NF (1957) Going Home

  A trip to a Native Reserve. The office is the same as that which during the war was the Aliens’ Office. I know it well, because during the war I was technically an enemy alien by marriage. I was supposed to report once a week, my fingerprints were taken, and I was not allowed to move without permission beyond 50 miles around Salisbury. My husband was a refugee from Hitler, and passionately anti-Nazi; but this made no difference to officialdom.

  This was a very interesting experience: first, becoming an enemy alien because of my signature on a bit of paper; then being policed and restricted in my own town; and then ceasing to be an enemy alien because of another bit of paper. The labels stuck on me in this case were so arbitrary, bizarre and incongruous that I could never quite believe that the thing was happening at all. Now, of course, the law has been changed.

  But it was certainly a useful apprenticeship to living in the world today.

  The official of the Native Department enthusiastically explained to me the provisions of the Native Land Husbandry Act. Its aim is to break the tribal system, under which land is communally owned and distributed through the Chiefs. Land is now being given on the Reserves in plots of one, two, three, four acres to Africans, provided they have given evidence that they are willing to learn husbandry. And, in the words of my guide: ‘They have to be good types, you know; we don’t like troublemakers.’ This policy is quite different from what is happening in South Africa, where Strydom intends Africans to remain based on the Reserves, going into town to work in the industries. Under the Husbandry Act, which is regarded as the key to the new policy, Africans who cannot support themselves on these plots are expected to leave the Reserves and go into town to work. This is deliberately creating an industrial proletariat. The land is expected to be allocated by 1961. As there is a shortage of surveyors, a scheme is worked out by which the land is photographed from the air; it is said boundaries can be judged by these photographs to within a foot either way.

  Within the framework of segregation this is a far-sighted policy. For one thing, since the plots can be left to only one heir, it will prevent the infinite subdivision of land among children which has taken place on poor white farms in the Union, leading to dust-bowl conditions. And they can be bought and sold, which means, inevitably, that the efficient will acquire larger plots, and the inefficient must leave the land for the towns. This policy will save the soil. There are too many Africans for the amount of land left. They cannot all be supported on it, even with the policy known as ‘destocking’ which has caused more bitterness among Africans than any other.

  Cattle traditionally play an important part in the rites of tribal life. For years the Government has been forcing the people to sell the beasts which cannot be supported on the land available.

  The Africans hate the Land Husbandry Act. It is a blow at their traditions, and will divorce them from their soil. Ninety per cent are still tribal people, who think of themselves as village folk who make trips into town to earn some money, from whence they can return to their own people, their own way of living.

  Progressive Africans told me that they could see it was inevitable that their people must become either village or townspeople; what they objected to was the fact that this policy consolidates segregation: ‘If they gave us back some of our land, they wouldn’t have to force so many of us off. Nor would they have to make us kill so many of our cattle.’

  From the point of view of maintaining white supremacy it is a brilliant policy: creating a class of small peasant farmers who are traditionally conservative. To quote again from the Report on Native Affairs, 1954, in a succinct paragraph called ‘Political Situation’: ‘Rapid implementation of Government policy by application of the Native Land Husbandry Act, right throughout all the Native reserves and areas, is vital to establish and ensure a contented and progressive Native peasant, who, having been divorced from the present communal system of land tenure will, with his individual allocation of land, become aware of a new pride of ownership and aware of a new incentive to adopt better husbandry methods for his own progress. Inevitably he will disregard the political sirens of the industrial areas, who themselves are making no headway with their self-aggrandizement schemes.’

  I was taken to the Chinamora Reserve, near Salisbury. We knew the moment the Reserve began, because the road abruptly turned into a sandy, rutted track. As an African said to me: ‘No vote, no roads.’

  The official was enthusiastic about the Act as it had affected this Reserve. Three years ago, he said, there was not a blade of grass on the place; now the grass was growing up again and erosion had been arrested. There were small dams here and there, and evidence of contour ridging. The villages were of the familiar mud huts, each with its tin-roofed little store and its church.

