This article considers the different ways that Marirangwe purchase area farmers understood and used their farmland, resources and opportunities. In the pioneer period from 1931 to the 1940s, Marirangwe farmers favored extensive use of their land and its resources. However, as labor and capital opportunities changed, land became for some an expendable commodity. By the 1950s, the farmers' ability to generate capital through land sales paralleled the arrival of squatters in the area. With the help of these squatters and revenue from land sales, Marirangwe farmers prospered. This development, however, did not signal a change from the extensive farming habits of the pioneer period but rather a brief, and generally prosperous, period of specialization.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies.The purchase areas are an awkward presence in the landscape and historiography of Zimbabwe. Created as a result of the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, these scattered areas of freehold farms were meant to compensate Africans for loss of their right to purchase land anywhere in the country.' Largely through government neglect and later hostility to the scheme, the purchase areas, not expansive even at an original estimate of some 7 million acres, constituted less than 4 million acres at independence in 1980.2 Adding insult to injury, much of this land was of poor quality and often in isolated areas of the country, far removed from transportation lines and markets.3 In the end, the purchase area scheme fell far short of the promise to settle some 50,000 Africans on freehold property, being home to fewer than 10,000 at independence.4 Thus it is not surprising that the Zimbabwe purchase area farmers have not attracted the same amount of attention, research, and debate as have *Thanks to Michael West who read successive drafts of this article and offered helpful suggestions, and to Thom McClendon and the anonymous reviewers for this journal. I am deeply grateful to Oliver Pollak for generously sharing his interview notes with Marirangwe farmers and officials in the African Farmers Union. [hereafter cited as Lnd Commission]. Initially, farmers were given leasehold rights, gaining freehold only after full payment. All transactions were vetted through a Native Land Board which oversaw administration of the areas. See Land Commission, para 253-57, 269, and Report of the Native Land Boardfor the Year Ending 1932. 2 Land Commission, Schedule No. II and Schedule No. III; Angela P. Cheater, Idioms of Accumulation (Gweru, 1985), x. The Commission's recommendations were adjusted frequently over the years. See Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Domination (Los Angeles, 1977), Table IX, 182-83, Appendix If 251-78 and Ch. 7. 3 Some 61 percent of the purchase areas were located in low-rainfall areas, 21 percent in medium rainfall areas, and the remainder in high rainfall areas. National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) Harare: S160 DMV 2/12/51: "Schedule of NPAs in Various Rainfall Belts," n.d. All achive file references are to the NAZ, Harare. 4 Land Commission, para 135, cited the figure of 50,000 as reasonable. For the final number see Cheater, Idioms, x. In 1994 there were 10,629 farms. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure System, I (October 1994), 73 [hereafter...

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This paper examines the 1938 cattle culling and sales in Gutu and Victoria reserves, colonial Zimbabwe. What began as a routine culling very quickly became a crisis of authority for the Native Affairs Department since critics of the Department forced an inquiry into the sales. The criticism and defence of the culling facilitated a debate on state and personal justice, as well as a dialogue about the proper behaviour towards Africans, settlers and animals. The critics of the cullings as well as the colonial officers all believed themselves to be experts in African affairs. Thus what began as a criticism of cattle culling revealed tensions within white society, and in particular the need to refashion boundaries of expertise and authority within the Native Affairs Department. A close examination of the scope and development of the ensuing commission of inquiry reveals the importance of etiquette to the colonial enterprise in colonial Zimbabwe.

: This article analyzes the historical ambiguity of the “purchase areas” in colonial Zimbabwe. Established under the 1931 Land Apportionment Act that segregated land in the colony along racial lines, the purchase areas were discrete areas of freehold tenure dotted throughout the country. African elites who setded in the area and Europeans who administered them held distinct notions about the value and proper use of purchase area farms. For the African landholders, the small farms expressed their elite status in society. The state expected that educated, elite Africans should maintain modern, efficient farms. However, African landholders remained extensive farmers. They increased production by extending their fields, rather than by adopting labor-saving techniques. When the state confronted Marirangwe purchase area farmers about their “poor farming” techniques, the farmers presented a brash defense of their family values which they connected to their farming methods. This family-centered defense of their farms forced the state to concede certain development patterns to the farmers, foremost being the permanence of family farms, thereby enabling extensive farming.