Zambezia (1977), 5 (ii).ESSAY REVIEWSOCIAL WELFARE OR SOCIAL CONTROL?THE PROCESS OF urbanization in Africa confronts local and national govern-ments with a host of problems. The growth of many of the larger cities hasbeen phenomenal. In global terms, Africa remains the least urbanized ofcontinents; but it has recently been estimated that cities in Africa are growingmore rapidly than in any other area of the world. In the inter-censal figures forthe period 1950-60, it has been estimated that the population growth rate inAfrican urban centres over 20 000 was 69 per cent. This compares with agrowth rate of 67 per cent for Latin America and 42 per cent for the worldas a whole.'So far there has been very little work done on the meaning of this rapidurbanization in terms of other developmental problems. The decade 1960-69has witnessed growing problems, arising out of the widening income differen-tials between the rural and urban sectors. Other characteristics of the urbanproblem have been the unequal distribution of income, housing shortages,urban unemployment, and increasing pressure on limited social services.Two monographs recently printed in Rhodesia, therefore, are a mostwelcome contribution to a study of these problems. Dr Gargett discusses howlocal authorities have attempted to deal with African urban settlement inparticular with regards to housing, and the distribution of welfare services.2Mrs Gwata's study endeavours to measure the response of Africans in theSalisbury townships to the cultural and leisure facilities provided by localgovernment and central government agencies.3The two works are remarkably similar in their theoretical assumptions,which it will be argued, are inappropriate for dealing with problems of urbandevelopment in Rhodesia. A 'transitional phase theory' runs through bothbooks. The very title of Gargett's book, 'The Administration of Transition',betrays his main subject of concern, which comes up again and again:In the writer's view the social purpose of public assistance forAfricans in urban areas should be to facilitate the transition tourban living by reducing the insecurity of the wage economy.4Urbanisation as a way of life involves the adoption of attitudes andvalues foreign to traditional peasant society. The real transition thatis being made is not from country to town but from traditional tomodern.5* A. Gavriola, 'Special features of urbanisation in tropical Africa', Journal of ModernAfrican Studies (1971), 9, 291-6.2 E. Gargett, The Administration of Transition : African Urban Settlement inRhodesia (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1977), 104 pp., Rh$l,65.a M. F. Gwata (with a Foreword and Chapter 1 by D. H. Reader), RhodesianAfrican Cultural and Leisure Needs (Salisbury, Univ. of Rhodesia, Dep. of Sociology,Commissioned by the National Arts Foundation of Rhodesia, 1977), 59 pp., Rh$0,55.4 Gargett, 69.s Ibid., 37.203204ESSAY REVIEWThe significant features of the townward movement in Africa havebeen the abruptness of the transition and the immensity of the culturalgulf to be bridged.6Nowhere are we given a clear quantitative or qualitative statement ofthis 'transition'. At any rate the assumptions made by Gargett are not ofmuch help in an understanding of the urban problem. From a holistic pointof view, the concept of 'transition' explains very little of the problems stem-ming from rural-urban migration; and there is also the paternalistic hint thatRhodesian urban Africans have been powerless to shape the nature of theirJives according to their own perceptions. Gutkind, in his critique of the 'transi-tional phase theory' has reminded us that:It is more exact to speak of a particular style of life as particular asany other set of arrangements considered suitable at a particularmoment of time and serving particular ends.7Gwata also proceeds from the same evolutionary theoretical assumptionsas Gargett. What emerges from her work is characteristic of social anthro-pologists and to a lesser extent urban sociologists who were working in Africaduring the sixties; cities were utilized as instruments through which urbanbehaviour which deviated from village life could be measured.8 Gwata's ap-proach to her subject is therefore essentially aimed at juxtaposing the urbanAfrican community against a rural backdrop in order to gain knowledge ofuntouched African life as it existed before colonialism:This rather sharp division of time is essentially a phenomenonof industrial society. In the traditional situation the African people'srecreational activities were of such a nature that they were