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‘HOOLIGANS, SPIVS AND LOAFERS’? : THE POLITICS OF VAGRANCY IN 1960s SOUTHERN RHODESIA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2013

JOCELYN ALEXANDER
JOCELYN ALEXANDER*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Abstract

In 1960, amidst the most violent period of protest since conquest, the Southern Rhodesian government implemented a new Vagrancy Act alongside a range of repressive legislation. The Act's origins lay in a particular analysis of the social origins of unrest. It was unprecedented in promising not to exclude and criminalise ‘vagrants’ but to rehabilitate them as productive urban citizens. By presenting the Act as reformist and progressive, the government sought legitimacy for its actions. In fact, the Vagrancy Act was deeply punitive, underlining the tensions between reform and repression in settler social engineering. African leaders and Africans targeted by the Act saw it as a means of humiliating and criminalising those denied a livelihood by the settler political economy. In rejecting the Act, they invoked different models of citizenship to those on offer from the state. The Vagrancy Act ultimately met its demise at the hands of the Rhodesian Front, whose analysis of African protest made no space for the possibilities of reformist social engineering.

Keywords

Zimbabweemploymentlabourlawurbanwelfare
Type
Taming the City: Urban Planning and Population Control
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 345 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

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4 As Florence Bernault has argued, colonial legal and carceral strategies generally differed from their European counterparts in relation to race and labour. See Bernault, F., ‘The politics of enclosure in colonial and post-colonial Africa’, in Bernault, F. (ed.), A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2003), 1–54Google Scholar.

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8 See the wide-ranging debates on ‘petty offenders’ in National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare (NAZ) S235/355, Circulars 1934.

9 See correspondence between township authorities, police, and magistrates in NAZ S235/440. Colonial vagrancy laws were rarely implemented to the letter: see Burton, African Underclass, ch. 1; Willis, ‘Thieves’; and Gordon, ‘Vagrancy’.

10 Barnes, ‘We Women’, 71–80; Barnes, T., ‘The fight for control of African women's mobility in colonial Zimbabwe, 1900–1939’, Signs, 17:3 (1992), 586–608CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See Raftopoulos, B. and Yoshikuni, Tsuneo (eds.), Sites of Struggle: Essays in Zimbabwe's Urban History (Harare, 1999)Google Scholar. On the central role of ideas about gender in urban struggles in the 1940s and 1950s, see Barnes, T., ‘ “So that a labourer could live with his family”: overlooked factors in social and economic strife in urban colonial Zimbabwe, 1945–1952’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21:1 (1995), 104–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnes, T., ‘ “Am I a man?”: gender and the pass laws in urban colonial Zimbabwe, 1930–80’, African Studies Review, 40:1 (1997), 59–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scarnecchia, T., ‘Poor women and nationalist politics: alliances and fissures in the formation of a nationalist political movement in Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1950–6’, Journal of African History, 37:2 (1996), 283–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Burton, African Underclass, 10.

13 West, M. O., The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965 (Bloomington, IN, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raftopoulos, B., ‘Nationalism and labour in Salisbury, 1953–1965’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21:1 (1995), 79–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Alexander, J., The Unsettled Land: State-making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe, 1893–2003 (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

15 Government of Southern Rhodesia, What the Native Land Husbandry Act Means to the Rural African and to Southern Rhodesia: A Five Year Plan that will Revolutionise African Agriculture (Salisbury, 1955), 14.

16 Bantu Mirror (Salisbury), 4 June 1960, cited in Ranger, T., Bulawayo Burning: The Social History of a Southern African City, 1893–1960 (Harare, 2010), 219Google Scholar.

17 See West, The Rise, ch. 4, for a discussion of the shifts in African housing and their link to ideas about moral decay and crime in this period.

18 See NAZ RG3/BRI 41, Southern Rhodesian Departmental Reports, British South Africa Police (BSAP), Annual Reports of the Commissioner, 1956–9.

19 See especially the vivid reporting in the media aimed at African audiences, notably the often outspoken and independent Central African Daily News and the popular magazine African Parade. On the media in Rhodesia generally, see Windrich, E., The Mass Media in the Struggle for Zimbabwe: Censorship and Propaganda Under Rhodesian Front Rule (Gwelo, Zimbabwe, 1981)Google Scholar.

20 Barnes, ‘We Women’, 132.

21 See Bhebe, N., ‘The nationalist struggle, 1957–62’, in Banana, C. (ed.), Turmoil and Tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990 (Harare, 1989), 68–9Google Scholar.

22 For a detailed analysis of developments in Bulawayo, see Ranger, Bulawayo, ch. 7.

23 Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 74–7.

24 Tredgold, R. C., The Rhodesia That was My Life (London, 1968), 229–33Google Scholar; Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 81.

