The African Land Husbandry Act, of 1951 as a land reform: a study of the ineffectiveness of adopting the individual freehold land tenure in raising agricultural productivity and stamping out labour migration in Tribal Trust Lands of Southern Rhodesia

Abstract

In 1951, the Southern Rhodesia Government passed the African Land Husbandry Act to establish individual freehold land tenure in communally held land in the then 'Native Reserves' which had been set up for exclusive occupation by Africans in 1902. The thesis of the writers of the Act was that individual freehold tenure would provide maximum security of land tenure to the farmer and free him from traditional obligations which, under communal land ownership, tended to be a drawback to the emergence of a class of progressive farmers. Maximum security of land tenure, a sense of personal ownership of land one cultivated, and freedom from kinship obligation, it was claimed, would be incentives for the farmer to work harder and improve his land and raise yields. Higher agricultural productivity would make part-time wage employment-labour migration Labour migration is a common practice in the East, Central and Southern Africa. Males leave their villages to take up paid employment in towns, mines or on plantations, and return to their villages after a short period of one to five years. - unnecessary for most farmers because returns from agriculture would be large enough to satisfy both subsistence and cash requirements of rural families. Africans who failed to secure farming land would become industrial workers with their roots pulled out of the land. The Act was to revolutionise African society by creating a permanent division of labour or two classes - a progressive peasantry and a class of wage earners. African agricultural productivity was to be raised and labour circulation between industrial centres and Tribal areas would be halted. The writers of the Act (1951) claimed, justifiably, that labour migration was partly a cause of the deterioration of African agriculture and partly a result of poor returns from agriculture. It was officially estimated that crop production would double in the first five years and annual cash income in Tribal areas would rise from £3m. to £11 million.