"LAW AND ORDER MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE IN EVERYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE NATIVE": THE AFRICAN "LOCATION," CONTROL, AND THE CREATION OF URBAN PROTEST IN SALISBURY, COLONIAL ZIMBABWE, 1908-1930. (2025)

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Colonial rule in Rhodesia hinged upon four key endeavors by theEuropean settler population: 1) an attempt to contain African politicalambitions, 2) reconcile socio-political conflict between Africans andEuropeans; 3) ensure the efficient functioning of the developingcapitalist economy; and, above all, 4) maintain European hegemony in anacceptably harmonious environment. The strategies employed by successiveRhodesian governments to these ends were informed by an ideology thatportrayed Africans as incapable of organizing and maintaining adeveloped Western industrial capitalist economy. At worst, Africans wereseen as inherently incapable of acquiring the requisite skills; at best,it was supposed that they would require an indefinably long period ofexposure to modernizing influences. (1) Key elements that reinforcedthese attitudes were spatial segregation and discriminatory legislationand, with those, the phenomenon of the "Location," the namegiven to those places in urban areas that were officially demarcated forthe settlement of the Africans.

At the level of local authorities, this ideology was reflected inresidential segregation and the continued marginalization of Africans inthe day-to-day processes of civic participation. African desires toparticipate in local affairs and contribute to decisions that affectedtheir lives were given only fleeting recognition and no serious attemptswere made to accommodate them. Their European rulers saw Africans ashaving a cultural background that was not compatible with an urbanlifestyle. As such, Africans in urban areas were never affordedeffective access to municipal decision makers; the problem wascompounded by a pervasive belief among Europeans that they 'knewand understood' the African mind and that they could prescribepolicies for their African subjects. (2) Hence, Africans had littleopportunity to determine the conditions of their urban environment or todirect development in what they considered to be their own bestinterests, and they were never, in any meaningful way, able to influencepolicies or programs that were fundamental to the self-interest of theEuropean group.

It is with these points in mind that this work explores the natureof township development in Harare (known as Salisbury in the colonialperiod) since the establishment of the first African township and, in sodoing, provides an account of the genesis of African representation inthe urban arena. In this work, I argue that urban protest movements tookroot in African townships because of the specific forms of socialorganization and domesticity that characterized township society. Icontend that these forms were largely the product of colonial exercisesin social engineering through racial urban planning deployed in thebeginnings of African township formation. As a method of control,racialized townships marked the beginnings of a decisive strategy bycolonial administrators, especially when African urbanization followedas a response to industrial demand for labor. A constant worryconfronting the colonial administrators was that'detribalization' and the consequent urbanization of Africanswould engender social indiscipline and political agitation. (3) Africantownships were thus engineered in such a way that would allow colonialadministrators to assert control over the urban African population. Thisarticle argues that this colonial social engineering of the Africantownship, while intended to ensure the maintenance of Maw andorder,' ended up making the townships centers of social unrest andpolitical activism--precisely the consequence the scheme was designed toprevent. Ultimately, then, the colonial state became the victim of itsown strategy of social control. This fits comfortably with MahmoodMamdani's description of apartheid South Africa: "the form ofrule shaped the form of revolt against it." (4)

The townships were established at as low a cost as possible to thecolonial government, and this meant poor facilities for the Africans. Asa result, as the structures of urban settlement were established and asmore Africans "invaded" the urban space, the guidingprinciples of colonial "differentiation, domination andaccumulation" created the roots of urban protest from which mosturban African social movements would grow. (5) This was because the"central problem for settler colonialism... was the need toreconcile the requirements for urban labour with the cost of producingsuch labour and the overall imperative of maintaining the idea of awhite city." (6) Richard Gray's book, which represents anearly discussion of colonial urbanism, points at the dependency onAfrican labor as the "element of colonial rule that mostdisturbingly challenged the policy of segregation." (7) Given sucha scenario, the Africans in the "European" urban area weregoverned under the Native Affairs Department and were put under a strictregime controlling their movement, participation, and association. BrianRaftopoulos and Tsuneo Yoshikuni argue that this emphasis on control anddomination led the colonial state in 1933 to place its first townplanning department under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a ministrydesigned "to oversee internal security." (8) For the two,therefore, when urban settlements were developed, they were part of the"process of establishing an administrative and political structurefor colonial rule." (9)

The participation of urbanized Africans in the residents'movements was a result of difficulties that confronted urban Africanseven from the establishment of the Africans' Location. Theseproblems had emerged largely because of the lack of consensus among thelocal council, colonial state, and capital over who would be responsiblefor the cost of housing and social services required in the Africantownships. African associations, unions, and boards thus becameimportant platforms from which urban Africans could collectively airtheir grievances. Yoshikuni argues that the expansion of the Africantownship "not only curtailed Africans' already limitedfreedoms, but also helped collectivise African grievances over livingissues, as it concentrated more and more people in one place." (10)This made the different African associations and unions an importantfront for urban social protest, and helped make the Location animportant site of such African urban social movements. This article isthus a history of the origins of social movements and popular strugglesaround community issues.

Work has been done on African urban movements in the colonial era,but most of the works have looked at these groups primarily as labormovements that were composed of African workers. (11) As such, thesemovements have been analyzed mostly from the perspective of laborrelations or worker-employer relations. This article argues that atleast some of these groups represented more than just the Africanworker. They represented unemployed women, men, and all the people whowere affected by township issues. Other scholars have also examined theassociations as nascent nationalist organizations with a broadernationalist agenda for Africans. (12) Indeed, with a few exceptions,scholarship on African responses to colonialism in colonial Zimbabwe haslargely been limited to analyzing them in the context of the nationalisthistoriography which viewed most African movements of the early periodof colonialism as typifying African nationalist consciousness. Attentionhas been focused on African organizations' political traditions,and here political tradition has mostly been taken to mean nationalistaspirations, which has tended to blind scholars to some of theseorganizations' rich traditions of protest and representation withregards to civic matters. Scholars such as Clyde Sanger have thusdescribed the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) and theSouthern Rhodesia Native Association (SRNA) as "hardly effectivebodies." (13) He limits these groups to "vehicles for theindividual ambitions of various Africans." For him, the ICU existedas the "private band" of Charles Mzingeli. (14) Others havetaken Terence Ranger's approach in seeking the "Africanvoice" in these organizations, which has tended to see the Africanvoice as a manifestation of African nationalism. As a demonstration ofthe influence this approach has had, Ian Phimister argues thatRanger's books and articles have "exercised a generallypernicious nationalist influence for over a generation." (15) Thelimited focus of such studies caused many scholars to fail to appreciatethe deeper nature and influence of these organizations. Only a fewhistorians have argued that some of these organizations had mandatesoutside the framework of the nationalist movement. (16) Noting thebroader mandate of these organizations has also allowed some scholars torecognize that even some of those organizations with a political missionwere neither nationalist nor precursors of nationalism. (17)

