important treatments of the social history of Bulawayo, both unpublished, are Stephen Thornton's draft doctoral thesis for the University of Manchester, ‘A History of the African Population of Bulawayo’, written in the late 1970s but unfortunately never submitted, and Stuart, ‘Good Boys, Footballers and Strikers’.

7. Gann, History of Southern Rhodesia, 269.

8. These are the demands made in the poster calling for a ‘cosmopolitan public meeting’ to take place in the location on 30 November 1929. ‘Roll up! Roll up! Roll up in your numbers to protest against the action of the Mayor and the Councillors of Bulawayo's actions in the Bulawayo Native Location’. This poster is reproduced in Raftopoulos and Phimister eds., Keep on Knocking, 21. For an ICU poster calling for a mass meeting under the Indaba trees on 11 January 1930 on ‘What is Wrong and What is Right with the Bulawayo Council’ see Nyathi, Masotsha Ndlovu, 27.

9. Zimbabwe National Archives (ZNA) Harare, S 138 22, CID reports to Chief Superintendent, 21 July and 24 July 1929.

10. ZNA, Harare, S 138 22, CID report to Chief Superintendent, 6 July 1929.

11. ZNA, Harare, S 138 22, Chief Native Commission (CNC) to Prime Minister, 23 December 1929.

12. ZNA, Harare, S 138 22, S/N, Bulawayo to CNC, 28 June 1929.

13. Moffat's desire to curb the authority of the Native Department and to work with missionaries and the Native Development Department is detailed by Murray, The Governmental System. Murray remarks that ‘in the late 1920s … the colony's government made some effort to increase its involvement [in urban affairs] as part of the general policy of gaining control of the direction of development’, 315.

14. National Archives (NA), Bulawayo, Interview with Mafimba Nucbe, 9 October 1981.

15. NA, Bulawayo. Interview with Masotsha Ndlovu, 8 October 1981.

16. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19, ‘Reply of the Bulawayo Municipal Council to the Report of the Native Affairs Commission on its Inquiry into the Matter Concerning the Bulawayo Native Location’, 6 May 1930.

17. ZNA, Harare, S 138 22, ‘Natives who interviewed the Minister of Native Affairs in Bulawayo’, November 1929.

18. Gann, 242.

19. Murray, 288–89.

20. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19, ‘Reply of the Bulawayo Municipal Council’, 6 May 1930.

21. Chronicle, 10 April 1930. H.W.Davies was the member for Bulawayo South; Jack Keller the member for Raylton, the white rail workers’ suburb. Both men objected to the complex and restrictive municipal franchise and spoke for one man-one vote for all white residents. ‘It was entirely wrong that men should suffer simply because they did not own property, and big interests would always rule the country through the votes of their representatives’. They did not think of extending this principle to African residents of Bulawayo, however. Chronicle, 8 and 9 April 1930.

22. Chronicle, 3 and 4 April 1930. Hay and Peel persisted in their objections, ‘Native bodies had approached the Premier on all sorts of questions, and he was taking notice of them, although apparently he was going to ignore the European farmers. I take back nothing I said. I do not think we spoke strongly enough. Mr Moffat, with his big majority, has got a bad attack of Mussolinism’.

23. ZNA 1/1/1, Evidence of Madhlinga on behalf of the Matabeleland Home Society, NA Harare.

24. ZNA 1/1/1, Evidence of Madhlinga on behalf of the Matabeleland Home Society, NA Harare., Evidence of Magavu Indebele: ‘It is customary for our kraals to have separate rooms for our sons, daughters, ourselves and our parents-in-law. In the Location we have but two rooms, there is no door between these rooms’. Jackson of the Northern Rhodesian Bantu Association said he had worked in Southern Rhodesia for 28 years but was still ‘unmarried because there is no suitable accommodation for a wife in the Location’.

25. Evidence of Magavu Indebele: ‘It is customary for our kraals to have separate rooms for our sons, daughters, ourselves and our parents-in-law. In the Location we have but two rooms, there is no door between these rooms’. Jackson of the Northern Rhodesian Bantu Association said he had worked in Southern Rhodesia for 28 years but was still ‘unmarried because there is no suitable accommodation for a wife in the Location’.

26. Evidence of Magavu Indebele: ‘It is customary for our kraals to have separate rooms for our sons, daughters, ourselves and our parents-in-law. In the Location we have but two rooms, there is no door between these rooms’. Jackson of the Northern Rhodesian Bantu Association said he had worked in Southern Rhodesia for 28 years but was still ‘unmarried because there is no suitable accommodation for a wife in the Location’.

