Zimbabwe's Fight To The Finish

Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317846970
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book challenges the Western interpretation that poor governance under President Mugabe is the sole cause of the Zimbabwean crisis. It considers inherited and highly unequal colonial structures, and the impoverishing impact of an IMF and World Bank.

1 Rhodesian Political Economy, 1890–1962

DOI: 10.4324/9781315828473-2

Four phases of Rhodesian political economy are considered, namely, primitive accumulation 1890–1930, the ‘two pyramids’ 1930–1953, ‘partnership’ 1953–1962 and UD1 1962–1980.1 discuss the first three here and devote the next chapter to the fourth. Throughout all phases, Rhodesian development remained a complete paradox: the sources of growth—African dispossession, settler nationalism, external demand and white luxury consumption—were also the sources of structural constraints that crystallized in the recession of the late 1970s. A skewed domestic class structure formed the root of economic ills—not the so-called ‘closed’ economy, as is the want of the orthodox economists of the World Bank and IMF. State intervention released a dynamic of national economic growth far greater than elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa [excluding South Africa]. Ultimately, market distortions emanated from racially based capitalist classes that denied black entrepreneurs access to the resources and services necessary to add to the country’s wealth and develop the national market.

The process of brutally converting the land and labour resources of native economies into market commodities is what Marx called ‘primitive accumulation’, which he considered the starting point of capital generation [Max, K, 1978 ed, vol. 1, pt.8: 668–669]. Rosa Luxemburg in The Accumulation of Capital [1913] argued modern capitalism was engaged in a ‘fight to the finish … with every historical form of natural economy’ in order to usurp the land, labour, minerals, flora and fauna for capitalist development [1995 [ed]:369–371].¹ In the settler colonies of Southern Africa violent assaults were perpetrated against indigenous people to make way for capitalist agriculture and industry. The experience was less violent in the areas of indirect rule but no less revolutionary. Either way, to quote Colin Leys [1995:45], whether by direct assault or by the gradual encroachment of capitalist relations of exchange, ‘the result was to destroy the precolonial economies and the social orders based on them, without putting in their place economies or social systems capable of defending themselves against world market forces’.

In March 1938, Godfrey Huggins, the then Prime Minister of Rhodesia, inadvertently defined the nature of unbalanced or uneven development:

The Europeans in this counlry can be likened to an island of white in a sea of black, with the artisan and the tradesman forming the shores and the professional classes the highlands in the centre. Is the native to be allowed to erode away the shores and gradually attack the highlands? [cited in Rifkind, M.L., 1972:56]

His answer to the latter question was an illusory ‘two-pyramids’ or two separate societies each with a monopoly over occupations. Earlier the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 officially divided the country according to race and sanctioned the concentration of the economy’s main productive asset in the hands of a white minority. The Act effectively entrenched a deformed structural base marked by highly inequitable wealth accumulation.

Allocated marginal and inadequate land, African reserves converted to ‘sink areas’, that is, lands beset by environmental and demographic crisis bereft of any real autonomous development prospect. In turn a dispossessed and impoverished population deprived the country of the national market needed to sustain embracive endogenous development. The consequent external orientation of the capitalist base reinforced uneven development and the vulnerability inherent to world market fluctuations and foreign capital imperatives. The protection of white class status via laws of racial discrimination perpetuated an ongoing interest in African oppression to ensure supplies of cheap labour and an absence of competition; discouraged intensive land use and production innovation; and enticed luxury consumption amid conditions of relative mass deprivation [Brenner, R., 1977:84]²

Yet given a settler-focused capitalist development state and exogenous stimulants, namely, white immigration, world export demand and foreign direct investment, Rhodesia obtained drive especially while the latter factors lasted. Indeed, based on agriculture and mining, external stimulants enabled by the 1960s a higher GDP contribution from manufacturing than both the former. But the prospect for sustained and balanced development had been eliminated. The monopoly of white labour over skilled employment pushed up production costs beyond African purchasing power while the export focus of white farmers often left the country short of food and industrial inputs. The savings base and domestic market only expanded in so far as white society was enriched. Without an inclusive rural-urban dynamic, the national economy could only grow in spurts and forever tend toward saturated markets and recession. Inevitably, the ‘trickle down’ remained inadequate to pull African society out of poverty, which proved the nemesis of colonial Rhodesia.

The interests of domestic and international capital generally coincided but a disjuncture emerged in the 1950s during the so-called ‘partnership’ era under Prime Minister Garfield Todd [1953–1958] and his successor Edgar Whitehead [1958–1962]. The post World War II boom in manufacturing, largely fuelled by international capital, and the corresponding rise of African nationalism created an interest amongst liberal-minded industrial classes to promote a productive black agrarian bourgeoisie and a skilled, less migrant-prone urban workforce. A golden opportunity surfaced to strengthen the national market and the agricultural sector as a whole but such a venture, at the bare minimum, depended on repeal of the Land Apportionment Act—an issue that Whitehead fought the 1962 election on and lost. The white farming community and labour aristocracy were not prepared to court the competition of an African middle class and thus voted for the reactionary Rhodesian Front.