The majority of African associations and unions established incolonial Rhodesia were founded by urbanized "intellectual"Africans, and most of these leaders set out to use the African townshipas a foundation to further their national political ambitions. However,most of these leaders were also compelled to represent African townshipaffairs against the local municipality, central government, and capital.While there were signs of national concerns within some of the issuestackled by their organizations, their focus was nonetheless onaddressing everyday township discomforts that they shared together as"Location" or "township citizens." Theseorganizations were bound to react against the irritations of a colonialtownship that was "designed to contain and control first workersand later entire African urban populations" and, for some of them,the acquisition of nationalist characteristics was a necessity ratherthan an intention. (18) Local leadership had to "redefine issues oflocal concern within the frame of a nationalist project." (19) Theconcerns of African local residents in the townships were thus centralto the continued existence of the organizations and the organizationswere a key platform for African urbanites. In The Urban Roots ofDemocracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe, Timothy Scarnecchia doesan exceptional job of "providing an account of the democratictradition that was present in the African townships of what wasSalisbury." (20) This article goes further and deeper to examinehow such a tradition was used by different African organizations toconfront the local municipality and central government with regards totownship grievances.

UNPACKING THE ABSTRACT FOUNDATIONS OF A RACIALIZED URBAN SPACE INCOLONIAL RHODESIA

The Pioneer Column that raised its flag in what would becomeSalisbury in 1890 included a body of men with varied skills andqualities. These early pioneers were committed, in principle at least,to the moral decency of their mission, to extend British 'power andglory' and, most importantly, to secure the yields of rich mineralresources. (21) This imperialist group generally considered theindigenous Africans to be backward, ignorant, and undeserving of socialinteraction on an equal footing. Indeed, this group saw the African asfit only for menial labor. (22) The Pioneers' early encounters withthe indigenous people during the Ndebele and Shona uprisings hardenedtheir attitudes towards Africans and reinforced their initial approachto separation. (23) These Pioneers set up the colonial city ofSalisbury, and it followed from their approach to relations betweenEuropeans and Africans that the city would be organized along racialfault lines. The majority of the European settlers readily accepted theexistence of a dominant white elite and a subordinate group of colonizedAfricans, and relations between the groups were maintained so as toserve the economic and political interests of the dominant group. Thisincluded mechanisms to ensure a flow of labor from the subordinate groupto the dominant and the imposition of control and administration overthe subordinate population. By its very nature, this system of socialrelations was coercive, non-interactive, and rooted in ideas about classand race. Workers drawn from the white population were routinelyprivileged in employment, occupations, income, and access to politicalauthority. Munyaradzi Mushonga argues that those "who wore theuniform of the white skin wore it with inherent power, authority andprivilege." (24)

It followed that the African organizations, even those created tocater to African interests at the workplace, would extend theirtentacles into the township, where power relations found physicalexpression in the organization and construction of the African township.Examples of such organizations include the Industrial and CommercialWorkers Union and its successor, the Reformed Industrial and CommercialWorkers Union. The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) wasestablished in 1928 under the leadership of Charles Mzingeli. Theorganization was not exclusively an urban labor movement speakingagainst poor housing, low wages, and poor working conditions; it alsodelved into many rural and non-labor related matters, such as landshortages, racial discrimination, and the violence of nativecommissioners, among others. Therefore, though these organizations werecreated mainly as labor organizations, their activities were broad andoften encompassed township issues. Indeed, the first meeting of the ICU'under the indaba tree' in Bulawayo on 30 November 1929positions the ICU as more of an urban residents' organization thananything else.

The role of such organizations as township intermediaries wasespecially pronounced in Salisbury, where control over the Africans wasquickly accomplished through the creation of a society in which whitesheld control over positions of power and over capital. The state thusfound it logical to effect cost minimization strategies on the urbanAfricans because, in their view, the urban space was a temporary placeof work for the African to be occupied at as little cost to the city andcentral state as possible. (25) The result was often a haphazardapproach to urban policy, with unclear categories of African urbansettlement. What emerged, therefore, was a poorly equipped and poorlymanaged setup for Africans in urban arenas.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A "NATIVE LOCATION" IN SALISBURY: ANASSESSMENT OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

The Salisbury town council opened the first 'NativeLocation' outside the boundary of the town in October 1907. (26)Shortly after the opening, the central government declared thatbeginning in May 1908, all Africans in Salisbury would have to reside inthe Location, with an exception for those already sleeping on theiremployers' premises. (27) The opening of the Location resulted inthe extensive removal of urban Africans from the town center andsolidified the racial segregation of Salisbury. However, an informalLocation had already existed as early as 1892. This site was abandonedin 1907 when the new site was adopted under provisions of section 2 ofthe Native Urban Locations Ordinance (Number 4 of 1906), marking thebeginning of the Salisbury Native Location. (28) The Native UrbanLocations Ordinance prohibited "free" African residence inSalisbury from 1 May 1908. (29) An April 1908 report from the townpolice stated that "all natives in the Township and on theCommonage, occupying premises, not used by their masters, have beenwarned that they will have to remove to the Location on the 1stMay." (30)