27. Evidence of Magavu Indebele: ‘It is customary for our kraals to have separate rooms for our sons, daughters, ourselves and our parents-in-law. In the Location we have but two rooms, there is no door between these rooms’. Jackson of the Northern Rhodesian Bantu Association said he had worked in Southern Rhodesia for 28 years but was still ‘unmarried because there is no suitable accommodation for a wife in the Location’.

28. The draft report can be reconstructed from two files in the National Archives, Harare, ZNA 2/1/1 and S 235/394.

29. The draft report can be reconstructed from two files in the National Archives, Harare, ZNA 2/1/1 and S 235/394.

30. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19, ‘Reply of the Bulawayo Municipal Council to the Report of the Native Affairs Commission’, 6 May 1930.

31. The mainstream Missionary Conference met in Bulawayo later in June. Its president, Louw, thanked Moffat for the appointment of the Native Affairs Commission. Chronicle, 27 June 1930.

32. Chronicle, 24 and 25 June 1930. The newspaper wrote on 10 July about the Rate Payers ‘monthly recreation of hauling Town Councillors over the coals’; when four council seats came up for election in July it urged that the Rate Payers should put up candidates. Otherwise ‘there is little likelihood of a contested election for any of the vacancies’. In the event three retiring councillors were re-nominated without opposition.

33. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19, Premier to Mayor of Salisbury, 6 August 1930.

34. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19, Premier to Mayor of Salisbury, 6 August 1930., Native Affairs Commissioners to Minister, Native Affairs, 14 January 1931.

35. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19, Premier to Mayor of Salisbury, 6 August 1930., Acting CNC Charles Bullock to Secretary, Premier, 8 June 1934.

36. Gann, 294–96.

37. Native Mirror, 15 June 1932.

38. National Archives, Bulawayo, Interview with Mafimba Nucbe, 9 October 1981.

39. Chronicle, 25 July 1930. Masotsha's rage had been aroused by Carbutt warning the Missionary Conference against the ICU as dangerous agitators,

40. Phimister, Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 199–202; Nyathi, Masotsha Ndlovu, 30–32.

41. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19 Private Secretary, Premier, Memo, 17 January 1934.

42. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19 Private Secretary, Premier, Memo, 17 January 1934. Private Secretary, Premier to Town Clerk, Bulawayo, 20 April 1934; Town Clerk to P.S.Premier, 3 May 1934; P.S.Premier to Town Clerk, 7 May 1934.

43. ZNA, Harare, S 482 789/19 Private Secretary, Premier, Memo, 17 January 1934. Acting CNC to Secretary, Premier, 8 June 1934. In default of comprehensive new legislation the Native Department kept a vigilant eye on urban locations. File S 1542 L14/1933–39 in the ZNA deals with departmental interventions. In August 1936 the Native Commissioner, Selukwe, for instance, fined the location superintendent for assault and ensured his dismissal and that of all the location police. ‘The record discloses a pitiful state of affairs in the Location, no supervision and petty assaults. The [Town Management ] Board is composed of illiterate and ill-educated men for the most part – quite ignorant of dealing with natives’. The Chief Native Commissioner himself met Africans in Gwelo location and heard their complaints in October 1936. He then urged the municipality to dismiss its location superintendent. Such direct interventions were impossible in the unique case of Bulawayo.

44. ZNA, Harare, S 1542 L14/1933–39. Superintendent of Natives Bulawayo to Chief Native Commissioner, 21 February 1938. In the event the application of the Land Apportionment Act was postponed until after the second world war.

45. Macmillan, ed., Rhodesia and Eastern Africa, 263, 284, 286, 292, 296, 303, 307, 311.

46. ZNA, Harare, ORAL/MA5, Interview with J.S.McNeillie, Bulawayo, 9 February 1972.

47. ZNA, Bulawayo,Municipal Records, Bulawayo, B 1/10.5R, Box 17. Town Clerk to Osborn's Bakery, 13 June 1929.

48. D. J. Murray argues in his Governmental System of Southern Rhodesia, 165, 346 that in the 1930s and 1940s Rhodesian industry and commerce did not need representation in national politics because their interests were catered for at municipal level. In Murray's view, the municipalities, especially Bulawayo, represented the emerging industrial class. Macintyre, with his interests in iron and steel, is seen as an outstanding example of a councillor dedicated to industry. This article argues a rather different case.

49. City of Bulawayo : Some Facts About the Municipal Government of Bulawayo, December 1962

50. I owe this anecdote to Sir Garfield Todd. Grace Todd put a more charitable gloss of Macintyre's legendary thrift, describing how throughout his career, ending as Federal Minister of Finance, he did not move from his modest house in western Bulawayo, not far from the location.