Ian Smith’s subsequent Unilateral Declaration of Independence [UDI] in 1965 and comprehensive resort to state economic controls managed impressively to harness foreign capital to serve national development goals but only for a white. He opted to work within the skewed class structure and market, which continued to pose chronic limits on balanced development. In a paradox, as much as settler nationalism was an economic strength, it was a weakness. As access to productive resources continued to accord to race, African oppression remained a concomitant of development, which ultimately courted war. Yet the challenge of overcoming the economy’s deformed structural base lay less in a victory over racist ideology as it did over the ruling class structure based on land segregation and the interests of dominant capital. Such comprised the key elements of Rhodesia’s development and underdevelopment.

1.1 Primitive Accumulation 1890–1930

Once the Rudd concession to mine Mashonaland had been deceitfully obtained off the Ndebele king, Lobengula, Cecil Rhodes founded the British South Africa Company [BSAC], which received a Royal Charter to colonise Zimbabwe. The BSAC’s Pioneer Column entered the country in 1890 and met little resistance forging the colonial belt.³ The Shona, the colonists said, wanted their protection from the Ndebele raiding parties from the southwest. The African population was estimated at 530,000 and the land they cultivated at about 500,000 acres out of a total land area of near r00 milllon acres [Government of Southern Rhodesia, 1955:1], of southern Rhodesia, 1955:11. The BSAC claimed the Rudd concession and the purchase of the land concession in 1891 from the German, Edward Lippert, gave it the legal right to sell away African land once surveyed.⁴ Later, a Judicial Committee in 1918 concluded candidly that the land belonged to the Crown through ‘right of conquest’.

‘The fuelling of Rhodes’s adventures’ was one of the ‘last great speculative splurges’ of the nineteenth century [Bond, P., 1998:44]. The BSAC’s overestimation of the country’s gold reserves precipitated a boom on the London money market in speculative land and mining capital. Contrary to expectations, however, there was no ‘second rand’: the alluvial deposits had been mined by the Africans and remaining deposits were scattered and of low quality. Well before the speculative bubble finally burst in April 1903, Rhodes knew that unless the ‘subordination of production to speculation ceased’, to use Giovanni Arrighi’s words [UIMM], the colony would collapse and the BSAC’s huge investment in rail unrecovered. In the long run, export-oriented settler agriculture would have to be promoted while the mining industry needed to maximise output and minimise costs, particularly African wages. In the short run, Rhodes and the BSAC decided to ransack the Ndebele economy to increase access to land and labour.

Lobengula provided the pretext in 1893 when a Ndebele raiding party at Fort Victoria disturbed Mashona labourers. Starr Jameson, the BSAC administrator, said to Rhodes:

The serious part is that every native has deserted from the mines and farms … There is no danger to whites hut unless some shooting is done, I think it Will be difficult tO gel labour … [cited in Ranger, T.,1985:93].

In the ensuing 1893–1994 War of Dispossession, a BSAC force of 1,135 white troops killed 1,000 Ndebele troops, pursued Lobengula to his death, plundered some 90,000 cattle and were awarded 6,000 acres

and 20 gold claims each for their efforts [Martin, D., and Johnson, P., 1981:45–46; Phimister, I., 1988:9–10]. The BSAC’s subsequent land commission created the first African reserves at Gwai and Shangani where the Ndebele were relocated [Rifkind, M.L., 1972:53].

The BSAC administration then resorted to taxing the African economy, which all households, rich or poor alike, had to pay either in cash, kind or labour.⁵ Africans were to pay for their own brutal colonisation that entailed land encroachments, livestock seizures, forced labour and violent native police. In March 1896, propelled by ancestral anger believed to be expressed in drought and rinderpest and locusts plagues, the Ndebele rebelled followed by the Shona in June. The uprising dragged on until October 1897, killed 10% of the white population and threatened the collapse of the BSAC administration. At the behest of Rhodes, the Ndebele surrendered while most Shona leaders were killed or executed [Rasmussen, R.K., and Rubert, S.C., 1990:299].⁶ On the basis of an 1897 British Government report, authored by Sir Richard Martin, the land assigned to African reserves expanded and reached 20% of the total land area in 1902 [about 20 million acres] while the remaining 80% was open to purchase by any race [Rifkind, M.L., 1972:53].

According to Kingsley Garbett [1966:116], from thereon the ‘traditional political system cea...