largelyintegrated with their means of making a livelihood. For examplehunting which in modern society is considered to be a recreationalactivity was pursued for purposes of obtaining food. Furthermorework and recreation could occur simultaneously and there were norestrictions on the individual's movements in the rural areas.Today the black man finds himself in Salisbury, under theservice of an employer who pays him for his labour. He is bound toan eight-hour day with specific holidays and free weekends. Work andrelaxation can no longer run concurrently and he cannot just moveabout as he likes. The urban woman now only looking after thehome without fields to till also finds herself with some spare time.The transmission of culture and the general process of socializa-tion which were interfused with the daily life of the traditionalsociety are missing from the present work situation.9e ibid., 7.7 p. C. W. Gutkind, Urban Anthropology : Perspectives On 'Third World' Urbanisa-tion and Urbanism (Assen, Van Gorcum, 1974), 21.s See, for example, H. Miner, The City in Modern Africa (New York, Praeger,1967); H. Powdermaker, Coppertown : Changing Africa (New York, Harper ColophonBooks, 1962).a Gwata, 9.T. D. SHOPO205Cultural theories such as this are not helpful and only serve to direct attentionaway from the institutional structure as the most important cause of Rho-desian underdevelopment.10Another tendency implicit in both Gargett's and Gwata's work is therather naive attempt to be value free and 'apolitical'. In both monographsthe 'political' is tacitly identified with the proper functioning of the presentRhodesian political order; Gargett identifies it with legal processes and theadministration of laws:The fact of urbanization and the response in terms of housing andother services need to be seen within the context of political legislativeand financial measures ..."In the same vein Gwata refers to:the confusion of agencies and objectives due to a clash betweenmunicipal and governmental African leisure and culture provisionsin Salisbury.'2Both studies are therefore divorced from the whole political, economicand social superstructure of Rhodesian society. Nowhere in either book isconsideration given to whether the black man in Rhodesia caught up in aneconomically underprivileged situation can obtain his social and culturalneeds via institutional changes.Thus, a distinctive theoretical feature in these books is a functionalistand dualist characterization of the social formation and system of racialdomination in Rhodesia. Gargett makes this quite obvious, when he writes:Economic considerations centre on the sub-economic position ofmost urban African families and on the dual economy, with a twotier wage structure in town and a vast majority under subsistenceconditions.'3Implicit in this approach to Rhodesian urban problems is the assumption thatthe development of the developed white sector and the underdevelopment ofthe underdeveloped black sector are causally unrelated, and that the wholeproblem of underdevelopment is one of insufficient integration into the capi-talist system:The political, legal and financial background to African urban settle-ment in Rhodesia is a picture of planned non-integration. Africansare seen to be in the city but they are not of it.14Professor Reader, in his introduction to Gwata's study, obviously viewsthe whole question of African cultural and leisure needs as being unrelatedto the capitalist system:'° For an excellent critique of this cultural ideology see D. G. Clarice, 'Settler ideologyand African underdevelopment in post war Rhodesia', Rhodesian Journal of Economics(1974), 8, 17-38; and B. Mothobi, 'Some reflections on management beliefs about Africanworkers in Rhodesia', South African Labour Bulletin (1975), 1, 36-45." Gargett, 7,'2 Gwata, 4-'3 Gargett, 34.54 Ibid., 14.206ESSAY REVIEWThe whole problem of African cultural and leisure needs is set in thecontext of a people struggling to survive in a world of galloping in-flation. No amenities which fail to take that salient act into accounthave much hope of acceptance or success.15Let us now examine the policy implications for urban development andsocial work, arising out of the theoretical considerations discussed above.What both Gargett and Gwata have failed to consider is that the picturesthey discuss are part and parcel of the total economic structure which has in-stitutionalized the underdevelopment of the black population.'6 Thereforethere cannot be any hope of improving African urban conditions, as long aspolicies are not based on this consideration.The