Of paramount importance to this discussion are the factors thatshaped and informed the formal establishment of this Location at thistime. The formalization of the Location was necessitated by an emerging"urban problem," itself the result of the perceived influx ofuncontrolled African residents in the town. Indeed, African tenancy wasbecoming commonplace in Salisbury, where an African could rent a room intown for a monthly rent of 15 shillings, or one pound. (31) This Africanpresence in town was a major point of contention, particularly for thewhite property owners and especially in the Kopje area. (32) There wasthus a rise in white residents' demands for the removal of theAfricans from town and in calls for the creation of a formal AfricanLocation. John Smith, the Location Inspector in 1905, highlighted theproblem of Africans renting rooms in town when he pointed out that thehuts in the "Town Native Location" (which was informal at thistime) were "gradually becoming unoccupied," a problem heidentified as a result of the fact that "natives are renting houseswithin the town." (33) Smith was particularly concerned about thisdevelopment. For him, this would likely lead to "a loss of revenueto the Municipality" and was "a source of danger to the townin many ways." (34)

The formal establishment of the Location was, therefore, a responseto the supposed urban decay and danger caused by the presence ofuncontrolled Africans in the "white city" and to growing whitepressure for segregation. Such pressure is evident in the actions of agroup of Kopje residents who lodged a petition with the council inFebruary 1906. The campaigners complained of the "continual streamof boys going to and fro, making the neighbourhood more like a nativereserve." (35) As a result, Africans were pushed to the Locationthat had been grudgingly created by authorities who had been reluctantto acknowledge the necessity of an African presence, even temporarily,in an urban setting. One consequence of such an attitude was thatemployers, the state, and local authorities took little interest inproviding services for the Africans in the urban area. This was notlimited to Southern Rhodesia alone. In South Africa, the plannedtownships that emerged in and around the major urban centers wereproducts of that same lack of enthusiasm from the colonial governmentand from local authorities, again caused by the unwillingness to embraceand pay for an African presence in urban areas. (36)

To justify the creation of the segregated Location, the townauthorities argued that relocating Africans into the Location wouldaddress the poor sanitation supposedly caused by Africans in the city.Interestingly, the same argument about sanitation, occasioned by a 1918epidemic of Spanish flu in informal settlements along the outskirts ofDurban in South Africa, was used by authorities to create a segregatedtownship in that area. (37) In Salisbury, this argument sailed throughbecause of white settlers' collective paranoia of Africans. Thereis no evidence during this time that supports the view that concernsabout sanitation were central to the establishment of the Location.However, despite the lack of such evidence, such arguments made theirway into the historical literature, as when Gann and Duignan toed theofficial colonial line regarding poor sanitation and claimed that the"fear of the African's unsanitary habits and the danger ofdiseases led to the segregation in Rhodesian towns." (38) A look atthe evidence for this period shows that there was no indication of aserious epidemic or panic requiring the establishment of the newLocation. (39) Rather, the best evidence regarding the motive for thesegregation is contained in an editorial of the Rhodesia Herald in March1908, which explained "the advantages" of having a separateLocation for Africans. It reasoned that having a Location for Africanshad tremendous "benefits which will accrue to the town by thestopping of the system of letting houses to the natives in town."(40) At the core of these "benefits," the paper argued, wasthe prospect of gaining more "adequate control over thenatives" who "frequent the town and whose methods of obtaininga livelihood are doubtful in the extreme." (41) The majordeterminant for creating the segregated Location was the whitesettlers' preoccupation with controlling African subjects and thewhites' desire to do so while keeping Africans in their own place,far away from the whites' "respectable neighbourhood."This preoccupation was driven by the government's and the whitesettlers' fear of "the African," a paranoia that wouldhave a huge bearing on the nature of the colonial government'sdealings with Africans. The construction of "the African" as adangerous antagonist helped to validate whites' opinion ofthemselves as bringers of order and morality. The policies that emergedfrom this racialized paranoia and self-justification became the sourceof African misgivings.

The policies associated with 'locationization' were veryunpopular with Africans, leading to a series of protest movements. (42)The unpopularity of the Location was due in large part to the fact thatthis initial municipal involvement in African housing resulted not froma genuine desire to provide the urban Africans with better housingfacilities, but from pressure coming from the white citizens to excludeAfricans from the town, and from a perceived need to maintain control ofthese African urbanites. Municipal Location policy was, as a result,characterized by "utter disregard for the quality of tenants'lives." (43)

The 'new' Location was made up of a collection of Kaytorhuts, built on a "plot 50 by 50 feet and standing in lines runningfrom east to west." (44) By the eve of World War I, the Locationhad a total of 156 Kaytor huts. (45) By the mid-1920s, it had a total of247 huts and a population of around 760. (46) Forty-five huts were usedas bunkhouses by private companies and the municipality, and five wereused by the "police and labourers." (47) The 197 remaininghuts were rented by African workers in their personal capacity, andthese included a mix of families and tenants sharing rents with others.(48) Sharing rent was important, as prices were high: In 1907, a Kaytorhut in the Location cost 10 shillings per month, and not many Africanworkers earned more than 15 shillings per month.

The Location was also lacking other elements that would have madeit a better place for its inhabitants. For example, there were noamenities like shops, clinics, churches, or schools inside the Location.(49) The only facility worth noting was the municipal beer canteen,which, unfortunately, was viewed with scorn by the Location residentsbecause the price of beer was beyond their reach. (50) Indeed, the beercanteen was a point of further contention, as it represented the loss ofincome suffered by those Africans who had previously benefited from thenow-banned practice of home brewing and selling beer.

