“In Native Areas, Stores Have a Big Influence on the People”

Abstract

This article explores the experiences of African traders as they applied for trading sites in the African reserves in colonial Zimbabwe between 1945 and 1955. Using empirical evidence and drawing on previously underutilized archival sources, it argues that the trading sites became intertwined with the colonial state’s efforts to reorganize African agriculture during the 1940s and 50s. As such, officials of the Native Affairs Department (NAD) used the trading sites to reward and punish Africans who cooperated with, and flaunted the state’s conservation efforts, respectively. At the same time, white traders gained ground in the African reserves because of their capacity to buy African grain, a key concern for the implementors of the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLH Act) of 1951. Cumulatively, this undermined African entrepreneurship exposing the colonial rhetoric of “protecting” African traders in the African reserves. African responses, in turn, showed resourcefulness and involved the employ of lawyers and colonial institutions such as African Councils.