White People in Zimbabwe - Gentrification

Gentrification

In 1891, before Southern Rhodesia was established as a territory, it was estimated that there were about 1,500 Europeans residing there. This number grew slowly to around 75,000 in 1945. In the period 1945 to 1955 the white population doubled to 150,000. During that decade, 100,000 black people were forcibly resettled from farming land designated for white ownership. However some members of the white farming community opposed the forced removal of black people from land designated for white ownership and some even favoured the handover of underutilised 'white land' to black farmers. For example, in 1947 Wedza white farmer Harry Meade unsuccessfully opposed the eviction of his black neighbour Solomon Ndawa from a 500-acre (2.0 km2) irrigated wheat farm. Meade represented Ndawa at hearings of the Land Commission and attempted to protect Ndawa from abusive questioning.

Large-scale white emigration to Rhodesia did not begin until after the Second World War, and at its peak in the late 1960s Rhodesia's white population consisted of as many as 270,000. There were influxes of white immigrants from the 1940s through to the early 1970s. The most conspicuous group were former British servicemen in the immediate post-war period. But many of the new immigrants were refugees from communism in Europe, others were former service personnel from British India, others came from Kenya, the Belgian Congo, Zambia, Algeria, and Mozambique. For a time, Rhodesia provided something of a haven for white people who were retreating from decolonisation elsewhere in Africa and Asia.

Rhodesian white settlers were considered different in character to white settlers in other British colonies. Settlers in Kenya were perceived to be drawn from 'the officer class' and from the British landowning class. Settlers after the second world war in Rhodesia were perceived to be drawn from lower social strata and were treated accordingly by the British authorities:

Foreign Office mandarins dismissed white Rhodesians as lower middle class, no more than provincial clerks and artisans, the lowly NCOs of empire. —Peter Godwin, The Guardian,

However, it should be noted that white people never amounted to more than 5.4% of the country's total population (that is, 270,000 white people divided by 5 million total population in 1970). Also, the white farming community never amounted to more than around 8% of the total white population and this proportion fell steadily after 1945 up to independence in 1980.

Various factors encouraged the growth of the white population of Rhodesia. These included the industrialisation and prosperity of the economy in the post-War period and the fact that the National Party victory in the 1948 South African general election made that country less friendly to British settlement and investment than was previously the case. It was also apparent as early as the 1950s that white rule would continue for longer in Rhodesia than it would in other British colonies such as Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Kenya. Many of the new immigrants had a "not here" attitude to majority rule and independence.

Rhodesia was run by a minority government. In 1965 that government declared itself independent through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence ('UDI') under Prime Minister Ian Smith. The UDI project eventually failed, after a period of UN economic sanctions and a civil war known as the Chimurenga (Shona) or Bush War. British colonial rule returned in December 1979, when the country became the British Dependency of Southern Rhodesia. In April 1980 it was granted independence as "Zimbabwe".

One characteristic of white settlement in Rhodesia was that the white community kept itself largely separate from the black and Asian communities in the country. Urban white people lived in separate areas of town, and white people had their own segregated education, healthcare and recreational facilities. Marriage between black and white people was possible, but remains to the present day very rare. The 1903 Immorality Suppression Ordinance made "illicit" (i.e. unmarried) sex between black men and white women illegal – with a penalty of two years imprisonment for any offending white woman. The majority of the early white immigrants were men, so some white men entered into relationships with black women. The result was a small number of mixed-race persons, (1998 out of 899187 total according to the 1921 census), some of whom were accepted as being white. A proposal by Garfield Todd (Prime Minister, 1953–1958) to liberalise laws on inter-racial sex was viewed as dangerously radical. The proposal was rejected and was one factor that led to the political demise of Todd.

Rhodesian white people had enjoyed a very high standard of living. The Land Tenure Act had reserved 30% of agricultural land for white ownership and black labour costs were low (around US$40 per month in 1975), but included free housing, food and clothing. Nurses earned US$120 per month in 1975, which had a large effect in the context of an agricultural economy. Public spending on education, healthcare and other social services was heavily weighted towards provision for white people. Most of the better paid jobs in public service were reserved for white people. White people in skilled manual occupations enjoyed employment protection against black competition. In 1975, the average annual income per head for Rhodesian white people was around US$8,000 (with income tax at a marginal rate of 5%) – making them one of the richest communities in the world.

At independence probably around 38% of white Zimbabweans were UK-born, with slightly fewer born in Rhodesia and around 20% from elsewhere in Africa. The white population of that era contained a large transient element and many white people might better be considered foreign expatriates than settlers. Between 1960 and 1979 white immigration to Rhodesia was 180,000 and white emigration in the same period was 202,000 (with an average white population of around 240,000). Many white people were relatively recent arrivals in the country and showed little hesitation about moving on after independence.