Zambezia (1975-6), 4 (ii).ESSAY REVIEWTHE PUBLICATIONS OF THE TRIBAL AREAS OFRHODESIA RESEARCH FOUNDATIONIt may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our restGod's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.G. K. ChestertonPeasant farming behaviour once called conservative hasbeen so thoroughly understood and. so thoroughly interpretedas rational that peasants now appear almost as embodimentsof the eighteenth century enlightenment . . .!AT A TIME when there is an urgent need for problem-oriented research in thefield of African agriculture in Rhodesia, it is a matter for serious regret thatthe mam contribution of The Tribal Areas of Rhodesia Research Foundationis to provide an outlet for material that would not be accepted for publicationby any academic institution.It is not, the reviewer hastens to add, that there is anything basicallywrong with Bulman's account of the Native Land Husbandry Act, in the con-text of its original and limited purpose as an M.Sc. thesis;2 but the workis too schematic in its descriptive aspects to serve as a reference source andtoo superficial in its assessment to provide insights into either particularor general problems of land reform. It is also unfortunately marred by theinclusion of a number of factual errors of which the following are examples.She says that, 'After European settlement, tribal occupation was restricted tothe reserves', thus ignoring the Unassigned Area, and the 'squatter' problemin the European area which was not seriously tackled until after the SecondWTorld War; that, 'In 1926, the Government, faced with these problems[such as overcropping] devised a policy of centralization', whereas in factthe policy of centralization was not introduced until 1929, and contrary tothe general impression conveyed by the author remained a relatively minoraspect of Government policy until 1955; that, 'All extension resources andsurveying skills in the Colony were transferred to the Plan', when in fact theEuropean agricultural extension staff was never deployed in the African area.3.By curious coincidence, however, the Native Land Husbandry Act,viewed rightly as a conservation measure implemented within the rigid doc-trinaire framework of the policy of Land Apportionment, provides a unifying' R. Chambers, Managing Rural Development (Uppsala, Scandinavian Institute ofAfrican Studies, 1974), 602 M. Bulman, The Native Land Husbandry Act of Southern Rhodesia: A Failurein Land Reform (Salisbury, The Tribal Areas of Rhodesia Research Foundation, ls»75),45pp. no price indicated.3 Ibid., 4, 12; on centralization, see Southern Rhodesia, Report of the Director ofNative Development for the Year 1929 (Sessional Papers, G.S.R.13, 1930), 80.Ill112ESSAY REVIEWtheme in this miscellaneous collection of publications under review. Theveld management schemes described by Danckwerts,4 are precisely in directline of succession. It is rather ironic, therefore, that this glowing optimisticassessment of the schemes should come under review at a time when the 1975report of the Natural Resources Board has officially acknowledged them asa failure: 'In the Board's 1974 report, it was noted that they appeared to befaltering: they now appear to be collapsing,'3But even a superficial reading of the facts presented by the author couldnever have warranted his optimism. It involves no distortion of the situationto state that a scheme, which had not been proven suitable to tribal conditionsand does not appear to have been subject to regular supervision and assess-ment, was introduced into an area suffering severe ecological deteriorationand heavily overpopulated in terms of both people and stock. It would havebeen truly miraculous if it had proved to be a lasting success; the wonderis that it lasted so long!An awareness by the author of the rise and decline of similar schemesin the 1950s would perhaps have tempered his optimism. But it is impossibleto regard this publication as a serious cost-benefit study even in the loosestsense of that term. As an indication of the calibre of the work, it may benoted that the author begins by castigating those Europeans who 'think white'and then proceeds to impute monetary values to virtually all goods in a basic-ally subsistence economy, though omitting what might have been the onlylegitimate variable in an objective function, namely, the increase in the num-ber and value of stocks of cattle. At another point, however, he quotes withapparent approval the view of an Agricultural Officer that tribesmen tendto think in terras of 'enough' and 'not