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Settler Farmers and Coerced African Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1936–46*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Johnson
David Johnson
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Extract

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on the socio-economic impact of the Second World War on Africa. The focus is on the inter-relationship between the state, settler farmers and African labour in Southern Rhodesia. The war presented an opportunity for undercapitalized European farmers to enlist state support in securing African labour that they could not obtain through market forces alone. Historically, these farmers depended heavily on a supply of cheap labour from the Native Reserves and from the colonies to the north, especially Nyasaland. But the opportunities for Africans to sell their labour in other sectors of the Southern Rhodesian economy and in the Union of South Africa, or to at least determine the timing and length of their entry into wage employment, meant that settler farmers seldom obtained an adequate supply of labour. Demands for increased food production, a wartime agrarian crisis and a diminished supply of external labour all combined to ensure that the state capitulated in the face of requests for Africans to be conscripted into working for Europeans as a contribution to the Imperial war effort. The resulting mobilization of thousands of African labourers under the Compulsory Native Labour Act (1942), which emerged as the prize of the farmers' campaign for coerced labour, corrects earlier scholarship on Southern Rhodesia which asserted that state intervention in securing labour supplies was of importance only up to the 1920s. The paper also shows that Africans did not remain passive before measures aimed at coercing them into producing value for settler farmers.

Type
Colonial Zimbabwe
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 111 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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36 One such farmer was J. M. Moubray of Shamva, one of the best-known farmers in the country. His recommendations to other farmers included encouraging workers to marry and grow their own produce on small plots of land; Rhodesia Herald, 14 Mar. 1941, letter from J. M. Moubray.

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46 PRO, DO 35/831/R17/178, O'Keefe to Stephenson, 21 April 1942. Forced labour for wartime production (in British colonial Africa) was first introduced in Kenya and Northern Rhodesia in February 1942. These measures attracted a good deal of criticism from sections of the British Labour Party but were defended by the Imperial Government as being essential for the prosecution of the war. For an analysis of the wartime usages of forced labour in Kenya and Northern Rhodesia see: Clayton, A. and Savage, D., Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (London, 1974), ch. 7Google Scholar; K. Datta, ‘Farm labour’; and Banton, M., ‘British wartime policy: the role of the Colonial Labour Advisory Committee’ (paper for SOAS conference on Africa and Second World War, 1984).Google Scholar For an overview of coerced labour in Africa during the war see Killingray, D., ‘Labour mobilisation in British colonial Africa for the war effort, 1939–1946’, in Killingray, D. and Rathbone, R. (eds.), Africa and the Second World War (London, 1986), 68–96.Google Scholar

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60 S1563, NC Mrewa, AR, 1945.

61 S1563, NC Mazoe, AR, 1944.

62 S1563, NC Bindura, AR, 1942. For similar views see: S1563, NC Salisbury, AR, 1942; NC Goromonzi, AR, 1944; NC Mazoe, 1944; NC Chilimanzi, AR, 1945.

63 S1563, NC Matobo, AR, 1944.

64 S1563, Assistant Native Commissioner (ANC), Shabani, AR, 1945.

65 S482/55/42, J. G. Odendaal (Secretary to The Gazaland [South Melsetter] Farmer's Association) to Huggins, 14 June 1946. For further evidence of conscription encouraging migration to South Africa see: S1563, NC Gwaai, AR, 1944; NC Shangani, AR, 1944; NC Belingwe, AR, 1945; NC Nyamandhlovu, AR, 1945.

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93 S1563, NC Sinoia, AR, 1946.

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