25 For example, Barber, J. P., Rhodesia: The Road to Rebellion (London, 1967), 55Google Scholar; Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 80.

26 See Bernault, ‘The Politics of enclosure’, 25–6.

27 ‘Vagrancy bill has now been gazetted’, The Chronicle (Bulawayo), 22 October 1960. On the many amendments and concern over the speed of the Act's passage, see Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates (SRLAD), vol. 46 (Salisbury, 1960–61), cols 2213–90.

28 ‘Police clean African townships as Vagrancy Act comes into effect’, African Daily News (Salisbury), 22 Oct. 1960. The British South Africa Police, Annual Report 1960 (Salisbury, 1961), 4 and 26, notes that there were 12,347 European police reservists and 3,168 African reservists in 1960, up from a total number of 4,417 combined European and African reservists the previous year, and praises their role in 1960 in ‘arresting vagrants and generally clearing out the undesirable elements’ in the townships.

29 Precisely when the decision to exclude black women was taken is unclear – they were certainly on the agenda in parliamentary debates, and after the Act's passage black men called for them to be targeted in the press. See SRLAD, vol. 46, col. 2236; ‘Vagrancy situation fraught with danger, says Minister’, The Herald (Salisbury), 20 Oct. 1960; letter to the editor from M. D. Maposa, entitled ‘Women are the real vagrants’, African Daily News, 29 Nov. 1960.

30 See NAZ S3615/7/172, W. J. J. Welch, Town Manager, Senka, Gwelo, to the Director, Department of Social Welfare and Probation, 7 Nov. 1960.

31 For an account of the Salisbury reception centre, see ‘Films – and bottle tops – for the Salisbury vagrants’, The Chronicle, 28 Oct. 1960. I draw on the mainstream European newspapers as well as the ‘African’ press in constructing this account. The main European papers – The Herald, The Chronicle and their Sunday counterparts – were owned by the South African Argus Press. Argus supported the ‘old Establishment’ politics of the parties of Huggins, Welensky, and Whitehead and continued to do so after the rise of the Rhodesian Front. It opposed the Front's Unilateral Declaration of Independence but remained ‘solidly conservative’. The Central African Examiner offered a ‘liberal’ view. See Windrich, Mass Media, 57–61.

32 ‘City's vagrants moved into partly-built reception centres’, The Chronicle, 26 Oct. 1960.

33 ‘Vagrants may be made to do work’, The Chronicle, 5 Nov. 1960.

34 ‘Films’, The Chronicle, 28 Oct. 1960.

35 ‘Vagrancy court problem for magistrates’, The Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1960.

36 NAZ ORAL 242, Brian Dennis Beecroft, interviewed by I. J. Johnstone, Alderholt, England, 18 Nov. 1983.

37 See Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 68–9; Ranger, Bulawayo, 238–40.

38 See the views of Minister A. E. Abrahamson in SRLAD, vol. 46, cols 2303 and 2614; and ‘Two Bills give teeth to campaign against hooligans, spivs’, The Chronicle, 19 Oct. 1960; ‘Vagrancy situation is fraught with danger, says Minister’, The Herald, 20 Oct. 1960; ‘Vagrancy Act arrests now almost 700 – Abrahamson. No NDP Members are among those held – and MPs applaud’, The Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1960.

39 SRLAD, vol. 46, cols 2213–21 and 2257; ‘Assembly rejects bid to rush through vagrancy bill. European, Coloured loafers to be affected, says Minister’, The Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1960.

40 Evidence of MP Ahrn Palley, SRLAD, vol. 46, col. 2237. Ranger shows that, of those arrested in the aftermath of the rioting in Bulawayo, as many were married as single and most were employed: Ranger, Bulawayo, 234–6.

41 There are of course parallels to these ideas elsewhere. See Luise White's analysis of official views of the relationship between gender relations and Mau Mau in Kenya: White, L. ‘Separating the men from the boys: constructions of gender, sexuality, and terrorism in central Kenya, 1939–1959’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23:1 (1990), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 See Abrahamson in SRLAD, vol. 46, cols 2253–6, and in ‘Round up of vagrants to start soon’, The Herald, 20 Oct. 1960.

43 See Alexander, J., ‘Nationalism and self-government in Rhodesian detention: Gonakudzingwa, 1964–1974’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37:3 (2011), 553CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 The International Labour Organisation launched an investigation, which eventually exonerated the government; there were questions in London from British Labour and Liberal MPs. See ‘Vagrancy – S. R. action is criticised’, The Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1960; ‘Labour attacks Vagrancy Act’, The Herald, 2 Dec. 1960.