More remarkably still, the 250 Kaytor huts in the Location sharedjust one borehole, and three communal latrines. (51) This was anunhealthy and inconvenient scenario for the hundreds of Africanresidents who used these facilities. The Kaytor huts also did not haveproper kitchens. As a result, most of the Location inhabitantsconstructed their own makeshift kitchens, though those were demolishedby the council in 1914. This represented a further financial loss, asthese makeshift kitchens had not only enabled cooking, but also made itpossible for the huts to accommodate a greater number of people. (52)The demeaning conditions inside the Location were aggravated by itsincreasingly aggressive separation from the rest of the city. In 1912, abarbed wire fence was erected around the Location. (53) The AssistantNative Commissioner of Salisbury argued that this was a necessarymeasure "If proper control of the Location is to be expected,"and he emphasized the need for there to be "one entrance, and oneonly." (54) To borrow Bozzoli's description of Alexandriatownship in South Africa, the Salisbury Location "was enclosed bylaw, memory, culture and physical boundaries of racialidentification." (55) The built environment was akin to a"concentration camp," worsening the already dreadfulappearance of the Location.

Under Ordinance 4 of 1908, a Superintendent of Natives wasappointed to run municipal Locations. (56) Starting in 1913, the towncouncil employed a full-time Location Superintendent. (57) This Locationsupervisor took up residence in a cottage on the edge of the Location.(58) In 1914, new Location regulations were introduced, includingstipulations that every visitor to the Location must "obtain apermit from the superintendent" and that "the superintendentshould have power to arrest drunk and disorderly natives." Moresignificantly, it was "an offence to resist the Superintendent orthe headman in the execution of his duties," and the "brewingof Native beer in the Location" was thereafter banned. (59) Thus,added to the physical barriers controlling African movement were theseregulations that made Location life all the more unbearable.

Infrastructural upgrades to housing, sanitation, lighting, and manyother structures were, in many instances, considered only if thedeteriorating conditions threatened to compromise law and order. Thatattitude, combined with the general lack of desire among both the localgovernment and the central state to invest in the upkeep of urbanAfricans, meant that Location standards were always poor. In a ratherdisconcerting description, Boris Gussman summarizes the colonial mindsettowards African urban life, describing legislation and urbanarchitecture geared towards providing "boxes for machines orstables for draught beasts." (60)

The white discomfort with African presence in town, and their needto control the Africans even when they were in their own space, is clearalso in the allocation of spaces for institutions or facilities to beused by Africans. For example, African Christians initially attendedchurch in town, a situation that did not sit well with the whitecommunity. The situation was "addressed" with the requirement,after the Location's establishment, that all mission churches beconcentrated within the Location's boundaries. In 1908, churchessuch as the Salvation Army and the Presbyterians had accepted the offerof building churches in the Location. (61) Interestingly, even this ideawas abandoned after the council received advice from the Bulawayo towntreasurer, who highlighted the disadvantages of such a plan. He citedthe example of Bulawayo where most of the Africans congregate in theLocation under the guise of attending church when they "have nointention of doing so"; the pretext of church attendance, however,made it "very difficult to control them." The town clerkcontended that the "population at the Location is about 700... andas on Sundays we get as many as 2000 present, you can imagine theposition is a thorny one and requires careful handling." (62) Thusin October 1909, because of the warning from Bulawayo emphasizing thedanger of an uncontrolled and undocumented African populationpurportedly attending church in the Location, a church reserve was setaside, situated outside but adjoining the Location. (63) The settingaside of a church reserve outside the Location further exacerbated thedesolate nature of the Location.

By the end of the British South Africa Company's (BSAC) rulein 1923, the "maturing" of the Location system was apparent.African free residents had been ejected from the town center; Africanchurches and schools had been relocated to the fringes of the Location;and, most importantly, the miserable machinery of control headed by afull time European Superintendent had been built. Indeed, by 1923, therewas de facto residential segregation in Salisbury and the Europeans hadimplemented laws and ordinances for the purposes of regulating theAfrican population in order to serve white interests.

THE LOCATION AS A THEATER OF CONTROL

It is important to note that no clear process of Africanadministration was established during the first years of Company rule.African administration was nominally vested in a Native Departmentattached to the administrator's office, and officers were appointedto different districts, but there was no statutory basis for theiractions before 1898. The British government showed little interest inCompany actions, and it was only in the aftermath of the Africanrebellions--namely the Ndebele uprising of 1893 and the 1896 FirstChimurenga--that Britain concerned itself with internal Rhodesianproblems. (64) From its establishment, therefore, the Location was atheater of control and domination by the white ruling class over theirblack subjects and a product of the fixation with law and order that wascentral to the colonial government's approach to relations withurban Africans. Responsibility for the municipal Location was delegatedto the local authority, with the government retaining powers such aspolice control. The police had access to the Location at all times. AsYoshikuni notes, "housing controls in the Location were emphasizedas a means, along with a pass and night curfew system," to controlthe African urban dweller. (65)

Many aspects of daily life in the Location became"battlefields," giving rise to extraordinarily variedinstitutions to control dealings between the colonizer and thecolonized. (66) Yoshikuni cites a litany of sources of conflict andtension in the Location and the city, including the checking of passesby the police, night curfews, banning of Africans using the sidewalks,requirements that Africans remove their hat before any Europeans andtake off their shoes at government offices, and myriad other arenas ofconflict. (67) Even worse grievances of overcrowding, inadequatesanitation and recreational facilities, and a stifling system of controlover the movements of the African urban citizens were soon to emerge.Living under such conditions, a spirit of hopelessness, hostility, anddesperation emerged among the Location citizens and developed into massdisaffection.

Inadequate and poor housing in the Location helped collectivizeAfrican grievances regarding the discomforts of daily life in theLocation. This was compounded by the fact that Africans living inSalisbury were subject to strict rules and restraints that did not applyto the white population. For example, the Location Regulations outlinedin 1895 banned the possession of beer in the Location, and theserestrictions were reinforced in Native Location Regulations number 181of 1898, which authorized the Inspector of Locations to check Africanaccess to alcohol. (68) However, it was not until 1900 that"township wide" regulations were first implemented inSalisbury. (69) These regulations touched upon and disrupted the socialnerve center of the otherwise drab African life in the township, asweekend beer parties involving "drinking, singing, dancing,gossiping and many other social activities" were becomingconventional. (70) The many attempts by the African Location residentsto defy these regulations and, in many instances, to protest againstthem, should thus be understood in the larger context of Africans'lives. (71) The beer parties can be seen as endeavors by the AfricanLocation residents to make the best of a dull, tedious, and agonizingtownship life, and municipal attempts to ban them touched at the core ofAfrican attempts to reclaim their very existence. For example, in 1914,the Location Superintendent, with the help of the Detective Department,rounded up and arrested those who possessed beer in large quantities,and the Native Commissioner also collected taxes and arrested taxdefaulters. (72) These arrests were happening at a time when beerbrewing and selling was an integral part of the Location, as suchactivities supplemented the heavily depleted incomes, which had alreadybeen affected by wartime inflation.