51. Southern Rhodesian Hansard, 18 May 1943, column 812.

52. McNeillie interview.

53. Hansard, 30 November 1944, column 3378.

54. Hansard, 28 October 1943, column 2216.

55. Hansard, 23 June 1942, column 1746.

56. Lawrence Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe,161.

57. McNeillie recalls that Macintyre told him ‘I don't want them … Some were trouble-makers’.

58. ZNA, Harare, S 1906/1, evidence to the Howman Commission, 26 November 1943. Joshua Nkomo, the Bulawayo labour activist, could never have taken Macintyre's reputation as a political radical and ‘friend of the natives’ seriously. Nkomo describes in his autobiography how in October 1937 he qualified as a driver of public service vehicles. His first job was as driver of a half ton delivery truck for Osborn's Bakery. His pay was £4 a month, which he thought ‘pretty good’ until he discovered that Coloured drivers were getting £12 a month. ‘I went to Mr Macintyre and asked why it was … He explained first that I was native and the others were coloured; second that natives did not need beds and wheat bread and knives and forks, because they were happy with just a couple of blankets and some mealie porridge and a plate to eat off. I told him that if he would pay me £12 a month I should be very happy to sleep on a bed and eat meat with a knife and fork. So of course he sacked me’. Nkomo, Story of My Life, 27–28.

59. Hansard, 23 November 1944, column 3137.

60. Hansard, May 1942, column 959.

61. Hansard, May 1943, column 452,

62. Hansard, 1942, column 959.

63. ZNA, Harare, S 1906/1, evidence to the Howman Commission, 26 November 1943.

64. Proceedings of the Municipal Assocaition, Bulawayo, 1942.

65. Hansard, 1945, column 3150.

66. ZNA,Harare, S 482/469/39, Memorandum, Secretary of Native Affairs, July 1936; Sec/NA to Sec/PM, 24 August 1936; Huggins to Macintyre, 8 September 1937.

67. ZNA,Harare, S 482/469/39, Memorandum, Secretary of Native Affairs, July 1936; Sec/NA to Sec/PM, 24 August 1936; Huggins to Macintyre, 8 September 1937., Macintyre to Huggins, 1 October 1937.

68. ZNA,Harare, S 482/469/39, Memorandum, Secretary of Native Affairs, July 1936; Sec/NA to Sec/PM, 24 August 1936; Huggins to Macintyre, 8 September 1937., Huggins to Macintyre, 15 November 1937; Macintyre to Huggins, 18 November 1937.

69. ZNA,Harare, S 482/469/39, Memorandum, Secretary of Native Affairs, July 1936; Sec/NA to Sec/PM, 24 August 1936; Huggins to Macintyre, 8 September 1937., Prime Minister to Minister of Internal Affairs, 11 March 1938.

70. ZNA, Harare, S 482/163/1. Huggins to Danxinger, 2 March 1944. The common age was a large circle of land around the city which the British South Africa Company administration had ceded to it for future growth. It had been used for the erection of white suburbs to the east, for cattle grazing and market gardening. The growth of townships in the 1950s did in fact take place on the Western Commmonage but in 1944 there had been no development there and the council was trying to push African housing beyond it.

71. The municipalities, of course, had a completely different view of where the blame lay for the urban crisis. Government was responsible for ‘prevarication and procrastination’. Macintyre had proposed a motion in parliament on 26 May 1943 calling for African housing and slum clearance legislation which would establish these projects as a Government responsibility. Government did not respond so at the Municipal Conference in May 1944 a resolution was passed saying that in default of such an Act government must ‘grant to the local authorities in this country the same financial aid as is at present being given to the local authorities in the Union of South Africa’. In October 1944 Salisbury municipality joined Bulawayo in a declaration that if no financial aid was given councils would accept no further ‘responsibility for the erection of additional houses in the Native Location’. NA, Harare, S 482/163/1, Town Clerk, Salisbury to Prime Minister, 12 March 1945.

72. ZNA, Harare, S 482/469/39, Huggins to Macintyre, 15 November 1937.

73. Proceedings of the Municipal Association, 1943, 7,46.

74. Proceedings of the Municipal Association, 1944, 5.

75. Proceedings of the Municipal Association, 1944, 127–29, Sir Ernest Guest, the new Minister of Internal Affairs, told the conference that before he took office ‘I suspected that the relations between the local government bodies and the central government bodies, to say the least of it, left a good deal to be desired, but after my appointment as a Minister, I found that my worst fears were realised’. Meanwhile municipal delegates, once they had pinned the blame on the government, allowed themselves to outdo Huggins. Urban Africans were ‘living in filthy, abominable conditions which are a disgrace to civilisation’. The Mayor of Salisbury, Charles Olley, notorious for racist attacks on Africans, even allowed himself to express some worker solidarity: ‘We are perpetuating in out treatment of the natives the very treatment us from Home received, the treatment that was meted out to wage-earners in Britain’.