implications for social work arising out of the theoretical assump-tions in the studies under review, are that social work is seen as representingcommonly held or accepted values as a reminder of the 'conscience'. Theplight of Blacks is seen as a dilemma and a 'moral' problem.17 The object ofsocial work as expressed by Gwata and Gargett is primarily to help individualsto adjust to 'social reality', represented by Rhodesian social institutions. Thereis a presumption made that Rhodesia is a democratic country, so that socialwork is viewed as a non-political 'neutralist' activity in which technical skillsare used to pursue aims which are generally accepted as legitimate. The optionsfor a meaningful improvement are therefore severely circumscribed. Theradical critique of social-work professionalism makes explicit the real issueat hand.Social casework is seen as serving the capitalist system admirablysince its basic assumption is that there is nothing wrong with societyand that problems are the problems of individuals who cannot'adjust' in some way. Because of the power of this form of profes-sionalism in determining how clients' problems are to be defined,one of the functions of social work is to act as an agent of socialcontrol although this is not how social workers typically see theirfunction. Above all, a practice such as social casework preventsclients seeing the totality of their situation or of feeling solidaritywith other people in the same situation.18The pertinence of this line of criticism of the theoretical frameworkof the two studies under review can be seen from an analysis of their contents.Chapter I of Gargett's monograph deals with the background to urbansettlement in Rhodesia. The effect on urban Blacks of laws, such as the 1895Pass Laws and the Master and Servants Act, is seen merely in terms of racialdiscrimination.19 This preoccupation with colour discrimination, however,does not explain much. All these laws are better understood in their historical'5 Gwata, 7.>6 See D. G. Clarke, 'The Economics of Urban Inequality in Rhodesia : Considera-tions on the Langley, Whiting and Wright Report' (Univ. of Rhodesia, Dep. of Econo-mics, Conference on African Influx and Urbanization in Salisbury, 19-20 Feb. 1972)17 Gargett, 46, 104.«s B. J. Heraud, 'Professionalism, radicalism and social change' in P. Halmos (ed.),Professionalisation and Social Change (Keele, Univ. of Keele, 1973). 89.is Gargett, 7.T. D. SHOPO207context as forms of extra-economic coercion which placed Africans in a posi-tion of powerlessness and exploitability in relation to their employers.20Similarly the financial considerations discussed by Gargett as providedfor in the African Registration and Accommodation Act, and the ServicesLevy Act, are best interpreted as ways in which Rhodesian governments havesought to modernize racial domination; for this reason the comparisonsGargett makes between Rhodesian and South African policies are from a holis-tic point of view irrelevant.21 Rex has described the workings of the system ofurban administration in Rhodesia and South Africa:The management of the semi-settled urban labour force howeverrequires more than police control. Drains must be provided if dis-ease is to be prevented and disease must be prevented because itspreads through domestic servants to white homes. Street lightingis essential to the effective prevention of crime. And beyondthese more mundane material services it is also necessary to providea minimum range of human and personal services to prevent unneces-sary suffering and grievance which make for inefficiency. Yet thereis a difficulty about providing these services. The native urbanitescannot afford them and white rate-payers, who are alone enfranchisedwill not pay for them. Thus, so far as social services at least areconcerned an alternative source of income must be found. This isfound through the creation of a municipal monopoly in the brewingof native beer.22Gargett tends to mystify the Land Apportionment Act and the LandTenure Act, by again viewing it as merely in terms of the colour bar. Theselaws by restricting the property ownership and property rights of Blacks andby restricting their political rights served to perpetuate the economic de-pendence of Blacks and to secure the ultra-exploitability of their black labour.The much-vaunted home ownership scheme only gained momentum in the1960s after the division of the electorate into A and B rolls, which stifledAfrican political advancement. In 1944, Huggins had warned the municipali-ties of the consequences inherent in their delay in implementing