Besides the lack of commitment from the colonial state and thelocal authorities to invest in the African township, the need to controlurban Africans also provides a partial explanation of the colonialstate's discomfort with allowing "natives" to constructand own houses, in the Location or elsewhere. The town council'srefusal to permit Africans to build their own houses came despite theevident failure by the council and the government to construct adequatehousing for the Africans and despite the willingness of some Africans torelieve the authorities of the burden of doing so. The fear was that"natives" would become too free and would in turn rent theirproperties to other "undesirable natives." Robert LloydPollet, who was a member of the town council from 1900 to 1930, and itstown clerk from 1920, argued that it was not a "safe policy toallow a native to put up a building himself" since this would givethe "native" the right to say, "I am going to put someoneelse in there." (73) For Pollet, the hypothetical Africanhomebuilder "might let it to someone undesirable." (74)

As noted above, sanitary conditions were also a source of grievancefor the Location residents. It was the duty of the town council toprovide suitable latrines for males and females, and the duty of thesuperintendent under the direction of the council to identify, from timeto time, a place or places suitable for the disposal of rubbish, filth,or litter of any kind. (75) By 1930, there was no washroom in theLocation, and it had only one bathroom for females and one for males;there were water pipes, but they were not in use. Location residentsused water from boreholes and wells. (76) Improvements to sanitaryconditions hinged upon the inclination of either the state or the localauthority, and neither was willing to part "with unnecessaryexpenditure" in the Location. One of the sources of conflict amongthe colonial state, the local authorities, and private capital was thequestion of who was responsible for the upkeep of the Location, and thisinevitably took a toll on Location infrastructure and development.

Even considerations for building infrastructure in the Locationwere considered in terms of the intended benefits to law and order.Nowhere is this clearer than in considerations for lighting and theprovision of a market for those who lived in the Location. Until 1930,complaints were still being raised that there was no lighting in thelatrines at night and that the Location only had two lamps altogether.The Location Superintendent, Mr. Home, admitted that lighting was a weakpoint in the Location and that there were only "2 lamps of theincandescent type." (77) In response, and offering further evidenceof the council's obsession with surveilling and controllingAfricans' movement, Lawrence Phillips, Salisbury Deputy Mayor,emphasized the importance of lighting the Location so that "nativeswill not be able to run around without being seen." (78) For him,lighting the Location was another way of enabling effective control ofAfricans, and it only became an infrastructural priority because of thatneed. He, like the council, was uninterested in questions of comfort inthe Location or the wellbeing of its inhabitants, but they were clearlyinterested in the advantage it would offer the authorities in theirendeavor to control and monitor the "meandering native."

In the construction of a beer hall and the provision of sportingfacilities in the Location, control and domination were again the keyfactors. The argument was that "organised sports would help tocheck vice and fill the time of the young bloods more profitably."(79) The same was also maintained for a Location beer hall, which wasdescribed as a good institution because it "is a stop gap for manynatives from worse evils." A proposed hall for concerts and"suitable cinema entertainments" was also seen as a necessitybecause it kept the "native occupied and divert[ed] their attentionfrom other things." (80) Interestingly, these colonial officialswere equally convinced that the Africans "cannot organisethemselves," as evidenced in the suggestion in the Report of theNative Affairs Commission that these activities should be"controlled by a European." (81)

At the heart of the network of control was the pass system, whichregulated the movement of Africans in and out of the Location. JulieBonello argues that the connection settlers made between labor andimproving or curing ostensibly inherent deficiencies in the"native" character reveals a significant desire to control thesocial and economic presence of blacks generally. (82) She argues thatwhite treatment of blacks was about far more than ensuring a steadysupply of cheap labor; it reflected the need to create distance anddifference between the races. (83) The Native Affairs Department kepttrack of the movement of the African population with rigorous pass laws.Yoshikuni states that congregations of Africans aroused anxiety amongEuropean residents, "especially when the former were out in thestreets as anonymous consumers and pedestrians coming to and from'kaffir truck shops', 'native eating houses', thepass system office and the Location." (84) It was this anxiety, andthe need to control labor, that necessitated the urban pass regardlessof the disquiet it caused amongst the Africans.

The BSAC's native rules and regulations, published in 1892,was the first document establishing urban passes for Africans. (85) AllAfricans were required to register and obtain a pass when they came intotown, and a curfew was imposed from 9pm to 5am, during which timeAfricans were excluded from European areas. Employed Africans wererequired to register their contract of service with the BSACauthorities. (86) Pass legislation was gradually expanded and refined.For example, there were later calls for passes to include a note bywhite employers describing the laborer's character. (87) In 1895,the Registration of Natives Regulation was introduced, providingcriminal penalties for Africans found in towns without passes to seekwork, or registered work contracts, and for breaking curfew. (88) Thepass laws thus controlled entry into and movement within the urbanareas. This was done as part of the European efforts to obtain Africanlabor while also ensuring the separation of the races.

