Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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WHITE POLITICS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
the war. Hundreds
of
Mambwe flocked
to
join
the
movement,
which rejected
not
only colonial authority
but the
authority
of
chiefs as well.
In
Nyasaland too, Watch Tower services reflected
a mood
of
resentment. ' The white
men say the war is
finished,
where
are
your children?', went
one
Watch Tower hymn, with
the grim refrain: ' You may shave your heads', that is, ' you may
go into mourning'.
17
Some Nyasas, most
of
them independent
farmers, looked to the village-based Nyau secret society to defend
them against alien cultural influences, though many more turned
to mission Christianity, whose increased popularity
was
related
in part
to the
increased responsibilities given
to
African pastors
and evangelists during
the
war. Clerks
and
teachers used native
or welfare associations
to
protect their limited gains. Based
on
Livingstonia and Karonga, where
the
first association
had
been
founded
by
mission graduates
in
1912, these bodies spread
and
took
on a new,
more aggressive character
in the
immediate
aftermath of the war. Members called unavailingly on the govern-
ment
to
reward their military efforts and complained
at
its failure
to prevent the fall in real wages caused by the growth of inflation.
' It is unquestionable
to
everybody,'
an
association minute recor-
ded
in
1921, 'that natives since
the
hideous war broke out, find
great difficulty
in
supporting themselves
and
find that goods
in
stores
are
beyond their means.'
18
WHITE POLITICS
AND
ECONOMIC GROWTH, I918-194O
In the decade before 1923
the
main issue
of
white politics
in the
Rhodesias
was the
creation
of a new
form
of
government
to
replace chartered company
rule.
Even before the war the Company
had expressed reluctance
to
continue carrying
the
burden
of
administration indefinitely,
and
this feeling intensified when
in
1918 the Privy Council decided that ownership of unalienated land
was vested
in the
Crown,
not
the Company. Since
the
Company
had failed to achieve the amalgamation of Northern and Southern
Rhodesia, which settlers
in
both territories opposed,
it
looked
increasingly
to
union with South Africa
as the
best means
of
obtaining adequate financial compensation
for its
assets. This
17
Quoted
in
McCracken,
Politics and
Christianity,
226.
18
Malawi National Archives Si/210/20, Minutes of the Mombera Native Association,
26-27 September, 1921.
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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
policy was actively supported
by the
South African prime
minister, Smuts, who hoped that Southern Rhodesia's incorpo-
ration into
the
Union would
be an
important step
in
South
Africa's northward march into the interior of the continent. It was
also favoured in the British Colonial Office, where the view was
held that union would strengthen imperial and anti-republican
interests in southern Africa generally. However, many whites in
Southern Rhodesia aspired instead to 'responsible government'
(which in effect meant self-government for the white minority).
Farmers, anxious to prevent the Rand mines from competing for
African labour on equal terms, founded the Responsible Govern-
ment Association
in
1917 and under Coghlan's leadership
it
gained the support of most European
artisans.
In the constitutional
referendum of 19 2
2 the
cause of responsible government prevailed
by
8,774
votes to 5,989. Tobacco farmers anxious to penetrate the
South African market combined with Company officials, wealthy
businessmen and Afrikaners
to
swell
the
Unionist vote,
but
popular distrust of big business and of Afrikaners gave the victory
to Coghlan. Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing colony
in October 1923, though in theory at least the franchise remained
colour-blind, while (again,
in
theory) some restrictions were
placed on the powers that the elected assembly could exercise over
African affairs. A year later Northern Rhodesia was transferred
to
the
control
of
the Colonial Office; since
the
total white
population was less than 5,000, it was agreed that there could be
no question as yet of self-government. The chartered company
retained its railways and its mineral concessions, thus remaining
the largest commercial force in the region.
The change of government in Southern Rhodesia did not result
in any sudden change in direction. Once responsible government
had been won, Coghlan widened the base
of
his support
by
introducing several former Unionists into his Cabinet. Under his
leadership and that
of
H.
U.
Moffat, who succeeded him
as
premier
in
1927,
a
cautious policy
was
followed aimed
at
safeguarding the interests of foreign, in particular mining, capital
as well as those of white farmers. The country's overseas trade
still depended heavily
on
mineral production,
and
this
was
concentrated in a few firms. Gold exports continued to predom-
inate, though during the 1920s the average annual output was only
two-thirds that in 1914-17. Nine goldmines accounted for more
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WHITE POLITICS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
than two-thirds of output; the total number of goldmines fell from
466
in
192}
to
290
in
1929. By then, Southern Rhodesia had
become one
of
the world's principal sources
of
asbestos and
chrome, which together contributed £
1.5
m
to exports (almost a
quarter
of
the total); the greater part came from three mines.
