5
Table 1.1: Land tenure classification, Zambia, 1937 and 1950 (million acres)
|
Land category |
193T |
1950° |
|
Reserve Land: | ||
|
Barotseland |
37.0 | |
|
Other reserves |
34.0 | |
|
Unassigned |
94.0 | |
|
Crown (European) land |
9.0 |
4.6 |
|
Forest and game land |
5.0 |
1.0 |
|
African land: | ||
|
Reserve Land |
7i.0 | |
|
Trust Land |
i00.0 | |
|
Unalienated crown land |
4.7 | |
|
Total |
i79.0 |
181.3 |
a. Robin Palmer, "Land in Zambia," in "Zambian Land and Labour Studies," vol. i, Occasional Paper no. 2
(Lusaka, National Archives, n. d. ), p. 64.
b. Robin Palmer, op. cit. supra, 64. The discrepancy between the i937 and i950 is carried over from official
sources.
A number of important developments followed in the post-World War II period. First, a wave
of settlers did eventually acquire farms; over a thousand white farms were established by the 1960s,
with a substantial reduction in the area of unalienated crown land. Second, prior to the 1930s,
allocations of crown land involved mainly freehold property. Beginning in the 1930s, more and more
settlers were granted long-term leaseholds rather than freeholds, giving way entirely to leaseholds by
1944. With independence in 1964, crown land became State Land, while Reserves and Trust Land
retained their pre-independence classifications (table 1.2). As late as 1987, the former European sector
comprised only 6 percent of the nation's total land area.
III. Agrarian structure
State Land, or the former commercial sector, has been the geographical focus of commercial
farming in Zambia. The country historically has relied heavily on the commercial farm sector for the
food surplus to feed its highly urbanized population and work force. Large numbers of expatriate
farmers emigrated in the 1960s for several reasons: Zambian independence, marketing policies that
seriously eroded profits, major land incentives offered by Zimbabwe and South Africa, and stringent
regulations governing expatriation of profits. Sales of freehold farms and assignments of leaseholds
increased in the years immediately preceding independence and continued into the 1970s.
Approximately 1,185 European farms with a total area of 3.79 million acres existed in 1961.
Approximately 460 European farmers left the country within two years after independence (Arntzen
et al. 1982). By 1970-71, the commercial farming sector had declined to 1,076 farming units, of
which 643 were classified as "African" and 433 as "non-African" (agricultural census). By 1981, the
number of "non-African" commercial farming units by most counts had fallen to around 300 (Bruce
and Dorner 1982).