On the date set down, a team of land development officers and peggers would visit the are concerned and physically point out to each person on the list of approved farmers the boundaries of his or her bit of arable land.
These were so designed to fit between contours already pegged, and the farmer would be told that he had to dig the contours by a certain date. All concerned would be expected to help dig the main storm drain, which, in some cases, protected the highest portion of land.
When the allocation was complete, each farmer was given a formal notification of how much land he had been given, and a master copy referable to a plan of the area, was kept in the District Commissioner's office. Thus, a farmer was allocated his own piece of land for perpetuity, which he was able to bequeath to his heir. If he wished to he could purchase the right to another person's allocation, with the agreement of the chief and up to a certain limit.
Similarly, the amount of grazing land available was assessed and the correct stocking rate was calculated, based on the nature of the area concerned, which varied tremendously and depended on such factors as rainfall, soil types and the presence of rocky areas which could support no livestock at all. With that information and figures of each individual's current stockholding, a formula was worked out based on the proportionate destocking method described, and each stockowner was then given a livestock allocation card. Within a certain period he then had to bring his actual stock owned down to the figure shown on the card. As there was a set minimum figure of, I think, four head they were entitled to bring their holding up to four. Similarly to the land right, a stock owner was allowed to purchase stock rights from others, to bring his permitted stock holding up to a certain limit.
In theory this was a brilliant piece of legislation and administrators and field staff flung themselves into the task of its implementation with entuasiasm. However, the Land Husbandary Act after an initial flying start, soon started to falter and eventually foundered upon the rocks of suspicion, inate conservatism and the tides of militant nationalism. It was found difficult to carry on the exercise in the face of passive and sometimes even active resistance and even more difficult to punish the thousands of "offenders" who had not constucted the contours in their newly demarcated piece of arable land or who had cattle in excess of their allocation. Attempts were made to enforce government's requirements but eventually the whole complicated fabric of the act was put quietly away and in time forgotten and at last the act was repealed.
However, a lot of pracical good came from the scheme in that many thousands of hectares of arable land were protected by contours and this seemed to have the effect of somehow instilling into the peasants that contours were helpful, so that even after the collapse of the Land Husbandary Act it was less difficult to persuade them to dig their contours, and remarkable progress continued to be made until the intervention of the war made nearly all this type of extention work too difficult and dangerous.
It is pleasing to note that the present government needed no convincing that the protection of the arable land is essential, but unfortunately the tidal wave of "freedom farming" and consequent lack of control on thousands of peasants who are ploughing wherever they like, has made the task of the land inspectorate terribly difficult with the result that erosion has become a national disaster in some areas, with dams and formally perennial rivers silted up and useless. Drastic and immediate action, no matter how politically unpopular must be taken before our lovely land turns into a desert.
Native Commissioners started making roads at about the time that the forerunners of today's Ministry of Roads started. Obviously when the first Native Commissioners took over their vast districts, and set about following the BSA Company's instruction to "get to know the people", roads were not necessary because there were no motor cars and the Native Commissioner went on patrol on foot with carriers or on horseback with pack mules and followed the existing paths which had propably followed the same route for centuries. Later these paths had to be widened to accommodate a scotch cart and ultimately they had to be improved so that the narrow tyres of the Model T Fords could run without expecting a puncture every few kilometres. So over the years the Native Commissioner and his staff became acknowledged as the road makers of their districts for all except the major national roads. The far-flung networks of tracks throughout the communal areas were gradually improved until every dip tank and every school was accessible by road. The advent of four wheel drive in the early fifties made even the remotest area accessible even if it did take many weary hours to reach one's destination.
Whilst I was not personally engaged in the trail-blazing of exciting new roads into the "wild blue yonder" I did have some interesting experiences in the task of rebuilding existing roads. District Commissioners were responsible only for the construction and maintenance of roads within the communal areas and small scale commercial farming areas, other roads being handled by rural councils or the Ministry of Roads. But an exception to this rule was when I, as District Commissioner Wankie, was instructed as part of the border patrol scheme in the early days of the war, to convert to all-weather standards the western border road which ran along the boundary between Zimbabwe and Botswana from Point 222 on the south western corner of the Wankie National Park to Kazangula on the Zambesi River. My portion ran from Pandamatenga police station northwards. Most of the terrain was deep soft Kalahari sand which provided a superb running surface after rain, but was the consistency of powder during the winter months and impassable at times, even to 4-wheel drive vehicles. Field staff prospected for gravel and found a deposit of calcrete which was used for topping the Kalahari sand with a 15 centimetre layer. We used contractors' vehicles and plant (bulldozers and front end loaders) as we did not have sufficient equipment on station for this task.