During the mid-1920s coal-production expanded very rapidly, and
by 1929 the mining industry as a whole employed 47,000 Africans
and 1,700 whites. Its preference
for
cheap food was countered
by the government's concern to protect white farming and thus
encourage further white settlement. White ranchers in the south-
west captured the market
for
cattle
in
Katanga from whites
in
Northern Rhodesia, but this counted
for
little compared with
South African resistance
to
importing food from Southern
Rhodesia. For
a
while, the best hope for white farmers seemed
to
be
tobacco: from 1919, tobacco from
the
Rhodesias
and
Nyasaland enjoyed preference over American tobacco
in the
British market. The tobacco boom of 1926-7 lifted exports to over
£im; it quickly collapsed, but the government rescued farmers by
purchasing their unsold crop. Between 1921 and 1931 the white
population increased by
a
half to just over 50,000.
In Northern Rhodesia, the first years of Colonial Office rule also
favoured white settlers. Sir Herbert Stanley, the first governor,
had been resident commissioner
in
Salisbury, and he looked
to
settlers to rescue the territory from chronic indebtedness. In 1925
a legislative council was set up, including
a
minority
of
settlers
elected on
a
franchise which effectively excluded Africans. Between
1928 and 1930, land was set aside for whites along the line of rail
and around Fort Jameson
and
Abercorn,
and
some 60,000
Africans were moved into reserves. The country shared
in
the
tobacco boom
of
1926—7
and
though
the
Broken Hill mine
encountered problems in producing lead, its zinc and vanadium
constituted the chief exports
in
1928-30. By then, however,
it
seemed clear that the most likely source of future prosperity was
copper.
The
rapid expansion
of
electrical
and
automobile
industries after the First World War caused a sharp rise in world
demand for copper.
In
1922 new capital was invested
in
Bwana
Mkubwa mine and the British South Africa Company adopted
a
policy
of
granting exclusive mining concessions
to
large firms.
Mining financiers
in
South Africa and
the
USA took
a
new
interest in the copper deposits around the headwaters of the Kafue
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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
river and with advanced prospecting techniques revealed
the
existence of huge ore-bodies of copper sulphide, mostly far below
the surface deposits of oxides to which mining had hitherto been
confined. By 1930, four large new mines were being developed:
Mufulira
and
Roan Antelope, controlled
by the
American-
dominated Rhodesian Selection Trust; and Nkana and Nchanga,
controlled
by
Ernest Oppenheimer's Anglo American Corpor-
ation, the largest
of
the South African mining finance houses.
Bustling company towns grew up at each of
the
mines; roads and
feeder railways were constructed. By 1930 nearly 4,000 whites and
30,000 Africans were at work on mines
in
Northern Rhodesia;
the total white population had risen to 13,000.
In Nyasaland,
the
scope
for
white enterprise was sharply
reduced.
In
the post-war slump, many estates failed and
the
initiative in cash-crop production passed to African farmers. By
1929 some 47,500, mostly in Lilongwe and Dowa districts, were
producing two-thirds
of
Nyasaland's output
of
tobacco, which
from 1917
to
1937 remained its chief export. Europeans, who
numbered less than 2,000, concentrated
on
capital-intensive,
flue-cured tobacco and on tea, mostly grown on company estates
which still employed Lomwe workers from Mozambique
at
starvation wages. Such immigrants also worked
for
African
cotton-growers, mainly in the Shire valley, and enabled them to
achieve preponderance during the 1920s. But the interests of both
white
and
black farmers were firmly subordinated
to
grand
imperial strategy.
In
1919 Britain arranged
for the
British-
dominated Mozambique Company to build a railway through its
own territory from Beira to Chindio, Nyasaland's outlet on the
Zambezi. This
had no
commercial justification;
it
was only
intended to reinforce British influence in Mozambique.
19
Yet the
railway
was
financed
by a
loan
on
which
the
Nyasaland
government was obliged to guarantee interest payments. The line
was opened in 1923 but scarcely covered its working costs, despite
freight charges which seriously handicapped producers
in
Nyasaland. Exports between the wars reached
a
peak
in
1927,
when they were worth £963,000; annual revenue was seldom
more than £3
50,000.
