Going Home - Doris May Lessing [51]
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