Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

He remembers his return from the war clearly. But not for the relief it brought. And not even for the unsettling sensation of being back in Maronda Mashanu where so little had changed. Where, despite all that had happened, the goats still grazed and the women still walked from the river with firewood and water on their heads, making it seem impossible they had lived through the same period of time. That the same dates had passed over them. That is not why he remembers his return. He remembers it because for eighteen months at the lake he witnessed the insult of war. The injury of it, man to man, black and white, and he thought his return would mean an end to such witness. But he was wrong. On his arrival back in Mashonaland he found the insult continued. Not in the way of the war: carriers withering under neglect, askaris cut down under machine-gun fire, men dying in a war that was not theirs to fight. But in a quieter fashion. Delivered in the language of the law. Devised by ministers and commissioners not generals and captains. Slower, less immediate in nature, but still fuelled by the same idea. But then, as he came to realise, in Southern Rhodesia it was always the same idea. There had only ever been one idea in the country, one idea that dominated all others. The idea that shaped the country and fuelled its forming. The idea of Land. It was the only idea that mattered. Land had brought the settlers, the missionaries, the war. Land held the stones, the iron, the gold. Land held the Africans’ ancestors, their spirits and their myths. Land held the past of the country, locked in its earth, and, as he realised on his return from the war, its future too.

The insult came in the form of an Imperial Commission report on the native reserves. The author, Government Surveyor Atherstone, recommended a reduction of one million acres in this land set aside for native use. In the Sabi Reserve, in Arthur’s own district, the land taken by the government would be used to build a railway. The reserve would be cleared of native villages for six miles on each side of the line, and the land there assigned for white settlement only.

Arthur knew the reserves were already too small for the growing population that lived there. That water supplies were short, and much of the earth infertile. And he also knew the BSA Company didn’t want the Africans to be able to farm their own land, so they would take the best land from the reserves. They wanted workers, not farmers. He also knew the Company had millions of acres of unassigned land it could draw upon elsewhere. But that unassigned land would be left and kept for when more white settlements would be built, and now, after a war where thousands of Africans had died, land would be taken from the reserves instead.

He was exhausted by his experience of war. His soul felt shredded.

But he recognised that without land the natives would become strangers in their own country. The reserves were not the answer, but as he wrote to his friend John White at the Aboriginal Protection Society, they were the ‘best makeshift harbour of refuge’. So he chose to fight again and began writing a pamphlet, A Million Acres , in protest. Looking back it seemed inevitable, but there must have been a choice. He could have allowed the report to go unchallenged. Returned to just his local mission work. Perhaps even returned to England. But really, there had been no choice. He had to fight the Commission’s report. He had always fought. He had only ever chosen not to fight once in his life and he’d never stopped regretting that choice. Even now, years later, pinching sadza to his slow mouth, holding Fortune’s soft shoulder, her hand on his knee, the thought of that choice, that walking away, still haunted him. Like a recurring dream that he will never wake up from, that he will only forget when he never wakes up again.

♦

Annual Meeting of the B.S. A. Company, 1917

Address by Company Chairman, Dr Starr Jameson

Now gentlemen, besides the record of progress, in various directions, measures have been taken to clear up ambiguities and uncertainties, to consolidate our position, and so make our property more valuable. Our native areas have always been in rather a fluid state. A commission was appointed by the Imperial Government to inquire into the necessary areas to be set aside for natives…The needs of the natives, both now and in the future — after careful examination by this Commission — which travelled all over the country, accompanied by the surveyor general — have been amply provided for, and the net result is that more than 1,000,000 acres of land have been added to the land which may be leased for white settlement. That means really that you people get another million acres odd of what is called unalienat-ed land in the country. That is very satisfactory…

§

13th March, 1918

Waddilove Methodist Mission

Mashonaland

Dear Arthur,

When this Commission was investigating I was asked to give evidence and refused. I thought that the composition of it was so palpably one-sided that the British Government would take no notice of its findings. Had things been normal, I am sure they would not have done so. This war has meant the passing of many things that would have been more fully investigated and probably turned down. The fact that such a large number of Natives in the whole of this country are living on private farms and paying in many cases big rents, proves conclusively that the land set apart for them is either unsuitable or very insufficient.

It seems to me a shameful thing that when quite a number of Africans are assisting the Empire in this gigantic struggle against tyranny that this time should be selected to rob them of their heritage.

With kindest regards,

Yours affectionately,

John White

§

October 30th, 1918

Private Secretary to the B.S. A.

Company’s Resident Administrator

Salisbury

Dear Rev. A.S. Cripps,

I am directed by the Administrator to acknowledge receipt of your pamphlet entitled ‘A Million Acres’. His Honour regrets that your zeal for the natives should lead you to make such an undeserved and offensive attack upon those responsible for the administration of this territory…the unfairness of your action seems to His Honour to be quite inexcusable.

I think you will be well advised to accept without further protest the Commission’s decision and you will find, I feel certain, that in the result of putting the decision into effect, the natives will suffer no hardship.

§

From The Sabi Reserve by Arthur Sliearly Cripps, Missionary to Mashonaland

Tourin the Sabi Reserve, Oct. 1919

From map 2 (appended) some idea of the lie of the land in the Sabi Reserve may be obtained. The route A marked upon it represents what is by far the more probable railway route. Route B — the Government Cattle Road (used in moving cattle towards Odzi for East African Campaign supplies), generally speaking, represents a possible alternative — a route much less likely I should think. The map shows approximately the defined areas of several native clans. The commission’s recommendation of reduction applied to Route B would wipe out much of perhaps the loveliest stretch of natives’ open country in all the Reserve — that ruled by paramount Chief Marara. On the other hand applied to route A, which is much the more probable railway route, as I believe, the recommendation, literally carried out, would wipe out most of the fine, if hilly block of Chief Magaya’s country, and slice deep into the adjacent territories of Chiefs Kwenda and Tshitsungi.

Moreover, I suppose that Chief Mambo would be mulcted of some land, possibly not worth much to him, in the neighbourhood of the Sabi river-crossing. For practical politics, it seems fair to assume that route A is the railway route we have to reckon with.