  This is not a typical Reserve because it is so near Salisbury. Most of the men go into Salisbury to work; the women do the farming. The official said that a class of prosperous small farmer was already emerging, growing vegetables or flowers for sale in Salisbury. They might earn £50 or £60 a month. They were beginning to build European-type houses—brick houses with two or three rooms. Some had proper furniture and ate European-type food.

  This official, a pleasant young man obviously very enthusiastic about his work, said: ‘It will take three thousand years for them to get civilized.’ And then: ‘We must create a middleclass with some property.’

  Next day I visited a Native Purchase Area. On these, Africans may buy plots of 50 to 200 acres. It is intended that these areas, at present for what the Native Commissioner called ‘the upperclass of Native who thinks himself every bit as good as we are,’ will ultimately merge with the Reserves, when the small peasants there have consolidated themselves and weeded out the weaker, and enlarged their units of land.

  I saw several houses on the Purchase Area. They were like a poor white man’s house, brick-walled, with a corrugated-iron roof, and a minimum of furniture.

  In each house was the basic family and many sons, daughters and cousins of allied families. The clan pattern is breaking up very slowly into the individual family pattern.

  The first house we entered was owned by a friendly fat lady, curtsying at every second step, ‘Yes, Madam; no, Madam’ obviously well used to showing off her home to visitors. She had a little orchard of citrus trees, a run of fowls, and was very house-proud.

  In the next house was an old man, who said deprecatingly: ‘We are very poor people here.’ Whereupon the Native Commissioner said sharply: ‘But you are much better off than you were.’ ‘But we are very poor people,’ he insisted.

  He told me he had paid £10 a year to send his son to Domboshawa Mission to be taught the trade of building, and in return his son had built him his house for nothing. ‘My son is very good to me, very good to me,’ he insisted, and showed me the photograph of his son and his new daughter-in-law who would come to live in another little house next to his, to help him with his farming.

  He earned £100 gross in a good year, £80 in a bad year; grew maize, rapoka, nuts, rice. He sold his rice and maize to the neighbouring European farmers for food for their labourers.

  Another homestead was half-way between the African pattern and the European. It was a scattering of half a dozen brick huts, thatched, allocated among the twelve people who lived on this farm. They grew Turkish tobacco, munga, maize. The sons were employed in town. One son ran a lorry service, and helped his parents with the proceeds.

  At the back of these houses young women were pounding grain in old-fashioned mortars, or spreading grain on racks to dry.

  On one plot, under a light thatched roof open at the sides, about a dozen young women were sorting tobacco. They were hired from a neighbouring Reserve at 1s. a day. Work was going on with much laughter and enjoyment, until we appeared. They obviously resented us.

  Employment of Africans by Africans is new. On the Reserve I saw a work-party in progress, which is a traditional way of getting a rush of work done quickly: the host family brews beer
and cooks something specially good to eat, and invites friends and relations to do the job. But wages are ousting the work-party.

  On another homestead the farmer, who was single and more prosperous than the others, said that he had employed two men but they had left him. ‘They didn’t like working for another African,’ he said. ‘Although I paid them as well as a European farmer, one £2 a month and one £4 a month; and they ate the same food as I did.’

  He said he ate mealie porridge, with vegetables he grew, and a fowl for special occasions.

  Points made by the Native Commissioner: That all these people had savings-bank accounts. That none had beasts up to the amounts allocated—in this area they are allowed forty-nine beasts each. That all the children went to school up to Standard III—that is, five years’ schooling. That the women owned sewing machines.

  Both Purchase Areas and Reserves are always under the eye of the Native Commissioner; nothing can be done without his advice and permission. Under the Native Commissioners work the agricultural demonstrators, especially trained Africans who are the backbone of the Husbandry Act, and whose task it is to exhort and advise and demonstrate proper methods of farming.