The government was only able to service the
railway loan by borrowing in turn from the British government:
this loan (which was at least interest-free) amounted to £ 1.2m by
1936.
19
See chapter
io, p.
512.
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The world trade depression
in the
early 1930s made
an
immediate and prolonged impact
on
Central Africa. Southern
Rhodesia weathered it best, thanks to the rise in gold prices which
followed Britain's departure from the gold standard in
1931.
Small
workers were attracted back
to
the industry;
by
1936
the ten
largest mines produced only 37 per cent of total output and this
was rising steadily: though it never reached the
1916
peak, by 1939
it was worth over £6m (60 per cent of all exports). Lower-grade
ores became profitable and African employment in the industry
doubled during the decade. By contrast, asbestos- and chrome-
mining was set back severely, though the former expanded rapidly
from 1935. Meanwhile, the onset of the depression had intensified
white impatience with
the
British South Africa Company's
enjoyment
of
mineral rights;
in
1933 they were bought by the
Southern Rhodesian government for
£2111.
For farmers, both white and black, the depression threatened
disaster. Many white farmers
in
the late 1920s were still under-
capitalised and inefficient, too poor to risk technical innovation
and dangerously vulnerable to fluctuations in price. As demand
for their products slackened, their fear
of
African competition
increased and they turned to the government for
help.
Almost half
the legislative council were or had been farmers, and from 1930
the government began
to
intervene
in
the marketing
of
maize,
tobacco and dairy produce; it tried to sustain domestic prices and
promote exports
by
enforcing and financing improvements
in
quality. Many white farmers were saved from ruin by loans from
the Land Bank. Tobacco-growers, handicapped in 1930 by South
Africa's protective import quota, were much helped when
Southern Rhodesia joined Britain
in
leaving the gold standard.
This gave their product an important advantage over American
tobacco
in
sterling markets
and
exports
to
Britain expanded
considerably even though yields per acre were half those in the
USA and Canada.
The most far-reaching measure of protection for white farmers,
and indeed other white businessmen, was the Land Apportion-
ment
Act of
1930. This largely incorporated
the
recommen-
dations of the Morris Carter Land Commission, which had been
set up in 1925 in response to the desire of most whites to prevent
Africans from buying land adjoining their own. Under the Act,
49 million acres (just over half the total land area), including all
urban land, were reserved for European use or purchase. Outside
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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
the existing reserves for Africans, 7.4 million acres were set aside
as Native Purchase Areas; most were in low-lying, tsetse-infested
border country. Africans on European land who were not
employed as agricultural labourers were given six years to quit.
This measure was not fully enforced, partly because many white
farmers still required the services of their African tenants and
partly because the reserves could not accommodate all those
threatened with expulsion; yet over the next decade as many as
50,000 additional Africans may have been crowded into the
reserves.
Despite its assistance to white farmers, Moffat's government
faced rising opposition. There were widespread complaints against
high railway rates, and many white artisans had lost their jobs.
In 1933 the Reform Party, led by Godfrey Huggins, a Salisbury
surgeon, replaced the Rhodesia Party in office. Huggins's overall
majority was soon threatened by dissent within his own party, and
in the interests of stable government it mostly joined the Rhodesia
Party in forming the United Party; under Huggins, this governed
Southern Rhodesia for the next 20 years. The all-white Labour
Party retained five seats, but it was effectively neutralised in 1934
by the Industrial Conciliation Act, which extended the framework
of economic segregation from the countryside to the towns and
mines. The Act was modelled on South African legislation of
1924;
it protected white artisans by obliging employers in
townships to pay skilled black workers at the same rates as whites
while at the same time excluding Africans from membership of
recognised trade unions. Provision was made for the training of
white apprentices in a variety of trades; African youths were
deliberately excluded. In the same year, the government revised
the maize marketing system in order to protect the smaller white
farmer against both the larger farmer and the African producer.
Both these measures, like land apportionment, had required and
received the assent of the British government.
In one sense, the apparatus of economic protection for whites
was clearly segregationist, but its effect was to make blacks and
whites ever more interdependent. Restrictions on African
production and combination kept down the price of African
labour, and the number of black wage-earners rose from 179,000
in 1931 to 300,000 in 1941 (about twice the rate of increase in the
previous decade). Most were still 'alien natives', but the
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WHITE POLITICS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
proportion of Southern Rhodesian blacks continued to
rise.
