Looking Back: A vicious act, says Nkomo

The Rhodesia Herald, 13 September 1958

THE Southern Rhodesia African National Congress today called upon the Government of the Colony to suspend immediately the implementation of the Native Land Husbandry Act, and to appoint a commission of inquiry to report on the effects of the Act in the reserves.

The call was made in the Stanley Hall, Bulawayo by the president of the congress, Mr Joshua Nkomo, in his presidential address to 1 000 Africans who attended the first meeting of a three day rally, to mark the organisation’s first anniversary.

“The Land Husbandry Act is a vicious device whose primary aims and objectives are to uproot, impoverish and disperse the African people,” said Mr Nkomo.

“Any law, Act or measure whose effect is to undermine the security of our small land rights, dispossesses us of our little wealth in the form of cattle, disperses us from our ancestral homes in the reserves and reduces us to the status of vagabonds and a source of cheap labour, will ultimately turn the African people against society to the detriment of peace and progress.”

The crowd of 800-odd in Stanley Hall and the overflow outside listening to a relay of Nkomo’s address, cheered and clapped widely when the president stated that the Congress “is in no way connected with communists.”

There was applause when he said: “Vicious rumours have been spread that the Congress is communist-inspired. This is a vile lie. We don’t want, and we have not had, anything to do with communism. “Mr Khrushchev is no friend of ours. We are only interested in democracy.”

LESSONS FOR TODAY

The Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951 deprived Africans of their land rights as the colonial government wanted to create a source of cheap labour in secondary industries that were emerging in cities and towns.

This was a monumental deprivation of land rights for the original land owners, and the political leadership of the moment resisted it, with support from the people.

Nationalists like the late Father Zimbabwe Dr Joshua Nkomo worked very hard under draconian conditions, to denounce the Native Land Husbandry Act.

With the land reform programme now in its 20th year, as thousands of people benefited, and the land issue being a major cog in the Constitution, it has been clearly spelt out the land reform programme is irreversible. What is required is more production on that land, to improve the food supply chain.