The 1930 Land Apportionment Act made it illegal for Africans to purchase land outside of established Native Purchase Areas in the region of Southern Rhodesia, what is now known as Zimbabwe. Before the 1930 act, land was not openly accessible to natives, but there were also no legal barriers to ownership. The Act was passed under British colonial rule in an attempt to prevent a loss of government authority over those native to the region. The Act led to the eventual overpopulation of Native Reservations, and limited native African access to quality land that resulted in large economic and social inequality. The consequences of The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 can be seen in the legislation passed to address the issues it created, such as the Native Land Husbandry act of the 1950s, that also enforced land segregation and limited native opportunities in Southern Rhodesia. Post independence, land reform continues to maintain its salience in Zimbabwe, as the current administration works to redefine land ownership in the twenty-first century.
Land rights before 1930
Various southern Bantu peoples inhabited Matabele and Mashonalands (what is now known as Zimbabwe) for thousands of years according to fossilized evidence and discovery of present tribes' artifacts stretching over the last nine centuries. Alongside archived DNA proof of African Peoples around Great Zimbabwean ruins as early as 1500s and various tribal oral history accounts paint a picture of the native settlements and land past. Land ownership of most agrarian peoples consisted of common tribal communal lands for sustenance and trade with pastoralists. Peoples thrived in this land structure while mining gold, copper and Ivory for barter trade with even the far away ancient Chinese dynasties during Kingdom of Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe ruins) era. The exploration and subsequent settlement of European Christian missionaries in the late 19th century greatly increased the population of foreigners, with the areas temperate climate found suitable by most of these new immigrants. While concessions and treaties with tribal chiefs made up the vast majority of legal agreements in these native tribal lands through most of the 18th and 19th centuries, it wasn't until the partition and Scramble for Africa after the 1884 Berlin Conference that territorial control switched from local (native) to colonial (foreign) rule. Colonialism also shifted the power base from the local natives to colonial foreign powers with military support from the colonizing nations to secure their colonies. Common (British European) law replaced native (African) law. The capitalist British society, still in pre-industrial stages, sought agrarian means to self-sustain its colonies alongside other exploitative means. In 1889 Britain granted royal charters to two firms that merged to form the British South Africa Company as a vehicle for Imperial wealth extraction. This ushered in the commoditization of these native ancestral lands as instruments of economic gain through farming or mining for future european settlers in Zimbabwe. Southern Rhodesia was under the chartered control of the British South Africa Company starting in the 1890s and became a self governed British colony in 1923. In the time leading up to the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, there were no legal barriers to land ownership by black Africans. Section 83 and 81 of the Southern Rhodesia Order in Council had established the right for natives to land ownership within the region, and also established the responsibility of the colonial state to provide land to the natives of the region. However, that did not mean that land was easily accessible to native Africans in the region. In 1919, the Southern Rhodesia Privy Council took steps to limit land purchase to solely black South African migrants, seen as more capable of individual land tenure. The council had reasoned that exposure to white settlers in South Africa made these migrants more capable of adhering to the idea of individual land tenure, as opposed to communal ownership. The Privy Council sold these lands at higher prices, excluding local Africans from purchase, and also demanded recommendations for land tenure by missionaries before allowing purchase. These recommendations were difficult to come by as missionaries tended to provide negative recommendations in an attempt to maintain religious control of their congregation. At the same time, the British South African Company in charge of administering the region refused to sell land to black Africans, in a total rejection of the Southern Rhodesia Order of 1898. In response, Africans began to buy land directly from white settlers or through third parties. Those who bought land through this method had to purchase at higher prices and pay fees to land agents, and tended to be wealthier than the general African population. This segment of the population were often those employed in higher wage positions such as catechism teachers connected to missionaries; the purchase of land allowed these individuals to accumulate more wealth and resources than others in the community.
Land Apportionment Act of 1930: implementation
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