GD6: Momentos de crisis: la ruptura del Estado del Bienestar

At the very time Thornton wrote this report the Resident Commissioner was attempting to push through the long discussed series of reforms to bring the country in line with other Indirect Rule territories. These were eventually promulgated in December 1938 as Proclamations 61 and 62 of 1938, often referred to as the Native Administration Proclamations.70 Under Sections 8 and 15 of Proclamation 61 the Paramount Chief was empowered to issue Orders and Rules, within clearly defined areas, providing for the

‘peace, good order and welfare of his people’.71 Many of the areas in which the

Paramount Chief could issue Orders related to agricultural development or conservation policies including the right to issue Orders to ‘regulate grazing’ and ‘prevent soil erosion’.72

With the passage of Proclamation 61 the Basutoland administration could press the Paramount Chief to introduce new regulations concerning protection and maintenance of anti-erosion works. They were considerably delayed, however, by the death of Griffith in 1939, the debate over the succession of Bereng or Seeiso, the death of Seeiso just months after he was confirmed Paramount Chief, and the subsequent wrangling between Bereng and Seeiso’s widow ‘Mantsebo. Within months73 of her accession to the Regency, however, ‘Mantsebo signed an Order concerning the construction of contour banks through fields and pasture areas, ploughing on the contour, the protection

69 LNA 1486, Thornton, R.W., Outcome o f Investigations, March 1938.

70 See Machobane, Government and Change, p. 185-186 for details.

71 Proclamation 61/1938 (Chieftainship Powers Proclamation) in Basutoland, Laws o f Basutoland, pp.

156-62. The exact distinction between Rules (issued under section 15) and Orders (issued under section 8) is a little unclear. The Basutoland authorities were themselves confused about the distinction, see Machobane, Government and Change, pp. 207-209. Several previous Laws o f Lerotholi were revised as Rules. These appeared in the revised (1946) version o f the Laws of Lerotholi as part II. Orders issued under Section 8 were supposed to related to essentially administrative decisions and were included in the revised Laws o f Lerotholi as part III. Rules issued under section 15 had to have the prior approval of the High Commissioner, while this was not necessary for Orders issued under section 8.

72 Section 8, Proclamation 61/1938. Sheddick, Land Tenure in Basutoland, (p.30) lists the subjects relating to land tenure. Eric Limbach and Anita Franklin both mistakenly assumes that the 1938 Proclamation refers to actual Orders rather than the right to make Orders; Limbach,‘Current Status of Range Management’ and Franklin, Land Law in Lesotho.

73 The Order was actually issued before her appointment was confirmed by the Secretary o f State for Dominion Affairs on 10 May 1941.

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of contour banks, meadow strips and inlets, dams, grass burning trees planted in dongas and damage to fencing.74

With this Order the Department of Agriculture at last had a clear locus from which to intervene in the rural economy of Lesotho. In the words of one junior Basutoland official:

The principle of conservation - that government must have the right to drive terraces through private lands, take areas out of cultivation, to plant plantations - is now accepted.*5

Furthermore in the atmosphere of post-war reconstruction the Basutoland

administration were hopeful of gaining access to more funds under the revitalised CD&W Fund. In the belief that they were now able to overcome the two major constraints on their activities the Department of Agriculture set about intervening in a much more fundamental way in rural land-use patterns. They were soon to discover, however, that their high hopes were misguided.

7.4.1. Agricultural Improvement Areas

In 1945 the Department of Agriculture unveiled a plan to declare Agricultural Improvement Areas in parts of the country deemed to be suffering from particularly acute environmental problems. Under the scheme chiefs and headmen in these areas were temporarily to abdicate their rights to allocate land to the Department of

Agriculture. The Department was then to categorise the area as agricultural land, grazing land or tree plantations on the basis of its agro-ecological potential. All pre­

existing divisions of agricultural land were to be cancelled and each family allocated a single field in proportion to its size.76 The scheme was closely modelled on the

Southern Rhodesian ‘centralisation* and South African Betterment policies though it did not include as strong an emphasis on the regrouping of residential sites.77

When proposals for the Agricultural Improvement Areas were put before the Basutoland National Council they received a very unfavourable reaction. In the aftermath of the administrative and judicial reforms of 1938 and 1944 the Chiefs were in no mood to give up their major remaining source of power: the allocation of land.

74 Order No. 1/26, Office o f the Paramount Chief, Matsieng, 26 March 1941, reproduced in Thornton, R.W. ‘Anti-erosion measures and reclamation o f eroded land’, Proceedings o f the South African Society o f Civil Engineers, XL, 1942, pp. 79-104, p. 96.

75 Duncan to Robertson, 20 October 1944, Patrick Duncan Archives, University of York, DU5 81/10, emphasis in original.

76 Sheddick, Land Tenure, p. 129.

77 See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War, pp. 71-75 on centralisation and Yawiteh, J.

Betterment: the myth o f homeland agriculture, (Johannesburg, 1981) on Betterment.

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During a ‘stormy session’ the proposals were rejected.78 Despite this set-back the Department of Agriculture included many elements of the scheme in a proposal for further CD&W funding79 and attempted to re-introduce the schemes to the National Council the following year.