It was
under such pressure
of
movement from the land that Huggins
sought, in the Native Registration Act of 1936, to emulate South
Africa by allowing Africans into towns only if they could prove
they had work there or had official permits. When
it
suited him,
Huggins claimed he wanted Africans to be able to rise up a social
'pyramid' alongside that for whites, but little was done
to
bear
this
out.
Although government revenue had risen by 19 3
9
to £ 3.5 m
(which in relation to total population may have been three times
that of Northern Rhodesia), this was very largely spent on whites,
of whom over
a
third had been born in the country. The prospects
for an African middle class were still very dim. By 1938 only 834
Africans had obtained holdings in Native Purchase Areas. In the
reserves, the best efforts of a few agricultural demonstrators could
not offset the effects of overcrowding and labour migration. There
was no appreciable increase in African maize-production. Greater
government provision for African health and primary education
was a matter of enlightened self-interest, but even the latter was
opposed by many
whites,
and there
was
no question of introducing
secondary education for Africans.
For Northern Rhodesia, the crucial feature
of
the depression
was the slump in copper prices from late in 1929. The small mine
at Bwana Mkubwa had to close, but the big new mines were
at
a comparative advantage,
for
they were relatively low-cost
producers favoured by high-grade ores. They had to reduce their
workforce drastically, but production began at Roan and Nkana
in 1931 and at Mufulira in 1933. The price of copper in London
rose sharply from 1935
to
1937,
due
partly
to a
producers'
restriction agreement and partly to growing demand from both
Britain and Germany as they rearmed.
In
1938 the Copperbelt's
output was 213,000 tons, over 13 per cent of the non-communist
world's total, and sales were worth almost
£<)m,
some nine-tenths
of total exports.
This spectacular growth brought limited gains
to
Northern
Rhodesia.
It
did not, as yet, do much to stimulate the economy.
The mines imported their equipment. They
did
enlarge
the
internal market for maize and cattle, but spending-power did not,
in this period, increase sufficiently
to
stimulate local manufac-
turing. The mine companies' industrial strategy was founded on
a
dual wage structure and labour-intensive methods of production.
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From 1931, suitable unskilled labour was plentiful and therefore
cheap, though
it
was paid better on the mines than elsewhere.
White wages, by contrast, were relatively high, since they had
to
compete with those
on
the Rand:
in
the late 1930s the ratio
between average white and black earnings was 30 : 1. By the same
token, however, there were relatively few whites in the industry:
just over 2,000
in
1938,
as
against 20,000 Africans. Nor did
government revenue increase in line with copper sales: between
1929 and 1937
it
rose by only
a
half,
to £im. The British South
Africa Company exacted royalties from
the
mine companies
regardless of other production costs; by 1940 total royalties paid
since
1923
exceeded £im and largely compensated the company for
the deficits of
its
administration before 1924. Dividends, first paid
in 1935, amounted by 1941 to
£jm,
rather less than a third of the
sum invested in the industry. Taxes were payable in Britain, where
the mine companies were domiciled, and only
a
half-share was
forwarded to Northern Rhodesia: in this way, between 1930 and
1940 £z.4m was retained by the British government.
Northern Rhodesia escaped from deficit in 1935 but at the cost
of drastic cut-backs: its finances had incurred the additional strain
of moving the capital from Livingstone to Lusaka in that year.
In 1937 the Colonial Office despatched Sir Alan Pirn to find ways
of reducing government expenditure and expanding sources of
revenue in Northern Rhodesia. Pirn's wide-ranging report under-
lined the artificial burdens of royalties and shared taxation, and
the costs of using whites for jobs for which Africans could have
been trained. He argued the need for much greater government
investment
in
African welfare: medical services were 'most
inadequate', African education was 'very backward and needs
extra provision on
a
considerable scale', and technical assistance
to African farmers was almost non-existent.
20
This neglect was
aggravated by the effects
of
the reserves policy
of
the previous
decade.
The
intended new wave
of
white farmers
had not
materialised; the land set aside for them reverted to tsetse-infested
bush, while reserves became overcrowded and suffered serious
food-shortages. Even outside the reserves, production was handi-
capped by distance from markets and infertile soils. Most house-
holds depended on some share in the earnings of migrant workers.
20
Report
of
the commission appointed to enquire into the financial and
economic
position of
Northern Rhodesia (Colonial,
no. 145,
19)8), JJJ.