the LandApportionment Act: 'Everyday the possibility of the African acquiring pro-perty in the township increases'.23Chapter II of Gargett's monograph suffers from the same defects as thefirst one; it is mainly descriptive and there is little attempt at analysis. Thus,he merely mentions the unbalanced age and sex structure of the urban Africanpopulation in the early days, without probing the institutional mechanismsthat brought this state of affairs.24In Chapter III, Gargett considers the question of housing. It is difficultto agree with him when he attributes the poor housing conditions in the inter-war period to a reluctance on the part of local authorities and to limitedfinancial resources.25 Nevertheless there is more to it than that; for the point20 For a more detailed exposition of this thesis, see F. A. Johnstone, Class Race andGold : A Study of Class Relations and Racial Discrimination in South Africa (London,Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976) ; G. van Onselen, Chibaro : African Mine Labour inSouthern Rhodesia 1900-1933 (London, Pluto Press, 1976).21 Gargett, 8-9.22 J. Rex, 'The compound, the reserve and the urban location : The essential institu-tions of Southern African labour exploitation' South African Labour Bulletin (1974) 1,13-14.23 Southern Rhodesia, Debates in the Legislative Assembly . . . 1944, 24, 2501.24 Gargett, 21.25 Ibid., 41.2O8ESSAY REVIEWis that in the inter-war years, Rhodesia had no substantial industrial sectorand so had no need to stabilize the labour force.26 To disprove Gargett'sstatement that local authorities lacked financial resources to improve housingconditions is easily challenged. African locations in the pre-war years werea means by which municipalities maximized profits for themselves and thewhite ratepayers, as the Jackson Commission made clear in respect of theSalisbury municipality's financial administration:the operations are more in the nature of a banking business thanof ordinary government or Municipal loans.27In the inter-war years Bulawayo was notorious for the exorbitant rentscharged in the location. A committee of enquiry by the Native WelfareSociety disclosed that for the period 1931-41, the Bulawayo Municipality hadbeen overcharging rent, despite the fact that it received a better return oncapital invested in African housing than any other local authority.28In Chapters III and IV we can see the laudable attempts that have sincebeen made by the Department of Housing and Amenities in Bulawayo toprovide welfare services and more representation in local government forAfrican residents of the townships. A criticism that does spring to mind, afterreading these two chapters, nevertheless is that the subtitle of the monograph,'African Urban Settlement in Rhodesia', is rather misleading; for there areno comparisons made between what has taken place in Bulawayo and theposition in Salisbury. A study of the social policy of the Salisbury City Councilhad this to say:But it has not necessarily been the legislative framework and widergovernment policy that has caused the underdevelopment of socialpolicy in Salisbury. Local authorities have had considerable freedomin deciding the nature and direction of policy.29Of course, the question of the progressiveness of one local authorityvis-a-vis another is not entirely value free. Given the institutional backgroundto urban African administration in Rhodesia, a 'progressive' local authoritysuch as Bulawayo can only be credited with having had greater success inmasking and perpetuating the inequality of an acquisitive society,Gwata begins her study with a western orientated definition of leisure,which obscures its importance for capitalist groups in Rhodesia. Rottenburg'sstudy of leisure in the West Indies would have provided a more useful basisfor comparison than the works of Dumazadien and Goule. Rottenburg'sconcern was to disprove the belief held by West Indian planters in the 1940sthat the British West Indian had a large preference for leisure over work and26 G. Arrighi, 'International corporations, labour aristocracies and economic develop-ment in tropical Africa', in R. I. Rhodes (ed.), Imperialism and Undervelepoment(London, Monthly Review Press, 1970), 236.27 National] Archives of] Rhod[esia, Salisbury], S86 ('Report of the NativeAffairs Commission on Its Enquiry into Matters Concerning the Salisbury Native Loca-tion, 1930'), 30.28 Nat. Arch. Rhod., Historical Manuscripts Collection, RH16/1/1 (Rhodesian In-stitute of African Affairs : Corespondence and Other Papers, Chronological Series:1935-62), Secretary Native Welfare