enough'. He may be interested to learnthat sophisticated economists, such as Sharpies, in writing about sophisticatedAmerican farmers have lately been debating whether the concept of a targetincome may not be more realistic than that of profit maximisation.8The major finding of Theisen's field-work, presented in the two pamphletsunder review, is that there is a simple causal relationship between socio-economic status and family size; this is positively dangerous. The followingis a reasonable summary of the present state of research on the topic:*In a recent work, Karen O. Mason and her associates reviewed andanalyzed more than a hundred studies on differential fertility in thedeveloped and developing countries. In this work, the authorspresent the major studies undertaken to measure the effect of socio-economic variables on family fertility. The major variables includedin the studies were: income, occupation, social and geographicmobility, education, family structure, female labour-force participa-tion, egalitarian maternal relationship, religion and religiosity, valueorientation, and family planning. After a careful examination of the4 J. P. Danckwerts, A Socio-Eeonomic Study of Veld Management in the TribalAreas of tha Victoria Province (Salisbury, The Tribal Areas of Rhodesia ResearchFoundation. 1974). 149op. Appendices and Tables, no price indicateds The Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Natural Resources Board of Rhodesiafor the Year ended 31st December, 1975 (Sessional Papers, Cmd R.R. 16, 1976), 16, 17.e J. A. Sharpies, 'The representative farm approach to estimation of supply response.,American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings (1969), 59, 171.7 R. Theisen, The Exploding Population Problem in the Tribal Trust Lands ofRhodesia (Salisbury, The Tribal Areas of Rhodesia Research Foundation, 1975), 29pp.,no price indicated; Agro-Economic Factors Relating to the Health and AcademicAchievement of Rural School Children (Salisbury, The Tribal Areas of Rhodesia Re-search Foundation, 1975), 12pp., no price indicated.H. DUNLOP113results of these studies, the authors have found very little evidenceof uniformity and consistency in the findings of the studies.'8The general conclusion, based on Iranian data which would appear to beborne out also by experience in India,9 of particular interest in relation toTheisen's study, is summarised as follows:Finally, while modern value orientation and high socio-economicmobility reduce the high fertility, norms and practices among theurban Spirazi, these factors seem to have a positive effect on thefertility pattern of the tribal population.'0To return to the basic theme of Land Apportionment, whereas the authorsoL the Native Land Husbandry Act may be forgiven for believing that theDioblems of African agriculture could be solved within the area allotted forAfrican use, it is impossible to justify the acceptance of this constraint bytheir successors. Moreover, it is difficult to believe that either Danckwertsor Theisen could be ignorant of the existence of between five and six millionhectares of unused or under-utilized land in the European sector. Apart fromthe evidence available in the official agro-ecological survey,11 the factualposition is freely acknowledged by representatives of European farminginterests. For example, at the most recent Annual Congress of the RhodesiaNational Farmers' Union, it was stated that 'a scheme [European LandSettlement] was needed urgently, not only in the tobacco and crop areas butaiso in the 3 240 000 ha. of unoccupied or sparsely-occupied land, most ofwhich was in the hands of large landowners.*12Dire ecological necessity, not to mention equity, requires a carefullyplanned and executed settlement scheme for progressive African farmers torelieve the excessive population pressure in the tribal areas and to enablethis elite to contribute through the fiscus to the relief of their less fortunatecompatriots. Such research as is embodied in these papers contributes nothingtowards a solution of such basic problems.University of RhodesiaH. DUNLOP8 A. A. Paydarfar, 'Sociocultural correlates of fertility among tribal, rural, andurban populations in Iran, Social Biology (1975), 22, 151.a T. T. Poleman, and D. K. Freebairn (eds), Food, Population and Employment.The Impact of the Green Revolution (New York, Praeger, 1973), passim.'o Paydarfar, 166.ii Southern Rhodesia, An Agricultural Survey of Southern Rhodesia. Part I: Agro-ecological Survey (Salisbury, Govt Printer, 1962).'2 The Rhodesia Herald, 29 July 1976.