adminAbel Zhakata Senior Reporter
THIRTY-FIVE years on since attaining independence on April 18, 1980, Zimbabwe has witnessed a remarkable improvement in the general lifestyle of its citizenry.
Before Uhuru, racism marked the very existence of Africans who were subjected to despicable living conditions as compared to their white counterparts.
As the country celebrates 35 years of self rule tomorrow (Saturday), it is imperative that we turn back the hands of time into the colonial days, scrutinise the lifestyles Africans were subjected to, that eventually led to the war of liberation.
By its very nature, racism is exclusive, which means that the group that is on the receiving end is deliberately denied the good things that life has to offer.
Those playing the racial card enjoyed the most. In order to exclusively reveal the draconian side of the Ian Smith regime as well as make people, especially the youths, understand the circumstances that their fathers and mothers were subjected to when the Union Jack flew from Zambezi to Limpopo, The Manica Post tracked people who lived the Rhodesian experience.
People who know what they faced by heart because theirs is not a secondary story but a lived one they vividly know and understand.
The liberties that we enjoy today were totally denied the Africans and remained a pipe dream for those who lived in Rhodesia. Cde Wilton Mufoti from Chipinge has vivid memories of the life he was subjected to during the colonial era.
“At work, we were abused and child labour was rampant. I once worked at Chipinge Border Garage where we sold fuel and repaired vehicles. The owner of the garage whom I can’t remember by name was very abusive. He was the reason why I left work and joined the liberation struggle in 1975.
“One day I was assisting in repairing a vehicle when the spanner I was using broke. The white man called me all sorts of names and this effected a big salary cut on my earnings to replace the spanner. I did not get anything that month because the cut was too much. I left work and joined the armed struggle,” he said.
The retired soldier said Africans were not allowed to drink clear beer which was regarded as the reserve for the whites.
“It was a big offence if you were found drinking clear beer. We helped ourselves on opaque brew.
The Chipinge Country Club, which is being run by Africans today, was a no-go area for Africans. Blacks who were only allowed would be escorting their white bosses and once inside they did not mix and mingle with them but grouped with fellow aides that would have accompanied the whites. It was purely racist.
The same applied in the locations. As blacks we were bundled and lived in Gaza where the houses were thatched while whites lived in the suburbs. Our living conditions were squalid.”
Mr Mufoti’s narrations mirror the colour-bar system used by Europeans which was racist to the core.
The system ensured the division of the Rhodesian society into white and black. The 1947 Native Urban Areas Accommodation Act split the urban areas into African and European sections.
It was not permitted for Europeans to live in the African areas — which were dusty, crowded townships — but Africans could reside in the European areas as ‘houseboys’ or ‘garden boys’, provided they remained in the service of a white household. Those Africans permitted to live in the clean, green, spacious white enclaves, lived in kias, little outhouses, usually at the bottom of the lawned and swimming-pooled gardens of their white employers.
These Africans could also enter some shops in the European areas so they could do the grocery shopping for their white employers, although purchases were usually made through a hatch in the side wall so that they would not disturb the European shoppers.
The central business districts of major cities like Mutare were only open to Africans from 9am to 9pm but outside those times only those with a pass from an employer could enter.
There was no guarantee though that Africans would be served at shops, restaurants, cinemas, hotels or bars, even during the day. Mr Lazarus Saungweme from Sakubva said the liberties he enjoys today in a free Zimbabwe were denied him during the colonial era.
“If you see how Sakubva is located you will notice that the suburb is at the receiving end of all industrial emissions that come out of the factories. Air emissions blew our way while industrial effluent flowed into the Sakubva River which passes through our location. The white community lived in Murambi and surrounding suburbs where there was clean unpolluted air and water.
Today you can wake up in the middle of the night and go into the CBD without anyone troubling you. That was not so during the colonial era. It was a no-go area and you needed a pass to enter,” he said.
Cinemas had separate entrances for whites and Africans, restaurants had separate rooms, hotels often did not permit Africans to rent a room.
The use of derogatory terms such as “munt”, “kaffir” and “nigger” were common currency, and it was an inherent part of white discourse to refer to “our blacks” or “my boys”.
African men, regardless of age, were called “boys” as a means of diminishing their social standing while physical punishment was used both by private employers and the state itself.
There are two laws which greatly affected the African lifestyle for they were exclusivist and discriminatory.
These were the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and its successor, the Land Tenure Act of 1969. They ensured spatial division on the basis of race.
The Land Apportionment Act (1930) divided Southern Rhodesia into 5 sections, with racial separation being the intended goal.
According to Stinky Britches, the Native Reserves were “land which would remain under African control but with white native commissioners overseeing all actions, providing court, police, and legal services, and settling all disputes. Taxes would be paid within them to the white state. Native purchase areas provided land for African farmers to purchase land from the state for cattle grazing and crops. Land was prohibitively expensive.
“The African lands were also in less fertile areas, either with lower rainfall levels, poorer soil conditions, or unsuitable for intensive agriculture.”
Statistics compiled then showed that 38 percent of the African adult population in Rhodesia were employed in wage labour. About half worked on white-owned farms, were paid wages by the white farmers, and lived either in what were called ‘‘African villages’’ or ‘‘stands’’ on some remote corner of the farm, or else in older villages that were located nearby.
By 1965 another 20 to 30 percent of the African populations were employed in wage labour in the factories. These people usually lived in the townships around the cities like Sakubva with houses that consisted of brick structures or cobbled together shanties. There was supposed to be basic infrastructure not provided to families but single men only — women and children remained in their traditional villages.
If you lost your job, you lost your room in O.T.S. and these locations like many in Sakubva were situated near factories to afford quick commutes to work.
Life then was unbearable for the black people.
Online Reporter