About 20 kilometres north of Pandamatenga (which was in a safari hunting concession) is the Kazuma Game Reserve which contains a feature called the Kazuma Depression which is one of the few treeless grassland areas in Zimbabwe, and has several fascinating ecological features. Being dead flat, when it rains in Botswana, floods flow eastwards but when it rains in Zimbabwe the flow is westward. When it rains in both areas the water just rises! For most of the rainy season the track across the Kazuma Depression was totally impassable except by boat and it was my task to make an all weather road across this feature, about 4 kilometres in length. The only way to do this was to construct a dyke and this we proceeded to do, using the better type of Kalahari sand for the base and topping it with calcrete gravel. The average height of the dyke was about two metres and it ran dead straight across the Depression just inside the border fence. Every 400 metres or so it had to bulge outwards to form a crossing point as we did not have the funds for a two-lane dyke. It had to be interspersed with culvert pipes to allow the wayward flow east or west dependant on the rainfall pattern. It was a proud day when the first vehicle crossed the completed dyke but it was not a very proud looking vehicle, being my battered 1957 model Series I short wheel base Landrover, which was my trusty work horse for seven years. I bought it in 1965 for $400 and sold it for $770!
The Kazuma Depression was a paradise for aquatic birds during the rainy season, but we saw very little animal life - probably it had been frightened away by the activity of the road making equipment. One of our temporary camps was in abandoned buildings formerly used as a base camp by veterinary department border control staff. A game fence had been erected all along that border to prevent potential carriers of foot and mouth disease, principally buffalo, from wandering over from Botswana. The buildings were pitted with bullet marks from one of the very early contacts between ZIPRA guerillas who had been sheltering there, and Rhodesian security forces.
It was on this road that I had a most alarming experience one day. I was taking the provincial road engineer who had been giving us technical advice, to inspect our dyke, when I suddenly smelt burning and noticed black smoke issuing from under the bonnet of my landrover. I braked hard, switched off and dashed around to open the hot and heavy bonnet lid, complete with spare wheel,and through the smoke saw flames flickering amongst the wiring. With great presence of mind the roads engineer started to pick up handfuls of knobbly black bassalt soil on which we were standing and flung it onto the flames. I did likewise and in no time the fire was out. When things had cooled down, an inspection revealed that the petrol feed pipe from the pump to the carburetttor had sprung a leak at a union and was dripping petrol onto the hot exhaust manifold. This had ignited and had started to burn the wiring. We were extremely lucky that we were able to catch it in time, and avoid a complete burnout or even an explosion that could have had grave consequences. I tightened up the union on the pipe, moved the electric wires, some of which had been burned bare, away from each other (I had no insulation tape with me) pressed down on the starter and away we went as if nothing had happened. On my return to Wankie I replaced the burnt wiring and had no further problems.
Years previously on a rough road 100 kilometres from headquarters, in the Gutu district, I had the misfortune to snap every blade on one rear spring of my Morris Oxford station wagon. I had three passengers in the car, which came to a very sudden stop, fortunately not damaging anything else in the process. What a terrible sight the remains of the springs were, collapsed like a broken bone over the rear axle. There was a peasant village nearby and from them we borrowed an axe and some fencing wire. While I jacked the car up and battled to remove the remnants of the spring, The district assistants went searching for a substitute and came back with a stout branch of "Chinese Lantern" bush which they proceeded to cut to the approximate shape of the spring, complete with a "U" cut at each end to fit the shackles. We inserted the new "spring", bound it up tightly with wire, and gently lowered the jack until the weight of the car rested firmly on the springs. All seemed to hold in place and so we boarded the vehicle and proceeded on so slowly and carefully back home. It took over three hours to cover the 100 kilometres but the make-shift spring held and remained in place until the arrival of a complete new spring.
Another interesting road that we tackled in the Wankie district was the Northern border security road which we constructed as close to the Zambesi river as the topography allowed. In places, just downstream of the great gorges below the Victoria Falls, we were able to go so close that the river was visible way down in the valley below, but as the road went eastwards the tributaries, valleys and general ups and downs of the lie of the land made it technically very difficult and financially impossible to follow the course of the river closely and we settled for the crest some kilometres away from the border where drainage was not too much of a problem. This road was the eastern end of the Hostes Nicolle trail, named after that great administrator and former Secretary for Internal Affairs. It leaves the Wankie District at the Gwaai bridge, and crosses Binga, Kariba and Urungwe districts where it joins the Harare to Chirundu road near Karoi. One day this will be a great tourist route, because from it lead access roads to such attractions as the Chizarira and Chete Game reserves, Bumi Hills and Matusadona.