45 SRLAD, vol. 46, cols 2294–8, 2300–03 and passim.

46 See Palley, Constitutional History, 626, fn 6.

47 SRLAD, vol. 46, cols 2223, 2237, and 2287–9.

48 See Abrahamson's comments in ‘Vagrancy situation is fraught’, The Herald, 20 Oct. 1960; Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 80.

49 ‘S. R. emergency measures, Vagrancy Act cut city's crime rate’, The Chronicle, 17 Nov. 1960.

50 NAZ S3330/T1/35/23/2/1, F. E. Barfoot, Deputy Commissioner (Crime and Security), to the Secretary for Law and Order, 17 Oct. 1962. Investigations regarding the establishment of a new reception centre in Bulawayo followed, but came to nothing.

51 Barber, Rhodesia, 208.

52 ‘Police clean African townships’, African Daily News, 22 Oct. 1960.

53 ‘54 arrested as city's police step up move against “spivs” ’, The Chronicle, 24 Oct. 1960.

54 ‘Vagrancy Act arrests now almost 700 – Abrahamson’, The Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1960; Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 80.

55 After the first week of the Act's operation, 176 of 695 individuals had been consigned to reception or re-establishment centres; 215 had been ‘voluntarily repatriated’; 43 awaited deportation; and 215 had been released. ‘Vagrancy Act arrests now almost 700 – Abrahamson’, The Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1960; Bhebe, ‘Nationalist struggle’, 80.

56 ‘Vagrancy courts hear 108 cases’, The Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1960.

57 ‘ “Gambler” defended in vagrant court by city attorney’, The Chronicle, 2 Nov. 1960.

58 ‘Vagrancy Act arrests now almost 700 – Abrahamson’, The Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1960; NAZ S3338/1, Reception and Re-establishment Centres, Southern Rhodesia. Visited by Mr G. C. Senn, Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, n.d. [January 1961].

59 ‘Vagrancy courts’, The Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1960.

60 ‘Former prisoners now inmates of vagrants camp’, African Daily News, 8 Dec. 1960.

61 ‘Vagrancy courts’, The Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1960.

62 ‘How the inquiries operate’, The Chronicle, 26 Oct. 1960.

63 ‘Vagrancy courts’, The Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1960.

64 ‘Vagrancy court problems for magistrates’, The Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1960.

65 ‘Secret of the rich madala’, The Chronicle, 28 Oct. 1960; ‘A beggar (solvent) is freed’, The Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1960.

66 ‘Former prisoners now inmates’, African Daily News, 8 Dec. 1960.

67 ‘Big drop in number of Africans seeking jobs: city official’, The Chronicle, 27 Dec. 1960.

68 ‘Police clean African townships’, African Daily News, 22 Oct. 1960. Also see ‘Vagrancy courts’, The Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1960.

69 For example, ‘Detention of loafers yields plenty beer’, African Daily News, 22 Nov. 1960.

70 ‘Big drop’, The Chronicle, 27 Dec. 1960.

71 Letter to editor from ‘non-working wife’ in Eastlea, The Herald, 24 Oct. 1960.

72 ‘Wives aid hunt for vagrants’, The Chronicle, 15 Nov. 1960. It was unacceptable for the police to carry out township-style ‘swoops’ in the white suburbs.

73 See ‘54 arrested’, The Chronicle, 24 Oct. 1960; ‘S. R. emergency measures’, The Chronicle, 17 Nov. 1960.

74 ‘Big drop’, The Chronicle, 27 Dec. 1960.

75 See Ranger, Bulawayo, 243.

76 ‘Vagrancy Act an embrassment [sic] to the unemployed’, African Daily News, 29 Oct. 1960. The Association protested against both women and alien Africans taking jobs from Southern Rhodesian men. See Ranger, Bulawayo, 217.

77 For example, see ‘Why have vagrants?’, African Daily News, 13 Dec.1960.

78 ‘City Africans hit out at Vagrancy Act’, Bantu Mirror, 20 Oct. 1960.

79 ‘Mixed views on broadcast: soldiers alone not the solution, they say’, African Daily News, 14 Oct. 1960, cited in T. Scarnecchia, ‘ “The point of no return”: the October 8, 1960 Harare riots and the establishment of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act in Southern Rhodesia’, unpublished paper, 2010, 15.

80 ‘Vagrancy pleas to be probed’, The Chronicle, 8 Nov. 1960. Trade unions continued their attacks on the Act and Abrahamson. See ‘Why have vagrants?’, African Daily News, 13 Dec. 1960.

81 ‘African will help probe vagrancy complaints’, The Herald, 6 Dec. 1960; NAZ S3330/1/35/23/T4, B. Beecroft for Director of Social Welfare, Situation Report, Social Welfare Centres at Month Ending 31 October 1962.

82 ‘Ex-vagrant: “I was jailed for forming party at centre” ’, Bantu Mirror, 4 Feb. 1961.