These early pass ordinances were buttressed by the Town LocationRegulations of 1898, which gave Location administrators powers to grantresident permits to Africans and wide authority to deal with loiteringand disorderly activities within the African urban Locations. (89) Thistype of legislation, which reinforced overall African regulations withspecific urban requirements, became an integral part of the Europeancontrol apparatus. Further urban Location ordinances promulgated in 1905gave the Administrator broad authority to control Location life; amongthese were strict regulations against admitting wives and other women tothe Locations. (90) The following description, though coming from muchlater, demonstrates the cumbersome nature of the pass system forAfricans and the level of harassment they endured:

the African required a pass to have his wife in town and another forhis children; his visitors must obtain a certificate if they spend thenight with him and he requires a permit to seek work or to walk in theEuropean part of the city. Many Africans find it convenient to carry thereceipt for the watch they wear or the parcel they carry as police areliable to stop and question them. Unlike Europeans, Indians orcoloureds, they are obliged to carry at all times an identity documentin which is set out their full personal particulars and details oftheir employment. The need for these various documents is greatlyresented by all and the physical difficulty of coping with them isconsiderable for the many who cannot read what is recorded in thedocuments or whose trousers or shirt pockets are, as is often the case,in holes. (91)

The Location police were at the center of maintaining "law andorder" in the Location and, much to the irritation of Locationdwellers, they exercised their power with impunity and without limit.Albert Edward Horney, the Location Superintendent from 1926, had fivepolice boys, a barman, and an assistant barman for the beer hall, andtwo native assistants who worked under him. Because of the presence ofhis "efficient police boys," Horney maintained that he had notrouble in controlling the Location, as they were always ready to"see that the law was kept and there was no disturbance." (92)Indeed, Horney had nothing but praise for "his boys" who were"constables sworn before a magistrate" and who were ready toreact "if anything untoward happened, such as a riot." (93)Yvonne Vera's novel Butterfly Burning makes reference to thisnotorious police force, and details the severity of suffering thatLocation dwellers endured under them, including how the police maderesidents regret being in the city "before resigning to theirsituation." (94)

There was, therefore, no real motivation for the council orgovernment to provide for their African urban subjects. What little wasdone was either done grudgingly and at minimal cost or to ensure themaintenance of law and order. The fact that most of the developments inthe Location--or even discussions of improving developments--werenecessitated by concerns other than the basic comforts and needs of thepeople who lived there meant that much of the resulting work was of alow or compromised quality. The social geography and administrativeculture shaped by Native policy in the urban areas had a profound effecton the way Africans responded in the early period of urbanization. Earlyurban planning and urban culture highlighted the creation of barriers, apenchant for domination and control, and a marked hesitancy to investmore than was necessary to ensure African survival in the Location.These ideas and attitudes went a long way towards determining thephysical and social structure of the Location.

CONCLUSION

This article has established how the roots of urban discontentamong the African Location inhabitants stemmed from the very nature ofthe Location's formulation. The Location was a product ofcompromise forged to satisfy labor demands while also assuaging theanxieties of European inhabitants of the city who were becominguncomfortable with the uncontrolled and unmonitored presence of Africansin the city. That compromise was in turn shaped by the government andcouncil being unwilling to invest the resources necessary to ensure evenbasic necessities, much less comfort, for the Africans who were to livein the Location. As such, the infrastructure and services were, from theonset, very poor, and were bound to attract the ire of Africaninhabitants. Indignation, anger, and grievances were communicated to theauthorities through various methods which led the Location inhabitantsto realize the effectiveness of collective efforts in expressing theirobjections and protests. This realization gave birth to effectiveresidents' movements from the early years of Location formation, asa majority of urban Africans were unwilling to passively accept theirmarginal positioning in the Location. These responses took the form offormal organizations, delegations sent to confront authorities, andother such collective actions of grievance articulation. As a result,the mobilization of urbanized Africans reacting to their conditions cameto characterize this early period of Rhodesia's urban history. Itis worth noting that this confrontation was not physical, but verbal,first from the Location citizens to the delegate organizations throughnumerous meetings held in the Location or its environs, and then to thestate and municipal authorities via meetings and correspondence betweenthe African leadership and government officials.

Such movements reached a peak in the years immediately after WorldWar I. Before the war, people's protests frequently took the formof staying away from the Location to settle outside the town. In thepostwar years, however, protest activity was much more often basedwithin the Location, with mobilization occurring among the people livingin the Location and in response to issues directly relevant to theirlives there. Indeed, Lewis Gann remarks that at the end of the 1920s,Howard Moffat, "the Rhodesian Prime Minister, for the first timefound himself facing a small emergent 'Africanistmovement'." (96) Though this remark was in response to theShamva mine strike in 1927, it is a suitable description of what Moffatfaced in the Location during this time as well. Ranger argues that manyof these emerging Africanists lived in the Bulawayo Location andcomplained bitterly about conditions there. They demanded, among otherthings, a hospital, a government school, a recreation hall, and bettersanitation. (97) The same sorts of mobilization were also happening inSalisbury, especially in the face of the authorities' clearreluctance to invest in the African township.

As a result, by 1930, organizations like the Southern RhodesiaNative Association (SRNA) became a major voice for articulating theconcerns of the urbanized Africans and managed to carve out a niche forthemselves, especially among the educated urban Africans, or thosedeemed "the better class of native." (98) The SRNA had alsomanaged to gain acceptance as a representative organization of urbanAfricans that was tolerated by the government and council, the onlysource of conflict being its attempt to extend its tentacles into theReserves. (99) The SRNA managed to confront urban authorities andgovernment without raising the ire of those authorities by going out ofits way to present itself as an association that was not geared towardsfighting the state or council, but working with them for the ultimategoal of creating a contented African urban citizen. This was acceptableto both the colonial state and the municipal authorities, whose mainagenda was at this time to maintain effective control through theexercise of law and order. As long as the SRNA was not going to turninto "agitators," the colonial state was willing to indulgethem. The SRNA learned this lesson well, realizing that they couldbenefit more by presenting themselves as a cooperative association,especially at the expense of the ICU, who had unfortunately won theunenviable brand of dissenters.