Society to Town Clerk, Bulawayo, 12. Jan. 1943.z9 B. Nussbaum, 'The Underdevelopment of Social Policy. Salisbury African Town-ships' (Univ. of Rhodesia, Dept. of Sociology, unpubl. B.Sc. Special Honours Sociologydissertion, 1974), 33.T. D, SHOPO2O9that his wants were small.30 Clarke has criticized the operation of the limitedwants thesis in Rhodesia with reference to wages, and had Gwata applied itto the question of leisure, she would have provided us greater insights.31 Forexample, it is stated, without comment or analysis, that 76 per cent of res-pondents had showed favourable reaction to the leisure facilities provided,and that only 12,8 per cent believed that, 'the facilities are provided to pre-vent mixing of the races or as a discreet way of oppressing the African';32but this cannot be accepted as an expression of social reality, without en-quiring into the question of different levels of social and political conscious-ness. History would support the contention of the 12,8 per cent of respondents;from as far back as 1910, there is no doubt that the provision of leisure faci-lities by the settlers was intended to be a form of social control. The NativeCommissioner, Belingwe, in a letter to the Acting Native Commissioner in1910, wrote:For a moment let us consider what it was that made the (pre-war)British proletariat contented although working in many cases, in cir-cumstances which were scarcely more conducive to a sustained interestin their actual labours than are those in which the mine boys workhere. It was largely sport Š or what the workman considered sport.For example, the hands old and young in every community wereenthusiastic 'supporters' of some local football team whose Saturdayafternoon matches furnished a topic of interest for the remainder ofthe week. Here the labourer's principal recreations are connectedwith beer and women, leading frequently to the Public Court andthe risk of being smitten with one or other of the venereal diseaseswhich are so insidiously sapping the strength of the native population.Those who employ and those who control native mine labour should,for a double reason, try to influence the native to change in this res-pect. Sporting enthusiasm is not the ideal substitution for presentconditions but it would be a step forward and one, I am sure notdifficult to bring about. The native is intensely imitative, often vain,and always clannish and all these are qualities which would further'sport' ŠŁ a parochial spirit of sport if you like Š but one whichwould forge ties of interest and esprit de corps between the labourerand his work place. A patch of ground, a set of goal posts and a foot-ball would not figure largely in the expenditure of a big mine.33This form of reasoning was to be echoed over the decades. In a letter tothe Prime Minister in 1936, by Bullock, the Chief Native Commissioner, re-creation was seen merely a means of perpetuating the migrant labour system:'It is not thought that sexual intercourse is a necessity for young bachelorswho mostly work in the towns for comparatively short periods if facilitiesare provided for games and recreation'.34 One could quote many other state-ments in the same vein to illustrate the function leisure has performed inperpetuating the exploitative system in Rhodesia. Until the 1950s, at least,the definition of Welfare for Africans in official documents was simply the3° S. Rottenburg, 'Income and leisure in an underdeveloped economy', The Journalof Political Economy (1952), 60, 97.si D. G. Clarke, 'Settler ideology and African underdevelopment'.32 Gwata, 34.33 Quoted in Van Onselen, Chibaro, 190-1.34 Nat. Arch. Rhod., S1542/A1 (Chief Native Commissioner, Correspondence andOther Papers, General, 1914-43 : Acts, Notices, Amendents and Ordinances, 1933-40).Secretary for Native Affairs to the Prime Minister, 10 Sept. 1936.2idESSAY REVIEWprovision of facilities for recreation. Voluntary organizations such as the Afri-can Welfare Society, the Women's Institute, left no stone unturned in theirefforts to see that the natives were occupied in their spare time.There are frequent references to 'culture' in Gwata ('Culture forpresent purposes may be defined broadly as the training and refinement of themind, tastes and manners'35), but it is never quite clear how her concept isto be related to other developmental processes. The academic controversy onculture is too involved to be dealt with here; our main interest is to relate itto social development of Africans which presumably was one of the objec-tives of Gwata's study. The recommendations she makes for the