83 ‘Easy life for city vagrants’, The Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1960.

84 ‘Films’, The Chronicle, 28 Oct. 1960.

85 NAZ S3338/1, Reception and Re-establishment Centres, Southern Rhodesia. Visited by Mr G. C. Senn, Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, n.d. [January 1961].

86 ‘Easy life’, The Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1960; ‘Vagrants want to negotiate for release’, African Daily News, 26 Nov. 1960.

87 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft. Also see ‘Five escapees caught in widespread hunt by police’, The Chronicle, 21 Nov. 1960.

88 ‘More vagrants planned escape bid’, The Herald, 25 Nov. 1960.

89 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft.

90 See ‘Five escapees caught’, The Chronicle, 21 Nov. 1960; ‘More vagrants planned escape bid’; The Herald, 25 Nov. 1960; and reporting on the court case that ensued in ‘Vagrants jailed for escaping’, The Chronicle, 9 December 1960. Ten men were imprisoned for three months with hard labour; one man received six months with hard labour.

91 ‘Vagrants want to negotiate’, African Daily News, 26 Nov. 1960.

92 See NAZ S3338/1, Reception and Re-establishment Centres, Southern Rhodesia, visited by Mr G. C. Senn, Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, n.d. [January 1961].

93 ‘Vagrants assaulted guards’, The Chronicle, 30 Dec. 1960.

94 ‘Vagrants protest at “return to centre” order’, The Herald, 31 Dec. 1960.

95 This did not, however, imply any let up in the practice of ‘raiding’ and ‘rounding up’ large numbers of urban Africans under a range of legislation. Police continued to use the Vagrancy Act to arrest people but then simply prosecuted them for tax or pass offences, or for trespass or prostitution. Palley, Constitutional History, 144, fn 4. At the same time, of course, security legislation was used to arrest hundreds of people year after year.

96 ‘Giving hope to the loafers and spivs is the aim of the men who run WhaWha’, The Herald, 26 Nov. 1960.

97 ‘Gwelo's WhaWha centre for the unemployed has now been opened’, African Daily News, 2 Dec. 1960.

98 ‘Giving hope’, The Herald, 26 Nov. 1960.

99 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft. Beecroft refers to Edmond Mwafuruseni as Edward Marafushena.

100 For example, see ‘Men at “HwaHwa” want freedom of movement’, African Daily News, 31 Jan. 1961; ‘Training for vagrants’, African Daily News, 1 Feb. 1961.

101 ‘Former prisoners now inmates’, African Daily News, 8 Dec. 1960.

102 ‘6 HwaHwa centre men face charges’, African Daily News, 4 Feb. 1961.

103 ‘Vagrants revolt’, African Daily News, 20 Jan. 1961. Also see NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft.

104 ‘Vagrants a pain in the neck’, African Daily News, 20 April 1961.

105 NAZ S3338/1, Reception and Re-establishment Centres, Southern Rhodesia, visited by Mr G. C. Senn, Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, n.d. [January 1961]; NAZ S3330/1/35/23/T4, B. Beecroft for Director of Social Welfare, Situation Report, Social Welfare Centres at Month Ending 31 October 1962.

106 NAZ S3338/1, Reception and Re-establishment Centres, Southern Rhodesia, visited by Mr G. C. Senn, Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, n.d. [January 1961].

107 ‘Training for vagrants’, African Daily News, 1 Feb. 1961.

108 ‘The unfortunate men at Hwa Hwa’, Parade (Salisbury), Mar. 1961.

109 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft.

110 ‘Vagrants a year ago, they are now skilled men’, African Daily News, 18 Nov. 1961.

111 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft.

112 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft.

113 See Cooper, F., Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996), 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 On the Rhodesian Front's feeble attempts to ‘rehabilitate’ nationalists, see Report of the Secretary for Law and Order for the Year Ended 31st December 1963 (Salisbury, 1964); Report of the Secretary for Justice for the year ended 31st December 1965 (Salisbury, 1966), Appendix G; and NAZ ORAL 256, Francis Anthony Staunton, written answers prepared in November 1986 to questions supplied by I. J. Johnstone.

115 Report for the Secretary for Internal Affairs for the Year 1973 (Salisbury, 1974), 9, notes the use of the amended Vagrancy Act to order 412 ‘vagrants’ out of the urban areas for periods of up to two years.

116 NAZ S3330/1/35/25/T14A/2/1, ‘Wha Wha Re-establishment Centre, 1964–65’, Secretary for Law and Social Welfare to Secretary, Public Service Board, 24 Feb. 1964; NAZ S3330/1/35/25/T14A/2/1, Clifford Dupont, ‘Reply to the Queen's Speech’, 25 Feb. 1964.

117 NAZ ORAL 242, Beecroft.