The situation was thus acceptable to both the authorities and theAssociation: For the authorities, the Association served as "a ventfor ill-formulated but sincere expression of Native grievance and Nativeopinion," which might otherwise have emerged in less pleasant andmore confrontational ways. (100) The arrangement also served theAssociation well, because "the government can only provideconditions of progress, but it is we ourselves who have got to make thegovernment see that it is worth their while to help us." (101)Perhaps ironically, the compromise between the authorities and theAssociation would also serve the developmental interests of the ICU, asthe cooperative behavior of the SRNA allowed the ICU to attract supportamong the uneducated, unmarried women and single men who had borne thebrunt of Location struggles and had been alienated by the SRNA'selitist tendencies. Charles Mzingeli and his ICU achieved immediatenotoriety when an ICU branch was officially formed in Salisbury in 1929,but the seeds of his success there lay in policies, police measures, andeven a physical infrastructure that long predated the ICU's arrivalin the city. (102)

KUDAKWASHE CHITOFIRI

Kudakwashe Chitofiri is a lecturer at the National University ofLesotho and a Research Fellow with the University of the FreeState's Centre for Gender and Africa Studies. He received his PhDin Africa Studies in 2016 from the International Studies Group,University of the Free State. Prior to that, he graduated with anHonours in Economic History and Master of Arts in African EconomicHistory from the University of Zimbabwe. His areas of interest includeurban history, protest history, and the history of migration.

(1.) John N. Paden and Edward W. Soja, The African Experience(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 28.

(2.) The term 'subjects' is used in the context ofMahmood Mamdani's analysis of a colonial African state as abifurcated power that mediated racial domination through triballyorganized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens andethnic identity in subjects.

(3.) This concern is very prominent in documents in which urbanauthorities and colonial officials debate African urbanization.

(4.) Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa andthe Legacy of Colonialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1996), 24.

(5.) Brian Raftopoulos and Tsuneo Yoshikuni, eds., Sites ofStruggle: Essays in Zimbabwe's Urban History (Harare: Weaver Press,1999), 1.

(6.) Ibid.

(7.) Richard Gray, The Two Nations: Aspects of the Development ofRace Relations in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1960), 33.

(8.) Raftopoulos and Yoshikuni, Sites of Struggle, 1.

(9.) Ibid.

(10.) Tsuneo Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in ColonialZimbabwe: A Social History of Harare before 1925 (Harare: Weaver Press,2007), 2.

(11.) Some of the key works in this respect include BrianRaftopoulos and Ian Phimister, eds., Keep on Knocking: A History of theLabour Movement in Zimbabwe, 1900-1997 (Harare: Baobab Books, 1997);Duncan G. Clarke, Contract Workers and Underdevelopment in Rhodesia(Gweru: Mambo Press, 1974); Ian R. Phimister and C. van Onselen, Studiesin the History of Mine Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe (Gweru: Mambo Press,1978).

(12.) Terence O. Ranger, The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia,1898-1930 (London: Heinemann, 1970), was path breaking in this regard.

(13.) Clyde Sanger, Central African Emergency (London: Heinemann,1960), 206.

(14.) Ibid.

(15.) Ian R. Phimister, "Narratives of Progress: ZimbabweanHistoriography and the End of History," Journal of ContemporaryAfrican Studies 30:1 (2012), 28.

(16.) Yoshikuni, for example, has identified some of theseorganizations more as self-help organizations than as proto-nationalistorganizations. See Tsuneo Yoshikuni, "Strike Action and Self-helpAssociations: Zimbabwean Worker Protest and Culture after World WarI," Journal of Southern African Studies 15:3 (1989): 440-468.

(17.) Enocent Msindo, "Social and Political Responses toColonialism on the Margins: Community, Chieftaincy and Ethnicity inBulilima-Mangwe, Zimbabwe, 1890-1930," in Peter Limb, NormanEtherington, and Peter Midgley, eds., Grappling with the Beast:Indigenous Southern African Responses to Colonialism, 1840-1930 (Leiden:Brill, 2010), 117.

(18.) Timothy Scarnecchia, The Urban Roots of Democracy andPolitical Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940-1964(Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 21.

(19.) Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor, and Terence Ranger,Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the "Dark Forests"of Matabeleland (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000), 85.

(20.) Scarnecchia, The Urban Roots of Democracy and PoliticalViolence in Zimbabwe, 3.

(21.) Chengetai J. M. Zvobgo, A History of Zimbabwe, 1890-2000 andPostscript, Zimbabwe, 2000-2008 (Cambridge: Cambridge ScholarsPublishing, 2009).

(22.) For more on the Pioneer Column see Barry A. Kosmin, "Onthe Imperial Frontier: The Pioneer Community of Salisbury in November1899," Rhodesian History 2 (1971): 25- 37.

(23.) See Paul L. Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin, The RhodesianWar: A Military History (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008),which has a chapter that chronicles the roots of conflict between whitesettlers and the Ndebele and Shona and explains the racial attitudesthat were solidified as a result of the conflict.

(24.) Munyaradzi Mushonga, "White Power, White Desire:Miscegenation in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)," African Journal ofHistory and Culture 5:1 (January 2013), 2.

(25.) This was a dominant view at least up to the Second World War,when the changes in Southern Rhodesia's political economy forcedthe state to reconsider this position.

(26.) The new Location was established and regulated under theNative Urban Locations Ordinance of 1906.

(27.) Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe.

(28.) National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ), S246/ 782, GovernmentNotice Number 70 of 1908, Chief Secretary's Office, 19 March 1908.

(29.) Ibid.

(30.) NAZ, LG38, Chief Inspector, Southern Rhodesia Constabulary toTown Clerk, 29 April 1908.

(31.) NAZ, LG38, Sergeant Delahay to Sub-Inspector. SouthernRhodesia Constabulary, 19 February 1908.

(32.) Early Salisbury was divided into two quarters, the Kopje inthe west and the Causeway in the east. The kopje was mostly inhabited bynon-official residents and was dominated by principal businessestablishments, while the Causeway had government offices, officialresidences, the English and Roman Catholic churches, etc. See TheRhodesia Herald, 8 February 1895.

(33.) NAZ, LG 52/6/1, John Smith, Inspector of Location to TownClerk, 25 January 1905.

(34.) Ibid.