  When we had finished seeing the homesteads, the Native Commissioner and I had a sandwich lunch under a tree near the Women’s Centre, whose foundation-stone had been laid, but which was not finished for lack of funds. The two Africans who were with us, the demonstrator and the interpreter, wandered off tactfully to find their own lunch. As usual I felt bad about this; and as usual could say nothing—it was not as if I were an ignorant visitor who did not know it was impossible for them to sit and eat with us. And I felt bad, too, about this official, who was kindly and helpful; just as I felt embarrassed the day before by the other Native Department official, who was so pleased because the grass had grown up over the eroded land. For so deeply ingrained in these white people are the ideas of segregation—that it is right and proper for a white farm to be thousands of acres, and a black plot one acre, or, for a few, a couple of hundred, that any discussions taking place can only be on this accepted basis. Therefore we sat under the tree and talked about the role women were playing in these Purchase Areas. It seemed that in this case it was the men who had pushed the women into starting a Women’s Association—because it made their wives more house-proud, better cooks and better mothers.

  I wished very much I could have had the chance to be alone with the two Africans for an hour without the Native Commissioner; not, I must emphasize, that he was concealing anything from me.

  Before we went in search of the two Africans, he said that Mr Todd was a wonderful Prime Minister, and that if only they were given time to create a middle class…

  Going back in the car, passing a clutch of straggling poverty-stricken huts, I asked the interpreter how many of these farms had good houses, such as we had seen; and he said eagerly, as if he had been waiting for me to ask it: ‘Only eleven, Madam.’ And the Native Commissioner said quickly: ‘We have seen the better houses, of course.’ As if he were saying: ‘If you were me, wouldn’t you have shown the better houses?’—Well, of course I would.

  I asked the interpreter if there was a library. He said there was not. No, the people did not read newspapers. He added that there was no electricity in the whole area, no telephone, no laid-on water. He said that to reach Salisbury, the people had to walk a minimum of seven miles to the bus-stop; the bus made the journey on the main road, once a day, in and out of town.

  There are now 5,000 of these better farms in the Colony. One eighth of the land available for purchase has been allocated. There will be 40,000 farms; but the Purchase Areas will not be settled as quickly as the Reserves, because they are being surveyed properly.

  ‘And why can’t they be photographed, like the plots on the Reserves?’

  ‘Because if people buy a bit of land, they have the right to be fussy about their boundaries; and because the Reserves are more urgent—we’ve got to save that soil before it blows away.’

  There is a waiting list of tens of thousands for these farms. To own one is the summit of ambition of most Africans.

  A conversation which illustrates the Native Land Husbandry Act from the grass roots:

  A friend and I had made a trip into Marandellas to buy stores. It is a pretty little village. The sun glistened off the leaves, the wall of the post office glared white.

  An old African, passing the parked car, stopped and said:

  ‘Morning, baas.’

  ‘Ah, that you, Thomas? And how are you?’ He settled down for a talk, one foot on the running board, while the African stood on the pavement, hat in hand.

  ‘Ah, baas, things are very bad.’

  ‘Ah? And how’s that?’ (This talk is in kitchen Kaffir.)

  ‘Baas, baas, the Government is shupa-ing me meninge.’ (‘The Government is pushing me around.’)

  ‘Yes? And what is the Government doing to you, Thomas?’

  ‘Baas, I have just come from my kraal. The Government says I must put my cattle into a house in the winter and feed them.’

  ‘Well, Thomas, and what is wrong with that?’

  ‘But baas, there is only my wife when I’ve gone to work. And how can a woman all by herself put the cattle into a house and get all the food they need all through the winter? Why can’t the cattle graze as they have always grazed?’

  ‘Thomas, you do not understand this business.’

  ‘No, baas, I do not understand. Explain it to me, baas.’

  ‘Your soil on the Reserve is no good.’

