Paper short abstract:

This study explores the politics of organising urban life in the African part of the city of Salisbury in colonial Zimbabwe between the 1920s and the 1940s and how the emergence and character of a ghettoised African “Location”, was shaped and influenced by colonial bureaucratic segregatory policies.

Paper long abstract:

This study explores the politics of organising urban life in the African part of the city of Salisbury in colonial Zimbabwe between the 1920s and the 1940s. It examines how the emergence and character of a ghettoised African "Location", was shaped and influenced by colonial bureaucratic segregatory policies which viewed Africans as temporary sojourners in the city. It engages with the controlling ideologies of colonial administration of "differentiation and domination" to unpack the root cause of the rise of African urban protest. It argues that the reluctance of the colonial authorities and business to invest in basic infrastructure and social services for the Location was the core reason why Africans organised themselves for the improvement of conditions in their segregated part of the City. Seeing themselves as permanent dwellers long before this fact was acknowledged by municipal authorities, many Africans came gradually to understand their collective strength. The emergence of African urban movements was thus a result of a realisation by Africans of the strength of the collective in confronting colonial authorities. It makes the assertion that emerging labour union movements that were coming out of colonial Zimbabwe were obligated by the conditions prevailing in the African Location, reluctantly established by the colonial government, to become agents of urban Africans township grievances and concerns. The article examines the direction taken by the colonial government in "Native Administration", specifically "Location Administration" in the context of the Depression years and the Second World War in colonial urban Zimbabwe.