improvementof leisure facilities are to a large extent nullified by the fact that 'culture' isdiscussed in a vacuum throughout the work, except for the occasional allu-sion to the low living standards of Africans. There is no discernible attemptto assess the impact of the colonial situation on African culture, so thatstatements, such as the one by Reader that 'the population of the sample Rho-desian African townships seems remarkably like a working-class group any-where',36 are barely useful as a basis for assessing cultural needs of exploitedAfricans in a particular context.The effects of colonialism and domination on the culture of a conqueredpeople have been well summed up by Paulo Freire:The relationships between the domination and the dominated reflectthe greater social context, even when formally personal. Such re-lationships imply the introjection by the dominated of the culturalmyths of the domination. Similarly the dependant society introjectsthe values and life style of the metropolitan society since the structureof the latter shapes that of the former. This results in the duality ofthe dependent society, its ambiguity, its being and not being itself, andthe ambivalence characteristic of its long experience of dependencyboth attracted by and rejecting the metropolitan society.37There can be no overestimating of the importance of culture for develop-mental purposes, but it cannot be confined to values, personality or judged byoddments of beads and pottery, but rather as Peel defines it:'a way of life' rather than the actual observable pattern of living atany one time. It consists of ideal elements: people's notions aboutwhat exists and about the conditions of their existence, about whatthey would like to see for themselves and their society and abouthow they might achieve them.38Given the limitations in Gwata's study, the recommendations she makeswill only serve to perpetuate and legitimate the status quo.CONCLUSIONIf there is to be a meaningful change in the social conditions of urbanBlacks in Rhodesia, there will have to be a drastic revision of the theoreticalassumptions on which present policies are based: the pervasive effects of35 Gwata, 10.36 Ibid., 7.s? P. Freire, Cultural Action For Freedom (Cambridge (Mass.) Penguin, 1970), 59.3s J. D. Y. Peel, 'The significance of culture for development studies', /. D. S. Bulletin(1976), 8, 8.T. D. SHOPO211political and economic domination will have to be considered. The studiesreviewed above largely beg the question in seeking causes for the under-development of Africans outside the capitalist system.It might be more worthwhile to study the problems posed by urbansettlement within the theoretical framework of Walton's definition of internalcolonialism,Internal colonialism is defined as a process that produces certainintra-national forms of patterned socio-economic inequality directlytraceable to the exploitative practices through which national andinternational institutions are linked in the interests of surplus extrac-tion, and capital accumulation. Stated differently internal colonialismrefers to those domestic structures of inequality whose origins lie inthe interface between internal conditions and external influencesstemming from metropolitan economies. Internal colonialism has re-ference to both a process whose central characteristic is exploitation,and to the patterned consequences of the process in the form of socio-economic inequality. Exploitation is distinguished from potentiallydiverse sources of inequality by the use of power (as opposed tomarket or voluntaristic mechanisms) to obtain the necessary inputsto the capital accumulation process at the lowest possible costs andto enhance the profitability of that process through monopolisticrestraints on its distributive impact . . . 39Within such a conceptual framework the meaning of urban administration,aMd social services, in terms of developmental processes will emerge with lessambiguity: this would involve case studies of development-making processes,and the resulting differential consequences of these policies. Key policy areasfrom which valuable data on the workings of internal colonialism would beland use and land tenure. Finally, an analysis of the solutions sought tourban problems in Rhodesia within a cost-benefit framework would lead toquantitative estimates of the impact of alternative policies.University of RhodesiaT. D. SHOPOss J. Walton, 'Internal colonialism : Problems of definition and measurement', inF. M. Trueblood and W. A. Cornelius (eds.), Latin American Urban Research : 5 (Lon-don, Sage, 1976), 34-5.