  ‘Ah, baas, that is so. Very bad land on the Reserve, not good land like you have, baas.’

  ‘Yes, but the land is bad land because there are too many cattle on it.’

  ‘Ah, baas! And how can there be too many cattle when the Government has made me sell my cattle so now I have only three cattle?’

  ‘But, Thomas, the Government has made you sell your cattle so that there won’t be too many cattle on your land.’

  ‘Then why cannot they graze as they always did?’

  ‘Thomas, it is like this.’ And my friend takes his foot off the running board, stands up, and raises his finger in admonition. ‘And now listen well, Thomas, for now I will explain the Government to you.’

  ‘Thank you, baas. I am listening well.’

  ‘When you let your cattle run all over the veld in winter looking for grass they cut the land into dust, and the cattle and the grass both get thin and no good.’

  ‘Yes, baas?’

  ‘Now you put your cattle into a house, you cut grass for them and you carry the grass to the cattle, and they do not make the soil into dust.’

  ‘But baas, the soil is no good, not like your soil.’

  ‘It is because you do not shut up your cattle.’

  ‘But baas, the Mkiwa do not shut up the cattle, they let the cattle run.’ (Mkiwa—the white men.)

  ‘The farmers that are good farmers, they shut up their cattle and feed them in the winter when the grass is no good.’

  ‘But if the Mkiwa do not wish to be good farmers, then they can let their cattle run, because they have plenty of land.’

  ‘But, Thomas, you are not using your head.’

  ‘Yes, baas, I am using my head well.’

  ‘Now, Thomas, you must do what the Government says.’

  ‘Yes, baas, that I understand. But the Government is shupaing me. For how can my wife, who is a woman by herself, do all the work?’

  ‘Then you must leave your work for Mkiwa and help your wife, otherwise the Government will say you are not a good farmer and take your land.’

  ‘Ah, baas. And how can that be?’

  ‘Because now the Government says all the natives must farm well.’

  ‘But how can I and my wife and my small children eat if I do not earn money from Mkiwa?’

  ‘The Government says this, Thomas—now listen well. It is a new law.’

  ‘I am listening well, baas.’

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nbsp; And now my friend stands on one foot in the dust of the road and says: ‘Now, Thomas, this one foot of mine, it is in the Reserve.’

  ‘Yes, baas?’

  And he plants down his other foot and says: ‘Now this other foot of mine, it is in Mkiwa.’

  ‘Yes, baas?’

  ‘Now the Government says the natives must either be Reserve or they must be Mkiwa,’ and he lifts up his feet alternately, and with vigour, so that puffs of glistening pinkish dust go off into the hot sunlight. ‘Either one thing or the other. But not both Mkiwa and the Reserve.’

  Thomas says nothing. Then: ‘That is not a good law.’

  ‘Yes, Thomas, it is a good law, because now you must either be a good farmer, on your land, or you must work for Mkiwa. But if you work for Mkiwa and just go home at week-ends, then you will be a bad farmer and the Government will take your land.’

  ‘Ah, baas!’

  ‘Yes, Thomas, it is so. That is the new law. It is the Native Land Husbandry Act.’

  ‘Thank you for explaining it to me, baas.’

  The two men stood facing each other for a while. I see that there is something more to be said. After a pause, however, Thomas says: ‘May things go well with you, baas.’ And moves off.

  My friend stands looking after him.

  ‘That’s the only boy,’ he said, ‘that I’ve ever known who can cut a hedge straight. But I sacked him for smoking dagga.* I wish I could get him to come back.’ A pause while Thomas, a straight, thin old man, retreats along the pavement. ‘I suppose he can cut a hedge straight because he was in the army for so long during the war.’ A pause. Thomas is walking very slowly. My friend calls: ‘Thomas!’ Thomas turns. He comes back again. ‘Baas?’

  ‘Thomas, you are the only boy I have ever known who can cut a hedge straight.’

  ‘That is so, baas.’