This time the Basutoland administration incorporated the Agricultural Development Areas into proposals for the construction of a new mountain road, arguing that it would open up new areas to agricultural expansion and the Department of Agriculture therefore needed new powers over land allocation in a twenty-mile strip on either side of the road.80 Most members of the Basutoland National Council were very much in favour of the road and had been lobbying for its construction for some time. They were, not surprisingly, extremely annoyed to discover the proposal was now tied to a scheme they had rejected the previous year. Chief Leloko Lerotholi, one of the more outspoken senior chiefs,81 clearly outlined the reason for their opposition to the Agricultural Improvement Areas:

The declaration of Agricultural Improvement Areas means that the Government, that is through the Agricultural Department, should control the grazing and control the lands of the people which they never had the right to do before.

He went on to say that they would rather do without the road than agree to policies that would ‘persecute the whole Nation’.82

Opposition to the scheme was not confined to the National Council. In a series of editorials the influential bi-lingual Mochochonono newspaper, strongly associated with the Basutoland Progressive Association, spelt out its opposition to the

Agricultural Improvement Areas, especially the suggestion that the schemes might include regulations for the compulsory culling of livestock.83 Furthermore they felt that any scheme should be implemented through elected District Councils and not via the Department of Agriculture and the chiefs alone.

78 Lefela, M. ‘Taxes up in Basutoland’, Inkulueko, 18 February 1946, in Edgar, Prophets with Honour.

79 PRO D 0 3 5 /1 187/Y 1136/23, Application for Free Grant under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 20 March 1946.

80 PRO D 035/1187/Y 1136/23, Application for Free Grant under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 20 March 1946.

81 Over the next few years he raised a number o f important constitutional issues in the National Council, including the question o f whether Lesotho was a Crown Colony or a Protectorate, see Machobane, Government and Change, p. 248-249.

82 Basutoland National Council, Proceedings o f the 42nd Session, October 1946, p. 48.

83 Editorial, 18 August 1945, and letter from B.N. Mathe, 15 September 1945, Mochochonono. Arden- Clarke later pointed to fears about culling as the primary cause o f Basotho opposition, PRO DO 35/1187/Y1136/23, Minutes of discussion with Arden-Clarke, 29 June 1946.

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In the National Council the Acting Resident Commissioner made the position of the British Government position clear: unless the National Council agreed to the

Agricultural Improvement Area funds for the road would not be forthcoming.84 Despite this threat the National Council again rejected the plans for a national scheme by a vote of 44 to 4.85

Given this opposition the Department of Agriculture decided to by-pass the National Council and try to get the backing of individual chiefs for projects in their wards. The policy was announced in an unusually downbeat manner in their 1946 Annual Report with a note that they regretted that the ‘question of stock limitation... will not at present be considered by the Basotho’.86 Only one Agricultural Improvement Area was ever declared,87 in the Maphutsang valley in Mohales Hoek District after the area was visited by a party of senior chiefs.88 Fields were to be allocated on the basis of family size and a further quarter-acre plot in a large block suitable for vegetable gardening was given to each family.89 A second stage of the plan was to include the implementation of rotational grazing, ‘the disposal of stock surplus to the estimated carrying capacity of the grassland’ and compulsory villagisation.90

At first the Department of Agriculture reported that the scheme was proceeding satisfactorily and were pleased to show Dr W.C. Lowdermilk, the recently retired head of the United States Soil Conservation Service, around the project.91 The following year, however, they admitted, in an unusually candid statement, that things had not gone according to plan:

One of the difficulties which has to be overcome in this scheme is the equitable distribution of arable land. Shortly after the scheme was commenced, land was redistributed on a family size basis, but this is such a fluctuating figure that within a few years what was equitable to start with has become wholly inequitable. As land issue is one of the few remaining props to authority which the chiefs and sub-chiefs have it is considered to be politically unwise, apart from it being almost impracticable, that the issue of lands should become yet another function of Government, as would be required in any extension of the Maphutseng scheme.

Therefore, land issue is to be allowed to revert to the chiefdom 92

84 Basutoland National Council, Proceedings o f the 42nd Session, October 1946, p. 55.

85 Basutoland National Council, Proceedings o f the 42nd Session, October 1946, p. 57.

86 Basutoland, Department o f Agriculture, Annual Report, 1946, p.4.

87 Though they were discussed in other areas, including in Mokhotlong.

88 Basutoland National Council, Proceedings o f the 42nd Session, October 1946, p. 8-9.

89 See Nobe and Seckler, An economic and policy analysis o f soil-water problems.

90 Sheddick, Land Tenure, p. 130.

91 Basutoland, Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1949, p. 11.

92 Basutoland, Department o f Agriculture, Annual Report, 1950, p. 11.

Ill

After the failure of the only Agricultural Improvement Area ever declared the policy was dropped.

Despite this set-back the Department of Agriculture were still keen to establish at least one area based agricultural development project. In 1952 they obtained CD&W funding for a Pilot Project in the Tebetebeng river valley. Apart from the inevitable

construction of contour banks the major intervention associated with the Pilot Project as the introduction of co-operative ownership of tractors. Given the failures of the

Agricultural Improvement Areas, however, the Department of Agriculture were extremely wary of tampering in pre-existing land tenure arrangements.93

The basic idea behind the scheme was that farmers in one area would co-operate and all have their fields ploughed at the same time by a communally owned tractor. Despite relatively generous external funding and high hopes amongst Basutoland officials, again the scheme did not go according to plan. Inevitably the land tenure system was one of the primary targets for blame: if one farmer in the centre of a block refused to take part it became extremely difficult to administer the ploughing.94 Unable either to reform or work with the agricultural land tenure system the Department of Agriculture changed its emphasis and from the mid 1950s decided to ‘concentrate on improving the methods and output of progressive individuals and not to undertake “mass” schemes’.95

7.5. Access to mountain grazing areas, boundary disputes and