176
In 1949, a revised scheme was introduced, and, with it, the price stabilization fund was
renamed the Southern Province African Farmers' Improvement Fund. The fund was to be replenished
annually by a levy on all African sales of maize in the province. This new scheme was extended to
the railway zone of the Central province and to the Eastern province in 1951 (Kalapula 1984,
pp. 37-38).
B. Agricultural settlement schemes
The first agricultural settlement scheme was started in 1950 with the selection of Chipangali,
an area under Chief Sayiri, North of Chipata in the Eastern province, to provide alternative land for
agricultural development for Ngonis displaced by white settlers in areas of Chipata South that had been
declared crown land. The first families moved into the scheme in 1951, but it was not until 1955 that
infrastructural developments promised at the beginning were brought to the area. At this time, roads
were constructed, wells were sunk, dams were built, the land was demarcated, and staff houses, a
school, a dispensary, a welfare hall, and stores were built.
Between 1951 and 1963, other people slowly moved into the Chipangali agricultural settlement
area from South Ngoni. Apart from their displeasure over being displaced by the European
immigrants, people were reluctant to move to the settlement area because of the long distance from
their original home base, and fear that their cattle would not survive in the tsetse infested area. Once
there, settlers were registered under the peasant farming scheme and given plots of 40 hectares.
By the end of 1963, 67 of the 86 farm plots were occupied, and the farm families, who had
been provided with 6 hectares of cleared land, two oxen, a plough, and a ridge and scotch cart 5 on
loan, were growing groundnuts, maize, and burley tobacco. Even though a few farm families moved
out, the number moving into the scheme was larger, and by 1973, 105 farm families were cultivating
12,000 hectares of land (Eardmans 1972).
Shortly after independence, many of the European farmers left Zambia, leaving behind their
large landholdings in the crown land areas. The agricultural structure left behind by the colonial rulers
was highly dualistic. Settled farmers dominated most marketed crops, and there was little development
of small-scale, semi-commercialized African agriculture. The newly independent Zambian state had
adopted the philosophy of humanism,' which committed it to the policy of full employment, requiring
that every able-bodied person be fully employed in some productive work. At the same time, the
government was concerned with the country's food insecurity position. On the one hand, it was a
frontline nation and in the past, the country had depended upon imports from the white-ruled south.
On the other hand, the country's urban population was growing rapidly, with obvious political
significance.
The government embraced the idea of giving land to people who wished to settle for
agricultural purposes, through settlement in organized schemes, a move that was politically
motivated,' and one that has persisted as a key factor in Zambian agriculture. The farms vacated by
A small two-wheeled cart of southern Africa with a detachable or slanting panel at the back.
6 Humanism is a pragmatic form of African socialism which stresses the need to remove "man's exploitation of man"
through state control over the "heights of the economy" but still allows private enterprise to continue in most sectors of the
economy. See Kaunda (1974), Part II.
7 For a more detailed discussion of this viewpoint, see Kean and Woods (1992).