76. Hansard, 23 November 1944, colums 2500 et seq.

77. Hansard, 23 November 1944, colums 2500 et seq., columns 2562–2575.

78. Chronicle, 9 August 1945. A subsequent report on 31 August documented some popular opposition to Macintyre and demands at a meeting of the Civic and Ratepayers Association that he resign either as mayor or as mp. Macintyre replied that ‘he believed in fighting for his own way if he believed he was right. It was a coward's way to resign’.

79. Chronicle, 17 September 1945.

80. Chronicle, 18 December 1945.

81. Herald, 21 December 1945. A letter from the Secretary of the Municipal Association to the Minister for Native Affairs, dated 20 December 1945, is in ZNA, Harare, S 482/163/1. This noted the view of the conference that if government were determined to proceed ‘it will be better for the Government to assume sole control over native affairs throughout the Colony, to acquire from the local authorities all movable and immovable assets relating to their native administrations’.

82. Hansard, 16 January 1946, 3074–3092,

83. Hansard, 16 January 1946, 3103–3110.

84. Hansard, 16 January 1946, 3149–3153

85. Hansard, 16 January 1946.

86. Hansard, 4 February 1946, 3686–3688.

87. Even then Macintyre would not give up. Through the SRLP he contacted liberals in England and asked them to protest in parliament about the bill. Lord Faringdon put down a motion in the House of Lords for discussion on 19 February 1946 drawing attention to the ‘severe conditions of disabilities and restrictions to which Africans will be subjected by the operation of the Bill’ because of its tightening up of pass laws and its giving the Rhodesian government the power to regulate assemblies. Faringdon asked the Colonial Secretary to refuse assent. Huggins was asked to comment and did so on 15 February. If my narrative has suggested that Huggins had become ‘liberal’ his reply to the Governor makes a useful corrective: ‘It must be remembered that the great majority of the Natives are uncivilised barbarians and their emergence from this condition will entail many teething difficulties. The complete lack of sense of proportion by the present leaders of urbanised Natives was well illustrated in the recent Railway strike … In the event of firebrands gaining control the situation that would arise would be similar to the position that a rose in the Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia in 1940 and 1942’: ZNA, Harare, S 482/163/1 Huggins to Governor, 15 February 1946. This reminder of shared difficulties, Huggins having sent troops to the Copperbelt, was enough to secure royal assent.

88. Hansard, 4 February 1946, 3691.

89. Vambe, Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, 236–37.

90. Scarnecchia, ‘Politics of Gender and Class’; ‘Poor Women and Nationalist Politics’.

91. Historical Reference Library [HRL], Bulawayo, ‘Rough Draft’ of Ibbotson's report on NUAARA, 4 February 1949; Brad Mnyanda to Ibbotson, 8 January 1949, Mnyanda expressed forcibly the ‘pernicious’ effects of the Act on decent and civilised people.

92. ZNA, Bulawayo, oral interview with Hugh Ashton, 1 June 1994. The typed text in the Archives collection is very garbled. I quote from my own transcription from the tape of the interview.

93. ZNA, Harare, S 2793/5 Commissioner for Native Labour to Secretary, Native Affairs, 30 March 1948.

94. ZNA, Harare, S 2793/5 Commissioner for Native Labour to Secretary, Native Affairs, 30 March 1948., Secretary, Native Affairs to Secretary, Prime Minister, 13 March 1948.

95. ZNA, Harare, S 2793/7, Acting Native Commissioner to Town Clerk, 16 February 1948.

96. ZNA, Harare, S 2793/7, Acting Native Commissioner to Town Clerk, 16 February 1948., Town Clerk to Acting Native Commissioner, 4 March 1948.

97. ZNA, Harare, S 2793/7, Acting Native Commissioner to Town Clerk, 16 February 1948., Commissioner for Native Labour to Secretary for Native Affairs, 8 March 1948.

98. ZNA, Harare, S 2793/5, Acting Prime Minister Memo, 1 April 1948.

99. ZNA,Harare, S 482/49/40/1, Huggins to Major Darby, 10 May 1948.

100. HRL, Bulawayo, J. P. McNamee, Report on the Native Urban Administration in the City of Bulawayo’, 2 December 1948.

101. ZNA, Bulawayo, oral interview with Hugh Ashton, 1 June 1994.

102. I hope to tell part of the colourful story of Makokoba politics, culture and violence in Bulawayo Burning. The Social History of an African City, 1893 to 1960, forthcoming.