(35.) NAZ, LG 38, Petition to Town Council, 2 February 1906.

(36.) For a comprehensive analysis of this see Jason Hickel,"Engineering the Township Home: Domestic Transformations and UrbanRevolutionary Consciousness," in Meghan Healy and Jason Hickel,eds., Ekhaya: The Politics of Home in KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg:University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014): 131-161.

(37.) Hickel, "Engineering the Township Home," 143.

(38.) Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan, White Settlers in TropicalAfrica (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962), 83-84.

(39.) Yoshikuni comes to the same conclusion regarding thisposition. See Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe,16.

(40.) The Rhodesia Herald, March 1908.

(41.) Ibid.

(42.) Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe,38.

(43.) Ibid., 41.

(44.) Ibid., 39.

(45.) NAZ, LG52/6/1, G. Reilly to Town Clerk, 3 March 1914.

(46.) NAZ, LG52/6/2, Location Superintendent to Town Clerk, 30 June1920.

(47.) Ibid.

(48.) Ibid.

(49.) NAZ, LG52, /6/2, H.E Hicks, M.O.H, to Town Clerk, 20 June1920.

(50.) This concern is raised in correspondence between H.E. Hicksand the Town Clerk, NAZ, LG52, /6/2, H.E Hicks, M.O.H, to Town Clerk, 20June 1920.

(51.) Ibid.

(52.) NAZ, LG52/6/1, Reilly to Town Clerk, 3 March 1914.

(53.) NAZ, LG52/6/1, J. Smith to Town Clerk, 14 November 1912.

(54.) NAZ, SI38/41 Assistant Native Commissioner to Superintendentof Natives, Salisbury, 13 March 1924.

(55.) Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End ofApartheid (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), 57.

(56.) NAZ S246/ 782, Government Notice no. 70 of 1908. TheOrdinance is quoted extensively in communication between governmentofficials and municipal authorities.

(57.) NAZ, LG93/11, Commonage and Markets Committee minutes, 7November 1913.

(58.) Ibid.

(59.) NAZ, LG38, Memorandum by H. L. Lezard, 13 March 1994.

(60.) Boris Gussman, "Industrial Efficiency and the UrbanAfrican: A Study of Conditions in Southern Rhodesia," Africa:Journal of the International African Institute 23:2 (1953), 138.

(61.) NAZ, LG38 C Clark to Town Clerk, 9 June 1908.

(62.) Quoted in Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in ColonialZimbabwe, 45.

(63.) NAZ, LG93/10, Council Minutes, 22 September 1909.

(64.) Larry W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in anAfrican State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 6.

(65.) Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe,11.

(66.) Ibid.

(67.) Ibid.

(68.) Quoted in Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in ColonialZimbabwe, 46.

(69.) Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe,46.

(70.) The Rhodesia Herald, 2 November 1910.

(71.) Yoshikuni has a very interesting discussion of these beerprotests. He also discusses how the municipal authorities took over beerbrewing and distribution in the Location. See Yoshikuni, African UrbanExperiences in Colonial Zimbabwe, 46-60.

(72.) NAZ, LG52/6/1, Reilly to Town Clerk, 3 March 1914.

(73.) NAZ, S85, Evidence, Native Affairs Commission (SalisburyMunicipal Location), 4 December 1930.

(74.) Ibid.

(75.) NAZ S85; Government Notice Number 248, 18 April 1924.

(76.) NAZ, S85, Robert Lloyd Pollet (Town Clerk) - Laws andRegulations.

(77.) NAZ, S85, Evidence, Native Affairs Commission (SalisburyMunicipal Location), 4 December 1930.

(78.) Ibid.

(79.) NAZ, S86, Report, Native Affairs Commission (SalisburyMunicipal Location).

(80.) Ibid.

(81.) Ibid.

(82.) Julie Bonello, "The Development of Early SettlerIdentity in Southern Rhodesia: 1890-1914," International Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies 43:2 (2010), 348.

(83.) Ibid.

(84.) Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe,19.

(85.) "British South Africa Company: Native Rules andRegulations," Rhodesia Herald, 29 October 1892.

(86.) Ibid.

(87.) "'Employer,' Black Domestics" [Letter tothe Editor], Rhodesia Herald, 20 October 1900.

(88.) James Muzondidya, Walking a Tightrope: Towards a SocialHistory of the Coloured Community in Zimbabwe (Trenton, NJ: Africa WorldPress, 2005), 23.

(89.) Ibid.

(90.) Rhodesia Herald, 30 March 1905.

(91.) Gussman, "Industrial Efficiency and the UrbanAfrican," 139.

(92.) NAZ, S85, Evidence, Native Affairs Commission (SalisburyMunicipal Location), 4 December 1930.

(93.) Ibid.

(94.) Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning (Harare: Baobab Books, 1998),44.

(95.) Ibid.

(96.) Lewis H. Gann, A History of Southern Rhodesia: Early Days to1934 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1965), 269.

(97.) Terence O. Ranger, "City versus State in Zimbabwe:Colonial Antecedents of the Current Crisis," Journal of EasternAfrican Studies 1:2 (2007), 163.

(98.) The Southern Rhodesia Native Association (SRNA) had emergedin the immediate post-World War period in 1919.

(99.) Black Africans lost their lands through wholesale evictionsand forced removal; they were forcibly moved to areas designated asnative reserves/communal lands. Those areas generally had poor,infertile soil and were located in the most inhospitable andtsetse-ridden areas of the country.

(100.) NAZ, S246/782, Notes of Meeting at CNC's office withDelegation from SRNA, 1 June 1927.

(101.) NAZ, S246/782, Speech by the Rhodesia Native AssociationPresident, 9 September 1924.

(102.) Charles Mzingeli was the organization's GeneralSecretary and a very influential member of Salisbury's Africancommunity.

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"LAW AND ORDER MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE IN EVERYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE NATIVE": THE AFRICAN "LOCATION," CONTROL, AND THE CREATION OF URBAN PROTEST IN SALISBURY, COLONIAL ZIMBABWE, 1908-1930. (2025)
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