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WHITE POLITICS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
By 1936 more than half the able-bodied male population was away
from home and the 60,000 employed within Northern Rhodesia
were outnumbered by those employed outside it, mainly in
Southern Rhodesia but also in the goldfields and sisal plantations
of Tanganyika.
Thus the general poverty of the African population in Northern
Rhodesia was due to a combination of natural endowment,
industrial strategies and public policy. Although the white popula-
tion did not exceed 15,000 throughout the 1930s, it exerted
considerable influence. Livingstone and Ndola were both munici-
palities run by elected local authorities and white rate-payers
dominated urban local government elsewhere. In 1938 non-
officials (all but one of them elected) were given parity of
representation with officials in the legislative council and Roy
Weiensky, a leader of the white railway workers' union, became
a member. There was no official colour bar, but neither the
government nor the mine companies were eager to antagonise
white workers by enlarging opportunities for Africans. In 1938
the government spent more on a thousand white schoolchildren
than on its budget for African education, and its first junior
secondary school for Africans was opened only in 1939. Most
officials were extremely reluctant to see Africans settling in towns;
despite the rapid growth of the Copperbelt they firmly believed
that Africans there should only be short-stay visitors. The African
strikes in
193 5
ZI
provoked some overdue public discussion of the
question, but the modest administrative reforms which followed
reflected the belief that even in towns and mines Africans should
remain subject to ' tribal' authority. One of the few white critics
of
this
view was Stewart Gore-Browne, a farmer who in 1938 was
nominated to represent African interests, and at this stage he was
closely allied to Weiensky in pressing for some form of white
self-government and an end to the burden of mineral royalties and
imperial taxation.
Nyasaland in the 1930s suffered not only the effects of the
depression but a tightening of the strait-jacket of railway finance.
Rates on the Trans-Zambezi railway increased,
22
but the govern-
ment compelled planters to use it and several were ruined.
21
See below,
p.
640.
22
In 19)1 a
2,ooolb bale
of
cotton cost
£i 15s od. to
transport from Rusape,
in
Southern Rhodesia,
to
Beira,
but £4
19s
od.
from Chiromo,
in
Nyasaland,
to
Beira,
an almost identical distance; and
the
latter rate was repeatedly raised.
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Meanwhile, the British government had given its backing in 1929
to plans for a railway bridge across the Zambezi, while preventing
the one thing which might have made it pay — the development
of
the
Moatize coalfield, opposite Tete, which would have
challenged Welsh exports
to
South Africa. Once again,
the
financing was underpinned by Nyasaland, which paid interest on
debentures out
of
loans from the Colonial Development Fund.
When the bridge was opened in
1935,
Nyasaland's public debt had
swollen to over £jm: this was relatively the heaviest such burden
in British colonial Africa,
for in
that year revenue was only
£422,000 and exports worth only £736,000. Between 1930 and
1936 the number of Africans employed within the territory fell
from about 80,000 to
5
o,ooo (many of whom were immigrants),
and in the latter year as many as 120,000 people from Nyasaland
were employed outside its borders. The railway was extended in
1935 from Blantyre to Lake Nyasa, but this had much less effect
on the revival of export values in 1934-8 than the expansion of
tea-planting due
to
a favourable international quota secured
in
1933;
in
1938-9 tea briefly replaced tobacco as the chief export
commodity. As elsewhere
at
the time, the government tried
to
shore up its revenues by increasing African cash-crop production,
but in 1936
it
formally acknowledged its dependence on labour
exports,
in
agreements which regularised
the
recruitment
of
workers
for
Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.
No
great
changes in numbers resulted, but the government was now able
to control migration more easily and ensure that Nyasaland
received some return from the contribution made by its workers
elsewhere.
For most Central Africans the decade of the 1930s was bleak.
Yet there were important gradations and exceptions within the
overall pattern of rural deprivation. Villages were indeed often
half-emptied of their men: in northern Nyasaland and eastern and
north-eastern Northern Rhodesia the absentee rate was between
40 and
60
per cent. This strained the capacity
of
those who
remained
to
grow food for themselves, but some communities
were able to cope better than others. In northern Nyasaland, the
lakeside Tonga adjusted to the loss of male labour by netting fish
and cultivating cassava, which women could grow with little or
no male assistance. In the woodlands of Northern Rhodesia, male
labour was essential for bush clearance and tree-lopping. This
could be secured
if,
as among the Mambwe, the men of
a
village
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