onialism in Zimbabwe. *NO IS of greatch dimension, and of deeper emotional appeal, to Africans in Southern Africa, than shortage,' as Nathan Shamuyarira, now one of the leaders OT -ine Zimbabwe Alrican National Union (ZANU), put it in a book, Crisis in Rhodesia, published at the time of UDI in 1965.
'So much envy has created that expropriation or seizure of European land will be resorted to by the future African rulers of the country."
When the British conquered Zimbabwe in. 1890-93, settlers stole tens of thousand of acres of African land. They took much of their cattle too. The Africans were either forced to work for European landlords or driven onto less fertile land not needed by the whites.
SEGREGATED
In 1931, the government formally segregated the under the Land Apportionment Act, 49 million aces granted exclusively to the tiny white minority and 29 million acres left for the Africans.
In 1969, the Rhodesian Front LAST WEEK we looked at how Britain and the United States are trying to oversee a transition to neo-colwe look at the condition of the black masses and why they are likely to resist the neo-colonial solution.
government introduced a new law, the Land Tenure Act, finalise the division of the land in Rhodesia into land European areas." This down that the Europeans could not hold less than 48 per cent of the total farming land in the country.
HALVED Thus, under this Act, the been land roughly between the 273,000 whites and Ene 0.3 mimon whites got 18.1 million hectares and the blacks 18.2 hectares. (259 hectares to the square mile.)
The European farming area is divided between about 6,000 large capitalist farms.
Contrast. OVCE Africans are crowded into the Lands', African 'reserves' where the average land allotment is only 4.4 hectares a head, soil erosion is widespread and poverty is land: Creene.
EXPLOITED were The 356,000 labourers who work on the white capitalist farms are the most exploited workers in the *to African and laid naved The million By million country. Their average wage in the the "masters and lation, they are prohibited from joining trade unions or going on strike Meanwhile, the ded, impoverished Tribal Trust Lands have served capitalist agricultural industry as reservoirs of cheap labour.
In an attempt to improve its international image, the Smith 331568 Tribal Trust Lands — reservoirs of cheap labour.
draconian servants' legispractice.
overcrowwhite farms; and even minority conditions hunger and their chance.
of power conditions.
will be OWE amended the Land Tenure Act in February 1977 to allow blacks to buy land in the white areas for the first time.
But this changed nothing in Almost no Africans have the capital needed to buy large makes workers illegal. of black capitalist farmers did arise, there would be no change in the appalling mass of peasants in the Tribal Trust Tribal Lands or the agricultural proletariat on the capitalist farms.
The only solution to the land of the rura masse would be the nationalisation and redistribution of the whiteowned plantations ranches estates And this is precisely what they are likely to fight for as soon as they see The urban working class is potentially one of the strongest in Africa, with over one million ers, Zimbabwe's 6.3 million Africans living in the cities. So far, industrial action has been limited, but this will change as the settlers grip begins to slip workers sense their improve their DEMANDS One of their top demands to wipe out inequalities between blacks and whites. The Salisbury regime's Economic Survey Rhodesia 1977 revealed that the average annual wage for an African in 1976 was £595, less than one tenth of the average white wage of £6,420 The black workers also want to get rid of the present anti-union legislation. The Industrial Relations Act effectively all strikes by black The repressive police state and the existence of a large pool of unemployed Africans in the cities and the rural slums of the Trust Lands BaVe 5311.
ONE OF the men jailed in the the grisly story of the Loyalist murder gang.
By Geoff Bell The UDR member CLCL0I WaS 25-year-old Gerald Mellwaine. At week's trial he was given a sentence of eight years kidnapping, assault, and gun Mellwaine was a member of the UDR from 1974 to 1977. The British Army has neither onfirmed nor denied Mellwaine was on its payroll at the time of his arrest.
But as the crimes for which *Shankill butchers' Were icted took place from 1975 to 1977, he was certainly a UDR mber during this period.
'Shankill butchers' case which ended last week in Belfast was a member of the British Army-controlled Ulster Defence Regiment while involved in the 19 sectarian assassinations.
But his membership of the UDR went unreported in the British media, as did a number of other aspects of Mellwaine, the gang leader Billy Moore, and all the others in convicted were members of the paramilitary, Loyalist mist, Ulster Volunteer Force.
Their Catholic victims were usually picked up at random at night in the black taxi owned by Moore.
They were taken to Protestant areas where they tortured and finally butchered that to death with an axe or by having their throats cut.
Other victims ten-year-old boy blown up in an CDOS OR CLOSE 02i Official Republican stration, and SUVr Noel Shaw, killed in an internal such concern; they blazoned his feud.
This is by no means the first time that a member of the UDR has been involved in sectarian crimes. The most instance was the massacre of the Miami Showband in 1975, WICT seven convicted of the triple murder were or had been in the UDR.
As an article last year in the Irish Times put it:
UDR members extre- members court on serious charges and have been found sectarian killings.
The same article went on to 'In the Catholics made up 18 per cent were of the UDR. For years now, however, their involvement has been minimal.
The UDR was first formed in included a 1970 as a replacement for the discredited B Specials. Like the Specials, has demon- reputation for violent antimember Catholic bigotry because of the participation of many of its infamous mostly Enose *Scores of der and the ex- battalion. have appeared in Royal of early days the Shankill butchers.
But superficial judgement.
that the eventua liv caught gained the tale and members in sectarian attacks.
But unlike the Specials, the Road UDR is part of, and under the command of, the British Army.
While its 2,000 full-time and 8,000 part-time members are been caught.
recruited locally, Yet commander is a onigadier in tne clues regular Army. Other members of the regular Army are the regiment's assistant comman- For chiefs of each murders In contrast to the UDR, the tain Long' Constabulary might appear to have emerged some credit from the 'claim rounding up and conviction of name commander, would be It was by good luck rather than any Road marked enthusiasm for the case butchers were It so happened that one of the victims of the gang, who was left for dead, lived to tell identified his attackers while being driven ir and Peter Fearon of the Press a police car in the Shankill Without that identification it is unlikely that any of those finally convicted would have there were numerous to tne assassinations which the police either ignored or didn't bother to investigate.
example, was claimed by someone calling himself 'Cap Loyalist gangs are fond of "claim killings hints they - the actual Loyalist "Captain Black', turned out to be White.
The Long bar in the Shankill favourite hunting ground for Protestant extremists, and the leader of the gang, Billy Moore, was actually a barman there But this clue wasn't followed up.
Again, from November 1975 a number of witnesses testified to spotting a black taxi at the Gerald Mellwaine time of the crimes.
Billy Moore was an owner of a black taxi but again this was identified by the gang's victim.
The failure to follow up such obvious evidence may in part have been due to the sender resources allotted by the RUC to investigating the multiple murders.
Only detectives were assigned to investigating the crimes just OVC half detective for each of the VEERIES When passing sentence on the Shankill butchers, Justice O'Donnell commented: "The facts speak for themselves and will remain forever a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry.
The facts of Mellwaine's involvement in the crimes and the minimal resources given te investigating them by the RUC can also be allowed to speak for themselves'.
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In the second of two articles leading up to the important Zimbabwe Action Conference on 3 March,